Reading "daddy long legs in its web" was setting off my "UM ACTUALLY" response but I have now learned that some people call cellar spiders daddy long legs
I have watched two of those spiders on separate webs reaching their legs very cautiously out to each other, getting freaked out and spinning around really fast, only to get disoriented and start the whole process over again
I never thought I would grieve for my bearded dragon as much as I did, but I realized with time that it was because so much of my very identity had been formed around her being something strange and unique that I took care of. People asked me about her, they would want to see the lizard when they came over, I had to make trips to the speciality pet store that sold proper food for her, etc. When she wasn't around, so many parts of my daily life brought her back to my thoughts so often that it was like a raw spot that couldn't quite scab over.
One thing that worked for me was paradoxically diving into those feelings of longing, letting my imagination for just a moment convince itself that I really was feeling her little claws in my palm again, and weirdly it worked for me well enough to smooth over the grieving process, which is neurologically very similar to the process of learning and which takes real resources to do.
Steven Erickson''s Malazan series had a big bad introduced in the third book named the Crippled God who was the personification of this, a mind subjected to terrible pain with no rehabilitation in the aftermath of its trauma. This god quickly establishes himself as the biggest player in the game, with torturous power that contorts people's bodies, and so pain is presented as something fundamental, something antithetical to meaning that is more powerful to living creatures than the spheres of any other God.
To counteract the treatbrain I'll also bring up the fact that solitary animals do not tend to cry out in pain like social animals do. They do experience pain, even though some people will try to classify it as something lesser with words like "nocicpetion," but the important distinction is that they aren't usually sent into fits of screaming and paralysis like social animals. This tells me that, for social animals, pain is something that MUST be answered, even to the point of wanting revenge when the pain is gone. The CEO (I spit on him let's be clear) would be alive today if Luigi's pain had been addressed properly. But if this CEO had pushed such a policy, my guess is that he wouldn't have been made CEO in the first place.
I had to look up what you meant by "negative scripting" and while I get why daydreaming could veer into it, some part of me still thinks it's a good thing to at least engage with it. As I mentioned before, daydreaming helps me notice cognitive patterns of mine since I become a sort of spectator of my own subconscious. Noticing it is the first step towards addressing something I feel to be a problem.
Of course, this is the kind of thing one does when they feel ready for it, I'm not gonna demand that a miserable person go into a sensory deprivation tank and ruminate about their unhappiness.
I don't like calling it maladaptive daydreaming tbh but that might be because I write
Daydreaming keeps the communication lines between your conscious and subconscious healthy. Honestly, allowing myself to do it while also actively critiquing why some motif or "scene" comes back to me repeatedly has been extremely helpful for storytelling since it has a way of helping me fill the gap between event A and B in a plotline
Not like escape from my problems (though that would of course be nice), but escape from me. That stagnant routine becomes a welcome backbone to my day-to-day when I'm really ensconced in something, be it a piece of media or a creative project of my own. Even just a couple hours of being so mentally involved in something that my awareness of myself melts away is deeply restorative. Maybe your depression doesn't stem from boredom like mine did (I think) but if it does, a little time in the flow state usually does the trick
Edit: this is very therapist-tone and I don't like it, so I want to also say something chummy and shitposty like "keep existing to enjoy the days Kissinger can't"
Hobbies might have some kind of internal "source" but they also need to be nurtured. You can't love what you don't know, you know? I have a bunch of weird interests now and each of them began with not much more than a sort of mental double-take that served as a starting point. Like the question "what is squid ink made out of anyway?" can be the start of an interest in marine biology.
Depression makes it very hard to catch these little moments since it smothers that little mote of curiosity and pleasure that can be the start of a passion.
: There is a deafening silence here. : Can the pale achieve a human form? Can it walk and talk and dream its nothing dreams of nowhere? : It can, the evidence is here. It's beautiful. : You should run.
![Poogona [he/him]](https://hexbear.net/pictrs/image/fc5a744f-2225-4b36-8997-101142ca1167.png?format=webp&thumbnail=128)
Poogona [he/him] @ Poogona @hexbear.net Posts 1Comments 342Joined 4 yr. ago
I KNOW MORE ABOUT HAGFISH THAN ANYONE IN THIS THREAD