I Don’t Hate You, I Have Social Anxiety – Role Reboot

I’m rarely in the moment with other people because I’m in my head, over-thinking, worrying, and analyzing. Those same thoughts and worries also prevent me from initiating hangouts and following up on rescheduling plans. I always assume that if someone doesn’t contact me or has to cancel a plan we’ve made that they don’t like me. I take any kind of rejection, real or perceived, incredibly personally. I obsess about what people say and do, analyzing their words and actions for cues to help me figure out what they really think of me.

Of course, this is the same kind of thinking that they might be applying to me as a result of my quietness and failure to initiate or reschedule. I’m doing the exact same thing that I don’t want them to do to me. It’s too bad that anxiety doesn’t respond well to basic logic.

via I Don’t Hate You, I Have Social Anxiety – Role Reboot.

How to Slowly Kill Yourself and Others in America: A Remembrance

I’m a walking regret, a truth-teller, a liar, a survivor, a frowning ellipsis, a witness, a dreamer, a teacher, a student, a joker, a writer whose eyes stay red, and I’m a child of this nation.

via How to Slowly Kill Yourself and Others in America: A Remembrance.

No link between prenatal mercury exposure and autism-like behaviors found

The potential impact of exposure to low levels of mercury on the developing brain — specifically by women consuming fish during pregnancy — has long been the source of concern and some have argued that the chemical may be responsible for behavioral disorders such as autism. However, a new study that draws upon more than 30 years of research in the Republic of Seychelles reports that there is no association between pre-natal mercury exposure and autism-like behaviors. (Credit: © Yoram Astrakhan / Fotolia)

“This study shows no evidence of a correlation between low level mercury exposure and autism spectrum-like behaviors among children whose mothers ate, on average, up to 12 meals of fish each week during pregnancy,” said Edwin van Wijngaarden, Ph.D., an associate professor in the University of Rochester Medical Center‘s (URMC) Department of Public Health Sciences and lead author of the study which appears online today in the journal Epidemiology. “These findings contribute to the growing body of literature that suggest that exposure to the chemical does not play an important role in the onset of these behaviors.”

The debate over fish consumption has long created a dilemma for expecting mothers and physicians. Fish are high in beneficial nutrients such as, selenium, vitamin E, lean protein, and omega-3 fatty acids; the latter are essential to brain development. At the same time, exposure to high levels of mercury has been shown to lead to developmental problems, leading to the claim that mothers are exposing their unborn children to serious neurological impairment by eating fish during pregnancy. Despite the fact that the developmental consequences of low level exposure remain unknown, some organizations, including the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, have recommended that pregnant women limit their consumption of fish.

“The Seychelles study was designed to follow a population over a very long period of time and focus on relevant mercury exposure,” said Philip Davidson, Ph.D., principal investigator of the Seychelles Child Development Study and professor emeritus in Pediatrics at URMC. “While the amount of fish consumed in the Seychelles is significantly higher than other countries in the industrialized world, it is still considered low level exposure.”

… lends further evidence to an emerging belief that the “good” may outweigh the possible “bad” when it comes to fish consumption during pregnancy. Specifically, if mercury does adversely influence child development at these levels of exposure then the benefits of the nutrients found in the fish may counteract or perhaps even supersede the potential negative effects of the mercury.

“This study shows no consistent association in children with mothers with mercury level that were six to ten times higher than those found in the U.S. and Europe,” said Davidson. “This is a sentinel population and if it does not exist here than it probably does not exist.”

Read entire article at ScienceDaily.

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ANXIETY is the body’s way of responding to danger. It’s a survival mechanism designed to keep us alive.

But the danger we perceive doesn’t actually have to be there. We just have to think that it is.

Whether the danger is real or imagined, our automatic survival mechanisms will kick in and we will try to escape or avoid the danger.

We might avoid certain people or places. We might refuse to go out. Perhaps we’ll only go out with someone else present and then leave early.

If we choose to face the danger, we might use coping behaviours to get us through, like smoking more, fiddling with our clothes, avoiding eye contact or taking medication.

Whilst our coping behaviours get us through the perceived danger, they actually keep our anxiety going. As long as we depend on them to cope, we don’t give ourselves the opportunity for the anxiety to go away on its own.

Learning to confront our anxiety might be uncomfortable in the short term, but it helps us take control and feel better in the long term.

If you feel anxiety starting to overwhelm you, ask yourself if you have any proof that what you fear is actually going to happen. What is the worst that could happen and how would you cope with it if it did? Imagine it is six months from now. How important will this feel then?

Just because you feel bad, doesn’t mean things really are bad. Imagine yourself coping with this situation. If you can handle it in your imagination, you can handle it in reality.

via Inner Child Healing.

The Boy’s Slumbering Mind

“I dreamed there were a whole bunch of fireworks that shot to the sky and exploded. They made a big picture of Mickey’s face.”

Weekly Photo Challenge: Forward

Rebellious Youth

“The angry graffiti of a kid denied computer game time after breaking several rules in a row. He better mellow out.”

My entry for this week’s Photo Challenge, subject of “Forward”.

 

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“You only live once, but if you do it right, once is enough.”
-Mae West

‎”If someone started telling stories about how my…”

‎”If someone started telling stories about how my gender was controlled by our genitalia and sexual arousal turns us into rapist automatons, I would be outraged. I would explain in very small, very loud words that I am a person and I can goddamn control myself. I wish more men would speak up to say ‘actually, even when I can’t turn my erection off, I can sure as hell use the rest of my body to put it somewhere it won’t bother anyone.’”

Calling All Gynecologists « I Heart Guts

Menstrual cycles can be baffling, and that’s why I really wanted to make this special poster explaining this special time of the month, mostly so I can justify to my poor husband exactly why I am feeling totally insane. “It’s not me, honey, it’s the progesterone spiking,” or, “Can you understand now why I’m being a total bee-yatch? I’ve got at least five different hormones coursing through my body right now. I’m on drugs.” Marvel at the leuteinizing hormone! Be amazed as the estrogen takes a nosedive right before ovulation! Check out the egg as it takes its long journey through your reproductive system! Anyway, check it out and give me feedback — calling all OB/GYNs! Editors! Anatomy nuts! Sex educators! — before I send this thing to the printer. I know it’s a little crazy-looking, design-wise, but then again, so’s the menstrual cycle.

via Calling All Gynecologists « I Heart Guts.

You can buy this poster at The Good Ol’ Menstrual Cycle « I Heart Guts.

Slut Dropping: the Slut-Shaming Craze “For Lulz”

“Of all the retarded ideas guys think up during their 20s, this one takes the cake. News of a practice called “Slut Dropping” is sweeping the world, a new “fun”, sexist “game of lulz” seemingly started in the UK by a gang of fucking idiots who don’t give two iotas of a fuck about a girl’s safety.

In the wake of Melbourne Australia‘s Jill Meagher tragic saga, this should be sure to pinch a nerve in many a reader:

Slut Dropping or Slut Dumping is the act of a car load of guys (or girls too, don’t put it past them) who, during the early hours of a morning when girls are leaving clubs and bars, drive up to them and offer them a lift. They coax the girl into accepting. She gets in the car. They then proceed to do a U-turn and instead drive the girl as far away from the direction of travel she wishes to go in, as possible.

The young men forcefully prevent her from leaving the car, ignoring her demands for them to stop, all the while laughing and hooting like a pack of Nitro-Jagermeister addicts at her expense. When they’ve driven to a satisfactorily far enough location, they drop the girl off in the middle of nowhere and drive off, leaving her to find her way home, alone.”

Disgusting… absolutely disgusting. Here’s the link: http://www.facebook.com/SlutDropping

Related articles

• Slut-Dropping, and Other Ways College Teaches Kids to Be Sexist Assholes [Sluts] (jezebel.com)
• ‘Slut dropping’ and ‘Pimps and Hoes’ – the sexual politics of freshers’ week (humanistlife.org.uk)
• Social media helped the hunt for the murderer of Jill Meagher (leaderswedeserve.wordpress.com)