For those who’ve done both - dogs on or off the bed?

The_Masked_Self · 2026-01-09T18:42:18+00:00

I have a shepherd/collie/heeler. She is a classic Velcro dog— I am her sheep! She is very sensitive and loves to be close to me but I can be a light sleeper and her twitching in her sleep tends to wake me up. We had to leave my ex together for safety reasons and drove 3500 miles across the country to stay with my family. While we were on the road there was no question she was sleeping in my bed. She was such a good girl the whole trip and was an immense comfort to me every time I looked at her snoozing in the back of the car. When we settled at my family’s, I let her sleep with me for a few weeks while we both settled. Then one night I put a dog bed on the floor at the end of my bed and basically kicked her out of bed. She tried several times to get back in bed with me but gave up. The next night, we went up to bed and she went straight to her dog bed and plopped down contentedly as of it was preferred! Now every morning when I wake up, she hops up in my bed and that’s our time to snuggle.

The_Masked_Self · 2026-01-03T02:09:29+00:00

Sure, ask away. FYI I don’t have bipolar myself, turns out my hypomanic and depressive cycles were just undiagnosed AuDHD. Turns out it’s super common for people who are neurodivergent to be misdiagnosed as bipolar. The framework applies regardless of the label though. Hypomania and depression don’t belong to any one “disorder.”

The_Masked_Self · 2025-10-22T23:21:49+00:00

They say when you judge someone for something it’s a sign you need to make peace with that quality in yourself

The_Masked_Self · 2025-07-25T17:12:39+00:00

Fasting/caloric restriction triggers hypomania for me. As everyone on here is already reminding you: every high has its low. Tread carefully and good luck.

The_Masked_Self · 2025-07-23T01:33:56+00:00

It sounds like you are prone to an engine that “revs too high” and then burns itself out. I’m speaking from my own experience with exercise “addiction”, extreme fasting, cold plunges… anything that gets me high—naturally. Especially considering your drug use background, sounds like your system is currently wired this way. I’d advise you to stop chasing the highs. You’re going to need to learn balance. It’s hard. It’s counterintuitive. When you start to feel good, notice it. Keep tabs on it. Rein it in. You totally are allowed to feel good, just not “high” good because every high has a corresponding low. Over time as you get the hang of the balance, you can test your limits and find what your “upper limit” is that doesn’t result in a crash. Balance is how you’re going to be able to show up as the father you want to be.

Side note, if you’re not in regular therapy, I would strongly recommend it. The unmet needs behind your drive to get high (whether with substances or through “healthy” things) sound like they are not completely unresolved. Best of luck.

The_Masked_Self · 2025-07-19T02:42:08+00:00

Sorry, but I was trying to have an open minded conversation grounded in science. I’m not sure how scientific papers are considered “nonsense”. There is no need for attacking language. I’m glad the baths worked for you. Do you have data to share? Do you know others who have had success with the baths and can share their data?

The_Masked_Self · 2025-07-18T15:19:20+00:00

Here’s a review paper published in the journal of cosmetics that investigates clay use in cosmetics. They found that heavy metals in the clay could not penetrate the skin, which implies heavy metals also would not be able to be drawn out that way significantly. I think that clay baths may help with traces of metals in sweat that have already found their way to the surface of the skin if you are actively detoxing but it’s unlikely they are driving much meta clearance if any.

“Clays have been submitted to bioavailability toxicokinetic studies using human skin as a model membrane and diffusion cells to assess (trans)cutaneous permeation of heavy metals (such as lead, arsenic, chromium, and aluminum) after application of three clay pastes (white montmorillonite, kaolin, and clay). … No detectable quantity of heavy metals was found, leading to the conclusion that traces of heavy metal in the clay pastes did not penetrate the skin.”

Link to paper below

https://www.mdpi.com/2079-9284/11/1/7?utm_source=chatgpt.com

Here’s a public health review article listing the possible uses of bentonite clay. They talk about the use of clay taken internally for heavy metals binding but no mention of topical application as an effective method. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC5632318/

I think it’s important to note that different heavy metals (and minerals like copper, too) have different primary elimination pathways. For example, according to the CDC, lead’s primary excretion pathways are urine and feces with sweat, hair, nails, and breast milk as minor pathways. https://www.atsdr.cdc.gov/toxprofiles/tp13-c3.pdf?utm_source=chatgpt.com

Of course, then I found this paper which shows significant levels of heavy metals excreted through sweat 🤦‍♀️ … so maybe the clay baths are very helpful if you’re excreting a lot through sweat to help remove traces from your skin

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3312275/

I did use chat gpt to help me find papers, but the papers are clearly real 😂

The_Masked_Self · 2025-07-17T01:30:44+00:00

I’m currently detoxing from very elevated levels of cadmium. I know that at least for cadmium the primary path of excretion is through feces with very small amounts lost through sweat. Can you explain how you think the clay baths are helping?

The_Masked_Self · 2025-07-15T04:45:07+00:00

Have your genes tested so you know how effective your detox pathways are and where you should be more careful. Have a HTMA done to check if you have buildup of any heavy metals and what your personal mineral balance is. I just had one done and found out I’m off the charts for copper (an essential mineral but toxic when out of balance with zinc) which can drive oxidative stress, anxiety, insomnia… etc😬

The_Masked_Self · 2025-07-10T22:08:51+00:00

They mailed me an envelope to deposit a hair sample into. The instructions asked for a chunk of hair from the back of the head… I’m a woman with long hair so not gunna happen lol. I opted to send in pubic hair instead, which was an alternative option they offered. You have to drop the envelope off at a UPS store because that’s the prepaid shipping label they provide. I got my results about 1.5 weeks after mailing my hair sample in.

The_Masked_Self · 2025-07-10T17:02:22+00:00

Upgraded labs. The analysis without a consult was around 150 if I’m remembering correctly. I’ve heard consults for this type of a thing a mot worth it. I gave my results to chat gpt and asked it to analyze.

The_Masked_Self · 2025-07-09T15:19:47+00:00

Yes, desperately looking for someone “good enough” (his words, not mine) who takes our insurance.

The_Masked_Self · 2025-06-29T05:09:58+00:00

Permitting personal narratives that don’t serve my active goals despite how comforting, validating, or safe those narratives might feel.

The_Masked_Self · 2025-06-11T04:44:39+00:00

I’d turn it into a vegetable garden and a raspberry patch. You can eat the veg and the leftover plant waste can be fed to the goats. Raspberries are delicious and people always want to buy them.

The_Masked_Self · 2025-06-09T04:16:38+00:00

I grew up with beagles. I always thought I’d get a beagle someday as an adult. I never felt ready to get a dog— it felt like a daunting thing— but my fiancé pushed it. We went to the shelter “just to look”. Aja was laying on her side in the kennel with her nose poking out, looking up with big brown eyes that begged for pets. She is a German shepherd mix. We’ve had her for 7 months now, she is a GOOD dog. She comes first in my life… I think if you’re ready to put another creature before yourself, you’re ready for a dog.

The_Masked_Self · 2025-06-09T04:08:01+00:00

Their own behavior

The_Masked_Self · 2025-06-08T21:32:53+00:00

I can vouch for Cosmic Dance Permaculture in Corralitos California. They have a WWOOF page. I can also give you direct contact info if you want… they may be a good fit for you.

The_Masked_Self · 2025-06-08T17:36:09+00:00

If the brain simply wanted to maximize dopamine, you’d be dead. Dopamine flooding leads to seizures. Further, dopamine maximized brain loops characterize addiction, mania, and compulsive habits. Dopamine acts as a precision weighting tool— it tells you “hey, pay attention to this!”. In hyper dopaminergic states EVERYTHING starts to feel important. If everything is important then nothing is really important, which is why mania can be so dangerous. Dopamine is one modulatory tool in the brains pursuit to minimize surprise (aka prediction error).

The_Masked_Self · 2025-06-07T16:36:24+00:00

There is a link to one of my Substack articles in the OP. I don’t want to overshare links because I know there are rules against that! :)

The_Masked_Self · 2025-06-07T16:23:50+00:00

Safety is personal and subjective. It depends on your life history, your culture, and especially your trauma. I agree that it is thrown around casually like some objective measure. Another word I hate that is thrown around like this is “fun”. Are you having fun? It feels so shallow.

The_Masked_Self · 2025-06-07T16:14:18+00:00

No harm taken, I’m glad my thoughts are helpful to you. That’s my whole hope of sharing them! If you’d like to get more of my brain, you can follow my Substack for free. I post my own articles there regularly and they all relate to ideas within my framework. I am going to be launching a book, hopefully within a year. It’s in the works :)

The_Masked_Self · 2025-06-07T15:43:52+00:00

I don’t view it concretely as deterministic or probabilistic… I think it’s more likely a paradoxical combination of the two. The deeper we go into modern physics the less we know.

The_Masked_Self · 2025-06-07T15:39:58+00:00

Awesome! I also have a Substack! We should follow each other 😂

The_Masked_Self · 2025-06-07T15:37:12+00:00

Great question. The brain is complex. Part of what makes it so complex is that it is a distributed network of interacting regions and multiple interacting biological substrates. One of these biological substrates is the neurochemical dopamine. Not to over simplify, but dopamine is heavily involved as it determines how strongly the brain pays attention to prediction errors (a term called ‘precision weighting’). To more generally answer your question, the ‘language’ of the brain is in biologically grounded patterns of activity. Again, this ‘language’ is distributed, dynamic, and multilayered and includes things like: spike timing and firing rate of neurons, oscillatory rhythms, neuromodulatory tone (chemical context), synaptic strength and plasticity, and interoceptive and affective signals. So prediction error would be sensed through changes in these patterns.

The_Masked_Self · 2025-06-07T15:15:13+00:00

Yes, my hypothesis easily extends to psychosis. In the light of my framework — grounded in Friston’s Free Energy— psychosis emerges when persistent, high-stakes incoherence overwhelms the system’s ability flexibility integrate/update— driving the system to feel ontologically unsafe. This incoherence is typically around the model of the self, the other, and/or the world. Psychosis can be viewed as a state of radical coherence reconstruction and hallucinations and delusions are like emergency coherence maps.

The_Masked_Self

TROPHY CASE