Author: Erin Hockings

vicioushyperbolizer:

embyrr922:

pyrrhiccomedy:

ifshehadwings:

ovaadosedonconfidence:

Intuition is real. Vibes are real. Energy doesn’t lie. Tune in.

This is actually called thin slicing. Your brain recognizes patterns from very small “slices” of information by comparing them to things you have experienced before. This all happens very quickly on a subconscious level without our conscious mind being involved. So intuition is actually really fast pattern recognition, and it can be very accurate. So yeah, if you have a gut feeling that a person or situation is not good, get the hell out. Your brain knows what’s up. 

When I was young – because I’ve always been a big skeptical pain in the ass – I thought that when people were talking about interpersonal “energy,” they were on some Gay Ass Shit.

Years later, after spending hundreds of hours reading studies about intuition and neuroscience and pattern recognition and the processing power of the subconscious mind, I realized that that kind of talk – “she has such good energy,” “you need to read the energy of the room,” “I just got some really bad energy off of that guy” – is a convenient shorthand for the lightning-fast, weirdly-accurate, real-as-fuck subconscious processing of the probability of positive or negative social outcomes likely to result from hundreds or thousands of variables. That “energy” isn’t a tangible thing floating around in the air. It’s your brain updating you constantly with information about your situation. Listen to it. Especially if it’s telling you to be nervous or scared. Your brain is very good at recognizing danger. Let the enormous processing power of your subconscious mind protect you. It’s better at spotting patterns than you are. 

“Bad energy” isn’t some hippie shit. It’s your brain setting off a claxon because it knows something’s not right.

Thin slicing is wonderfully helpful, but be aware that if it’s doing its pattern recognition from bad sources, you need to actively override it. We’re raised in a racist society, inundated with racist media, and bombarded with subtly (or unsubtly) racist advice. Thin slicing can save your life, but it’s also the cause behind the unconscious elements of racism (and misogyny/ableism/antisemitism/islamophobia/etc.) that we all suffer from

Trust your instincts, but if your instincts tell you something that seems prejudicial, double check their work.

A+ addition

always-bookgasming:

celero-needs-therapy:

prolifers-r-gross:

9yearoldsoul:

star-anise:

imnotevilimjustwrittenthatway:

star-anise:

dotdollplushies:

405blazeitt:

i hate the trope of kids giving their favorite stuffed animal to a younger child as a sign of compassion and coming of age, as if this is something that should be expected of kids as they grow up

im 22 and i dont care who you are you’ll have to pry my ikea shark out of my cold dead hands

I can’t remember the name of the study, but there was a theory, supported by pretty good evidence, that if you have your comforter, be it blanket, plush, pacifier, whatever, taken away when you’re not ready to give it up, even if you’re a dinky little kid, it can have really long lasting effects. People who kept their comforters into adulthood were less likely to smoke, drink or do drugs, tended to have better family relations and home lives etc, while those that saw their comforter removed or destroyed were more likely to be drawn to more serious “comforts” elsewhere. The more extreme the removal, the more extreme the result. Typically.

We learn at our own pace to make and break connections and emotional ties, and the situation is forced upon us, we seek comfort. But whoa wait, you can’t possibly have comfort anymore, you’re five. You’re a big kid now.

So when parents are forcing you to “grow up” by tearing the only comfort in the world from you, they could actually be messing you up big time.

In psychology they’re called “transitional objects” and they help the neurobiological process of helping children learn to internalize the experience of being loved and cared for, which is an essential part of learning to regulate your emotions.  They are REALLY important.

I wonder what it means psychologically that I’ve started getting a few more for myself?

Well, there’s a process we call “re-parenting yourself” where you give yourself the love you missed out on in childhood, and thereby start to heal the pain you’ve carried since then.  And using childhood comfort objects can be part of that.

Oh..

Oh my god…

In the year of the lord 2018 our grown asses start healing.

This makes me feel less bad for being an adult that still sleeps with a teddy bear. My parents tease me about it but they never took any comfort items away from me.

brandoncarlo:

snoopdogg-with-a-blog:

premiumdiscontent:

brandoncarlo:

If you think trans women shouldn’t be in women’s sports because you think that makes them male I want you to know I personally deeply dislike you and find you to be a vile person.

a good take. another option: sports are only segregated by gender in the first place because men are piss babies who cant stand the thought of losing to a woman, so just stop catering to fragile masculinity in the first place and divide the teams by skill level, or weight class, or any other actually meaningful criteria

Look I’m sorry but if you think the reason sports are segregated by gender is because MEN will lose then you are delusional. I hate to say that as a woman but it’s just straight true. They have waaaaay more testerone than us and it makes them stronger and faster and that’s just a fact. There are obviously exceptions but it’s true the great majority of the time and I think it’s okay to be honest about that. Women don’t have to be men to be just as good and valuable as men. I think we hurt women by pretending we have to be as physically strong as men because we’re not gonna win that battle. Why can’t we just be ourselves and value that?

I understand what you’re saying but you’re stating a lot of things as fact that really aren’t. Testosterone and hormones in general are really not the catch all you think they are. I’ve talked about this in another post I made but I don’t expect you to have known that but you should read this. Basically, sex is really complicated and multi-faceted and testosterone doesn’t realy work that way. There’s many things that go into it. 

There’s also the fact that it is absolutely impossible to separate sex and socialization. WE can’t state for a fact that men are superior athletes because socially everything we’ve been told by that has been shaped by the idea that men are better. The article linked above mentions multiple times where sexually “male” athletes who, because of the way their genes were expressed, were considered women and did not experience any sort of advantage over their sexually female competitors. as well as referencing that no studies really prove that testosterone gives athletes an advantage. So those aren’t facts.

And yeah, womens leagues now are a necessity because mens leagues are forcing them too. But if we want to go back to the beginning of pro mens sports in north america. They’re not totally wrong. Sports were going to be mixed gendered but men had their feelings hurt. It’s changed since then, definitely. But They’re not wrong. 

Womens leagues are amazing and they shouldn’t have to be compared to mens leagues to be that way. They don’t need to be physically superior to men. They don’t need to face off against mens teams to have worth. But we need to start acknowledging that men are put on that platform not because of sex and how that links to talent disparity. but because we live in a very sexist world that’s trying to portray biological sex as something concrete and simple when it is not. Women’s leagues are a necessary product of a shit system designed by men to make women and trans people feel they are lesser. They’re women trying to build themselves back up and find a place in that system. But the system relies on the fact that they are lesser.