my own handmade runes
I painted them in blue and silver because of the connection I feel to Sigyn.
Month: February 2015
Spoonies with dogs, talk to me.
Can you walk them? Are they overwhelming? Do you need to have help to keep up with the care? Is it doable?
spooniestrong, spooniepets, maybe you can help?
I think that really depends on 3 things – 1) if you have a fenced back yard, 2) how much exercise your dog needs, and 3) how much well-trained / well-behaved the dog is.
Personally, I have a small, non-shedding dog who is low-energy / doesn’t need much exercise, and he isn’t hard for me to care for unless I’m having a pretty severe pain day. He wasn’t house-trained when I adopted him, and house-training a dog takes a lot of energy (at least it does for a person with already really limited energy).
People won’t always let you do this, but you meet a pup & fall in love it’s worth asking if you can take it home with you on a trial basis to see how the dog meshes with your home / schedule / etc.
My original plan was to train him to fetch things for me if I didn’t have the energy to get them myself. That hasn’t worked so well. He’s clever, though, so I have hope.
He does need to be walked every day but he doesn’t mind if I can only manage a short walk. It keeps me active and gets me out of the house and these are, most days, good things. His bags of food are heavy, so I need help with that often. If I’m not feeling well he lies with me and makes me feel better.
It’s basically a breed thing. A larger dog will be stronger, but giant breeds need less exercise. Little dogs can be energizer bunnies. Older dogs might be spoonies themselves, so if you’re looking at a shelter that’s a factor. Short walks for them, but still get them out often because they need the change of scenery. (Balance that with the fact that they will cost more at the vet and will die sooner.)
Puppies will take all your energy. They have to be trained, and their energy doesn’t dissipate for a couple of years. You’re better off with an adult dog who has calmed down a bit and knows all the basics. Puppies are cute and all but they don’t understand “no” and you’ll be running after them saving things from their chewing for a while.
It’s very important that they’re well-behaved on a lead. They’ll pull you off your feet otherwise and hurt your arms. If you can get an adult dog who is already well-behaved on a lead, great; if you’re getting a puppy, really focus early on on this so when he’s bigger he won’t be a pain.
SIGYN Artisan Alchemist™ Ritual Oil – Nordic Shamanism, Seidr, Galdr, Victory, Courage, Earn Good Karma, Overcome Obstacles & Negative Orlog
Depressed person: “I just couldn’t do it.”
Non-depressed person: “Why not?”
Depressed person: “You know how you have a ‘survival instinct’ – that vague internal force that just stops you from knowingly hurting yourself?”
Non-depressed person: “Yeah.”
Depressed person: “It’s like I have that, only it’s all wonky. When I want to do something that’s good for myself, or that I need to do, it just stops me.”
Me, trying to describe what it’s like to have depression, and why I can’t just do the things I need to do sometimes. (via archers-bones)
So accurate it hurts
(via kiriamaya)
Sigyn Inspired Pendant
Never let anyone tell you that you are not worth being loved if you don’t love yourself. Never let anyone tell you that your mental illness is the reason why you are not in a relationship. Never let anyone tell you that you should smile more, fix your hair, or wear more color. Never let anyone make you feel bad about what you can’t always control.
What It’s Like To Be In Love When You Have Depression By: Holly Everett (source)
Executive Dysfunction
So this was originally a comment on a post about depression and so forth, but it actually occurred to me that it might be more helpful in a tag somewhere where someone might see it, rather than buried in 68k notes. So here’s the thing: I’m not great at explaining what executive functioning problems ARE, but I tried to explain what they feel like.
Looking at a dirty litterbox and a sink full of dishes and going “fuck this noise” and going back on tumblr feels a lot like laziness, even if you are feeling kind of like crying just looking at them. But it can also be your brain being currently incapable of putting together the steps you need to take in order to DO those things, you can’t quite put together that cleaning the litterbox is:
- Get a trash bag
- Get the litter scoop
- Get clean litter
- Open trash bag
- Move litterbox to accessible position
- Crouch down by the litterbox
- Scoop out poop and clumps
- Tie off trash bag
- Add some clean litter to box
- Put litterbox back in its original position
- Put litter scoop away
- Put clean litter away
- Throw away trash bag
When you’re having executive functioning issues, you look at the dirty litterbox and even if you don’t realize it, you can’t work out those steps, you just see the dirty litterbox and know that it needs to be clean and all those steps are mushing together into one big ball of overwhelming stress and you can’t quite figure out where to start, and it takes a LOT of mental and emotional momentum to start, and when you’re depressed or overwhelmed or whatever it can be next to impossible to GET that mental and emotional momentum.
This isn’t the best explanation of executive dysfunction, probably, but it’s the best I’ve got, and it can be awful, and it can make you feel like a lazy useless person when you’re nothing of the sort, and it’s so insidious, because when you’re NOT having these issues it’s the easiest thing in the world to subconsciously put all those steps together and get from “dirty litterbox” to “clean litterbox” without any conscious thought.
This can happen when you’re depressed, if you have ADHD or autism, if you have anxiety… there are a lot of reasons you might run into problems with your executive functioning. It can be simple things like cleaning the litterbox, it can be things you do (or try to do) regularly like your math homework, it can be something like going to the gym or cooking dinner or getting out of bed in the morning.
But the most important thing to take away from this is that there is a huge difference between “I could do this but I really don’t want to” and “I cannot do this”, and when you learn to recognize the difference, you can begin to stop calling yourself “lazy” and “useless” and “worthless” during those times when you CAN’T do this even if you want to.
Yeah, autistic people, people with depression, or ADHD, or anxiety… we can all be lazy sometimes. And that’s okay, it’s normal to be lazy sometimes. And we can still have issues with laziness. But the difference is real, and important, and I feel like not enough people outside of the autistic and maybe ADHD communities realize that this is something that they might be struggling with.
Learning disability awareness isn’t about reassuring people with learning disabilities that they’re ‘still smart’, it’s about recognizing that intelligence is a highly variable social construct and that an individual’s worth is not attached to that subjective construct.
Holding the Bowl 