Make Your Damn Bed

for me, it starts with getting more comfortable with doing rather than getting it done. i'm a creative and imaginative person, so if i were to plan for every potential experience, i would never stop planning. delegating tasks to myself like a manager has helped me put in perspective how much extra rumination and over-planning i have put on myself, and it's also helped me stop the cycle of over-thinking that often leaves me wanting to skip the "doing".

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The opinions expressed by Julie Merica and Make Your Damn Bed Podcast are intended for entertainment purposes only. Make Your Damn Bed podcast is not intended or implied to be a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis or treatment.

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it makes perfect logical sense that we choose to disassociate when we're feeling overwhelmed. if you've been in a perpetual cycle of overwhelm, it may help to focus on creating more space between you and the things that trigger that anxiety. it also may help to focus on one of the pillars of mental health: social connection, boundaries, time in nature, movement, mindfulness practice. in general, it's the endless "to-do list" that sends me back into my hole, so approaching those "to do's" with resources (friends, the internet, etc.) helps me to regain that sense of control that i lost when i was in the cycle of overwhelm.

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The opinions expressed by Julie Merica and Make Your Damn Bed Podcast are intended for entertainment purposes only. Make Your Damn Bed podcast is not intended or implied to be a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis or treatment.

Read Julie's Medium Blog.

Support JULIE (and the show!)

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Disassociation is a standard responses to the trauma we experience from living in a wildly intense society - but, like most things, if we're not careful, we may get caught in a cycle of disassociation and hopelessness. I wanted to offer some reassurance around it + some ways to break out of the cycle with ease.

RESOURCES: https://wokescientist.substack.com/p/capitalist-colonial-origins-of-disassociation?utm_source=publication-search

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The opinions expressed by Julie Merica and Make Your Damn Bed Podcast are intended for entertainment purposes only. Make Your Damn Bed podcast is not intended or implied to be a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis or treatment.

Read Julie's Medium Blog.

Support JULIE (and the show!)

Support + get some bonus stuff over on PATREON.

Get an occasional personal email from me: www.makeyourdamnbedpodcast.com

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Jenny Odell wrote the book "How To Do Nothing: Resisting the Attention Economy" + much to my surprise, it's not just any old 'self help book', this is the real deal. Today, we discuss the concept of "usefulness" and "worth" based on two very different perspectives.

Jenny Odell's writing: https://www.jennyodell.com/writing.html

BUY THE BOOK: https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/600671/how-to-do-nothing-by-jenny-odell/

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The opinions expressed by Julie Merica and Make Your Damn Bed Podcast are intended for entertainment purposes only. Make Your Damn Bed podcast is not intended or implied to be a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis or treatment.

Read Julie's Medium Blog.

Support JULIE (and the show!)

Support + get some bonus stuff over on PATREON.

Get an occasional personal email from me: www.makeyourdamnbedpodcast.com

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Disconnecting is an essential practice that I think a lot of us overlook the value of. For me, if I don’t take time to intentionally disconnect once in a while, my body will disconnect for me, without warning - in a way that is not easy to reconnect from. Of course, everyone’s experience with dissociation and disconnecting will be different. But - Here’s my personal field guide on how to rot with intention: 

It’s better to set yourself up before you need it. Listen to your body. Don’t let yourself get desperate for a break. Make a list of meals and snacks that make you feel better, things to do, or watch, or listen to, or play to help get you off of your phone, or people you can reach out to - even if it feels uncomfortable. 

A strategy that has worked for me is to imagine I am a kid with a cold, and then imagine how the best parental figure would take care of me to make me feel better. Think comfort foods, comfortable environments, and comfortable vibes. 

If this is tough for you, remember that relaxation is an investment. Your brain is a vital organ that benefits from rest. Rest is productive. It may help to change the language around it and call it recovery rather than rest. I also remind myself often that it is an act of rebellion to indulge in rest. But if you feel guilty or ashamed, remind yourself that is societal conditioning talking and not something you need to validate. 

Remember that it’s normal to want to disconnect from an overconnected world, and it can be healthy if we’re doing so with the knowledge that it’s not forever. That said, it is essential we address the need to escape at it’s core, in a healthy way. Needing to constantly detach and disconnect can be a sign of a deeper issue, such as anxiety, depression, dissociative disorder, and more, and it can lead to dangerous and unhealthy coping mechanisms like excessive screetime, and substance abuse. The real problem with chronic detachment is, like most things, the effects can be cyclical. These can further your feelings of despair/hopelessness and keep you from resetting - which is a natural part of the ebb and flow process of life.

You can and must disconnect once in a while, but don’t get too lost and forget that the feeling of reconnection after a well deserved break, is often the best part.   

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The opinions expressed by Julie Merica and Make Your Damn Bed Podcast are intended for entertainment purposes only. Make Your Damn Bed podcast is not intended or implied to be a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis or treatment.

Read Julie's Medium Blog.

Support JULIE (and the show!)

Support + get some bonus stuff over on PATREON.

Get an occasional personal email from me: www.makeyourdamnbedpodcast.com

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Constant exposure to information and crisis can reduce our ability to react, respond, or move forward with hope. It's incredibly overwhelming to know everything without knowing what to do with it. You must take action in your own life, in your own community, in your own ecosystem - if you want to shed that feeling of hopelessness.

Our investment in things we have no control over is exhausting + debilitating. The ripple effect of small changes is real. So take some small changes + see how much more hopeful you feel.

We are NOT powerless. "We have the ability to make significant change in the world, but only if we are willing to take grounded action within our sphere of influence." - Eliza Day

RESOURCE: https://www.apa.org/monitor/2022/11/strain-media-overload

AND: https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/how-not-to-think/202406/the-psychological-dangers-of-marketing

AND: https://www.tiktok.com/@elizadaylight/video/7387530742621981998?_r=1&_t=8npvby6IGFi

SOURCE: https://wokescientist.substack.com/p/rituals-with-your-homies-make-life

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The opinions expressed by Julie Merica and Make Your Damn Bed Podcast are intended for entertainment purposes only. Make Your Damn Bed podcast is not intended or implied to be a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis or treatment.

Read Julie's Medium Blog.

Support JULIE (and the show!)

Support + get some bonus stuff over on PATREON.

Get an occasional personal email from me: www.makeyourdamnbedpodcast.com

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My life is now divided into 2 parts: the pre-Ayesha Khan version of me and the post-Ayesha Khan version of me. I truly started to feel like I was screaming into a void and though people "understood" where I was coming from, nobody seemed to know what to say about it. Ayesha Khan not only "gets it" but her hopefulness + intentionality has renewed my own hope.

Today, we discuss the reality that our purpose IS community. It is connection + the rituals within those connections. We've been robbed from our interdependence, so we must be intentional with reclaiming it.

"we need to be interdependent because the daily acts of care that support other people or the lands survival are THE thing that gives our lives purpose." - Ayesha Khan of Cosmic Anarchy

SOURCE: https://wokescientist.substack.com/p/rituals-with-your-homies-make-life

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The opinions expressed by Julie Merica and Make Your Damn Bed Podcast are intended for entertainment purposes only. Make Your Damn Bed podcast is not intended or implied to be a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis or treatment.

Read Julie's Medium Blog.

Support JULIE (and the show!)

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Today we revisit an old nugget: low power mode.

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The opinions expressed by Julie Merica and Make Your Damn Bed Podcast are intended for entertainment purposes only. Make Your Damn Bed podcast is not intended or implied to be a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis or treatment.

Read Julie's Medium Blog.

Support JULIE (and the show!)

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Sometimes I’m painfully reminded that hope is really all we have. When I am suffering most from the effects of grief, the hopelessness becomes overbearing and all-consuming. It feels impossible to avoid and it typically makes me feel like that’s how things will “always” be. 

This is why, I often encourage myself (and others) to take action as a reminder that there is more than overthinking and dwelling in despair. The “touch grass” advice is always so funny to me - because that’s really all it takes sometimes. And maybe for you it’s not grass, because, if I’m honest, it’s not grass for me, either. But it is as small and accessible as grass - so I count it. Sometimes it’s the fresh air itself - reminding me that the world is still spinning. Other times it’s watching strangers going about their day - reminding me that the world is still spinning. But it’s always subtle, it’s always incomprehensibly tiny + it still seems to affect me so deeply. I think of all negative emotions, but especially hopelessness, like a ripcurrent.

The more you resist it, the more it will exhaust all of your resources and cause you to panic and drown. You are really meant to let it sweep you away for a moment, then swim alongside it calmly for another, and then when you see it begin to clear, you can head safely to the shoreline with less struggle and resistance and pain.

But it’s our natural inclination to swim against the current. To get the fuck out as fast as possible, and that would be back the way we came. But that’s not how emotions or riptides work. 

Similarly to a rip current, they are smooth looking on the surface but have traumatic and extreme conditions, right underneath - too deep to identify clearly but too powerful to resist logically. So we must get comfortable discarding logic every once in a while. We must learn to let the tides take us, and lean into the fear rather than the panic. To allow ourselves to flow with the current conditions + then, when it’s safe to do so, reflect + adjust our patterns to adapt to the new environment. 

Because sometimes, like a riptide, it can be more dangerous to resist the environment than it is to allow it to move us before we move away from it. 

RESOURCE LINKS: https://wokescientist.substack.com/p/we-keep-us-safe-by-fighting-back

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The opinions expressed by Julie Merica and Make Your Damn Bed Podcast are intended for entertainment purposes only. Make Your Damn Bed podcast is not intended or implied to be a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis or treatment.

Read Julie's Medium Blog.

Support JULIE (and the show!)

Support + get some bonus stuff over on PATREON.

Get an occasional personal email from me: www.makeyourdamnbedpodcast.com

Tune in on INSTAGRAM AND YOUTUBE or TIKTOK

Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/make-your-damn-bed.

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"Hopelessness is often most pervasive among the privileged who are more insulated from from overt violence." - Ayesha Khan

SOURCE: https://wokescientist.substack.com/p/how-do-we-keep-hope-alive-in-our

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OR WATCH ON YOUTUBE: www.youtube.com/juliemerica 

The opinions expressed by Julie Merica and Make Your Damn Bed Podcast are intended for entertainment purposes only. Make Your Damn Bed podcast is not intended or implied to be a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis or treatment.

Read Julie's Medium Blog.

Support JULIE (and the show!)

Support + get some bonus stuff over on PATREON.

Get an occasional personal email from me: www.makeyourdamnbedpodcast.com

Tune in on INSTAGRAM AND YOUTUBE or TIKTOK

Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/make-your-damn-bed.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.