Coping Skills for LB
Feb. 20th, 2020 04:26 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lb_leeHey guys, was talking about this on a friend's locked post, figured I'd share it here since it's been a long-ass time. Here's how we try to regulate our mood! We used to have all this written on disparate sheets of looseleaf that were stuck to our wall, but have now consolidated it into a little book for ourself.
Before I even try to fix the problem, I have three different things to track: pain, mood, and heartblood.
Pain (physical or mental) makes EVERYTHING worse, so takes priority. If my shoulder says, "no, fuck you," then I need to stop any activities that hurt it and start my stretches/electro/massage routine (and take muscle relaxants if necessary). If I'm at a psychological pain level over a 6, I need to stop everything because I ain't getting shit done until that improves.
Mood is how you're feeling; it overlaps a ton with psychological pain. Heartblood is our term for... uh, what other people call spoons, cope, energy, or wherewithal. Low heartblood and a crummy mood can impersonate each other, but require different means of dealing. Low heartblood is usually improved by rest; low mood can be EXACERBATED through lack of activity, and needs stuff to actively repair the mood--be it the sads, the fears, the guilts, whatever. (That all of these symptoms can just get lumped under "depression," I think, makes it harder; it acts like it's all one thing when it can be a constellation of different things with different causes.)
I feel like a common fail-loop is to have low heartblood, think, "oh, I need rest," and then embark on mindless activities that require no effort (mindlessly scrolling Facebook, for instance), but also have ZERO odds of giving you anything back, and high odds of making you upset. Then you have low mood, which can IMPERSONATE low heartblood ("ugh, so brainfogged, I can't think of shit to do, time to rest") which inspires MORE mindless activities that exacerbate the cycle.
SO. To break those habits means rigging your environment so you DON'T go to those mindless timewasters... or at least ones that don't make you feel BAD. (We still have a Lets Player on Youtube we watch, because he's always super-chill and comforting to watch. And as a bonus, he moves slow enough that he's perfect when we're completely out of brains, but not so much otherwise. A+ mindless activity.) Better is to find activities that DO give you something back, actively repair you and help you feel better about the world.
This is best done when you're not in the hole already; it's hard for us to remember the most basic shit when we're tired or sad or whatever. Find out when you're feeling good, then write it down for when you're feeling bad. Before we made our little book, we had pages of coping skills stuck to our wall so it'd stare us in the face. Here's a list of ours, with $ for the things that require a certain baseline amount of heartblood to do:
* HALT! Are you hungry, angry, lonely, or tired? FIX THOSE.
* Write, even if it's bad$
* Draw, even if it's bad$
* Make comics, even if they're bad$
* Read (we also have an itemized list of reading for various things--when we're sad, when we're envious, when we're just wanting raw comfort)
* Take a 30-60 minute walk
* Hang out with friends (seriously, isolation is for DWEEBS)
* hot shower and herbal tea
* ASMR (especially when anxious/tense)
Also, for real, write the shit you SHOULDN'T do but know that you're tempted to. (For us: not eating, hiding from all humans, moldering on the Internet...) Write on your paper NOT TO DO THAT THING. (If it's one of those "no, sometimes nothing else works," then for the love of god, require that you go through your ENTIRE list of better things before you resort to it.)
--Rogan
Before I even try to fix the problem, I have three different things to track: pain, mood, and heartblood.
Pain (physical or mental) makes EVERYTHING worse, so takes priority. If my shoulder says, "no, fuck you," then I need to stop any activities that hurt it and start my stretches/electro/massage routine (and take muscle relaxants if necessary). If I'm at a psychological pain level over a 6, I need to stop everything because I ain't getting shit done until that improves.
Mood is how you're feeling; it overlaps a ton with psychological pain. Heartblood is our term for... uh, what other people call spoons, cope, energy, or wherewithal. Low heartblood and a crummy mood can impersonate each other, but require different means of dealing. Low heartblood is usually improved by rest; low mood can be EXACERBATED through lack of activity, and needs stuff to actively repair the mood--be it the sads, the fears, the guilts, whatever. (That all of these symptoms can just get lumped under "depression," I think, makes it harder; it acts like it's all one thing when it can be a constellation of different things with different causes.)
I feel like a common fail-loop is to have low heartblood, think, "oh, I need rest," and then embark on mindless activities that require no effort (mindlessly scrolling Facebook, for instance), but also have ZERO odds of giving you anything back, and high odds of making you upset. Then you have low mood, which can IMPERSONATE low heartblood ("ugh, so brainfogged, I can't think of shit to do, time to rest") which inspires MORE mindless activities that exacerbate the cycle.
SO. To break those habits means rigging your environment so you DON'T go to those mindless timewasters... or at least ones that don't make you feel BAD. (We still have a Lets Player on Youtube we watch, because he's always super-chill and comforting to watch. And as a bonus, he moves slow enough that he's perfect when we're completely out of brains, but not so much otherwise. A+ mindless activity.) Better is to find activities that DO give you something back, actively repair you and help you feel better about the world.
This is best done when you're not in the hole already; it's hard for us to remember the most basic shit when we're tired or sad or whatever. Find out when you're feeling good, then write it down for when you're feeling bad. Before we made our little book, we had pages of coping skills stuck to our wall so it'd stare us in the face. Here's a list of ours, with $ for the things that require a certain baseline amount of heartblood to do:
* HALT! Are you hungry, angry, lonely, or tired? FIX THOSE.
* Write, even if it's bad$
* Draw, even if it's bad$
* Make comics, even if they're bad$
* Read (we also have an itemized list of reading for various things--when we're sad, when we're envious, when we're just wanting raw comfort)
* Take a 30-60 minute walk
* Hang out with friends (seriously, isolation is for DWEEBS)
* hot shower and herbal tea
* ASMR (especially when anxious/tense)
Also, for real, write the shit you SHOULDN'T do but know that you're tempted to. (For us: not eating, hiding from all humans, moldering on the Internet...) Write on your paper NOT TO DO THAT THING. (If it's one of those "no, sometimes nothing else works," then for the love of god, require that you go through your ENTIRE list of better things before you resort to it.)
--Rogan
no subject
Date: 2020-02-20 09:59 pm (UTC)Also, some day would you be willing to post your go-to reading for various emotions?
no subject
Date: 2020-02-20 10:05 pm (UTC)Family and Trauma:
The Tale of One Bad Rat, by Bryan Talbot
The Free Lunch, by Spider Robinson
The Witches, by Roald Dahl, pg. 125-127
Aliens Stole My Body, by Bruce Coville, pg. 150-153
Wire Mothers, by Meconis and Ottoviana
Ladylord, by Sasha Miller, pg. 323-328
The Post-Traumatic Source Disorder Sourcebook, by Glenn Schiraldi
Depression:
All Things Wise and Wonderful, by James Herriot, pg. 334-344
Hello, Cruel World, by Kate Bornstein
Envy:
"Involuntary Man's Laughter," by Spider Robinson
Exhaustion:
anything by James Herriot or Brian Andreas
The Callahan Chronicals by Spider Robinson
short zines
no subject
Date: 2020-02-21 02:21 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-02-21 03:09 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-02-21 03:55 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-02-21 07:24 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-03-03 04:39 am (UTC)I dunno what we should do yet whenever we have low mood, but probably not that since it only perpetuates the problem!
--Hikaru
no subject
Date: 2020-03-03 08:38 pm (UTC)Until you know what you're getting out of it, and thus how to get it some other way, it's hard to break out of the cycle.
--Mori/Sneak
no subject
Date: 2020-03-03 11:31 pm (UTC)--Hikaru
no subject
Date: 2020-03-05 05:13 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-03-05 05:29 am (UTC)--Hikaru