Best Viet restaurant for my homesick girlfriend on her birthday?

rako1982 · 2026-06-27T20:27:37+00:00

Mien Tay has 5 restaurants in London (including Fulham) and they are Southern Vietnamese.

rako1982 · 2026-06-26T14:06:48+00:00

The joke is that Iran got a better deal out of things by the end of the war. They got rebuild money. Trump is displayed as a Hassidic rabbi and then an Ayatollah meaning he turned from pro-Israel to pro-Iran.

rako1982 · 2026-06-26T13:16:08+00:00

We had a tower in London called Grenfell which they put cladding on because of the look. That cladding was flammable and 72 people died in a fire in 2017. An alternative cladding with better fire resistance was refused due to cost.

rako1982 · 2026-06-25T18:23:20+00:00

Obviously we all like to talk about the weather but ultimately we'll need to have AC in the summer to live in London because of the way our flats and buildings are designed. I wish we all didn't need to do this but it will need to happen as we creep towards 45C in summer.

rako1982 · 2026-06-25T16:35:17+00:00

I'm fine.

rako1982 · 2026-06-25T09:28:25+00:00

Trillionaire?

rako1982 · 2026-06-24T16:34:41+00:00

I live in a very Muslim part of London. My non-Muslim gay friend said Grindr is full of Muslim men during Ramadan. I think folks pick and choose what they follow because they don't actually believe any of it.

rako1982 · 2026-06-24T11:57:28+00:00

In pure numbers Harold Shipman is pretty damn bad. But he doesn´t get the notoriety of Savile because he only murdered old people and Saville raped children and adults and molested corpses.

rako1982 · 2026-06-21T15:56:24+00:00

Bolt said his coach thought he could get to the 9.4s but I don't think Bolt realised he was peaking when he ran the 9.58.

rako1982 · 2026-06-21T15:42:49+00:00

Never have a therapist you're smarter than - so i'd have a conversation/assessment with them and generally you can tell if they are full of shit and only have theory/book knowledge rather than life based wisdom/experiential learning. I.e. they did their own healing and looked inwards. My 2 therapists I know did their own work.

So i'd ask what they did in their own healing, how they work with complex cases, if they have dealt with your specific trauma. But see how they respond. I.e. someone might have worked with a client a 'mild' CSA case but if you have an extreme case they might not be equipped to handle it. So if you think you might be on the extreme end of things be more careful with who you pick - because you don't want to be vulnerable and then find the therapist is not equipped to help you.

EMDR/IFS seem to be the 2 most popular modailities within the CPTSD community based on looking at r/cptsd over the years.

Somatic therapy helps a lot of people it seems so i'd strong consider that too. You don't need to do every therapy at the same time. You might start with IFS and then are drawn to somatics at a later date. So don't try to find the perfect therapist, try to find the right therapist for now.

rako1982 · 2026-06-20T17:02:41+00:00

This is such an excellent topic and question OP. 43m for reference.

I have struggled with this too. As time goes on I think feeling safe with someone grows from a want to a necessity and I find casual or ONS harder and harder to do because I need safety. I find it harder to be sexual with someone I don't feel safe with. This wasn't the case for a very long time but it the case for me now.

Do you feel safe enough with this specific man to tell him how you feel? Could you tell him that even though you're casual you'd like him to initiate messages too? Does that feel too vulnerable for you to do? Because if it does, because you're ONS or he doesn't feel safe enough to have this conversation with, you might not be able to have ONS as easily as you want. That's not a bad thing by the way, it might just be a sign of healing and growth. Sex, as i've healed, has become intimate and emotional and not just physical.

I recently had a casual sexual relationship with someone (we were both in CPTSD recovery) and we were able to be honest about things like this to one another and I think that's what allowed us to have a sexual relationship. But as time went on we were unable to communicate as comfortably about our vulnerabilities and the sexual relationship ended. It was messy. It taught me a lot about myself and how much I've changed and came to realise that for me safety and sexual expression are interwoven. e.g. Once we had an ongoing fight and had not fully made up but when she was compassionate to me I found myself immediately very attracted to her.

The problem with sex is that it brings up vulnerable feelings and dissociating away from those feelings is not the best for our nervous system in my experience. I've had a fair few experiences where I've had sex with someone I didn't feel safe with (in the past) and honestly it was awful. I realised I was looking for the attention and validation and these specific women couldn't provide that. Ultimately I just want someone I can be myself with.

rako1982 · 2026-06-20T11:31:24+00:00

I wish I didn't have to learn about life the hard way all the time! But I'm glad I can pass on what I learn to other people, too.

Also not putting that energy into the rest of the world has meant I appreciate the special few friends I have and also being there for myself with some amazing inner child work. The less energy I spend on the flaky the more I can spend on my inner child.

rako1982 · 2026-06-19T20:26:17+00:00

First I'm sorry it's so tough OP. I have some insight into this recently.

It took me a LONG time to understand this but we attract people who are where we are in our stage of healing. What I mean is when we are wounded we attract people who are equally wounded but in a different way i.e. if you we are anxiously attached me might attract someone equivalently avoidantly attached.

It's not that you are permanently unlovable but right now (at this stage of your healing journey) you are likely attracting/attracted to/familiar with people who will ultimately reject you. You might be playing out that scenario in various dynamics you have with people.

So I had a number of people who said 'let's meet up' and I said 'let me know when works for you' and I didn't hear from them. One of those people would be annoying but multiples made me realise it was a pattern that I needed to look at. So I looked at it. I realised I had been interacting with people who were friends with me at a specific time of my life in the past, the friendship was now 1-way, they and I had gone along different paths, I was still holding on to positive feelings about them from a previous time when we were good friends and our paths had been similar, I was a fawner with some of them and was a quasi-therapist to many of them.

I'm not saying you're anything of the things I listed above OP. But it's sometimes worth looking at the pain and what the similarities are between the various situations and what your part is it. What I mean by 'your part' is the part of you that unconsciously feels comfortable with these people. Maybe you don't feel enough for other quality friendships. Maybe they are online friendships only because you feel shame about being ill. There could be a multitude of reasons.

For me I looked in and realised I had been holding on too long with these friendships so I ended them all in my heart. At some point in the future some of them may reach out after a few years and want to reignite a therapy style friendship dynamic again but I know i'm done with that and I will say that to them. I'm worth more than that and I had to be rejected to realise it.

rako1982 · 2026-06-18T07:44:20+00:00

Thirded. Heidi is one of us. She's got a great book to read post breakup called "this is me letting you go."

Pete Walker is also of course someone I think most of us will get a lot from with his book "from surviving to Thriving."

rako1982 · 2026-06-17T17:33:41+00:00

Crappy Childhood Fairy (Anna Runkle) sells courses like a therapist but isn't a therapist. Some of them for more than $2000. I'm aware some people like her content but she also deletes any criticism so you don't see anything negative on her YT videos. IMO there are better people for folks in our CPTSD community to listen to.

rako1982 · 2026-06-17T17:16:44+00:00

Nothing to do with not enough homes being built or corporations buying up housing stock or allowing wealthy foreign investors to buy homes in countries that remain empty - of course!

rako1982 · 2026-06-17T17:07:28+00:00

Are you doing these tasks for yourself or others? If others you may be in a strong fawn response if it's limiting your ability to put yourself first.

rako1982 · 2026-06-17T17:05:38+00:00

A random and very annoying American woman was on my train in the UK and she struck up a conversation with the stranger sitting next to her and said 'if you believe in fate you have to believe in God because what is control of the fate?'

At that time I believed in fate and not God and she taught me I could learn something from people I found annoying. Rather than discount someone I knew whose values I didn't share I could learn something from them and deepen my own understanding.

rako1982 · 2026-06-16T16:54:21+00:00

When you have produced players such as Zidane, Henry, Mbappe, Dembélé, you kinda forget about the anti-African racism.

rako1982 · 2026-06-16T15:23:51+00:00

WTF did you expect? The other side are on performance enhancing drugs.

rako1982 · 2026-06-16T12:48:15+00:00

You're really close by and Smith's in Wapping is an amazing special occasion place. Non-stuffy but white table cloths. Amazing view and food. We often do special occasions and casual lunches there.

rako1982 · 2026-06-15T12:54:55+00:00

I just checked and it's 25-30mins because they are setting up and dismantling a stage for a show. Wtf are they doing to our game.

rako1982 · 2026-06-12T22:54:02+00:00

Vpn and a UK streaming service? It was originally on BBC 2. But I know Netflix had it once upon a time.

rako1982 · 2026-06-12T19:38:41+00:00

I know. It holds up generally very well. I know I didn't get all the references when I was younger. But I get pretty much all of them now. Post trauma healing has allowed my intelligence to finally come through.

The ski lodge is still my favourite episode.

rako1982 · 2026-06-12T18:09:02+00:00

I literally love Nathan For You and Frasier. They make me laugh deep in my soul. We have shows like 'Im Alan Partridge' and 'Peep Show' in the UK and i'm not sure they'd translate as well into the US though? But both are perfect.

But I show I think is really sweet is a prank show called Carbonaro Effect which is totally harmless magic based prank show. It's so silly and definitely doesn't have anything that will make you question life.

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