It’s like millennials do not understand that middle east has been at war for 1000′s of years. That we intervened on behalf of Kuwait. That without “bombing” people that want to kill and oppress others, millions will be murdered and tortured.
“at war for 1000′s of years”
you clearly know nothing about Afghanistan nor the middle east
It’s interesting to note that when the communist government came to power in Afghanistan in the late 70′s, one of the first things they did was declare equality of the sexes, made education for girls mandatory, & banned child marriages. The conservative tribal leaders who the US armed & funded (& who later became the Taliban) declared this to be a “war on Islam” & fought against the central government.
The US had no problem back then with encouraging the growth of Islamic conservatism to counter socialism/communism. You created your biggest enemy & you have no one to blame but yourselves.
BLESS THIS POST
its crazy to me how the US talks about war in the middle east as if its this ancient problem inherent to the area instead of a recent problem created by western countries to further their own interests.
God fucking bless the “worried well” who seek psychotherapy. They can mostly keep their lives/jobs/families running, but want an increase in their mood or quality of life, and come to me for a tune-up. They talk about existential questions and childhood dreams and personal fulfillment, and worry that they’re “whining” or “taking up [my] valuable time.”
I like them for them, of course; I find their lives and worries interesting and valuable, and enjoy the work we do together. But also?
They make the more “serious” work I do possible. People with the greatest need for therapy are frequently the least able to pay for it. When one of my clients loses their job and benefits, they need therapy more, not less. And in private practice I can only afford to keep treating them for free if I have enough people on my caseload who are paying me full price. My ability to volunteer at a homeless shelter and talk to them about grief and trauma is strongly dictated by how many upper-middle-class people pay me $200 an hour to talk about optimal job performance.
And emotionally, it is an honest fucking joy sometimes to get out of a session with someone whose childhood abuse makes their entire life difficult, and spend an hour talking to one of my worried writer clients about anxiety management and creativity and nothing too deeply painful.
So if you’ve ever paid a therapist but felt self-indulgent or whiny or like your problems “weren’t serious enough”: please know you’re valuable and important. Not just for yourself (though you are), but because your presence in that therapy room makes a lot of other things possible.
i was tense because as someone who has trauma in her history but looks to a lot of people like “worried well” (to the point it took me years to be properly diagnosed with PTSD, ugh) i expected bashing from this post
THANK YOU for doing a very different thing ❤
I mean, once upon a time the worried well had confession with priests, or village elders/wise old men and women, or shamans/people in touch with the spirit world to listen to them and advise them on how to lead a happier, wiser life. Now that we’re a secular society that treats shamanism etc. as superstition, and locks old people away? All the worried well have is self help books, psychotherapy, people they know in person who are probably no wiser than they are, and talking to people on Tumblr. Of all these options, psychotherapy seems the most likely to actually help. Going to psychotherapy when you’re not severely mentally ill fills an important need that society isn’t otherwise filling, so it’s not shameful to go.
Also, the boundary between “worried well” and mentally ill/traumatized can be blurry sometimes. At one point I was in therapy for severe depression. But now, with my lower grade trauma, social anxiety, excessive shame, and just Needing Someone To Talk To In Order to Deal With Emotional Stuff And Reflect in General? That’s “worried well” compared to a lot of people here on Tumblr.
A related idea (which I’ve had before) is that if you do have a serious trauma, you’re wasting your/the therapist’s time if you aren’t talking about the most traumatic thing possible every single moment of therapy. But sometimes you’re not ready to go there, and that’s okay. Sometimes, your work or family need you to focus on more minor problems, like anxiety management or writer’s block. And getting unstuck on something like that can make you feel so much better about yourself, and more capable of change in general. I would think that could only help you deal with the serious trauma.
“In universal design, there’s something called the curb cut effect. Basically, things intended to benefit people with disabilities wind up benefiting everyone. Curb cuts, which are intended for wheelchair users to be able to get on sidewalks, help bicyclists, parents with strollers, delivery people, and a dozen other nondisabled groups. Similarly, closed captioning, which was originally meant to benefit Deaf people, helps people who have trouble with auditory information processing (hi!), people who like talking during films, and people trying to watch TV in noisy bars.” – The Curb Cut Effect, or Why It Is Basically Impossible To Appropriate From Disabled People
the term ‘passing’ was, iirc, used to describe african americans whose skin and facial features were light enough that they could escape from slavery to somewhere else and live in a state of constant fear of being found out.
people who could ‘pass’ did not have any sort of privilege; they simply lived out their oppression in different ways. they still suffered at the hands of the system that had been built to subjugate them.
arguing that anyone who is oppressed has ‘passing privilege’ is fundamentally misunderstanding what passing is and how dangerous it is.
a trans woman who ‘passes’ for a cis woman is in as much danger of being a victim of violence, of being murdered, as her non-passing sisters, especially if a cis man feels ‘tricked’ into finding a ‘man’ attractive.
a bisexual man who ‘passes’ for heterosexual is more likely to be abused by hetero and homosexual partners, who will then blame his sexuality for dissatisfaction in the relationship.
a ‘high functioning’ neurodivergent person will suffer the same lack of accommodations as a ‘lower functioning’ person with the same disability, but will be expected to achieve more because they aren’t ‘really’ affected by it.
passing means having your struggles erased or considered ‘lesser’ because there’s a chance that you could be seen as ‘normal’ in the eyes of passersby.
this is not a privilege. it’s living your life in terror of being found out. it’s being denied access to the community and services that claim to support you.
it’s oppression in its most insidious form; it pretends that you have gained something positive through the way you experience oppression.
My mom said that today in church her pastor said in the sermon that Jesus told us to help the poor, and taking money away from public schools to give to charter schools only widens the gap between the rich and the poor. She then added that Jesus spoke against adultery and lust and would not have approved of bragging about sexually assaulting women. According to my mom, people got up and walked out.
The pastor also started the sermon by noting that she’d heard of another minister who read the entirety of the Sermon on the Mount at the pulpit, to be told by the so-called Christian parishioners after the service that it was offensive and they didn’t agree.
The Sermon on the Mount is straight up the words of Jesus.
I recently read an article that said, hypocritical Christians in America don’t actually worship Jesus. They worship America, and even then, it’s a very specific, self-centered idea of America.
YES. EXACTLY.
My mom’s church talks almost every Sunday about how Christians are called to welcome strangers and foreigners and does tons of stuff to help refugees because HELLO, IT’S RIGHT THERE. IN THE RED TEXT, NO LESS.
I don’t believe everything they believe, but I REALLY like those people.
What a lot of these people are is idolators.
Not in terms of the realness or unrealness of who they worship, but in terms of how they’ve warped their focus away from the reality and turned it towards a fantasy of their own construction.
By definition, an idol is an image with no god behind it.
What they have done is taken the idea of Jesus and created a false image of him, nothing like the reality, to carry around in their back pocket, or to wave around on signs, and pull out and shove in people’s faces to justify all manner of unChristlike behavior.
It is a “worship” that is fundamentally self-centered rather than deity-centered, wherein the deity in question is more of a pocketbook get-out-of-jail-free card than directive to live by, and more of a status symbol than a guiding light.
That people will, without a shred of self-awareness, rest themselves assured that Jesus would want them to tip their waitress with a Jesus pamphlet made to look like folded-up money (to take only one example out of many) is the ultimate dismissal of everything the original stood for.
There is a line in the Bible about Jesus meeting his false worshipers and saying “I do not know you.” It seems like plenty of so-called Christians have beaten him to the punch with how quick they are to say they don’t know him.
A lot of churches and organizations in America that call themselves Christian churches are in fact Christianist cults. They no more represent Christianity than Daesh represents Islam. In addition to the usual nonsense of so-called Christians being pro-war, anti-immigrant, racist, and so forth, there are a lot of sects/movements that are just completely toxic and not Christian at all, even though they use that label. If you are Christian and want to have some fucking nightmares, google “christian dominionist,” or “prosperity gospel.”
Still think this is the most realistic diagram of the difference between the theological Jesus and the Comfortable Reinterpretation of Jesus.
American Christianity is, at this point, like the Cult of the Emperor in ancient Rome, which is simultaneously both ironic and appropriate given the history involved
to all the kids who were robbed the possibility of coming out on their own terms – this one’s for you ( tip : don’t leave your phone where your mother can see your incoming texts filled with sweet little nothings )
disney’s gonna release the live-action little mermaid movie and the director’s gonna do an interview for teenvogue where he says the crab sebastian is gay and everyone’s gonna laud it as the most woke moment of 2019 and a horde of 21-35 year old women on tumblr will draw human aus where he’s a young white redhead and he and king triton are fuckin’
sometimes you grow up and look back and the people you used to look up to seem different. it’s a messy feeling. the singer you used to idolize turns out to be just a person, and sometimes a bad one. your best friend isn’t actually that good of one: she treats you like you’re incapable of anything because she’s used to being the better one. the girl you loved is selfish and never loved you back; just loves it when she’s getting attention. the boy you grew up with doesn’t share anything in common with you.
sometimes you try and force these things to fit. sit in cafes with them and realize that you have nothing to say and nothing to do. blame yourself for being tired or hungry or distracted or all three. that this person you loved is in the right. it’s you who is wrong about everything.
but at a certain point you’re standing there and holding these precious things and you realize they need to stay precious. that if you keep trying to force them to be what they used to be, you’re forcing yourself to be who you used to be, too. and you’re different now. a better you. sometimes things need to stay in the past so they can stay good. and sometimes perspective gives you the chance to say “you know what. i think leaving is good.”
it’s not a great feeling. i’m used to being left behind. don’t like being alone. loyal to a fault. but the truth is it’s better to realize it sooner. that there are people it’s not worth it for. that you’ve been trying to see the best in but who will never open the door. that at one point you were maybe right for.
In the USA, it’s 100x cheaper to take an Uber to the hospital instead of an ambulance.
I don’t know if this is true or.. Like, having to pay for an ambulance that is taking you to the hospital? That doesn’t make any sense. What kind of distopian world is that?
It costs thousands of dollars to ride in an ambulance
In America some people with chronic health conditions like epilepsy literally have to wear medical IDs that say “don’t call an ambulance/911”. Some well-meaning person calling an ambulance for you will turn into a thousand (or couple thousand) dollars that YOU are on the hook for, even though you didn’t make the call. So, PSA: if you see someone having a seizure, look for a medical ID! You should only call an ambulance if: the person is elderly, pregnant, or the seizure lasts more than 4 minutes. Otherwise, wait for the seizure to pass, then ask the person if they want an ambulance when they regain consciousness.
wtf
Oh my god what.
Here in Quebec, if you call an ambulance for something they deem non-emergency, you get a bill later for like $180. But if it’s anything like a loss of consciousness, chest pains, labour, whatever, or if you’re in a public place and a a well-meaning samaritan calls 911, it’s paid for by the government.
Seriously, everything about healthcare in the US makes me want to cry.
Imagine a world where you have to wear tags to tell people trying to help you that “It’s ok, don’t try to help, I can’t afford to pay if someone tries to save my life. I’ll just take my chances and hope it’s not life-threatening.”
Literally the point of this post is that Americans do not have to imagine that world. We live in it
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