imnotevilimjustwrittenthatway:
i hate the trope of kids giving their favorite stuffed animal to a younger child as a sign of compassion and coming of age, as if this is something that should be expected of kids as they grow up
im 22 and i dont care who you are you’ll have to pry my ikea shark out of my cold dead hands
I can’t remember the name of the study, but there was a theory, supported by pretty good evidence, that if you have your comforter, be it blanket, plush, pacifier, whatever, taken away when you’re not ready to give it up, even if you’re a dinky little kid, it can have really long lasting effects. People who kept their comforters into adulthood were less likely to smoke, drink or do drugs, tended to have better family relations and home lives etc, while those that saw their comforter removed or destroyed were more likely to be drawn to more serious “comforts” elsewhere. The more extreme the removal, the more extreme the result. Typically.
We learn at our own pace to make and break connections and emotional ties, and the situation is forced upon us, we seek comfort. But whoa wait, you can’t possibly have comfort anymore, you’re five. You’re a big kid now.
So when parents are forcing you to “grow up” by tearing the only comfort in the world from you, they could actually be messing you up big time.
In psychology they’re called “transitional objects” and they help the neurobiological process of helping children learn to internalize the experience of being loved and cared for, which is an essential part of learning to regulate your emotions. They are REALLY important.
I wonder what it means psychologically that I’ve started getting a few more for myself?
Well, there’s a process we call “re-parenting yourself” where you give yourself the love you missed out on in childhood, and thereby start to heal the pain you’ve carried since then. And using childhood comfort objects can be part of that.
Oh..
Tag: that explains a lot
does anyone else get really uncomfortable when having to do stuff in front of other people? like even normal things like writing or something? i’m just so used to screwing things up because of my inattention problems that i’d rather be by myself when it happens again u know
Ok but no joke this is literally part of what makes my daily life so hard, if someone else is in the room and it’s not someone I’m like ten thousand percent comfortable with then I’ll feel like they’re watching every little thing I do and thinking about what a screw up I am like to the point that even just cooking around my family is so stressful
This is pretty typical of people who’ve been criticized a lot as children, especially by relatives. It gives us a kind of ‘performance anxiety’ as soon as anyone watches us do anything.
Like, I share the reaction to being watched while I cook too, and that’s because I was always criticized while I cooked as a kid and teenager, and if my own mother is around while I cook , to this day, I get anxious and wish she would go away because I’m always anticipating criticism about how I do anything and everything in the kitchen.
When I was a kid, my father got so mad at me because of how I was passing the vacuum that he literally ripped it out of my hands and very aggressively swung it around while hissing at me :’‘No, not like that, like this! IN. STRAIGHT. LINES.’‘ And since I had always known that he has a volatile temper, this sort of thing was terrifying, because I had no idea if he would get even more aggressive…
Its a survival tactic to want to avoid being watched, because it triggers our instinctual fear of being seen or watched by predators in the wild that our ancestors learned the hard way. And our brains react to being watched by other people the same way it reacts to being watched by a dangerous animal.
They’re telling the truth.
He’s an old friend of my father’s.
I remember him. I know him.
And if you strike him again, my father will know you did so after I made this clear to you.
#abigail ashe is a good kid #way way better than her father deserves#dispatches from the angry gay pirate future#i actually have a lot of feelings about her#and how someone with the moral fortitude of a damp tissue could help raise someone like her#the hilarious irony of peter ashe teaching her all these high minded ideals#and abigail going sure that sounds right #and then actually living by them via @sidewaystime
Meg's Mumbles 