Melanie Surani's Blog, page 263
May 21, 2015
gifsboom:
Video: The Dangers of Selfie Stick Abuse
I love how...
I love how we just imagine things aaaaaall the way to the extreme. Funny, though.
utadasam72:purpleyin:yourkingandqueen:dbvictoria:Incredible...
I love the bed fandom
I seriously want like a couple of these. Non-standard furniture, especially the multifunction or space saving kind, I am a sucker for. Why we not get this more often, make life more efficient people-who-decide-what-furniture-to-sell please.
Who thought this was okay?
Who thought this was okay?
May 11, 2015
cornflakepizza:
19990620: Hope, Fish, DespairTwo hungry cats...
Two hungry cats saw a big fish on the frozen lake park. They excitedly jump straight to the frozen lake where the fish away, to the front paw is caught is flexible, persevering fish separated by a layer of ice, visible touch them, spent a long time effort, still to no avail. Finally, the only hope, fish sigh, the disappointing.
Mental Health Awareness Month: Enochlophobia
For mental health month, I’ll talk about something I never thought I would admit.
Most of you know I live in NYC and that it’s eating my proverbial lunch. That’s mostly due to a phobia I didn’t even realize I had: enochlophobia, the fear of crowds.
When i was a teenager working at the mall, every Saturday was my worst nightmare. People came in droves, threw things on the floor, and formed lines around the register the whole entire day. I thought I hated retail (it does suck, but not for the reason I thought). This feeling didn’t get better, but I did start working in offices, so the fear went largely dormant because I didn’t expose myself to regular crowds.
I lived in Toronto, but didn’t work. I lived in Philly, and the only time I felt like I might be trampled was in the Reading Terminal Market. I usually went there on Saturday because that’s all my work schedule would allow.
Then New York happened.
Dear, sweet Jesus, every day and every situation is like a retail store on Saturday. Saturday at Christmas. Garbage everywhere, people everywhere, touching, talking, bumping, invading my personal space like it’s a team sport and they’re training for the Olympics.
I thought maybe I was being unreasonable because everyone else travels in a hoard everyday and makes no beans about it. Why is it bothering me? Everyone’s advice was to suck it up and look at where I am! The best motherfucking city in the world. But that didn’t help the tight feeling in my chest and the invisible hand that consistently squeezed my neck. “My scarf is too tight,” I thought, but no matter how much I loosened my clothes, I was choking. My heart was racing. I couldn’t look at the people squishing around me without wanting to scream (and having fantasies about doing a little face punching). I was constantly angry, constantly wanting to cry (sometimes actually doing it in front of everyone, adding morbid embarrassment to the whole thing).
It got bad one day. Something inside me broke and I flat out panicked. I went to work and did my best, but I was edgy and weepy the whole time. The next day, that tight, white-knuckled fear didn’t ease up. My throat was tight, I had trouble taking a full breath, and all I could do was cry. I went to work, crammed against new strangers. When I got to work, everyone took one look at me and asked what was wrong. Was I okay? Every single person would talk about nothing else, and I couldn’t even open my mouth without bawling. So they sent me home.
A few thoughts happened at that point:
1. These people are never going to trust me again
2. I have to get back on that motherfucking train
3. My husband is going to think I’m crazy.
The more I described to my husband, the more he thought he could look up my symptoms online and figure something out (to those of you outside the USA, health care is exorbitantly expensive, even with the new reform, and hairdressers don’t get insurance. Going to the doctor has to be a life or death issue).
So we figured out I have a fear of crowds. I’m not agorophibic, though I thought that might be it. I love going out! Just not in New York. This is the only place that’s plagued me with this feeling (and now you’ll understand why I hate it here so much).
Crowds, though. That’s it. A crowd can trample you. A crowd can keep you from getting to the doors before they snap shut. It’s called enochlophobia, and the only viable treatments I found were exposure therapy (in which I put myself in crowded situations all the time and eventually realize nothing bad is gonna happen – but if 15 hours of weekly work commuting wasn’t enough time, I didn’t know what would be), and hypnotherapy.
A woman online sells mp3s of her hypnotherapy, so I splurged the £4 and bought the one labeled “fear of crowds”. The instructions were to listen to it every day for month, and my fear should ease. And it fucking worked. I still hated being smashed against my fellow man, but the anxiety attacks didn’t come back.
Fast forward a few months. I’ve now found the city I want to live in, but it’s gonna be while before I can leave New York. As soon as I got back from my vacation, I realized just how long it takes me to commute anywhere. Just how many people are touching me all the time. It got to me again. I couldn’t get off the train at my stop. I couldn’t get a seat or a handhold on the pole. I was angry again, and I knew exactly where it was going.
I’m currently listening to the mp3 every night again before the invisible hand finds my throat. The only real cure, I think, is to get the fuck out of here. Until then, I’m holding it together as best I can.
While there might not be a cure for something like this, I know it’s not all that abnormal.
If you suffer from enochlophobia or anxiety attacks, here are some things to make your life more bearable:
1. Listen to music while you’re out (nothing like someone’s video game or chewing noises to bring the rage right out)
2. Stretch your arms all the way up and yawn. Not only does it help release that chest knot, you look like the chillest person out there and people will stop fucking asking you what’s wrong
3. Write something on your phone. Even if you’re not a writer, put down your thoughts. It helps focus your thoughts and makes the time go by a little faster.
4. And then there’s that big, cleansing breath. But maybe moving out of New York would be a more helpful step 4.
"Writing a book is a horrible, exhausting struggle, like a long bout of some painful illness. One..."
- George Orwell
(via maxkirin)
