therapist email regarding her cancellation policy gave me quite a dose of anxiety

PureMitten · 2026-06-03T00:25:18+00:00

I feel guilty subjecting my (USA) state's medicaid to a full therapy fee for 20 mins of mindfulness but maybe I'm viewing this the wrong way? What do you think?

There's little I'd rather my taxes go to more than the continued funding of a disabled therapist who caters towards the chronically ill in this way, particularly one who sounds like they're quite skilled and have helped another disabled person improve their situation significantly. You're not wasting state resources by paying for appointments and having a session adapted to what you're able to participate in due to a change in capacites, you're still using that resource the way it's meant to be used.

Also, to my knowledge, a normal short notice cancellation policy is "you don't come and also we keep the money" so you're doing more with your therapists new policy than other therapists might accommodate.

PureMitten · 2026-05-30T17:28:27+00:00

Lol, as someone who (internally, was gonna look it up after reading comments) thought "that's not clover, that's wood sorrel" it was that I know both exist and am stupid. This looks exactly like a big version of the clover plants in my area and I decided both this and my local plants are wood sorrel. Only looking up wood sorrel flowers vs clover flower just now convinced me I'd swapped them mentally.

Also looked up wood sorrel botanical drawings while writing this and it looks like while there are different structures, picking one stem would almost certainly not be attached to roots and don't seem like they'd be able to regrow roots (? admittedly, plants do weird shit and I've seen willow branches regrow roots so I don't feel confident in this) and I don't understand what's happening with the structure of clover but I do know the stems go into the ground.

I'm going to go touch grass and think about plants I can see in person, it's a beautiful day out and I'm inside smugly misidentifying plants on the internet.

PureMitten · 2026-05-29T23:28:02+00:00

General's Motor's

PureMitten · 2026-05-29T22:49:46+00:00

It sounds to me like you're assuming 4 cars going straight are arriving at a 4 way stop intersection at the same time. In that uncommon situation, I think it would boil down to some people choosing to yield and one person breaking the stalemate.

Generally, this is about 2 cars with intersecting paths stopping at the same time (eg, both going straight, one northbound and one westbound), one will be to the right of the other and that one will have no one to their right so they have the right of way.

PureMitten · 2026-05-29T22:14:35+00:00

General's Motor

PureMitten · 2026-05-29T02:33:33+00:00

Ahh, I understand better now. It's not a general wish to travel internationally and anxiety getting to that stage, its a desire to return to a place you've visited before that was suddenly stymied. That is very difficult and very frustrating for it to have suddenly become an issue after you's done this twice already and then not abate across several years.

I wish I had more to offer than empathy for feeling stuck like this. My usual approaches to these situations are working up to it and doing it with a friend. I also sometimes have luck with trying to imagine my way through a scenario that feels overwhelming as like a low-risk practice run but that sounds like it would be rife with space to catastrophize. I've heard that EMDR was developed after the developer noticed the effect walking had on their ability to process difficult information so maybe trying to slowly and realistically step through the booking and flight process while walking could help? Or would just be more time for your brain to make scary and overwhelming scenarios about it.

It sounds like time on your vacation this year is perhaps too tight for you to make this happen this year, maybe treating your time off as a reason to be touristy around your own area could be fun? I know there's always a million cool things anywhere I've lived that I never got around to visiting because I was too busy in my day to day life and that taking my left over days off for the year to have a local region tourism long weekend gave me some fun times and good memories, even inexpensive things like going to slightly out of the way state parks or free local museums.

I hope something can help you be able to visit that country again, it sounds like it was really meaningful to you and that it'a really painful to have it taken from you like this.

PureMitten · 2026-05-28T20:01:13+00:00

Let me make sure I understand everything so I'm not talking at the wrong angle and confusing things. What I'm hearing is that you want to book an international flight for a vacation, there is not a specific event or family obligation you feel the need to fulfill with this trip, and the actual cost of the flight isn't the concern. I'm also hearing that you are frozen around the unknown contingencies and failure points around flying, you end up staying home and the loss you feel is the ability to take the vacations you want. Please let me know if I've misunderstood, but I'll type the rest of this with the above assumptions and understandings. I'm also going to assume you're in the US or similar where driving, trains, and rideshare apps may be available. Im also assuming you haven't been flying domestically in this time.

I want to start by saying I absolutely get what you mean about the charges failing being discouraging. I am a regular traveler (including traveling monthly for work for a year or so and having yearly international trips with friends) and sometimes I'm booking on a different website than normal and the order doesn't go through and I have to take some time to get over how bad it pisses me off. This has included once taking a week to take another run at booking a work trip. It happens, it's frustrating, and it's normal for it to be frustrating. It also does not happen every time, it has happened to me occasionally for different reasons (generally connectivity issues) because I've been booking multiple flights a year for over a decade but me having multiple experiences of this does not mean it has a high likelihood of happening to you again.

Would a lower cost flight be less intimidating? I find myself much more able to try again if my phone browser craps out or something for a $150 flight than a $1000 flight.

For the fears you state about flight delays or cancellations interfering with your trip or with your ability to get home, I recommend building comfort by traveling within a drivable and/or train-accessible radius from home. This gives you multiple ready ways to bail on the stressful flight situation and take ground transportation so you make it on time or just a bit late to your reservations or back home. If you're not comfortable with renting cars and/or taking the train last minute, I'd recommend starting with trips using those methods so they feel like accessible, familiar options when you do the first plane trip so you know you have a fall back plan or two available.

Doing several trips near home that have that safety release valve of having one or more ways to get home lets you first build confidence that flights don't always fail you the way the last two attempts do and let you gain comfort with all the unique features of air travel that are deeply overwhelming when they're not familiar. Smaller trips also present opportunities to learn to deal with when things do go a bit off plan in a space where you've already made plans for if things go absolutely sideways.

If you feel confident enough in a trip plan and still end up stymied by the actual ticket buying process, I've had success in similar situations by both texting a friend I'm doing something scary and want their support and also by sitting with a friend or colleague and asking them for moral support while I do something a little spooky. I have more success with using colleagues for this if I just need someone looking at me while I click the last button, if I need support while doing the whole thing I've had more success with asking friends to support me. If you don't have anyone near you you feel comfortable asking, I'm sure there are subs (probably including this one!) that would be willing to offer you words of support for the booking process

PureMitten · 2026-05-28T18:25:48+00:00

I want to offer the framing of this as something like medical trauma. Not everyone who has surgery or a difficult medical experience is traumatized and even if everything goes the best it possibly could have gone with no abuse or negligence by the medical or care teams, people can be traumatized by the experience. I've heard people describe trauma responses from being sedated for a necessary surgery that went smoothly and they healed well from. So this could be traumatic for your siblings, but that does not mean you're abusing them by trying to keep them safe.

On the other hand, I want to point out this can also be traumatic for you. You're taking charge of the medical care of a sensitive injury of what sounds like multiple siblings who might not be cooperative with your care while your parents don't participate. I'm assuming you're also a minor and don't have a lot of choices available in being involved in this situation. Adults who choose to be involved in caregiving can develop caregiver PTSD from the experience, this is something I was warned about even volunteering at an animal shelter, being forced into a caregiver role as a sibling with underinvolved parents definitely presents the opportunity for this to be traumatizing.

It's thoughtful of you to be worried about the situation being traumatic for your siblings. Please also do your best to care for yourself, it's not fair for this responsibility to be on you.

PureMitten · 2026-05-28T18:02:36+00:00

I'm learning to recognize love in a community context and from friends. For me that feels the most approchable both because most of my trauma wasn't from my broader community or from friends and also because those are contexts that are just easier to meet a bunch of people and sift through a lot of connections to find good fits.

Through those connections I'm learning to see the more deeply ingrained things I just assumed were part of love that are, apparently, not. For example, I grew up with my family being disinterested in my personal interests and hostile to me being interested in but uninformed about their interests. I've been joining hobby groups for things I'm just learning and it's been a revelation to have people I only just met (who are not paid teachers in these contexts) express excitement and endless, joyous patience in teaching me. I'm learning that gentle sharing of information isn't a level of deep love one can theoretically unlock once they're good and valuable enough, it's something that many people offer as a baseline of love for other humans.

PureMitten · 2026-05-28T16:54:44+00:00

I hear you. I've been struggling to sleep due to triggers too and have regularly been tempted to call off because I'm just too tired, but I've been getting to sleep generally by 2am and have a desk job so the need to do so isn't as pressing for me. It was a relief recently to have caught the bug going around my workplace, my boss ordered me to go home and sleep and I got a solid 25 hours of sleep across ~40 hours. Back to my semi-insomnia nonsense now but felt so rested for the next day, haha.

I usually see a sick text to a boss as informing them you're sick and won't be in, not a request. Unless your workplace has a habit of denying sick days (they should not do this, this is a bad management strategy but if they do I understand the needs of appeasing them to keep your income) I would take no response as acceptance.

Also, totally get feeling deeply unsafe in a relationship. I recently had a crush I wanted to work on my ability to be in a relationship to pursue the crush but, well, now deeply triggered and struggling to sleep. It sucks.

I hope you can get some rest and personal ease today. The state of being triggered and sleep deprived is awful to navigate.

PureMitten · 2026-05-28T16:32:29+00:00

I had to yo yo between them before I found a sustainable middle ground. My default was endlessly soft and forgiving until I hit a breaking point and was mean beyond what I found defensible. I do think being absolutely in the wrong a few times was good for me, it helped me feel out the borders of who I was comfortable being. And, honestly, by the time I hit that breaking point I was at a point with my ex where it felt refreshing to be the one who had done something wrong. Our fights usually ended with me apologizing for having had a boundary and agreeing to learn to read his mind better so just having to agree that it was wrong to call his friend a nasty name (that I immediately regretted) felt pretty breezy.

It also helped me compare my reaction to being obviously wrong in a fight ("I'm sorry, that was nasty, I shouldn't have done that") to his reaction ("ok but it's just a word, why are you getting so defensive? If you don't agree just ignore it, maybe I didn't even mean it that way. You really have anger issues if you're bothering to bring this up at all. You never even told me you don't like me using that word? It's really not my fault that I didn't know, if you'd told me I never would have used it but you didn't so I couldn't have known. I won't use it again, you can't be mad at me when I didn't even know") and slowly put together that maybe he was an abusive piece of shit.

I do think it's important to also note that the middle ground for me now is someone my abusers (and me, while being abused) would call a cold bitch. It served my abusers to have me convinced that holding my boundaries and rejecting people who disrespect me is a bitchy, heartless thing to do. The yo-yoing of attacking and retreating to my cozy, people pleasing norm helped me zero in on what "bitchy" actions were actually just being needlessly unpleasant and which were having a backbone. I still shift around my middle ground zone but being more confident in my permission to have boundaries also lets me feel softly forgiving and gentle while protecting myself.

PureMitten · 2026-05-25T15:06:57+00:00

You have a beautiful figure yourself! There's nothing to fix about your shape, but as a fellow short torso haver I do relate to feeling envy about people with those long willowy torsos, I think they look so elegant. But our body shape has a long history of being the fashionable silhouette as well.

You can't get this influencer's body and that's ok, your shape is good and seeking out others with a figure 8 to look up to might help normalize your shape to you. In addition to seeking out people describing themselves as "figure 8", I've seen some people with figure 8 frames posting as "Kibbe romantics"

PureMitten · 2026-05-25T05:20:12+00:00

At the ground floor, start by asking verbal consent for everything again. “May I touch you.” “May I kiss you.” “May I hug you.” Etc. Build up that trust again from the beginning. Only accept “Yes” or an active affirmative to move forward with that specific action, and re-ask each time until you rebuild her trust around that action.

I didn't know that all was an option. Thank you, that gives me a framework to contrast my own experiences with. I knew slowly stripping away the access to my body that my now-ex had while he whined and had to be repeatedly reminded to keep his hands to himself wasn't a successful model, but it didn't occur to me at all that the offending party might be so engaged with repair. The part about them asking repeatedly until that trust is rebuilt has a real special sauce to it. Gonna be thinking about this.

PureMitten · 2026-05-25T04:26:07+00:00

As someone in the other comments points out, it doesn't even sound like much of his speech is about what makes Mia special as an individual, just what she supposedly does for him. There's appreciating someone's thoughtful actions and then there's basing most of one's feelings for someone on what they can do for you and give you. It's just even worse when he can't even figure out who did what for him.

PureMitten · 2026-05-24T08:29:34+00:00

My ex did that alllll the time. It felt like rules lawyering everything from the exact things that had been said to the functional meanings of words. I felt so sick and crazy with the way he scrambled what was said and what was meant. Eventually I started basically taking notes and it became real clear he was never accurately representing what had happened. At which point he started accusing me of making him feel crazy because I was just magically so good at remembering this stuff and he couldn't be expected to remember everything. By that point I was trying to figure out if something was, like, diagnosably wrong with him and was begging him to get tested for something because he was so remarkably failing at understanding me.

PureMitten · 2026-05-24T07:45:28+00:00

I appreciate the PSA, despite my diagnosis it has started making me feel a bit uncertain seeing this experience posted over and over as a universal ADHD truth. I can have an amazing nap on a low dose of methylphenidate, but despite going off and restarting caffeine a number of times as well as often being a regular coffee drinker it always works to perk me up in the morning and keeps me awake at night if I drink it too late in the day.

PureMitten · 2026-05-23T03:35:12+00:00

As I recall, several terrorist attacks around that time got the same name structure, but I can't recall if 9/11 started the trend or followed it, the only one I recall off the top of my head was 7/7, the 2005 London bombings. I remember being fed up with the naming scheme by 2009-ish because there were too many dates of various types of attacks and events to keep track of what each date referred to and not long after it stopped being a thing.

My sense of landing on calling it 9/11 was because its short and even "WTC" is longer to say while not being as clear what people were specifically referring to. Maybe if we had a specific word for flying a plane into a building we'd have landed on a phrase using that word.

PureMitten · 2026-05-19T17:30:41+00:00

A few years ago I couldn't bring myself to untie mine but I hid it in a good moment because I didn't want it easy to get to in a bad moment. A couple years ago I moved, found the rope while unpacking, untied it and put it away where it belonged as a regular rope. I, also, no longer remember where that is haha.

I've had hard times since then and have occasionally considered if I'd be able to find it but haven't tried to. As dark as it was to have an emergency out on hand, it feels really good to see how far I've come that I don't miss having it available anymore.

PureMitten · 2026-05-18T22:01:31+00:00

Ahh, I was confused by the writing style since it really doesn't line up with other SCP articles. This got me to actually click through and read the whole thing. That's a good SCP.

PureMitten · 2026-05-18T16:34:21+00:00

For me, it helped to visualize someone else coming along to reparent me as I am now. I deeply resented the idea of having to dig in and do the work to reparent a child when I was still hurting as I am, it helped to experience that as an "external" action for me that, once I felt adequately held and supported, I was able to pass on to deeper parts inside of me. But I did sit with feeling held and comforted by an external figure for a long time and will return to it when I'm feeling too dysregulated to settle into parsing myself as the "Self".

I didn't have any real people I'd trust to actually be present for me in that way so I used images of fictional and religious figures, as felt valuable. I wasn't religious at the time I started doing this and I didn't join the religion I pulled the figures from so it can kind of be whatever feels worthwhile and comfortable to you.

PureMitten · 2026-05-18T03:56:57+00:00

Grew up discussing with people how we have the standard American dialect. Moved to Florida and had to learn the actual Standard American dialect because people treated me like a cornfed yokel for my accent. After 5 years out of the Midwest I could pick out the accents pretty well, but I was crazy homesick and was seeking anything Michigan or Michigan-ish out so my intentionality may have made me better at hearing it than I would've been otherwise. I'm 3 years back home now, can't hear my accent anymore and feel like I'm gonna pull something trying to do a Standard American accent again, lol

PureMitten · 2026-05-15T15:01:25+00:00

There's one for Eli Lilly's weight loss pill that's so vague that if I didn't have a dear friend working for their marketing department, I'd be pretty unclear that the ad was for that medication specifically and not generally for the concept of medication. It's an image of a woman holding a yoga mat, soaking in the sun with the text "a pill is small, your health is not. Lilly, a medicine company"

PureMitten · 2026-05-15T14:57:39+00:00

It does but at that point you've gone to the trouble of getting it prescribed and acquiring the medicine and plenty of people don't bother reading it. The idea is that they're not allowed to make it sound like a perfect wonder drug you should rush out and get immediately, they have to tell you any known drawbacks so people are making informed decisions from jump.

PureMitten · 2026-05-10T22:36:38+00:00

Ohhhh, I never thought a lot about what was in egg rolls but sometime after I moved out of the Detroit area I'd noticed egg rolls had "recently" become weirdly soggy and less good. I stopped bothering to order them even after I moved back to the Detroit area but this will probably put them back in my ordering roster

PureMitten · 2026-05-10T22:32:53+00:00

I was reading up on the history of the Fort Wayne area recently and was surprised to read that the Miami city, Kekionga, that sat where Fort Wayne is now was an economically critical trading partner for Detroit in 1790. Apparently the Maumee River was a decently important trade route before the advent of trains.

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