mfkgmgkglglgmgkg

[ID: It’s the spiderman pointing at spiderman meme, but there are lots of spider men, and they are labeled as follows: social anxiety, normal anxiety, nausea from feeling anxious, burnout, seasonal anxiety, financial anxiety, covid anxiety, and existential dread. End ID.]

One of my many daily struggles from “living with” Anxiety

@aziraphae you are awesome & I’m so so happy you make these edits for us all. Neurodivergent solidarity right along with you!

Me: nods thoughtfully, realizes that I should calm down

Also me: sees the remaining 8.6% as scientific proof that I should absolutely still worry about everything

and then there’s always the part where you’re sure that you’re anxiety georg

who only worries accurately and should not have been counted

how did my ancestors survive the brutal unforgiving wilderness when I get anxiety sweats from going to Target

to be fair im sure your ancestors would have the exact same reaction going to a Target

In the brutal unforgiving wilderness false positives cost nothing and false negatives are expensive. You’re better off being afraid of something that can’t hurt you than not afraid of something that can hurt you.

In a world where we mostly aren’t in danger, day to day, as long as we don’t play in traffic or jump off something, that’s no longer quite as adaptive.

We got our anxiety from a long, unbroken line of ancestors who were scared enough to survive, and pass on those genes! 

It helps me sometimes to think about that at night, when I can’t sleep because my heart is pounding over something like “what if my usually reliable alarm clock doesn’t work in the morning for some reason and I’m late for work and lose my job and everyone hates me.” There’s nothing wrong with me, I just have a lot of extra, unused run-from-tigers juice that my grandparents left me.

“Unused run-from-tigers juice.”

I love that.

Our brains have been running Hunter/Gatherer 1.0 for 60,000 years without a software upgrade.

https://www.instagram.com/st.janie/ <--- source artist

tbh the worst thing about being a self aware mentally ill person is that people assume that because you understand your illness you’re automatically able to actually apply your knowledge to your life and cure yourself

Do I know my brain isn’t making the most sense right now?  Yes.  Can I stop it?  No. 

Everything is networking!

I am super socially anxious.  And when I get nervous, my usual response is hyperactivity, with a side order of lack of focus.  I will literally run into a swamp to avoid interacting with people.  This makes cocktail parties a kind of hell, and “networking events” a way to go right back to grade school.  I wind up standing in a corner, looking puzzled, until I go home and cry in the bathroom.  Clearly I am doomed, right?

Nope!  Because I wrote/write a lot of fanfic, and interacted with other fanfic authors in a low-pressure, “we are all in this together” way.  We became friends because we became friends, not because we were useful to one another.  And one of those other authors introduced me to my agent, who she knew through conventions.  And the beat goes on.

You can absolutely network in whatever sideways, idiosyncratic manner works best for you.  I promise no one is grading.

This is not for you.

This is a post aimed at me and other people who constantly fall into guilt spirals over all the things they can’t do, and feel they should somehow magically be able to do anyway.

For me, and for the others, this is a gentle reminder:

- Posts asking for monetary donations are speaking to people who have money. Not your broke ass, still worrying how to buy food next month.

- Posts asking you to care about [extreme injustice of the day] are speaking to people who have energy to care. Not you, hanging onto your sanity by the fingernails. 

And, most importantly: posts telling you that you are horrible/cheap/awful/rude/unworthy/unlikable if you don’t pay/reblog/signal boost/care? Those posts can fucking die in a fire.

TL;DR: Posts asking for shit you are not physically or mentally able to give? 

THOSE POSTS ARE NOT FOR YOU. 

yo what are you always so stressed about?

me:

…before leaving the house, take a photo of your stove and oven dials—or your thermostat, or your iron, or anything else you worry about accidentally leaving on. If your brain starts to play the “Did I really turn it off” game, you can simply tap your photo app and see for yourself

You have a reputation for being horribly indecisive. In truth, you’ve been cursed with the ability to see every possible negative outcome of every choice you make, no matter how minor.

Oh boy let me tell you a thing about anxiety