I honestly believe the whole “adults require less sleep” thing is honest to god probably a myth created by capitalism
It is.
i honestly believe that sleep deprivation is the biggest ignored/neglected root cause of health dangers that prematurely kill adults
ask me sometime about the role of sleep in the leptin ghrelin cycle and how its interruption destabilizes weight homeostasis
or about the new research showing that heart disease is not caused by fat, like we thought for years, but by inflammation in the circulatory system whose root cause is unknown but one of the prime suspects is, you guessed it, sleep deprivation
but nobody wants to hear that lack of sleep is killing people. employers don’t want to hear it. and god knows that having sold their waking hours to capitalism to survive workers don’t want to lose the only time they have left to them to live their lives, mostly stolen from sleep
i mean even i don’t want to do anything about it and i love sleep, i just love overwatch more
this this this this this
our society places almost zero value on sleep
on enough sleep
on uninterrupted sleep
on regular, predictable, cycling sleep
all the evidence we have suggests sleep is really, really, really important to the processes of the human body, including both mental and physical health, and yet when was the last time you heard somebody suggest that people had a *right* to sufficient, regular sleep?
Reminder that
- Humans are not meant to sleep for extended periods of uninterrupted sleep.
By this I don’t mean “humans shouldn’t have 8+ hours of sleep a night”; I mean that we are supposed to sleep for four to five hours (ish), then get up and do something relaxing like reading for a half hour to an hour, then get another bout of four to five hours. This is what our bodies were designed for.
Sleeping the whole night through was a fad started with the advent of the lightbulb. Sleeping the whole night through is so recent (and artificial) that First Sleep and Second Sleep are mentioned in Dickens’ novels.
- Lack of sleep for even a single night severely compromises your immune system.
If you’re planning on getting little sleep or pulling an all-nighter, make sure to eat lots of fruit and veggies/take vitamins that day. Or even better, get yourself some bee propolis. It’s a natural remedy used for thousands of years in Latin America and is insanely good for boosting up compromised immune systems (if you get the drop kind, put 3 to 4 drops in a spoonful of honey and mix well with a 2nd spoon to mask the strong taste). It has no side effects and is all but impossible to overdose on.
- According to several government bodies around the world, chronic lack of sleep is literally tied for 1st place as the worst kind of torture (the other is solitary isolation)
- Expecting a teen to get up for 8:30 classes is the equivalent of expecting an adult to be at work at 4 am.
After babies, teens are the age group that needs the most amount of sleep. Puberty is exhausting, and the body needs time to recharge. Ideally, a teen should be getting between 10 to 12 hours of sleep at the bare minimum. Most teens are lucky if they manage to get 8. And that’s a gigantic problem; not only does lack of sleep affect mood (which is extra significant when your hormones are already riding a rollercoaster to begin with), but also has massive effects on growth, which is kinda what the whole puberty thing is supposed to be about.
- According to research “starting work before 10 a.m. is tantamount to torture and is making staff sick and stressed”
- Humans were not designed to have the same sleep cycle across the species. Much the opposite in fact.
Night owls and morning people are an actual thing. Because we’re pack creatures, Nature came up with a clever way for our ancestors to always have someone on the lookout for predators and threats: make people naturally alert at varying times so that there’s always someone alert to keep watch.
Forcing night owls to follow morning people’s sleep cycle means night owls live with what researchers have referred to as “permanent jetlag”.
(points my shaking fist at high school) WHAT DID YOU DO TO ME
There is such a big difference in the way I manage my mental health during denial about having DID vs acceptance about having DID.
During denial, I tell myself that I am dealing with “intrusive thoughts” and that the feelings I am experiencing are just anxiety. I try to cope with everything using traditional “thought stopping” coping skills. When I wake up panicked and upset in the morning, I ignore the small frightened voice in my mind (because it’s just an intrusive thought) and I tell myself “STOP!”. I am not gentle with myself (because being gentle with real intrusive thoughts doesn’t work). The goal is to shut down and shut out those “toxic thoughts”.
When I am accepting of my diagnosis, I recognize that when I wake up feeling anxious it is not really my anxiety. I recognize that the small frightened voice in my mind is a part of me that is scared, not a toxic intrusive thought that I need to shut down and shut up. Instead of shouting “STOP!” I whisper “We’re okay. We’re safe.” I keep whispering as long as it takes to soothe the part that is scared. I remind her that when we get up we will go see our cat or that there is unicorn cereal in the kitchen, and that works, because being gentle does work when you’re not actually dealing with intrusive thoughts.
Yes! I was just talking about this subject with my psychologist yesterday and how damaging counselors not trained in dissociative disorders can be when they try to tell you to “talk back” to your “negative thoughts” and brand them “lies.”
They’re basically telling you to reject your alters that don’t act and feel in ways that are “positive” or acceptable to them. But those alters came into existence to protect you in some way and enabled you to survive and deserve your love and respect as much as the alters people find more “pleasing”.
Misguided priest counselors and Catholic friends who have told me to reject these parts of myself caused me more hurt than they could have known because they were ignorant of dissociative disorders and tried to pidgeon-hole me in disorders *they* were more familiar or comfortable with.
When I’ve tried to explain myself to them and where they went wrong: *crickets*
People don’t want to let go of their cherished beliefs and my brain doesn’t fit the binary Catholic world I was so much a part of until recently. I still go to Mass, but I don’t defer to priests anymore. I know I can’t just use my “will power” and “choose” to be the “best version” of myself or to “control” my own triggers as one misguided friend suggested—I don’t even know what all my triggers are and they can be so subtle and innocuous as to completely mystify people who don’t suffer from a dissociative disorder.
I’ve called priests out for mistakes they’ve made in counseling and confession and implored our local diocese to train their priests in trauma-sensitivity and dissociation.
Again: *crickets*
(Well, vague reassurances that the Bishop has been consulting with mental health “experts” but no specifics as to whether any of them are trained in dissociative disorders.)
Sorry to go off on this. But this post you’ve shared is so on-point and I think will be relatable to anyone with a dissociative disorder no matter their personal religious or philosophical background. I think it’s a universal experience for people with DID and related disorders to be misdiagnosed and mistreated!
Beth: Heads up there are a few mentions of triggers (no graphic content, just referential) Please look to the tags and let us know if you would benefit from us using any particular tag/s in the future – no questions, no judgments – we’re so proud you’re advocating on behalf of your system <3
Mae: Ugh yes I’m so sad/validated to see that there are these experiences. Our parts were not allowed to admit there was abuse happening in our household, even to a therapist when we first started seeing one bc the body was cutting itself in secret. When we finally mustered up the courage to use the word abuse in context for the very first time in therapy, our therapist at the time legit told us that sometimes it feels that way and that’s a pretty normal thing and since it’s not common it’s probably not a concern. We can’t remember what the body was talking about, only how terrified some littles were and how out of control the headspace felt Telling a Secret. Nearly 10 years later, we flat out denied any history of trauma when confronted with a PTSD Inventory (gotta love/hate dem amnesia barriers), and it only took weeks for our PHP case manager to identify the body as having a pervasive trauma history in the body. bc we were gaslighted out of believing we were abused by that therapists’ one comment for a decade. (that therapist did a bit of family counseling with our family and my parents were also clearly had their own issues but i was the one in treatment ???? and i was the one told yeah that’s not abuse???? bullshit we wanna go back to that clinician someday and just tell her she got it so fucking wrong and it took us 10 years to receive a proper diagnoses bc we werent validated and believed the first time we admitted to being abused. also our parents were divorced and our stepmom worked intimately for/with Prevent Child Abuse Ohio, so it definitely couldn’t happen to us right?
fuck gaslighting it was so read between the lines but no one believed us when we were brave enough to speak out in the first place
this has me so weak
The colors of horror movie posters
I think it’s so funny how every endorsement I see of Clinton HAS to be framed as like “Is she perfect? No, but she’s better than Trump.” The problem I have with this isn’t that it’s keeping politicians accountable, it’s that this accountability is only ever applied to Clinton and its done in such a way that make it seem like she’s somehow uniquely problematic. No one, not a single god damn person reblogs pictures, news stories, or quotes from President Obama and says “Damn, I really don’t like how he bombed the shit out of thousands of innocent civilians in the Middle East or how he ramped up deportation raids and ruined the lives of tens of thousands of peaceful undocument immigrants living here in the United States, but like he’s alright I guess.” No, instead every single post I see about Obama is about how much we’re gonna miss him and I don’t disagree, I think he was a great President, I just think it’s amazing how the callous or problematic decisions he made as Commander and Chief don’t ever taint his public image, at least not the image that his base has of him. Yet we hold Clinton to a completely different standard, the handful of problematic decisions she has made during her 30 year career define her in a way I haven’t seen before, to the point that the only “acceptable” way to support her is to speak about it in a tacit or even hesitant tone, like “yeah, I know she’s a corrupt bitch, but I’ll still vote for her I guess.” The notion that she is somehow more problematic than any other candidate who’s been elected prior to her is patently false, being a world leader is a implicitly dirty job, it just so happens that we’ve come to expect men to do these dirty jobs so we reserve our judgement. I mean, people aren’t even allowed to celebrate the fact she’s the first female candidate for president because it’s apparently “white feminism” to take note of the accomplishments of women in our country if they also aren’t literally perfect feminist icons. It’s not just enough to be exceptional as a woman to be celebrated, you have to be perfect. Also, if a single god damn person brings up another candidate in this race and tells me how their record is spotless I swear to god I’ll lose my mind because the reason for that is that no other candidate in this race has a mother fucking record of having any sort of governmental leadership position. Its not that they are somehow magically more pure than Clinton, it’s that they never got promoted to a position that would actually force them to make difficult decisions of national importance. It’s easy to keep your hands clean when you’re an irrelevant congressmen from butt fuck nowhere or simply have exempted yourself from the political process altogether until magically deciding now that you deserve to be President.
reblog if you’re def the kind of person who
- says “cool beans”
- does finger guns
- says “coolio”
- “my guy”
- “my dude”
- ironically said “get rekt scrub” and now can’t stop
- “ayyeee”
- makes a lot of weird faces