“Here’s What I Know: If Someone’s Much Better Than You At Something, They Probably Try Much Harder.

like there’s this whole thing in this book about how your brain grows stronger and healthier by practicing responding to stress in healthy ways,

because if a stressor is predictable and you feel a sense of control over it, you habituate and stop reacting to it,

but if it’s random and unpredictable you have the opposite response and become sensitized, so your reaction actually gets more and more extreme.

(if you hear a loud noise at predictable intervals you’ll soon stop noticing or reacting, but if you hear it at random intervals you’ll become sensitive to it and anxious.)

so one way to help people who have adverse reactions to reminders of trauma is to give them control over how they’re reminded of the trauma,

because it helps the brain practice responding to stress in a safe way so you can habituate to the stress response.

which is why if someone tags something for a trigger and you still choose to look,

it’s actually an act of healthy resistance against your reaction to that trigger (because it teaches your brain to habituate),

but encountering something triggering in a random and unpredictable way actually increases your stress response and makes you more sensitive to the trigger.

so people who are against trigger warnings because “you have to learn to cope” are actually taking away your tools for learning to cope,

because encountering stressors in a way that further strips you of control over your trauma is never, ever helpful.

it’s a lot of stuff i kind of knew but integrated and explained with more context and science

Little things that improved my life 𝜗𝜚˚⋆

Accepting my sleep schedule. I'm a night owl; I focus at night, I'm calm at night, I'm motivated at night. For a long time, I tried to fight this since everyone always preaches getting up early, but since I started accepting my natural sleep schedule, I've been feeling a lot better and have become way more productive.

"drink more water". TEA. Tea is the secret here. I will be honest, I hate drinking water; it doesn't matter if I have a cute water bottle or a cute glass, I still hate it. TEA.

Replying quickly. I used to be one of those people who get a text message and think, "Oh, I'll reply to that later", and then just forget about it entirely. Now, I text back as soon as I see the message. This has not only improved my texting anxiety (which I cause on my own by now replying and then feeling bad) but also deepened my connection to my friends. <3

Keeping my circle small and being okay with that. Over the past months, I've had this sudden urge to expand my social circle and get to know more and more people, especially after I moved in August. However, this quickly ended in what I like to call my "social burnout". I was tired, annoyed, and overwhelmed. It took a few weeks for it to settle, but I've come to the conclusion that I would much rather have a smaller circle of people who I trust and love deeply than a huge group of friends, and that's totally okay.

Wearing what I like. Even though I live in a big city, I'd still say that my style can sometimes be a bit more extravagant than what most people wear, another point is that I'm very uncomfortable with pants so I only wear skirts, which is also considered a bit odd where I live. But over the past years, I've come to accept that and have become so sure of myself and found such comfort in my style that I now just wear whatever I like, and it makes every day a little bit nicer.

Reading and writing for pleasure. Reading books outside of my studies and spending time researching topics that simply interest me is such a great way to calm your mind. Same for writing, I always like to say that to write is to think; putting your thoughts on paper in cohesive and well-crafted sentences that you can then reread and think over again is such a liberating thing to do.

Reaching out more. fuck the whole "double texting" and "no contact" thing. If you want to speak to someone because they mean something to you, then just do it. Unless they specifically asked for space, you shouldn't feel bad about wanting to be in touch with them. Many even really appreciate it when you show that you truly care. Let's stop the nonchalant act, and instead, let's face deep emotions and true vulnerability. <3

As always, please feel free to share your own little insights and things that helped you improve comments! <3

my insta: @ malusokay

love ya ･:*₊‧✩

Hades and his makeup done to resemble a skull: *chef's kiss* peak art

EFTI | Centro Internacional de Fotografía y Cine

Ana Martínez para Neo2

Nuestra antigua alumna del Curso Profesional Ana Martínez y Mario Ville nos muestran en esta nueva editorial para NEO2 su personal y contemp

✨These are going to make some Hellenics mad but the visuals are stunning🤩

This question and its answer from The New York Times work advice column is W I L D.

Magic Mushrooms for Depression: Brain Scans Show What’s Happening

A new study has shed light on what’s going on in the brain as psilocybin treats depression

Imagine a house share of several people. The house, technically, functions fine. One housemate sorts out the food. One earns the money. One cleans. One does laundry. Except they don’t help each other, don’t collaborate, and don’t listen to each other. They don’t even talk to each other.

Sounds pretty miserable in there, right? In a very simplified way, that’s what a new study has found is going on in the mind of depressed people, with different parts of the mind working isolated from the others.

Psilocybin, the substance responsible for the magic in magic mushrooms, has been under study for some time now and showing very promising results to help with depression. But on a physical level, no one, until now, knew why. Now, scientists have had a glimpse with the help of brain scan machines.

Let’s go back to that miserable house share. Now, the housemate in charge of the food has prepared a new soup for the housemates, and it contains magic mushrooms. What happens next? They all start talking to each other. And suddenly, overnight, the place gets happier. The even better news is that the next day, after the mushrooms have worn off, the walls have stopped moving and the pattern on the sofa has stopped being so incredibly funny, the housemates are still talking to each other. The living experience in the house has been transformed. It’s no longer a miserable place to be. No longer so… depressing.

So it is, according to the new brain scan study, with psilocybin and the depressed brain. Parts of the brain that struggled to interact and remained entrenched in their neural patterns became more fluid and communicated more with other parts of the brain.

One important element of these findings is they show how psilocybin works differently to antidepressants. As study author David Nutt says;

“These findings are important because for the first time we find that psilocybin works differently from conventional antidepressants — making the brain more flexible and fluid, and less entrenched in the negative thinking patterns associated with depression. This confirms psilocybin could be a real alternative approach to depression treatments.” — Nutt

For sufferers of depression who haven’t been responsive to antidepressants, this is very promising indeed. Especially when compared with a traditional antidepressant, psilocybin appears to work faster and with longer-lasting effects.

How effective was the psilocybin in this study?

Participants in the study had taken psilocybin twice over three weeks, as part of previous studies on psilocybin therapy. The results can be compared to people who take an antidepressant pill daily:

Psilocybin: After three weeks and two psilocybin experiences, participants averaged a drop in depression scores of 64%. Low depression scores were maintained for at least six months.

Antidepressant pills (Lexapro): After six weeks of daily pills, the depression score dropped by 37%, with the improvements not expected to continue after stopping the course.

So, on paper, that’s a win for the mushrooms.

While the pills target serotonin levels to help with the feelings of depression, the psilocybin gets parts of the brain talking, so the negative feelings are less entrenched. The brain can find new ways of doing things by talking to itself in a way a depressed brain can’t.

So, magic mushrooms are better than antidepressants then?

That’s not necessarily the case, though it’s easy and tempting to jump to that conclusion. It’s complicated and what works for one won’t work for another.

There’s a very common fallacy that you can spot in the thoughts of the psychedelic community, especially in users of mushrooms and Ayahuasca. That common thought is this: ‘Of course mushrooms are better than antidepressants… pills are synthetic chemicals, mushrooms are natural.’

This is called the appeal to nature fallacy, where our minds like to simplify things to nature is good, unnatural is bad. This is not good thinking. If you pick the wrong mushroom, you will die horribly, however natural it was. Deadly nightshade berries are called that for a reason. We can’t let our brains fall for the ‘nature is better’ trick.

This is why we rely on science. If we’re making personal decisions on how to treat ourselves, even if self-medicating, we need to be able to think clearly to make our decisions and not fall for common thinking errors.

Internal communication for mental health has a precedent

There’s a fascinating branch of therapy called Internal Family Systems (IFS), where the idea is to get parts of the mind to talk to each other and come to agreements and work together. The system uses talk and imagination.

In early research, the method has been showing positive results for treating depression, even in cases where medication and the more common cognitive behavioural therapy haven’t helped.

In the houseshare analogy, IFS would be like having a therapist show up, sit the housemates down, and get them talking and coming to agreements.

The two methods of creating in-brain communication both seem to be very effective. But we can’t assume they’re doing the same thing.

Psilocybin is shown through scans to improve communication in different parts of the brain. IFS encourages communication in different parts of the mind. These parts of the mind don’t necessarily live in different parts of the physical brain.

The two methods support each other in certain important aspects though: depression can be helped by getting whatever is in our heads to communicate better with itself. They do that in using very different ways.

In a nutshell, the study says psilocybin may work like this;

“…psilocybin’s antidepressant action may depend on a global increase in brain network integration.” — study authors

Internal Family Systems, like this;

“Just as our bodies are made of many parts that form a dynamic, interwoven system that works together, so it is with our psyches.” — Ralph de la Rosa

There’s one more little bit of psychology that we can possibly infer that our wellbeing is related to internal communication of different parts, be that of the mind or the brain: how we refer to ourselves in our inner voice affects our wellbeing.

People who talk to themselves as “You” generally have better wellbeing than those using “I”. There’s no inter-mind communication using I. The part of us that I refers to is itself. When you comes into it, that’s a part of us separate from the bit that uses I. People who use “We” also tend to feel better than those who use I. This again could be related to in-mind communication. This is all inferred and would need proper study.

But what if this inter-mind/brain communication could be done with extra love and compassion for the parts that communicate? Could that help?

Enter MDMA.

MDMA therapy and in-brain communication

MDMA, also under much study to help with various psychological disorders, works, in a super-simplified explanation, by adding compassion to proceedings. In the case of PTSD, for example, it’s by adding compassion to the memories that underly the trauma.

So would adding MDMA to IFS therapy add compassion to how we view and communicate with ourselves, and aid our mental health? The link is in early stages, but it seems so. That’s like entering our miserable houseshare and passing around ecstasy pills — and getting the housemates to talk to and feel very fond of each other in a way the compassion will last even after the drug has worn off. That’s a healthy state for a brain to live in.

Back to the psilocybin study, and brain communication. Would adding MDMA to mushrooms be useful in the same way? Possibly. Research into such an idea has begun, though first with LSD rather than psilocybin. Underground, adding MDMA to mushroom therapy has been used to aid the experience, and to take the edge off a bad psychedelic experience. If inter-brain communication really is the key to aiding depression with psychedelics, adding some extra compassion to the mix may be an effective idea.

Talk to yourself

It seems that one possibility is that helping depression may come down to good, old-fashioned communication. It may just mean doing it on the level of neural pathways with the assistance of psychedelics such as psilocybin.

Don’t rush out and buy or pick yourself a bag of mushrooms though. The study authors stress not to self-medicate based on these results, and psychedelics can have dangers for some people. Taking psychedelics for any reason is a big decision and should be considered thoroughly, with risks in mind as well as benefits.

The new study is another in the growing list in support of using psychedelics to help with mental health, and one of the first to give a clue of how they work physically in our brains. Plenty more research is to come.

By Alexander M. Combstrong (Medium). Image: Pixabay at Pexels.

"am I being annoying" are you aware that my heart is trying to crawl out of my chest to get to you

happy "everyone forgets that icarus also flew" monday. i want to throw up !

Faking a major event would require thousands of people. Try managing a project. getting twelve people to do what they are supposed to, on time, without blabbing early, is nearly impossible.

I realized why the idea of constellations has always swayed me. constellations are so very human.

our wonder of the stars is bone-sunk; we’ve been thinking and dreaming and watching and watching and watching since the beginning of time, and we looked for so long that we started making connections. 

we played a celestial game of connect-the-dots; trying to find order in something so vast and trying to show that the stars are in everything and everything is in the stars.

we plucked pictures out of the infinite; there’s a dog, there’s a bear, there’s a lion, see? look, right there; the stars hold and mirror back everything. 

but then it went a step further. instead of everyday things, we stopped picking out the cups and the bears, and instead we saw stories. 

look, there’s Andromeda, chained to a rock and waiting to be devoured by Cetus. there’s Orion, and Hercules, and do you see Orpheus’ lyre? Zeus sent an eagle to retrieve it after Orpheus’ death and he placed it in the sky. 

we did the most human thing imaginable: we wrote our stories into the stars. we filled the night sky; previously so vast, so unknowable; with our history. we forged connections to the stars and made it so our children will always know where they come from. 

Give me body horror in magic.

Give me pyromancy that burns the skin off your hand until your bones are showing. Give me arcane that cooks you inside-out from manaburn. Give me cryomancy that cracks your skin and chips it away. Give me necromancy that causes your teeth to turn necrotic and your eyes to glass over white.

I don’t want cute magic. I want magic to be a raw and dangerous force. I want those who harness it to feel the full effects of what a great and terrible thing it is. I want mages who wear the effects of their magic on their skin and in their bones.

That’s the good stuff.