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You Are The Starry Sky Eternal

@bluebelladon

Master of surviving cosmic bs
Ace/Aro/Agender
I use They and He pronouns
Profile pic is from @hunblooms picrew

You might not want to hear this but people with anger issues and/or violent impulses need social accommodations. And no by accommodation I don't mean walking on eggshells around them, actual accommodations for people with these issues comes down to giving them a space away from what's triggering them to process their emotions and calm themselves down same as what kind of accommodations people who get sensory overload or just any kind of overwhelmed. There is no moral value to having anger issues or violent impulses, people with them are deserving of accommodation the same as everyone else.

I had severe anger issues growing up, and the only way I was ever taught to deal with them was deep breathing. For some reason, deep breathing just triggers me to get angrier. But it's the only coping skill I ever got taught for it. Here's a few better ones.

  • Go and exercise. Get all of that energy out and away from the people you love.
  • Get a hang of when you're winding up to a rage and learn to tell people that you need to step away. I will warn you that the first time that someone refuses to let you go once you learn this skill will spook the hell out of you if you don't have a backup skill, so figure out ahead of time what you're gonna do if they won't let you leave.
  • Learn to set boundaries. One of the best things I ever did for my anger issues was tell people that I can't deal with people stealing food off my plate. Second best was when I'm mad, telling people not to touch me. I spook easily when I'm already angry.
  • Get a pack of pencils and if nothing is working, break one. Sometimes you really do need to break something in order to feel better, and pencils are cheap.
  • Don't cook with a knife when you're mad. If you get too much adrenaline, the knife can slip and hurt you.
  • If you have anger issues that pop up without any seeming reason and frighten you, I would strongly recommend going over the situation and over your mental health. If there's anything consistent with a mental health condition or with something particular happening to trigger it, seek to eliminate the trigger or treat the issue. Depression, anxiety, trauma, you name it, it can probably present as anger issues under the right circumstances.

Some quick notes for people without anger issues that want to help someone who has anger issues:

  • Fear transmutes into anger really, really well if someone's fear response is "fight". One of my guesses for why so many men have anger issues is that we're told we're not men if we have any other response to fear. However, this issue is far from exclusive to men.
  • Don't box people in when you're arguing with them or soothing them. If someone is backed up against a wall and upset, then getting closer to them without permission is a bad call for your safety and for their soothing, because that removes the ability to get away from you. Ask before getting close. This goes double if someone is injured or otherwise vulnerable.
  • Teaching angry people that are distressed about being angry the pencil trick on the spot is really easy and works more often than you can think.
  • Respect people's requests and boundaries. A lot of people think that some of the boundaries I set up are silly or that once we're pals, they can ignore them. No, because a lot of my boundaries are related to trauma, and crossing them will trigger me and bring up my anger.
  • All of this goes for children with anger issues as well. I was a child with anger issues, and a lot of disrespect for my boundaries and needs was because my anger was dismissed because I was a child. Respect children's anger.

Walking on eggshells is not and will never be a good way to treat anger issues. Recognizing that people with anger issues deserve to have their boundaries respected and to be treated like human beings is.

An end note: Anger issues are not the same thing as being abusive, because emotions are not abusive. Someone with anger issues can become abusive if they take them out on people, but so can someone with suicidal thoughts who takes them out on people. The issue is targeting another person in order to feel better, not having a mental health issue.

An end note for people with anger issues: It really can get better. You can find coping skills and perhaps meds that help cool you down and settle you. You can find people that will accept that doing that one weird thing spooks the fuck out of you, and will let you leave if you're scaring yourself. You can gain control of yourself without shutting down emotionally. It's achievable.

I’ve worked on a community support training about some of this once. Here’s some stuff paraphrased from that:

It is probably also worth speaking specifically about rage attacks. Rage attacks are a lot like panic attacks. They’re often a result of trauma or a build up of high stress. They’re your survival instinct going into overdrive for a bit because too much has build up and a release is necessary. Like panic attacks, rage attacks are waves of overwhelming emotions that generally have a build-up, a peak and a cool-down. The build-up and cool-down can take hours, the peak rarely exceeds one hour and is often much shorter. Recognizing these stages can help cope with them.

The build-up can feel like a tension in the whole body, especially in the chest which can feel like a weight is pressing on it. Trying to control the rage can feel like holding the lid on a pot of boiling water. From the outside, people in the build up of a rage attack seem irritated and non communicative with a short fuse. They might suddenly speak loudly or slam doors as the lid fails and bits of the pot boil over. This is often seen as being rude, when in fact it’s the person doing their best to stay in control. During the build-up fase, it’s sometimes possible to let the pressure off through acts of controlled destruction (pencil breaking, tearing up cardboard boxes, etc.). For some people deep breaths work, for some people exercise works, for some people writing down a violent fantasy and then tearing that up works. This will differ from person to person.

When not averted, the peak of the rage attack is an overwhelming phase during which the lid flies off and the rage can not be controlled, though it may to some extend still be directed at a point where it can do no or limited harm, such as punching a wall (or preferably, hitting the wall with some sort of stick so you do not damage your hands). People in this stage may ‘see red’ or see spots and may be nonverbal. There isn’t much you can do to support someone during a rage attack except keeping people away from them and trying not to redirect their focus towards a person. As long as the only things being hurt is inanimate objects (and maybe some bloody knuckles): do not intervene. Absolutely do not try to physically stop the rage attack.

NEVER call ‘emergency services’ when a person is experiencing a rage attack. A person in a rage attack can not control their actions, follow instructions, etc. Your phone call can very easily result in their murder-by-cop. Don’t do it.

After the peak comes to cooldown. Most of the rage has passed but the body is still full of adrenaline. Often at this point he person experiences shame and fear that the people who witnessed the rage attack will reject them. It’s quite common to self-isolate in this stage. If you’re supporting someone during this stage: give them that time to themselves. Once they return, you can check in with them in a nonjudgemental way, making it clear that you are still their friend and are not judging them for experiencing a rage attack. After a bit of cooldown, some people enjoy exercise, dancing or swimming to reduce the left over adrenaline in the body. Others might be too exhausted for such a thing.

Many rage attacks are harmless, but if a person did do harm during a rage attack: wait for them to fully recover (preferably at least one night of sleep in between) before engaging in a restorative conversation about the harm done. In such a conversation it is important to be nonjudgmental about the rage attack itself and to clearly separate the rage attack (something the person did not chose and could not control) from the harm (something the person does bear responsibility for). A person who has rage attacks can not ‘decide’ not to have them but can decide to work on repairing harm and avoiding harm in the future. You could work on a support plan together to figure out how better to recognize and re-direct a build-up, how to avoid harm during the rage itself and how to offer support during the cool down.

I got kind of choked up reading this, because although I've been on the ND side of tumblr for years, anger issues are generally only brought up in the context of being a "red flag". People go around saying that if someone is punching a wall or breaking things that they're "showing what they want to do to you", but also will hear you saying "I am not able to control my temper right now, I need to take a walk" and act like you're being completely unreasonable, or even threatening them. Since i was a kid, i was discouraged from breaking my own cheap things like pencils because "giving into your anger makes it worse"; trained therapists have refused to work with me because I (calmly) responded that while this may not be the ideal coping mechanism, sometimes breaking things that cannot suffer is the best possible option. It's fine to not be able to control tears, but to many people, even admitting you need a minute to yourself to calm down from anger you admit is irrational is taken as a threat. This problem is even worse for people of color and anyone who is marginalized in general. I would really like people to understand that while you are absolutely valid to distance yourself from someone who's acting like this, at the same time experiencing irrational, body-controlling anger is not a choice anymore than experiencing irrational panic and grief.

Well this is a new one.

[ID: a question that says "Gender Identity" with the options "No" and "Yes." No is selected.]

I’d personally like a slider scale from “no” to “yes” so you could say how much gender

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If you write down the results and properly format the paper, it even counts as science!

When I was in college, there was a solid year where our lgbt group did this with two bathrooms at the end of a hall that were used by like, maybe 20 people. They would put up gendered signs and we kept stealing them. And then we started writing random things on the walls INCLUDING full word for word copies of personal ads from the back of 1980′s advocate magazines.

It got to the point where the building management was on a hunt trying to find who was doing this and we had to start hiding our faces so as to not get caught on the security cameras. Our faculty advisor came down to the office one day and was like “do you guys know anything about this” essentially as we’re trying to close a comically full drawer of stolen bathroom signs, and we’re like “no” and they were like “great.”

They never caught us. 

watching people on tiktok consume borax is uh. something.

having to say “don’t eat borax” was not on my 2023 bingo

Can’t believe in the year 2023 we have to say: do not consume borax. It will not provide a “parasite cleanse”, it does not combat the “evil fluoride” in your water, and it is not a super mineral. It will damage your organs. Also, it’s not rated for human consumption so frankly, who knows what it’s cross-contaminated with (my personal bet would be arsenic).

Absolutely love when I Google something I've never heard of and find the reason I've never heard of it is because it's been banned in the EU for safety concerns

The Player: How do the Masters get out of these messes?
The Efficient Commissioner: They don’t. They create a bigger mess that cancels the first one out.

… That’s litteraly it isn’t it.

Like that’s actually what they do.

Don’t mind me I just realise the uber powerful space bats are gigantic IDIOTS when it comes to planning.

problem: the people of london keep complaining that they don’t get a say in their lives. solution: let them elect a mayor.

problem: the mayor keeps doing democracy shit. we don’t like that. solution: abolish the position of mayor.

problem: london is getting restless because we told them all that they cannot vote anyone mayor this year. solution: tell them there’s some cool buried treasure just over here

problem: everyone got so into buried treasure that we dug a bunch of holes under the city and now the whole thing’s about to collapse like the plot of the LEGO movie. solution: panic, cry, flood the city, then get someone else to solve the problem for us

no??? it's my blog and you can fuck off.

okay, so after a few minutes my reaction feels a little mean given that there are many new users these days. already blocked anon (rip), but i want to point something out.

asking people you follow to not post xyz is a nasty tumblr faux pas. if you follow someone and they get In A Mood about content you don't care for you:

  • ignore it
  • embrace it
  • block tags and/or keywords
  • unfollow them WITHOUT comment

this is my actual personal blog. there is no theme or mission statement. i have a number of interests and can merely follow the inscrutable exhortations of my soul.

what IS Good Tumblr Etiquette is asking people to tag for certain things and respecting their answer.

from me, the answer is usually "probably not, my blog is an adhd stream of consciousness and i have next to 0 triggers." BUT, especially if i'm spamming or live reacting, i can make the effort.

like if anon had said "can you please tag toshiro mifune?" i would have been like "oh, no problem, i'm obsessed with him this morning." but the ask was phrased in an unnecessarily dickish way by tumblr standards.

I think it was phrased in a dickish way by any standards personally but this is a nice additional note to the original ask.

Plato makes up Atlantis as an allegory and over 2,000 years later people are still looking for it. You might as well be looking for Narnia.

Plato: Luxury and unlimited power are forces that corrupt human beings and lead them to being colonialist and stupid. The gods will punish Athens if we continue to exploit others for our own gain. I have invented this society as a parable to illustrate my point because I tend to use metaphor for a lot of things.

Everyone: But where are you hiding it though

Plato: I’ve purposefully included details like a mud shoal west of Iberia that doesn’t exist and references to a volcanic eruption that we all have cultural memory of as an obvious indication that I made this up. Are you paying attention? It’s a metaphor. I’m using literary references. You can go west of Iberia yourself. It’s not there. I explained where it is and it’s not there. You all know it’s not there. Please stop it with the luxury and exploitation. That’s my main point here.

Everyone: Yeah but where is it though

Plato: Orichalcum is just a fancy looking metal. It’s kinda like fancy copper. I made it up for this fake parable city.

Everyone: So it’s magic, then.

Plato: I want Athens to be a bit more like Sparta.

Everyone: Where’s the magic metal

Plato: I just think that greed is bad, generally. We should stop doing that.

Everyone: Where are you hiding the magic metal???

so one of the things that's so horrifying about birth control is that you have to, like, navigate this incredibly personal choice about your body and yet also face the epitome of misogyny. like, someone in the comments will say it wasn't that bad for me, and you'll be utterly silenced. like, everyone treats birth control like something that's super dirty. like, you have no fucking information or control over this thing because certain powerful people find it icky.

first it was the oral contraceptives. you went on those young, mostly for reasons unrelated to birth control - even your dermatologist suggested them to control your acne. the list of side effects was longer than your arm, and you just stared at it, horrified.

it made you so mentally ill, but you just heard that this was adulthood. that, yes, there are of course side effects, what did you expect. one day you looked up yasmin makes me depressed because surely this was far too intense, and you discovered that over 12,000 lawsuits had been successfully filed against the brand. it remains commonly prescribed on the open market. you switched brands a few times before oral contraceptives stopped being in any way effective. your doctor just, like, shrugged and said you could try a different brand again.

and the thing is that you're a feminist. you know from your own experience that birth control can be lifesaving, and that even when used for birth control - it is necessary healthcare. you have seen it save so many people from such bad situations, yourself included. it is critical that any person has access to birth control, and you would never suggest that we just get rid of all of it.

you were a little skeeved out by the implant (heard too many bad stories about it) and figured - okay, iud. it was some of the worst pain you've ever fucking experienced, and you did it with a small number of tylenol in your system (3), like you were getting your bikini line waxed instead of something practically sewn into your body.

and what's wild is that because sometimes it isn't a painful insertion process, it is vanishingly rare to find a doctor that will actually numb the area. while your doctor was talking to you about which brand to choose, you were thinking about the other ways you've been injured in your life. you thought about how you had a suspicious mole frozen off - something so small and easy - and how they'd numbed a huge area. you thought about when you broke your wrist and didn't actually notice, because you'd thought it was a sprain.

your understanding of pain is that how the human body responds to injury doesn't always relate to the actual pain tolerance of the person - it's more about how lucky that person is physically. maybe they broke it in a perfect way. maybe they happened to get hurt in a place without a lot of nerve endings. some people can handle a broken femur but crumble under a sore tooth. there's no true way to predict how "much" something actually hurts.

in no other situation would it be appropriate for doctors to ignore pain. just because someone can break their wrist and not feel it doesn't mean no one should receive pain meds for a broken wrist. it just means that particular person was lucky about it. it should not define treatment.

in the comments of videos about IUDs, literally thousands of people report agony. blinding, nauseating, soul-crushing agony. they say things like i had 2 kids and this was the worst thing i ever experienced or i literally have a tattoo on my ribs and it felt like a tickle. this thing almost killed me or would rather run into traffic than ever feel that again.

so it's either true that every single person who reports severe pain is exaggerating. or it's true that it's far more likely you will experience pain, rather than "just a pinch." and yet - there's nothing fucking been done about it. it kind of feels like a shrug is layered on top of everything - since technically it's elective, isn't it kind of your fault for agreeing to select it? stop being fearmongering. stop being defensive.

you fucking needed yours. you are almost weirdly protective of it. yours was so important for your physical and mental health. it helped you off hormonal birth control and even started helping some of your symptoms. it still fucking hurt for no fucking reason.

once while recovering from surgery, they offered you like 15 days of vicodin. you only took 2 of them. you've been offered oxy for tonsillitis. you turned down opioids while recovering from your wisdom tooth extraction. everything else has the option. you fucking drove yourself home after it, shocked and quietly weeping, feeling like something very bad had just happened. the nurse that held your hand during the experience looked down at you, tears in her eyes, and said - i know. this is cruelty in action.

and it's fucked up because the conversation is never just "hey, so the way we are doing this is fucking barbaric and doctors should be required to offer serious pain meds" - it's usually something around the lines of "well, it didn't kill you, did it?"

you just found out that removing that little bitch will hurt just as bad. a little pinch like how oral contraceptives have "some" serious symptoms. like your life and pain are expendable or not really important. like maybe we are all hysterical about it?

hysteria comes from the latin word for uterus, which is great!

you stand here at a crossroads. like - this thing is so important. did they really have to make it so fucking dangerous. and why is it that if you make a complaint, you're told - i didn't even want you to have this in the first place. we're told be careful what you wish for. we're told that it's our fault for wanting something so illict; we could simply choose not to need medication. that maybe if we don't like the scraps, we should get ready to starve.

we have been saying for so long - "i'm not asking you to remove the option, i'm asking you to reconsider the risk." this entire time we hear: well, this is what you wanted, isn't it?

Hinamori can drive? How did that come about? Is she a "must follow all the rules" driver or a "hold on for dear life" driver?

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Momo's posting in the living world was in a more rural area and she got started driving her neighbor's tractor for him when he got hurt and she was bored, and then the farm truck and that was FUN on the little mountain roads, so she went and got a driver's license and managed to scrape together enough cash to buy her neighbor's 20 year old P.O.S. compact, and in the span of four months went from "what's a car?" To getting heavily into maybe-not-totally-legal vehicular modifications and earning herself the nickname "Peaches The Freak" on the illicit mountain rally racing circuit for "driving like she can't die".

She didn't actually tell anyone this when she got back to soul society because she was a bit embarrassed to be so enthusiastic about such a niche interest, so nobody finds out about HOW Momo drives until she's in the human world with her boss and her co-lieutenant, and they need to transport a large number of small objects at speed and the most reasonable way to do that is in the back of a car.

"what do you MEAN you don't know how to drive? Momo gapes at Shinji and Hiyori. "You were in the living world for a whole century?!"

"THEY GOT TRAINS EVERYWHERE IT DIDN'T COME UP!" Hiyori shouts. "ITS NOT LIKE YOU KNOW EITHER!"

"No, I do." Explains Momo, getting into the driver's seat of a Subaru old enough to vote. "That's why it's so strange to me."

"SHOTGUN!" Bellowed Hiyori, leaping into the passenger seat. "Okay, it's a little weird that *I* don't know how to drive, I guess, but do you really want mirror image dingus back there out driving on the wrong side of the road, do you?"

"I'm sure he'd get the hang of it eventually!" Said Momo. "Okay, seatbelts everyone! -and gas, mirrors, seat adjustment- who was driving this car, captain Komamura? Okay, check for cops-"

"What's a seatbelt?" Asked Shinji from the backseat.

"-and we're clear!" Momo said, putting her foot down and accelerating at a speed that made the buildings stretch and streak by like they were about to enter hyperspace.

One hour and six minutes later, they reached their destination, having reached a top speed of 193 mph, Hiyori discovering the female version of a terrorboner, and Shinji discovering what it feels like to be a lone sock in the washing machine during the spin cycle.

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I always wear a helmet because one time I saw a video of Tony Hawk skateboarding, and he took a bad fall where his head hit the ground and he skidded for several feet, but he was saved by his helmet.

If even goddamn /Tony Hawk/ on a skateboard can fuck up, I'm not taking any chances with me using a bike. I am not a better bike rider than Tony Hawk is a skateboarder, no way.