vaspider:

skaldish:

krisrisk:

eastofurban:

skaldish:

I say this as someone who’s trained in internal self-awareness and adaptive internal resourcing:

The kind of Brain Tigers that living paycheck to paycheck gives you are nothing less than horrific.

It simulates being persistence-hunted.

You can’t think. You can’t hide. You can’t plan.

You can only run.

This is intentional on the part of our oppressors.

What’s Brain Tigers?

I’m glad you asked!

“Brain Tigers” are my way of describing the mental sensation of when something intangible activates my survival instincts. Evolutionary speaking, we are only supposed to feel dread when our lives are in immanent danger—like when there are tigers in the bushes.

But our modern society now has simulated threats, such as the threat of homelessness via living paycheck to paycheck. Because our survival instincts don’t distinguish between immanent danger and conceptual danger, it reacts the same way.

However, unlike real tigers, we have no means of directly combating these simulated predators, which means we can’t remedy our sense of dread. And also unlike real tigers, we can’t detect them with our carnal senses, which creates a pretty horrid sense of unreality within our minds.

Not only does this kind of dread shut down our critical thinking, but it also shuts down our free will. As long as you need to worry about making ends meet, you’ll never, ever be able to fully tap into your higher judgement.

I’ve been brainwashed and programmed. I’ve been warped by neurotoxins. I’ve been tortured for 22 years due to inflammation of my entire nervous system. I’ve had mind held in a mental cage nearly all my life.

But my jailers are saints compared to the mind-killer that is poverty. You can’t imagine the primal horror it causes until you’ve experienced it.

Instructions To A Reader On Managing The Endless Stream Of Digital News During A Pandemic And A National Crisis With A Brain Developed For Different Times   Be present in your human body. Stop. Pull your shoulders down, you've made earrings of them. Flex your fingers, curl  your arms above your head like a ballerina or Renaissance statue: delicate as bowing with an oboe's keen song solid as marble.   Run your wrists under water. You may anoint yourself with heat and turn your skin the soft pink of new roses.  You exist in this moment, and none other. The savanna is clear.   Press flat your palms against the wall. Feel its cold, unbroken surface, the smooth matte  of your bedroom's paint. Follow its lines like a map. Breathe in for three. Hold for four. The weight of your body marries the soles of your feet to the wood floor. This is real.   The screen's glow is a hypnosis, it shows stripes and spots, so many illusory  predators, you'll see scant else. Look away.  Here are all the red things in the living room. The blue things in the bathroom. The rough reality of your dog's paw. His nose twitches in sleep.  It's 3:25 AM. You cannot solve anything until dawn. Listen to the air conditioner  click. You are here in your bones, nerves and meat. Flex your toes. Breathe.  There are no tigers here.   posted June 20, 2020. copyright to Author Spider B. PerryALT

yeah.

(via 23-tiny-wishes)