audreycritter: jenroses:bogleech: kittydorkling:jenroses: shinnegamitensei: this site has one settin
audreycritter: jenroses:bogleech: kittydorkling:jenroses: shinnegamitensei: this site has one setting I’m laughing, but there’s a super useful corollary, which my husband calls “the Red Balloon.” He was a defense lawyer and had a fair number of drug addicts come through, and there is a thing where if you’re like, on your first offense, they’ll do a thing where you can go to treatment and if you complete it they’ll take the conviction off your record. And he would tell his clients, “Look, everyone’s going to tell you not to do drugs. They’re going to say it over and over again. And it’s like, if people tell you not to think of a white elephant, you’re going to think of a white elephant. But the trick to not thinking about a white elephant is to think of a red balloon. So you need to find your red balloon. For some people it’s yoga. For others it’s woodworking. For some people it’s scrapbooking or gardening or any of a long list of things to do. They focus on that, it’s a lot easier to succeed in ignoring the white elephant.”So yeah, “watch yourself” is one thing… but the better idea is to watch something else. (Even if it’s fanfic about werewolves fucking.) It’s a form of productive dissociation, and is super, super helpful.It’s easy for me to get bogged down in how much pain I’m in… but some of the most painful periods of my life have also been the most productive, writing-wise, because writing is one of my red balloons. There is a phrase I use A LOT in my parenting and my son gets very sick of it, but it’s true:The thing you practise is the thing you get good at.You may not intentionally be practicing “being grumpy” but if you don’t put effort into practicing “not being grumpy” then I’m afraid that’s what you’re doing. It’s hard! It’s really hard! Sometimes, for some things, it’s pretty much impossible and that sucks! But being carefully aware that you are going to get good at the things you do most of is a good way to be more careful of what those things are. If that makes sense. You gotta appreciate sometimes how tumblr works in such a way that everyone who wants to reblog this interesting or useful psychological advice is also forced to reblog the thing about werewolf fucking excuse me, I know how to remove a reblog from the chain if I wanted to. seconding the parenting one! my kids hear “Well, were you working on being kind?” instead of “why were you being mean?” all of us, including me, need reminders that kindness and positive change don’t happen naturally. what you put effort into being is what you’ll be, and if you aren’t putting effort into being kind and being better, then the default is often the things that require less effort to be– choosing to be mean or grumpy or whiny or selfish or negative are still CHOICES, they just take less energy to choose, and they WILL be the fallback whenever you aren’t actively choosing to be other things.the good news is that while they always take effort, they can get better with practice, like a plant reaching for sun– we start to lean and grow toward what sustains us. -- source link