We talked stuff that works you up, how about things that you do to calm down? What techniques, activities, mantras, stims, etc. do you do to keep yourself comfortable and safe? Feel free to share what you’d like - and something kinda cool is that you might end up helping someone else down the line.
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Listen to music when shopping or at work (especially if I am surrounded by noisy coworkers), speak out loud to myself when I am alone (I also do it to just think about anything, it’s much easier for me to sort my ideas and take decisions). Another thing I do when I feel sad is playing rhythm games, because it forces me to focus about what I am doing while listening to musics I enjoy (but I do not do it a lot now that I have a dog, I feel much better thanks to her <3).
People who love animals get the healing power of them. They just lift you up with their sweetness. I used to listen to music, but I stopped at some point. I’d get an earworm and keep that sucker playing on repeat and zen out and BLAM! Chill. (Blam maybe wasn’t the right word but I mean all of a sudden I’d realized how chilled out I was)
What ryhthm games? I can’t play them, but my sibby plays Konami stuff. My fav is pop’n music.
I mainly played Project Diva for 10+ years, but now I also play Theatrythm FF. I think I would love Pop n music but never have it a try (the special controller looks so good :) )
Ooooo, those are the guitaroo man kinda ones with like - lines and timing right? How any of you play these is outta my head. I can sing, and I understand rhythm but translating that to this kinda stuff is just *wuh!?*
It’s got a crazy variety of songs if you ever want to check it out here’s a playlist of all of them apparently. I hope you get to try it someday =)!
Yes, it takes time to get used to it, but it’s almost automatic at some point :).Thanks for the playlist, I will have a look at it ;).
No worries, if you wanna send a cool jam (or jams) from either game feel free to toss it here. I love fun music =)
Crypt of the Necrodancer on steam is a fantastic rhythm game, and you can use your own music on it. The switch version is portable, which is a plus, but there’s no ability to swap your music in.
I also second Theatrhythm! Final Fantasy music is almost universally gorgeous.
Oooo yeah, people love this game. I yet again can sing my buns off and do have rhythm but bringing it to a game is something else. But there are actually a handful of music games on the pc but I don’t know too much about them as a whole.
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ill skip the last but otherwise alright.
I think medication helps in some very real ways. But of course, there are always side-effects and you have to approach it with an openness that both parties are coming in pretty blindly and you’ve both got a common goal to get you to where you want to go. So it’s a lot of trial and error, but when you find things that work for you it just kinda - *clicks* and you don’t feel different than who you are but almost kinda…better? That sounds absolutely awful, but by that I mean the things that stood in your way that made it hard for you to do whatever you want to do day to day become a lot easier to achieve without being detrimental in other areas of your life.
And I was anti-medication for about 650 years. But it’s helped me, quite a bit =)
im not anti per se but more last resort type. I was worse though. I have learned to start taking pain medication after a surgery and not wait until it gets bad enough to take (because it can take quite a bit of time to take effect and when the hospital ones wear off it can come on strong and sudden)
Yeah, my mom is so anti-medication she has surgeries and just winces through the recovery and it’s absolutely miserable to watch. I once was in so much pain that I went into shock and if an amazing most lovely nurse on the face of this planet (I LOVE YOU SARBJIT!) hadn’t helped me I am not sure what would have happened. I’m not even joking, it was bad. Really bad @_@!!
I am also taking some stuff right now that hasn’t fixed everything, but I am way more functional right now than I was prior (cause it got bad for a while there too - was stuck in bed for a majority of the year and could barely walk). SO! I am pro-medication but as long as you and your provider can reach a mutual space with it and you feel like it’s helping and not hurting your being =)! Cheers =)!!
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I mean I’m AuDHD so there’s that. But also not a psychologist but I think I read something about how there’s three categories of mental disorders and that the one both ADHD and Autism lay in are in executive functioning. I think the other two were…personality and mood? And I think those are given more kinda like - mind altering drugs. Cause I don’t really feel any different when I am taking my medication. It just kinda helps clear up my head a bit. I can function (personally) on or off of it if I needed to. But I know individuals who are drastically different on/off drugs. For better or worse. Like people with bipolar who can’t get out of bed because they can’t move an inch or shift to mania and have no filter to what they’d be open to.
*But pairing medication with therapy always helps. Having someone you feel safe enough to talk with - that’s the stuff. And if they can give you a relatively objective response to your word smoosh, even better!
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Oh yeah, I take =)! Me with adderall and without very different. It kinda takes all the soup in my brain and puts it in a funnel and I like that about it. Instead of thinking 50 things at once, I just think about one thing - but my channel can still flip by association. So I know for sure it’s not a “cure” but between the two I feel like a Buddhist monk =P!
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I mean everyone’s gotta find the way they can meditate. Or at least, by themselves. Cause you sit me in a temple and I can be as quite as a church mouse outside of discussion periods. But at home it’s a bit harder. I use a couple of techniques and switch them up depending on what I need. But I have a song that I will always meditate to that gets me in the chill spot. And yeah it’s got some heavy D&B but hell if it doesn’t zen me out like a baby being swaddled. So idk?
Also on calm they have an awesome meditation where you find a space in your body that is restless and you sit with it, then you take your minds eye and push it out as far as you can think of - a mountain top, a plane in the sky - whatever and then you yoyo it back and forth like that. I got a year free, and absolutely loved this meditation.
is meditation the main method of cultivating the various right ways. Feels like house before the cart to get to it to improve meditation rather than improve meditation to get to that.
I’d like to think we might all have certain pieces of the puzzle but we might not have the big picture view. Likewise I think it’s incredibly healthy to accept things as what they are, but to be honest (and this is a hot take here) I think a lot of westerners overly-idealize Buddhist philosophy. But as a mixed kid, eh! I like it, but I don’t sit in any one camp. People talk about how humble monks are only eating what they are offered. But honestly, it’s a social expectation. In a different space, monks would not thrive because it might not be something so readily being offered and in turn they would experience a level of stressors that push their very beliefs to their core. That’s why there’s a lot of jokes about things like meditating in isolation on anger only to be annoyed when those practices actually get pushed. In theory all individuals regardless of background, personality, stressors - etc should be able to reach enlightenment. But I think in actuality, it takes a certain alignment of the stars and it’s fool-hearty to think otherwise. But that’s just me, and what do I know? I’m a messy human. (I always anecdotally remember that one of the most materialistic people I’ve met in my life was a former Buddhist monk =P!)
I will say though, that in my travels the happiest people I’ve ever met in my life were a SE Asian Islamic/Buddhist combo. They didn’t have much, but they had each other. And to be honest, it really taught me how to mind my ps & qs when it comes to want vs need and what one truly needs to be happy.
But at the end of the day, it’s shown over and over again that meditation in some form helps people much like exercise and doing it in any capacity is worthwhile =)!
yeah im not much for it as a religion but since I was young I have been obsessed with philosophy including in religion and truth. Currently the four noble truths are about the closest I have come. Take out the rebirth thing but otherwise seems like it. My cuirrent form looks at accpetance a lot which you had right in your second sentence. All the same one of the big acceptances for me is I will likely finish up my time without understanding truth in the purest sense.
I totally feel this. See, I don’t think any one religion has the beginning, the middle, and the end. Which you could say about anyone, because how the hell is anyone right about everything 100% of the time. Or have 100% of the coverage of consensus. We try to mimick this with observation and study (basically learning), but we don’t have all the answers. I think for sure right now we’re all in this giant space of walking the unknown. And if we don’t let stuff like this go from time to time it’ll drown our minds.
im moved from any religion not having 100% to pretty much all of them having close enough to 0% to be 0%. The Qanon thing made me reasses how groupthink works.
Simple human does simple things to chill out. Feel this =)
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When I need to calm down super fast I literally pretend I am an old school zen-buddhist monk and pull my arms up to my side bent (breathing in) and then push them down saying “zen body, zen mind” all while doing a big long breath out. Plus side is when I do this around people it seems to always illicit laughs, and not in the bad way. So that also helps cool me down. Sometimes being a muppet can be a blessing =P!
I can fidget with my septum piercing all day and make faces like I’m taking a nasty poop or having a really weird think and just be with it because you know - my body so =P!
I take my thumb and rub my finger like I’ve got one of those worry stones, only it’s my index finger instead of a stone. It’s a low-low one and Idk if anyone even knows I do this. I also do “wave-toes” which are like flowering my toes back and forth and man it’s calming.
Humming is basically like medicine to me. I heard it stimulates your vagus nerve, and I think it’s true. I also sing, and think I might be a bit louder overall because of it. I say this because when I cough when I’m sick it’s really loud and deep. And I think practicing something that utilizes your diaphragm probably strengthens it. So humming might not work for everyone? But it sure works for me.
Lastly I destroy my cheeky-cheeks. Sorry cheeks. But you’re my chew toy.
Actually there’s something expressly not mentioned in that if something is distressing me like a five-star alarm I will remove myself from said thing and typically it seems to cause no real trouble. And to keep myself less-stressed over high stress situations I just give things an (insane) amount of practice until things flow so I am less freaked da-fugg out.
As for chill stuff I’m pretty standard in that I love watching things that feel humanistic in some way to me (although I tend to watch animated things more, and will say growing up I dug anime but am not really about it anymore although I can watch some of my older stuff), love hanging with my missus and our pets and doing whatever is “on the agenda,” love when the creativity bug bites in any manner (writing, drawing, singing, dancing, sewing, painting, etc.), will always think of books as my best-friends (because I love them dearly), like to cook some good food and chill.
I like nature, and have always appreciated it in whatever form I’ve been around. But I am having trouble that it seems like anywhere and everywhere I go now it’s almost too cluttered, crowded, and everything feels like it’s “on-rails.” I will say that I think as the population has expanded it has gotten harder for me to live as a whole. But I am doing okay right now. It’s weird to love people, but also get incredibly overstimulated by them.
An app called Finch, and directed breathing exercises.
Also calling a friend to loudly vent at who has a very unique ability to calm me down again. Usually its enough to have someone listen to me and acknowledge my frustration
That’s a good one. You’re right there. And why I applaud people who can be even-keel in a world like this. It’s just something else.
I used breathing zone for so long I can hear the sounds in my head now and don’t have the app anymore. Thanks for the response =)!
I do breathing exercises as well. I think concentrating on the counting keeps my brain busy enough to ignore external stimuli.
for me its breathing and stretching and sorta meditation since im never really sure if I achieve meditation.
I once knew a monk who basically broke it down like this (and I’m talking monk since he was a little one) as long as you focus on one solid thing you’re meditating. So he said you can be sweeping and meditating, doing the dishes and meditating, sitting and thinking about driving a sports car you like and meditating. As long as you just focus on that one thing. And I’ve always taken it as thems the rules since =P!
yeah I think I sorta achieve a state sometimes but its generally momentary (or in the best cases seems momentary) but I find it hard to stop the encroaching thoughts.
I think we only get little dribbles of it. I read a book on Focus a hundred years ago and it basically stated the second that you realize you’re in that space - is the second you lose it. Encroaching thoughts are a difficult one, but it’s suggested more practice makes it easier. Also just figuring out what is and isn’t worth it in life. And I guessssss letting things go. But eh. I’m not the greatest with that one. So stuff I can’t let go, I try to sink instead. Because I might just not be ready to drop whatever “it” is.
I smoke trees.
