And 10-20 years ago a licensed RN working for a university hospital would’ve been solid enough to afford an apartment in that city while the hospital paid for the bachelor’s. That’s… getting less doable. And I don’t want them paying for the bachelor’s in case the boss starts telling me I gotta do sketchy shit and I have to jump ship suddenly. Let’s not even get into how a CNA is considered a “starter job” for a student of some higher paid healthcare position instead of it’s own perfectly respectable career that’s vital to the safe functioning of a decent hospital and as such has always deserved a wage that can feed kids.

Interestingly I have a fair amount of patients who cry more as they’re coming out of their depression than when they were in the thick of it.

For the keyboard hoggers out there, state training is actually super easy with food motivated cats, and relatively easy with attention motivated cats. Basically, it’s super easy to just train them to sit in your lap instead.

You’ll need a container of treats and an interval timer such as a pomodoro or workout interval timer (lots of apps out there).

Basically set the time interval to like 5-10 seconds to start, and pull the cat into your lap at the computer. Every time it beeps and the cat is still in your lap, give them a treat. After the first set or so, do not provide a treat if the cat reaches for the desk at all during the interval.

After about 2-3 sets, lengthen the interval to 10-15, then 20-30 seconds, then keep lengthening the interval by about 1.5x every 2-3 sets. It shouldn’t take long to get up to 3-5 minutes, at which point the cat should be solidly state trained.

If they were attention motivated enough to seek your company by stepping on the keyboard while you work, having your non dominant hand in your lap petting them will likely be sufficient ongoing reinforcement.

For non food motivated cats, replace the treat dispensation with a few seconds of petting and praise in the specific way they like most.

I was gonna say, if your other options are poverty / prison, this isn’t actually a bad deal practically speaking. Not gonna get into the ethics of military service other than to say blaming individuals for trying to escape poverty isn’t the answer. When I teach about chronic institutionalization in a psychiatric context, the military is one of the susceptible demographics alongside prison and long term hospitalization.

It’s minimum wage but it’s like. The whole minimum wage income. Hundreds of millions of people use that $2k check to (barely) pay for food, a home, a car, and everything else they need to probably not die tomorrow. Because of the way wealth is distributed, more people do that than don’t do that. So it’s both a small, yet in proper perspective a HUGE amount of money to send monthly.

The fact that he can afford to pay another person a wholeass minimum wage paycheck is INSANE. Like you’re his wholeass employee. I make twice that and had to make my stay at home house-husband who shares a kitchen and bathroom with me get a part time job to afford $300 of weed money a month.

TLDR; it’s minimum wage, but the fact that your boyfriend is paying you A Wage is insane.

…or someone with IBS…

If you wring them out real good they’re basically just sweaty level of moist anyway.

I grade the nursing assistants on a simple three point triangle similar to the body composition slider in the newer elder scrolls games but instead of skinny fat muscular, the corners are nice, hardworking, and intelligent (specifically situational awareness). You need to be AT LEAST one. My favorites have at least two. I can count on one hand the techs / assistants I’ve met in the last three decades who have had either all or none of the above.

Get as much support out of them as you can stomach. Try to at least graduate a trade school if you can (some trades will let you get started in high school and be halfway done or even graduate with your qualifications). Say and do whatever you have to (within reason) to use your shitty family to get to a point where you can reliably pay your own rent and other bills needed for daily life. Then move to a new address and change your number and don’t tell them the new ones. Un-add and block them on all social media, email, etc. Pick somebody you actually like and trust to make your emergency healthcare decision maker and beneficiary on any life insurance policies or bank accounts (just don’t pick a romantic partner, you’re too young to know who is and isn’t an idiot in that context). Then go to therapy and stop talking to people that are mean to you.

sock/sock shoe/shoe because I put in my socks in the bedroom but don’t put in my shoes until I get to the closet by the front door.

It happens to people sometimes too. I’ve had a lot of patients actually that are completely incapable of safely accepting help from another human. You’ll be just trying to get their own excrement off them before it gives them chemical burns and they’ll scream and claw at you the whole time then get covered in bodily fluids again within a few hours.

Less soul-crushing but in some ways more frustrating is addicts who are just never going to be ready to be sober within the bounds of support that are available and keep using the mental health system in ways it’s not designed for then yell at everyone throughout the entire process when they’re not getting what they want at that exact moment whether it’s more substances or more food or just to yell at someone because their life is legitimately awful and they don’t know how to cope with that in any other way than trying to make sure everyone else is miserable too.

A little over a year ago we got news that a patient that hadn’t come back for a while had managed to complete suicide this time around and I was just relieved to know their pain had finally ended. Clearly we weren’t helping so they did what they had to to find peace. When I talk to most people about stuff like this they just have 0 perspective like. Most of my interactions with this person were them demanding more Graham crackers at 2am then yelling at me if we were out. That was like. The main thing they were living for. The Graham crackers. They weren’t even capable of holding a conversation of any kind about things they liked to do, or even music they liked or anything. If you tried they’d yell at you. TF were they gonna get sober for they didn’t even have anything to live for…? They were literally just a shell of a human being and the only thing left inside was anger.

Ty! This the the longer answer I was really looking for. I figured it was probably a scale problem but it’s nice to have that confirmed.

just randomly on the topic of Kessler syndrome. could we make a big sticky thing to just throw into orbit and like. Stick to everything. like a space lint roller or one of those slimes people use to clean car vents. Just turn it all back into one big garbage ball somehow.

Peeping Tom is a character from the legend of Lady Godiva (real Lady, probably made up story). Basically Lord Godiva was an asshole / tyrant and Lady Godiva begged him to have mercy on her subjects.

He was all “well if you like them all so damn much go ride a horse naked across the whole land so they can all see yo hoeass”

and she was like “OK then you’ll stop being an asshole? Bet.”

and he was all like “do it then bitch.”

So she fuckin’ did and all the subjects averted their eyes and/or stayed indoors except some weirdo named Thomas who was subsequently struck blind or dead by some angels or some shit.

Not even just corn. Also all the ticks, ants, and other pest insects in the yard, and possibly even some of your food waste. They literally turn trash and straight up pests into food.

Also most serial killers don’t want to talk to the police. They just wanna be left alone to torture and murder people nobody will care to look for like teenage runaways working as truck stop prostitutes. The bonus is that if you’re a long haul trucker that frequently crosses state lines, there’s a low likelihood that the couple of police departments who even bother to try solving those crimes will ever actually talk to each other enough to compare evidence (this is an actual theory of something that might be happening).

Interestingly one of the few times I ever got pulled over was when I was on my way back from helping someone with yardwork and had my hair bundled up in a scarf so it didn’t get nasty. It was so weird the cop actually apologized for pulling me over then drove off really suddenly. I definitely grew up in one of ‘those’ areas so I think he really did pull me over and was like ‘wait shit you’re white abort ABORT’ which is so funny because like. I just do what works culture means very little to me.

sounds like you need a trocar

I don’t wanna frame it as “I’m too smart,” but I think I have better problem-solving skills than average. Especially with these disorders, you often see a lack of global problem-solving skills as a risk factor. For me, though, I just had a specific deficit in interpersonal relationships and emotional regulation.

So I couldn’t figure out how to get how to regulate my emotions or not relate to people in weird, toxic ways on my own, but I was able to figure out what that meant and how to find people who could teach me. Three years of DBT basically completely changed me.

You might also find he doesn’t actually care as much as you think he does when you get away. Cluster b personalities (oh hi) often have something called “relationship impermanence” where you’ll just kind of stop existing and he’ll lose interest after he hasn’t seen you for like 3 months.

Not that he’s consciously lying about that specific thing or anything; part of why we give that vibe so strongly is that we also truly believe that nothing will ever matter more than you while it’s happening. Cluster b’s who have done therapy have to specifically learn skills to stay invested in relationships long term but I’m going to go out in a limb and guess this person has done 0 therapy and has no intention.

This isn’t to say you shouldn’t take any of the precautions other people suggest because you absolutely should just in case. But don’t look at it as this impossible inescapable thing when that’s probably just part of the “spell” of control he’s got you under psychologically.

Another great addition to one of my favorite image folders: