Mr. O'Bailey

I must not mock Gen Alpha. Mocking Gen Alpha is the mind killer. Mocking Gen Alpha is the little-death that brings total generational solidarity obliteration. I will engage with Gen Alpha lovingly. I will permit them to be cringe. And when they grow up I will turn my eye to their accomplishments. Where mocking has gone there will be nothing. Only generational solidarity remains

The Kids are indeed Alright.

We must teach them the Lore of things,

like piracy, and how to find stuff at the Library, and Unions, and what it's not legal for job applications to ask you.

when i hear complaints about the boomers, i say "was it not boomers getting shot by cops while protesting against the war in vietnam? Were not boomers the ones who insisted that banks would no longer require a cosign from a husband or father for a woman to open an account or have a credit card? Did they not literally take us to the moon?"

When i hear complaints about gen x i say " did not gen x bear the brunt of AIDS and the creation of the 'inner city'? wasn't it gen-x marching for queer rights and women's body autonomy and a change in corrupt banking policies in some of the largest protests in the country's history?"

when i hear complaints about millennials, i say "have not millennials fought against and lived through so many 'once in a generation' disasters they should by all rights have given up by now? Are not millennials those who rally against the status quo? the industry killers, the cop protesters, they who live through unending hardship as the economic noose tightens, leading the charge for sustainability and socio-economic reform?"

when i hear complaints about gen-z i say "hasn't gen-z gotten involved younger, and been involved stronger, in the continuance of these noble traditions? Are they not living without even the broken pieces of the promise given to the generations that came before? haven't they had their childhoods derailed by the imminence of consequences for actions they were never even present for?"

when i hear complaints about generation alpha i say "HOW DARE YOU. How dare you malign these souls who will have to fix so much that they did not have a hand in ruining... or else die of these mistakes made before they were born. How dare you do the work of our shared oppressors and alienate our fresh blood. You are not to mistreat and mock the youngest soldiers in this fight, no! you point out to them the best targets, you share your rations, you show them how to stay alive, because anyone in the trenches with us is our brethren, our sistren. Our safety and our strength."

don't let the worst kind of stand up comedian tell you other generations are terrible. Don't let the worst kind of headline convince you each generation is against the other. Don't let the worst kind of oppressive force keep us divided along lines that mean nothing real. Because that is how they win.

I’m about to save you thousands of dollars in therapy by teaching you what I learned paying thousands of dollars for therapy:

It may sound woo woo but it’s an important skill capitalism and hyper individualism have robbed us of as human beings.

Learn to process your emotions. It will improve your mental health and quality of life. Emotions serve a biological purpose, they aren’t just things that happen for no reason.

1. Pause and notice you’re having a big feeling or reaching for a distraction to maybe avoid a feeling. Notice what triggered the feeling or need for a distraction without judgement. Just note that it’s there. Don’t label it as good or bad.

2. Find it in your body. Where do you feel it? Your chest? Your head? Your stomach? Does it feel like a weight everywhere? Does it feel like you’re vibrating? Does it feel like you’re numb all over?

3. Name the feeling. Look up an emotion chart if you need to. Find the feeling that resonates the most with what you’re feeling. Is it disappointment? Heartbreak? Anxiety? Anger? Humiliation?

4. Validate the feeling. Sometimes feelings misfire or are disproportionately big, but they’re still valid. You don’t have to justify what you’re feeling, it’s just valid. Tell yourself “yeah it makes sense that you feel that right now.” Or something as simple as “I hear you.” For example: If I get really big feelings of humiliation when I lose at a game of chess, the feeling may not be necessary, but it is valid and makes sense if I grew up with parents who berated me every time I did something wrong. So I could say “Yeah I understand why we are feeling that way given how we were treated growing up. That’s valid.”

5. Do something with your body that’s not a mental distraction from the feeling. Something where you can still think. Go on a walk. Do something with your hands like art or crochet or baking. Journal. Clean a room. Figure out what works best for you.

6. Repeat, it takes practice but is a skill you can learn :)

I have been in EMDR therapy recently to help with past trauma and like 90% of the appointments is just this post. Which I thought was silly at first bcs I was like "well I know how I'm feeling, I feel bad" but man you have no idea. Literally JUST talking through whatever stressful thing I have going on at the moment and whenever I feel a Big Emotion stopping and acknowledging, naming, and sitting with it. I've made more progress with my trauma and mental illnesses just doing this in a single year than I have in like 10+ years of therapy.

It might feel silly or pointless at first but stick with it, it really helps.

As someone with alexithymia, I have found DBT's handouts on "Understanding and Naming Emotions" really helpful in being able to tell what emotion I was having to then validate it or manage it. They are detailed. On each emotion page, Marsha Linehan (long may she live) put things under the following headings, to create a detailed emotion profile:

I tend to slowly scan each part of my body for physical sensations, body language, and urges (ie "biological changes and experiences") and then try to match those to an emotion, now that I have those cheat sheets. Getting good at this took a lot of practice and repetition. For me at least, it is a manual skill I have had to build up.

Working backwards to figure out what emotions you might logically have in response to an event and seeing if those match what you are feeling can be really helpful too.

You can find these DBT emotion handouts here (scroll to page 7 for the start of the emotion profiles):

And here is every single DBT handout from the official manual for anyone interested (don't sue me pls):

Also helpful to other people I have talked to is this emotion-sensation wheel by Lindsay Brahman, which some people find easier to follow:

Just don't do a me - I took this too literally at first and thought that only the sensations directly branching off the emotions made up those emotions. In reality there is a lot of mixing and matching, and a lot of stuff not covered on the wheel. It is a rough (but often useful!) guide.

And here is another useful infographic that comes from this article by Greatist, which they adapted from a 2014 study that aimed to map bodily sensations of emotions. Yellow areas are the most activated/tense regions (so they might feel hot, tight, tense, full of energy, warm, maybe sick or fluttery if it is your stomach), and blue areas are the least activated regions (feel heavy, hard to move, maybe weak or cold)

And finally a tip for my neurodivergent friends: when you are scanning your body for emotions, look for signs or causes of overstimulation first, and address that before you try to do any of this - headphones, leaving a space, eating or drinking, turning off lights, weighted blankets, going somewhere cooler or warmer, stimming, whatever you need/can reasonably do. In its early stages overstimulation may feel like an intense emotion, and unfortunately mixing them up can lead to some bad and unproductive times.

Original

sorry I wasn’t in the mood to be a person today, sorry I forgot to keep a conversation, sorry my soul needs ironing. give me a moment, a day or a so. it’ll be good. I’ll brush my hair and change my clothes. I’ll laugh a lot. I’ll say important things. it’ll be good.

you ever get tired of living but in a non-suicidal way

like everything is bad everywhere and no one has money and im tired of this cycle

i tried to explain how i was feeling like this to my drug counselor and she was like "yeah that still sounds kinda suicidal" and i could not figure out how to explain that i don't wanna die, i just like. am so so so tired of the way life is for me and all my friends and family. i'm tired of living like this but i'm gonna keep doing it bc i guess there's no other choice

I don't wanna die, I wanna go lay on a warm field under the sun and watch the clouds go by. How is this hard to understand?

I just want to spend a few days in the dim twilight between sleep and waking, but specifically the dim twilight of a Saturday morning in April.

There used to be something derisive from UK psychology/psychiatry, called “shit life syndrome” where the person isn’t actually depressed they’re just unhappy because their life objectively is terrible. Like their mental health issues would go away pretty quickly if they had friends and more money, and some support and people that weren’t being cruel to them all the time. As I unpack my own mental health, I think about that frequently, and I’m more sure that I didn’t have depression. I just was unhappy and my brain was too, that so many of my basic needs were not being met. 

you say 'derisive' but fuck me, someone acknowledging this would have been a lot more effective than handing me a 'Have you considered not having Wrong Thoughts, citizen?' worksheet

Yeah, one of the ways the NHS is trying to fix this is with social prescribing

I got referred just before the pandemic lockdowns, so I didn't really get the intended experience, but the idea is that your doctor refers you to a social prescriber, who is a person who helps you identify your problems and helps to connect you with services/groups that can help you

It obviously doesn't work if the services don't exist/aren't helpful, but tbh, even getting confirmation that I wasn't just not looking hard enough was validating. Like, my social prescriber did ring places on my behalf and go "can you accommodate an autistic person?" and even when she got a "no", it made me feel less like I just wasn't making an effort

But yeah, shit life syndrome has been a massive issue for years and the NHS is trying to do what they can, but obviously, it's putting a plaster on a wound the rest of the government is actively causing

Parasite and Girl

it’s been one year since i’ve posted this and i still can’t believe the mind-bogglingly enormous response it has gotten… thank you all, i’m glad you liked my silly comic so much

It’s been 4 years

don't let my tits distract u from the fact that i'm not ok in the head

don't let the fact that i'm not ok in the head distract u from my tits

i’m not okay in the head so suck on my tits :)

don't let the fact that I'm only ok at giving head distract you from my tits

If you think about it your grandparents talking to the cashier isn’t actually weird and in the grand scheme of things we’re the weird ones for being afraid to talk to strangers. Like obviously if someone doesn’t wanna talk don’t talk to them. But I’ve made a point recently of giving cashiers and strangers openings to talk to me if they want like saying how’s business today or how long have you owned this shop, or asking how’s things, or commenting generally how hot it is today. Things people can ignore if they want or comment on if they want.

And honestly I think it’s made my life a bit richer. I’m still terrified. I’m still scared of people because anxiety is a hard thing to fight. But it’s just nice to connect with strangers actually. Chatting with the Uber driver about his engineering degree hes getting, learning about the history of a glass shop I visited, chatting with a stranger about his escape from a war zone, telling people I’ll never see again about my dreams I know are unlikely but I’m pursuing anyways, connecting even briefly with other coffee lovers, cat people, babysitters, and wine haters. I almost never see these people again but they make my life way more fun when they take my invitation or I take theirs.

Maybe we do need to talk to other people instead of being on our phones sometimes actually. Not forcefully. And time alone on your phone is a right you have. A good thing in its own right. But you don’t have to be isolated either. It’s nice sometimes to chat with the old lady in line at the grocery store. And she’s not weird for giving you that option.

If you wanna get started small with this, my suggestion is to go to a smaller store or coffee shop or something where you won’t be holding up a line too much, and when the cashier says “How are you today?” Say “Good, how are you?”

If the cashier just pushes forward the transaction, don’t push it. If they start commenting on how it’s a slow day or the weather we’re having, comment on that. If they wanna chat they’ll keep going. If they don’t, they’ll push you along.

Politely complimenting people’s clothes or nails or something they’re working on in a chill not crowded public setting is also a good opener. Asking about people’s animals they’re walking or chatting with someone when their kid runs into you is also a good opportunity.

If people don’t wanna chat they’ll usually scurry away or push you through the transaction with short quick answers. You’ll know if you pay attention. If they wanna chat, they’ll linger. They’ll give you longer answers. They’ll ask you questions back.

It’s really scary at first but you get better at it over time. Just start small. Maybe accept an invitation to chat from an old lady also waiting at the bus stop.

character who is sun-coded but not in the traditional ray-of-sunshine way. character who is sun-coded in the sense that they burn hot and bright and powerful, that they're a raging fury of fire and passion, and that maybe, just maybe, they are destroying themselves as they do so.

Today's Adventure is that I, after an unintentional 13-hour power nap,

Update:

Ok, so:

... further details in a bit I think the Vikings are here.

OK so.

Not to make this monster even longer, but I slept, and can answer a few questions:

Little Ham Man himself.

2. What was Illegal about what Officer and Mrs. Cunt Magnifique did?/If they're hosed, are you moving in?/Does Doris still have to move out?

I don't know all the details, but Officer Magnifique was going door-to-door, in uniform and armed, telling his neighbors they had to sign this paperwork or there would be legal consequences, which is pretty textbook coercion and abuse of office. Also If I understood the summary someone told me while I was dying of heat exhaustion, the actual legal setup they were trying to push was some shady land-ownership/tax evasion nonsense too.

But also. All of this happened YESTERDAY. Charges aren't files (tho they are definitely coming) let alone the trial held/conviction/payout or other consequences, so they could still be living there and involved in active litigation for like. A year. And it's an unfortunate truth that living near a cop that's having a meltdown is a great way to get shot.

So No. I'm not moving in there.

Also, Doris originally brought up the idea of moving because of them, but she is also very close to her granddaughter and they both want her to move out there.

3. You live like this/How do I get a life like that?

The process is fairly simple, but takes a lot of work. It goes like this

4. Are. Are you alright OP?

LMAO.

Things will probably calm down by Tuesday Afternoon, but until then I'm gonna be running on all cylinders until the wheels fall off. If you want to contribute to my "Stress Ice Cream/Herschel's Special Little Ham Boy Fund" You can Donate to my Ko-Fi, and if you want more stories, check out the #Family Lore tag on this blog, or head over to my Patreon for additional stories/to pre-order the book I'm writing about my and my ancestor's lives because this shit runs like rivers on both sides of my family.

5. Were you wearing the Cryptid Booty shorts for this?/Where did you get them?

They were a bespoke Wedding Gift from @theshitpostcalligrapher but you can always make your own with a pair of shorts and some fabric paint. My beloved Husbeast has a matching neon pink pair that say "BARD".

I am asking you to endure it.

a lot of Gregory Berrycones in the notes missing the reference to my twelve note magnum opus from several hours prior in which the narrator silently begs an entity that isn’t really God for death and the entity says no

the narrator is operating under the constraint that they can only use words “god” has already spoken, “god” is aware of this and says the ‘Time flies’ sentence on purpose in order to give the narrator the pieces they need to voice their complaint; “god” has constant access to the narrator’s thoughts, and answers them as though they’re having a conversation between equals, but clearly absolutely dictates the terms under which the narrator can speak. it becomes obvious as the scene continues that the narrator is silently screaming and that the request being denied may be a request for death, but is at minimum a request for some acute suffering to be stopped

this could be an interaction between a normal person and an evil telepath with some mind control ability pretending to be the voice of a benevolent god. or it could work as a demon lord speaking to a soul they’ve trapped in a mirror and keep at their side. or it could be an actual god trying to calm down their only believer because they’re trapped in the same prison. the concept amused me so kindly forgive the ugliness of the execution

you are asking me to endure it

[ID: original post here

god: Yes, you have been given a life in which none of your suffering will ever be meaningful or justified. I am asking you to endure it anyway. me: god: We both know that you know that I only speak in silences. me: god: A thousand faces, all of them Mine. me: [A thousand faces, [none] of them Mine.] god: Beloved. me: god: I am asking you to endure it. me: god: You did not always live inside this mirror. You will not always be here, suffering.

me:

god: You understand what will happen to you if I look away, don’t you? If I blink? I have had to watch every mean and sordid instant of your life, bound within these chains of ardent love. Although you beg me, curse me, and hate me, I will not look away from you. This was the choice I made on your behalf, not My own. me: god: No. But I’m close enough to your idea of the real thing that that shouldn’t matter.

me:

god: Time flies straight like an arrow, which is to say it doesn’t. me: [N][arrow][is][the][strai][T][.] god: I gave you language. You ate the fruit. You will not persuade me not to stay my hand. me: [I am asking [You] [h][ow] to endure it.] god: On the strength of My having asked it of you. me: [I am asking [not] to endure it.] god: Scio, sweetheart./]

tbf if a weird zombie-like guy running a monster-themed food truck paid me thousands of dollars per hour to dress up and occasionally attack another food truck, I’d probably go along with it without question too

So is this a fandom post or, like, something that happened in your town?

my assistant: Oh, boss, i have to report that your last 7 posts were... flops. im sorry.

me, lips quivering, eyes wet, at my office table: i... hrrrngh... *starts hitting my own head* stupid stupid stupid stupid stupid

You're being too hard on yourself. Posts are like flowers, not products. Don't let the expectations of capitalism ruin your posting experience.

can i hold your hand

Of course