Tag: brain stuff

desperadore:

alternative depression tips for when you read the ‘depression tips’ post and laugh hollowly, bc only in your fondest dreams could you manage to do any of those things

  • dry shampoo and face wipes are your friend. if you can brush your teeth you’ll feel maybe 2% less disgusting. wash your hands.
  • smelling nice is gr9, rubbing moisturiser in is Exhausting. perfume, scented candles and linen sprays are way quicker.
  • try to change your clothes at least every other day. wear sweats or pjs as often as you physically can.
  • you don’t need to put on underwear if you’re not leaving the house (that goes double for bras and binders)
  • drink any water that hasn’t been sitting out on your desk for a week. dust doesn’t taste good. stay hydrated. I fill one of those 2 litre bottles in the morning and keep it with me so I don’t have to get up and walk to the sink.
  • re: cleaning, try and keep one room vaguely clean. if everywhere else is a shit hole that’s fine, but you can go sit in your one tidy space and chill for a bit. it’s fine if that’s the bathroom or just the corner of your bedroom where there’s no crap on the floor. find a tiny space that isn’t horrifying and sit in it.
  • music helps.
  • eat a thing. +5 points if it has a fresh fruit or vegetable in it. take out is acceptable if it comes with veggies.
  • if your creativity curled up and died a long time ago try and find something that at least reminds you what it was like to feel inspired. watch a film, look at some art (probably not your own), read a thing. if that makes you feel worse, just?? don’t think about it??
  • grounding yourself is actually really helpful. open the window and breathe for 2 minutes. lay down on the floor and feel your whole body (unless you don’t want to in which case: lay down and don’t feel anything except the floor) 
  • human interaction is Good. text a family member you don’t hate if you have one. message a friend. reply to someone’s personal post with ‘SAME’. make your own personal post asking the void for validation. stare out the window at people and remind yourself that life exists outside of the black space inside your head. whatever works.
  • pets are amazing, agreed. watch some funny animal vines if you don’t have one.

Games make us happy because they are hard work that we choose for ourselves, and it turns out almost nothing makes us happier than good, hard work.

 We don’t normally think of games as hard work. After all, we play games, and we’ve been taught to think of play as the very opposite of work. But nothing could be further from the truth. In fact, as Brian Sutton-Smith, a leading psychologist of play once said, “The opposite of play isn’t work. It’s depression.”

When we’re depressed, according to the clinical definition, we suffer two things: a pessimistic sense of inadequacy and a despondent lack of activity. If we were to reverse these two traits we’d get something like this: an optimistic sense of our own capabilities and an invigorating rush of activity. There’s no clinical psychological term that describes this positive condition. But it’s a perfect description of the emotional state of gameplay. A game is an opportunity to focus our energy, with relentless optimism, at something we’re good at (or getting better at) and enjoy. In other words, gameplay is the direct emotional opposite of depression.

Reality is Broken, by Jane McGonigal

This book is fantastic and well worth reading even if you only play games and aren’t interested in making them. It’s about how games make us better and how they can change the world, by making it more gamelike and thus more motivating and rewarding. 

You can also watch her TED talk about the same subject here!

(via thecindercrow)

it pisses me off that i might be or someone implies that i’m one of those soft tender people who feel a lot of things all the time and have thin skin and cry over relatively unserious things

ive spent a lot of time being a person who can take a lot of shit and be an immovable object when it comes to things

i dont want that to all be just my depression or trauma goddamnit

leave me alone and let me be my weird self stop trying to fix me or make me the person i was when i was a little kid

i’m not fucking broken