13 october 2021
Doing pretty alright today. Been in a bit of a weird mental state lately, but mood has been mostly okay thanks to relentless avoidance. I know exactly why we've been feeling off, and I'm intentionally not letting myself deal with it until the time comes because otherwise it's going to be much worse. We have to deal with a major, longstanding phobia this Friday and we're really not looking forward to it. It's a medical trauma thing- don't worry, we're physically fine, just a routine check that's still hell to deal with every time. I'm just hoping it's quick so we don't have time to properly panic about it. The longer we can make it without processing the situation, the less likely our brain is going to flip out and make it worse.
Does remind me that we accidentally conditioned ourselves as a kid because of this. We tried using a kitten poster as a calming influence by intentionally conditioning ourselves to feel happy and calm when looking at it. It helped a little, but we accidentally re-associated it with the phobia and couldn't look at it without being afraid for a few months. Same goes for songs we listen to more than once while it's happening. I guess if we ever need an aversive, we have one ready to go. There's nothing quite like extreme terror to make you stop doing something.
Other than that, we're doing okay. Chipping away at a big project build in a Minecraft server, currently working on some apartment buildings. Excited to decorate since that's my favorite part. Classwork has been going well and I'm feeling confident about this quarter. It's finally cold enough that we don't need air conditioning, which is nice because those are way too loud and the noise is stressful. Heaters are nice and quiet. Our cats love them, too. It's adorable to see them rolling around by the baseboards.
Hey, whoever's reading this- thank you. You're appreciated. You're enough as you are, and you deserve to be happy. Go eat something if you haven't yet and make sure you're not dehydrated, okay? Take care of yourself.