HannahMR

In Puerto Rico, once you get outside the city a bit you’ll find people riding horses around. And sometimes they are texting while riding their horse. And I’m like… is that a problem? 🤔 the horse probably isn’t going to trot off the side of the road… right? I know nothing here lol

It's amusing when people try to tell me that Psychology, therapy, etc is just for women. "Modern Psychology" is about 150 years old. Women have only been able to broadly participate in that study for the past ~50 years. As women have generally been excluded from medical research, women were only included in psychology studies in the past 30-50 yrs. And so most of the theories we have in psychology, PTSD, etc. were based on studies of men, done by men. For most of it's history Psychology was a study by men, for men.

Why do I talk about sexual assault so much? A few reasons… First, because lifting the veil of silence is how we fix it, and I’m in a position to do so. Things got to be as bad as they have been because it was hidden. Predators rely on silence to be able to get away with what they do. I have experienced sexual assault, but dramatically less so than nearly all the women that I know. And so I am relatively undamaged and healthy enough to be able to discuss it. In short, I think I’ve got a bit of a moral obligation to not perpetuate the silence. Second, I’m hopequesting! That meme I posted the other day about doomscrolling vs hopequesting is really playing on my mind. Traumatic experiences are of course traumatic, but often what makes the trauma lasting is when we are unable to find support or assistance from our community. It compounds the issue and prolongs trauma when you can’t find people that even will believe your story. Posting about this stuff is in part a way to find people who can see me, who do understand me and believe me. People that I can be safe with and that brings healing and calm.

I love the idea of men as protectors. The problem is that so few men actually protect as they have such a limited idea of what that means. Our culture tends to think that "protecting" means having big biceps and being ready to punch someone, while actually that's only about 2% of the equation. The protecting that is really needed is protecting the understanding of women as sovereign creatures in the world. We need protecting from the casual acceptance of women as objects that serve others. The vast majority of actual protection doesn't look like time at the gym, it looks like not laughing at rape jokes.

I’m reading Virginia Roberts Giuffre’s memoirs and yikes, its rough. The book hits so hard because it rings so true even for people like me who have only experienced a fraction of what she did. The setting, the attitudes, the willful blindness, the blame… its all so familiar for most American women. The casual abuse, those who should have been protectors just looking the other way, the causal understanding that women are for using, the slut shaming and being blamed for your own abuse. Hating your body for the reactions it causes in others, and yet internalizing the idea that the only way to navigate the world is via being a sexual object. What an absolute mind fuck… and it has been the norm of the world for far too long.

There is such a lack of understanding of the human mind and body and nervous system in our culture. That really messes us up. A classic example here is telling someone to “calm down”. When a loved one is crashing out over something, saying “calm down” is a really horrible idea bound to make things worse. Most of us have recognized this, but we don’t understand why. After an upsetting or dangerous incident, humans reset and regain their sense of safety by reconnecting with their community. As we are pack animals we are wired for connection as we know that our safety depends on our connections. When someone tells us to “calm down” or “just don’t think about it” etc. that signals disconnection. It is dismissive of our concerns and signals that we do not have anyone who understands or will help… our nervous system goes into panic mode! If you really do want to help someone to calm down, instead try saying “tell me about it.” That signals that they have someone with them who will understand and maybe even help. “Calm down” signals distance and lack of understanding and alarms the nervous system. “Tell me about it” signals connection and calms the nervous system.

I'm really very optimistic about women's rights and place in the world. These misogynists are dumbasses and basically strawmaned themselves. They have gone so over the top and their arguments have become so cartoonish that's it really hard to not see the insanity. A lot of people on the right have openly embraced people who state clearly that they want to oppress women and say things like "your body my choice". Just really wildly indefensible things. And they are crumbling. Most of the red pill crew will be outed as either obvious hypocrites, true monsters, or closeted homosexuals. ...it will be wild.

Understanding is not condoning. You can fully understand someones behavior, and yet not condone any of it.

“Many are still confusing masculinity with the oppression of others, meaning that for men to rise higher, others must fall to their previous levels. We really need to build a stronger sense of self-worth and value that doesn’t change based on the station of others.” - Scott Galloway

“If you go into a morgue and there are 5 people who died by suicide, 4 of them are men. We have a homeless and an opiate problem but what we really have is a male homeless and male opiate problem. Men are three times a likely to be addicted, three times as likely to be homeless, twelve times as likely to be incarcerated. The far right really recognized the problem and started talking about needing to lift young men up. The problem is the remedy from the far right. Their suggestion was the we return to the 50’s where women and non-whites has less opportunity. That’s not the answer. And they began conflating masculinity with coarseness and cruelty. At the same time, the left hasn’t been that helpful because their advice when talking about the struggles of you men is to say… you are the problem. We can still address the problems facing women. But we can also recognize that young men are really struggling and that our country isn’t gonna continue to flourish and women aren’t going to continue to ascend if men are flailing.” - Scott Galloway

Wait... did Trump sleep his way to the top???

It’s not all men, it’s only about 5-8%. But when a woman meets a new man, she has no way to tell if he’s in that 5-8% or not. It’s like gun safety. When you encounter a gun, treat it as if it's loaded until you can verify that it's not.

I'll bet you ~90% of the women you know have a story about being sexually assaulted, and ~60% of the men you know have a story about doing some "gay" shit. And if you don't know these stories, it's because they don't trust you enough to tell you about them.

People out here proudly posting photos of themselves with politicians. ...I would pay money to prevent the posting of a photo of me with a politician.

I wish more people understood that appeasement is a survival strategy.

It’s the old two steps forward one step back with the mental health. One thing that’s super annoying about having done so much work and study into psychology and the workings of my own mind, is that sometimes I’ll hit a rough patch and know exactly what’s happening. I know what sort of error in thinking I’m experiencing, I know where it comes from, I know all sort of theories about it… and yet I can’t stop. It’s like watching a slow moving train wreck happening inside your own head. Good times. But then sometimes things do get better. Just now I was hit with a wave of shamexiety… you know, that lovely shame fueled anxiety! Ahh religious upbringings. And when it hits you, it’s just so damn heavy. And it felt really heavy. And my prefrontal cortex knows that it’s not mine to carry, and I was thinking, “I just want to put this down”… and then I did. And I felt better! I came back 5 mins later. But that was the first time I’ve been able to do that!

I need somewhere to document my predictions so I can check my accuracy. What do you think would work? Just a Google doc + some Google calendar events set like 2 years in the future?