Strongshape - Mishmash

that comment about how you should not borrow grief from the future has saved me multiple times from spiraling into an inescapable state of anxiety. like every time i find myself thinking about how something in the future could go wrong i remember that comment and i think to myself: well i never know, it might get better. it might not even happen the way i think it will and if it does happen and it is sad and bad ill be sad about it then, when it happens. and it’s somehow soo freeing

Stephanie Foo, What My Bones Know: A Memoir of Healing from Complex Trauma

Adapted from Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs

What is a need? (Adapted from this article)

It’s important to be connected to our needs because true needs are always in our best long term interest. Our needs for air, food, water, shelter, community, companionship, autonomy, respect, etc. are all in our best long term interest to fulfill.

Wants, on the other hand, don’t necessarily correlate with long term well-being. In fact, many wants, when fulfilled, actually contribute to our long term detriment.

Put another way: needs refer to the conditions that must be met in order for us to live a balanced life; whereas wants are strategies we use to fulfill our needs. This is why needs inherently map to long term well-being, while wants don’t have such a correlation. Wants can either contribute to our long-term wellbeing, or they contribute to our long-term detriment. In order for our wants to be good for us in the long-term, we must understand which needs they map back to.

Ideally, we should be connected to our needs first, and our wants second. When we become disconnected from our needs due to past trauma, we rely too heavily on our wants to guide our decision making. The disconnection from our needs increases the likelihood that we will attach to wants that lead to our long-term detriment. 

So many people treat anger as something inherently toxic that you have to repress, but it can actually be a sign of growth and recovery. If you have been through trauma and abuse, reaching a place where you're able to go "your behavior is not acceptable and I'm not going to tolerate it because I know I deserve better" is very much a GOOD thing

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I am going to see my dad today. He is still on the ventilator and probably will be for the next few days.

I am not ready to lose a parent.

I have hope that the hospital he’s at now can fix this. But I am still scared and overwhelmed.

things that seem small can be really brave:

getting up in the morning

asking for help

stopping when you know you’ve pushed yourself too hard

admitting when you were in the wrong

forgiving yourself

making an effort even when you don’t have the motivation

reaching out to others when you feel alone

+ much more

merry christmas to the people who have to pretend to be someone they’re not for their families, who don’t have family to celebrate with, who have bad past experiences with the holiday, who are having a rough year and just want to reach the end of it, who couldn’t afford gifts this year and feel guilt over it. merry christmas to everyone but especially those of you who are feeling down.