Meteorological Misanthropy #8: Rock Me Like a Labor Pain?

CW: Puns worse than my title ahead. Also some vague allusions to where Hypothetical Future Babies might hypothetically come from in some hypothetical future. Tornado Warnings from Tropical Storm Isaias spring up in the Northeast. Lavender: "One and a half hours. There is an actual tornado on the actual ground, and Google says we're a …

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No Praise Like Home

You know how trauma workbooks commonly offer a warning to stop, to practice self-care, and to return to a chapter at a future time if any material in it becomes too triggering? I have never paid much attention to those warnings, even during those years when my mistrust of the system was so intense that …

Messages in a Bottle #14: If You’re a Poet and You Don’t Know It…

Traumaversaries are weird. I have learned that it is entirely possible for me to feel stressed, anxious, rejection sensitive and floaty for days with no overt understanding of why I am feeling this way - even throughout events that should otherwise be fun in present-day 2019 - because my subconscious mind still remembers what my conscious mind …

Work/Life Int-egg-ration

I used to think my boss's term for work-life imbalance was something he made up. I don't know why I thought this, other than that he always said it so confidently and without attribution. I’d never have had the confidence to pass off a saying that often without crediting the original source, so I just …

Eek! Previews

Emotional flashbacks are tricky to recognize. You can become thoroughly caught up in the fight/flight/freeze responses of the past without even realizing you have shifted. And, even if you do realize you are in one, it can be tricky to recognize to what, exactly, you are flashing back. There are, after all, so many discreet …

Messages in a Bottle #11: Scheissegeist

Content warning: mentions of past abuse and medical crises. Mentions of the 9th Circle of Hell. Zeitgeist means "spirit of the times." It is the idea that you have to judge the past by the understanding of those of its day, not necessarily by modern conceptions. Scheissegeist...well let's just say that is a term for …

Trust in Mental Health Treatment (Part 4): Choose Your Own Adventure

So, I potentially have good news. I've gotten to the final round of the interview process for a new job in my same city. It's what I do now but with a different organization. I'll update eventually whether I got the job, but talking about it right now feels a bit too much like tempting …

Remote Control

If a bully-of-a-boss screams in an office, and there is no Lavender around to hear it, can he still control her amygdalar fear response? We're about to find out. I am now a 100% remote employee?! I've spent my not-FMLA completing a crash course in processing a lifetime of trauma alongside dealing with the concurrent 9th …

Where’s Whoopsie #14: Where’s it Hurt?

Traveling and being unwilling to bring anything I have actually invested time and effort in with me to Hell means I haven't posted a Where's Whoopsie since July! I suppose I could have posted some of my decidedly not-safe-for-work swear word drawings that I relied upon instead of geometric patterns to express my feelings during …

Absent without (Family Medical) Leave

I know the DSM-V no longer includes the term "nervous breakdown" anymore. I'm fairly confident even if it did include it, since the origins of my panic attacks, crying, dissociation, and depression are quite well known, I'd still just end up labeled with the "dissociative subtype" of PTSD (aka the compromise that is supposed to …