“Twist-o Eyeball-o!”

Considering this is Apple, they’ll probably scan your happy juices and, like… sell your entire genome to advertisers, or smth…

I knew it! That kitchen table’s ruining my life! And my hips!!!

FEAST ON THEIR IDEOLOGICAL FLESH!!!

My loaf is bigger than your loaf, We take more drugs than a touring funk band.

SING IT!

My loaf is bigger than your loaf.

SING IT!

My loaf is bigger than your loaf.

SING IT!

Picard, hands on face

Let’s turn that frown upside down! Instead of saying “Google failed to generate a useful LLM to bolster its search feature,” say “Google successfully replicated the output of an average Reddit troll!”

Ssooo… a cable package?

My pleasure, really hope something out of that wall of text makes something click on your end!:D

To be honest, it was quite counterintuitive, I’d say acting actually helped me get in touch with myself more than anything, actually dropped a lot of the “etiquette” I’d adopted in day-to-day life and just started being myself. There was a slight shift in others’ perception of me, but it only went to “eccentric and mostly harmless”:)) Did, indeed, help with the conversing aspect, helped me get rid of awkward pauses and be more attuned to the conversation.

Exactly! It’s an orderly kind of chaos, and that’s a very good point about levels of familiarity, could explain my tendency to mentally map out environments as well! Huh, my turn to thank you!

I own a Garmin watch and their interface is pretty straightforward on the watch itself. Gives you in-depth statistics in-app, but the stress level monitor, heart rate monitor, and BloodOx read-out are all readily available. Even has some in-built breathing exercise routines.

Again, my pleasure!:D It’s genuinely satisfying discussing about these things, not a lot of opportunities…

No bother whatsoever, happy to share!

Honestly, acting has helped me with this, therapy by exposure really pays off for agoraphobia - we used to have classes in large, tall, unfurnished rooms, with ash-grey padding on all of the walls (would’ve quit then and there were it not for the large windows…), about 6 hours per day. In the evening, full-on neon lighting. Also, the increased awareness of self gained through physical exercises and acting itself takes a lot of the edge off, for some reason. It helped me reach a point where I still feel the anxiety, I still feel my body going into prep mode, but I can push through it and everything subsides fairly quickly after that. Also went through a hefty amount of therapy to solve various childhood and contemporary traumas, which regained me my confidence.

Other than that, in more practical terms, I find grounding exercises help bring everything back into focus. I constantly listen to music when out and about, so I generally focus on that and try to get into the groove, just as yourself. Other than that, identifying random visual elements, feeling my body’s movement, focusing on my steps, on my breathing, the whole kit and kaboodle. Mine mostly manifests through physiological reflexes, like a burst of adrenaline, senses going into hyperalertness, and also through paying a lot of attention specifically to what others are doing around me. When tired and unfocused, overthinking, catastrophising, intrusive thoughts, and even hypertension come into play, so I try to get my beauty sleep as much as possible. I think I understand what you mean about something feeling off about certain spaces/situations, although I’ve honestly never identified the cause beyond an acute awareness of being overexposed, even when standing in the middle of a room, and it makes me really jumpy - this I attenuate through a sort of mapping of my space, I try to visualise where everything is and focus on the physicality of the space itself. I do go through prolonged periods of self-isolation out of a feeling of fatigue from having to face the symptoms, although I enjoy solitude, so there’s that.

My advice would be to not force it in unreasonable amounts, just like working out. Key is consistency, not volume, so keep safe spaces close and there is no abuse as long as you keep at it. I keep my space relatively cluttered, too - furniture or decorations/stuff, I think it has to do with visual noise in my case- to aid with this, I’ve also replaced all lighting with smart lights and I use those to hone in on a mood which feels relaxing in the moment. I also use my smartwatch to monitor my vitals just in case everything takes me by surprise, I’ve had sort-of “silent” full-blown anxiety attacks, in that my body and system go haywire, while my awareness has tunnel vision, so I’m not aware that my heart is pounding, stuff like that. Then, I go into grounding mode, breathing exercises are especially useful for the silent ones.

As a final note, I’ve found that several somewhat philosophical points have also affected my relationship with agoraphobia. I’ve learnt to appreciate the beauty of liminality, to the point where it turned into a minor fascination. Being aware of the universe’s scale helps me detach through reduction of dimensions, stuff like that. These are shots in the dark, but hey! Ya’ never know, brain’s weird!:))

Disclaimer: I do not have an official diagnosis, I just strongly suspect I may be on the moderate side of the spectrum, which has been confirmed by the tests I took so far.

Had a couple of years in Uni when I played bass in two bands - blues/rock and jazzy covers. The entire “musician” experience, for me, was the point where life made sense. I would call it the moment of feeling alive in the sense that the whole context encouraged me to be as present and as ‘in the now’ as I’ve ever been. Used to lose myself in the music and the friendships, even concert preps were engaging. Guess the whole planning, gear handling, and the set-up itself tickled me in a certain way.

Surprisingly, even my relatively pronounced agoraphobic side sort of calmed down during that period (although, admittedly, the fact that I took Theatre and acting as my Majors may have had an immense impact on that, too).

Can only give you my personal example:

I have a career in software QA, and I got into it because I personally believed in QA and its significance to generating good software for people to use. Hell, I even worked relatively low-paying jobs because it was compensated by job satisfaction.

Then enshittification took hold of absolutely everything, QA started being flushed down the turlet in the interest of cutting costs (and, I suspect, out of management incompetence and lack of perspective), and now it feels as though my passion got stabbed.

I still thoroughly believe in QA as an essential part of software development, I still try to do the best I can not out of dedication to a job, but to my principle-based belief that QA does more good than it does harm when properly performed. But I seldom have the context to be able to do that, instead being stuck with menial shit and/or rushed projects which don’t allow for a lot of testing.

Test your stuff, eat the rich.

“The Children of Asuryan haven’t received any new models since the 90s, y’know…”

Thank you.

Honestly, the most painful part of this is the dichotomy between the internet’s potential to become an evolutionary point for us and help us develop as a species, and the way we’re using it… We have the entirety of human existence digitised for our convenience and available at the push of a button and we just use it to terrorise and hurt eachother…

This must be the most 90s thing I’ve seen in a decade.

At least the water ain’t boilin’! Yet…

Exactly, pointing fingers just eats into problem-solving time at this point. Just shovel’em aside and start digging that drainage ditch, s’what I say… Once the job’s done, we’ll have all the time in the world to poke eachother in the eyes.

The more, the merrier!

Without the slightest hint of sarcasm or irony, this made me want to give you a hug.