Happy Wednesday To My Fellow Aro-specs. /gen

happy wednesday to my fellow aro-specs. /gen

In the wake of what's going on in the world, I see a lot of rhetoric that basically boils down to the idea that everyone has a responsibility to watch every bad thing that's going on in the world all the time. That awareness itself is a responsibility that everyone has always.

I'm not going to say that people do or don't have a responsibility to be aware of things, but I want to talk about how to take care of yourself and others while doing so.

For some context, I spent close to a year and a half reading about every terrorist attack in the world as part of my work on the Global Terrorism Database. It was 2015/2016, so this was the height of ISIS/Daesh, it was a major time for Boko Haram, and it was when there was a lot of political violence that we weren't sure how to classify in places like Yemen, Crimea, and Libya (stuff the GTD didn't know how to classify had all of is information recorded, and then it went into purgatory until someone above my paygrade decided what to do with it). What this means is that I was spending 10-20 hours a week reading about hundreds or thousands of attacks a month and, in my case, recording infomation about the type of attack and the type of weapon. Much of my life was reading terrible things.

Limit what you do in isolation. One of the worst changes for me during that time, mental health-wise (even though it was great for my commute) was when I went from working in-person to working remotely. With other people, there are ways to diffuse the pain. A burden shared is a burden halved and all that. That may mean talking about it, or joking about it, or finding some other way to engage with it that isn't just reading about the most horrible things in the world and then stewing in your own thoughts about them.

Find something to do that's totally unrelated. I highly recommend finding something to do with your hands, if you can (knitting, Lego, cooking, whatever), but regardless of what it is, you should have some time when you entirely switch away to something different. During a fair amount of my time with the GTD, I was also doing my undergrad thesis about terrorism on TV, so a huge amount of my life was about terrorism in some way. The only other thing I watched was Great British Bake Off, and I would just rewatch the episodes, over and over.

Be compassionate about how you share information and with whom. Use trigger warnings, and consider using consistent tagging on places like Tumblr so people can blacklist it if they need to. Also consider whether it's appropriate or necessary to share photos of bodies or other results of horrible violence. What is it accomplishing, to show that? Can that goal be accomplished other ways that don't require the equivalent of jumpscares of unexpected photos of dead or brutalized people? Are you just showing it because you think that everyone should have to see it? If you are showing it, are there ways to mitigate against harm it may do?

Do what you can to avoid an echo chamber. Sometimes, when everyone around you is upset or angry about the same thing, it just amplifies itself, and you all get angrier and more upset in perpetuity without accomplishing anything.

Work towards action. Watching terrible things happen for the sake of saying that you haven't looked away isn't as meaningful as taking action in some way. Write to your Congressperson. Donate. Do whatever is appropriate for the thing you want to stop. But penance via watching terrible things happen doesn't accomplish anything.

Recognize compassion fatigue and do what you can to mitigate it. If you spend long enough doing this, you start to lose context, and you start to become less able to have compassion about things. If you're reading about attacks with dozens or hundreds of deaths regularly, five can start to not seem like that many. If you're reading only about the worst suffering in the world, "lesser" suffering of those around you can start to seem unimportant and petty. Do what you can to mitigate that.

Be kind to yourself. You do nobody any good if you burn out. Look away, if you need to. Take a break. Do things so you can enjoy life, because otherwise you are just another person suffering in the world. Other people's pain isn't a hair shirt for you to wear.

ours is a mansion!! like victorian type, it’s always changing but we also have The Forest™️ outside the mansion where nobody is allowed to go except the gatekeepers and our scout, ir’s where new alters come from and where the more malicious headmates live/are thrown into depending on circumstances.

our memory storage is like a Big Library? the memories fluctuate between video tapes and books, it’s really cool. i’ve made a small board of our iw on pinterest to help with visualizing it since we have aphantasia

PLEASE INFODUMP TO ME ABOUT YOUR INNER WORLD I WANT TO KNOW PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE.

Systems are awesome they're a marvel of psychology however I'm most interested in inner worlds because they're mostly created by the imagination of a child or the imagination of an adult and sometimes it's really easy to tell by which. I love talking about my inner world I've drawn maps and stuff and I'm constantly waiting for someone to ask me about it so I can infodump about it (HINT FOR PEOPLE IN MY LIFE WHO MAY SEE IT)

Reblog or send an ask or use the replies, show me maps, write lengthy paragraphs I want to know about your inner worlds AHHHHHHH

-Glitch (He/It)

sharing for those who are able to/want to donate- it’s a google doc of families you can donate to who are trying to get out of gaza, even a little helps

- 🕷️ Peter, He/Sith

FUCK YEAH

Gale: Good morning.

Wyll: Good morning.

Shadowheart: Good morning.

Astarion: You all sound like robots, try spicing it up a bit.

Karlach: MORNING MOTHERFUCKERS!