Pass Straight Thru "Ugh," Into "Amazing..."

Hi, all!

...OMG, so, alright... It's EVERYFUCKINGWHERE, this COVID-19 bullshit.  You cannot seem to get the fuck away from it.  It's in all the news, 24-fucking-7, in your social media feed non-stop, and your life is now centered around this shit whether you're a warrior staying at home or are out on the essential worker frontlines.  Yes, I know... But I promise you, it's not the end of the world yet!  The human race has always found a way to survive despite things like global warming, nuclear warfare, the holocaust, asteroids, and shit like the black plague.  Statistically, we end up out-smarting whatever threat is going down, as this is just what is embedded in our genes from many years of evolution.  We are almost as resilient as the cockroach, LOL.

That being said, I'd like to point out a few other things that may help you get through this:

Second Life has started a Stay At Home Club, where you can get TONS of remarkable free shit (thank you, awesome mesh designers!) and even meet some authors of fabulous books!  I believe this came from some mentions and recent development in the Lab Gab episodes.

Following that, is the movement to put more good publicity forward to the public (into YouTube and such) from the SL community, and I discovered there are a TON of hilarious videos made by the tiny community!

I've always recommended Radio Paradise in the background, as it's always had a sort of calming/soothing, and Zen type of theme (that yeah, is really great to, say, sort your inventory to for like 10+ hours with)!  ;) ♥  ...Meanwhile, you can also check in to the really cool, daily Unlonely Project.

Tons of places in SL are providing community entertainment events like hunts, build contests, concerts, and even support groups.  There's still always the weekly discount sales, breedables, and L$ earning games to be played.  And do check the blogs and forums, too.

...I, personally, have learned some breathing techniques to re-center myself and prevent an anxiety attack (yeah, I have them to the point where I actually, physically feel like I'm falling)...  I've paraphrased the "3 Ways to Beat Panic Attacks," from a NC written by ღ Anya ღ  (anya.ibor), who is the Founder & Executive Director of Fearless Nation PTSD Support:

BREATHE LIKE THE OCEAN:

Practice this exercise several times a day until it becomes a natural reflex

This exercise will:

• Open up your chest and increase your circulation.
• Improve your posture while sitting or standing.
• Keep your blood oxygenated so your feet and arms won’t fall asleep while you are sitting at the computer.
• Improve your ability to absorb information and clear a foggy head (more oxygen in the brain).
• You will also be able to breathe during stress-outs like waiting in line, being stuck in a traffic jam or dealing with rude people.

When we get stressed, we begin to go into "fight or flight mode" and begin "bracing ourselves," scrunching up our diaphragms, and tensing the muscles around our rib cages, causing our breath to slow and become shallow.

• This is a typical fear reaction.
• This hinders us from reacting quickly to an emergency, because the brain becomes oxygen-deprived. "Holding back breath" also raises your blood pressure:
• We often involuntarily constrict our breathing when we are under pressure or focusing very hard on something, like when we hold our breath before doing a sit-up or running.  This is a perfectly normal human tendency—BUT it’s a bad habit we need to break!
• Breathing properly brings good health, a better quality sleep, and it feels good.
• Most importantly, in a dangerous situation, we have the breath and lung capacity to shout for help or scream loudly (have you ever been unable to shout for help because you are frozen with fear and there’s no breath to shout, just whisper?).
• This is a simple, fundamental skill to make part of your daily life. 

LIFE BREATH:

Enhanced Breathing with elements of Nidra and Mindfulness.

PRANA is the Hindu word for "living breath" or "life-breath:" the source of all living energy.

BEGIN:

1) Sit or stand straight- take a few minutes to stretch and align yourself…raise the arms above your head and scrunch up your shoulders—then let them dropdown.

2) Posture: "suck & tuck:" tuck in your buttocks and suck in your belly very slightly.

• This creates stability for your spine and supports your diaphragm, ribcage, and lungs.

3) Place your feet hip-width apart and make sure your head is raised, chin at 90°, eyes
forward.

4) Now, imagine a line running from the ground between your feet, and up through the center of your body and emerging from the top of your head up to the sky.

5) Lightly place the tip of your tongue on the back of your front teeth or rest it on the gum line above the teeth.

6) Relax your mouth and face, let go of tension there.  Let your mouth fall into a natural state:

• Imagine a flat plane, like a sheet of paper between your lips.
• Focus your mind on it.
• See how it extends toward the horizon to meet the place where the sky meets the land.
• Your thoughts and worries may rise to the surface.  This is normal, let them rise and float away like wisps of mist.

7) Breathe in slowly, slowly through your nose, drawing the breath up from your toes.

• Fill your being with clean fresh air, all the way, flood your body with new air.

8) Pause for a second...

9) Then release the air in a steady stream through your nose while keeping your tongue behind your front teeth.  The breath flows steadily, evenly out through your throat.

• This prevents too much breath leaving the body at once, prevents hyperventilation.

11) You will feel the breath exiting from the back of your throat through your nose—the tongue is helping the airflow out steadily and evenly.

12) Deflate your being.  Completely empty the body of this air, carrying away all the old bad feelings and toxins within.

13) Pause for a second and then inhale again, steadily and slowly, filling your being with energy.

14) Do this at least 5-12 times, at least 5 times a day.

15) Imagine that you are "breathing like the ocean" ... Waves roll in slowly as you inhale, and then recede back to the sea as you exhale.  The two are balanced, Yin-Yan, sky to sea.  Like the plane extending from between your lips to the horizon.

Let’s take a moment to breathe in this way…calming our thoughts, opening our minds…

"THOUGHT STOPPING" METHOD:

One effective and quick technique to help you overcome self-fixation and ruminating on anxious thinking is called "thought stopping."  Basically, you consciously issue the command, "Stop!" when you experience repeated negative, unnecessary or distorted thoughts, and replace them with something positive and realistic.

1) Identify your worrying thoughts:

• Locate and monitor your bothersome and unnecessary thoughts.
• Write down the thoughts that are causing you the most trouble.
• Pick one that you would like to work on.

2) Create a positive substitute for that thought:

• Write down positive statements next to your negative thought.  For example, replace the thought, "I cannot change my situation" WITH statements like: "I've been in bad situations before and have overcome them."  "The world is always changing.  I am confident that this will change and a door will open for me."  "Life has its ups and downs.  Currently, I am in the down part, I have been 'up' before and I will be again."  "This tough time is temporary.  It will not last.  Things will change.  I will change."  "This situation is an opportunity for me to grow."

3) Activate and replace (practice):

• Close your eyes and think about the stressful thought.
• Try to imagine yourself in a situation in which the thought may occur.
• Repeat it in your mind for about three minutes and say firmly, "Stop!" (you’ll probably want to do this part in private).
• Let your mind relax and go blank for about one minute.
• If the thought re-surfaces, firmly say, "Stop!" again.
• Say the positive substitution statements you identified above aloud.
• Repeat these substitutions for about three minutes.
• Envision your success in the stressful situation as you repeat your thought substitutions.  Review and replace negative thoughts with these images/slides, in your mind.

4) Important Considerations:

• For thought stopping to be effective, you need to practice it throughout the day for several days.
• The unwanted thoughts are likely to continue to recur during the initial days of this exercise.  They will gradually diminish.
• Thought stopping may not work for everyone.
• If you find that your stressful thoughts are becoming more frequent or if the exercise is producing increased anxiety, discontinue and talk to a doctor or therapist: Your anxiety may require professional attention.

"FAKE IT 'TIL YOU MAKE IT" APPROACH:

CAUTION: An emergency technique only—use rarely and only in a jam: Do not make this a habit or a method of avoiding your real anxiety issues!!!

"Method act" your way through a social /public situation:

• If I act confident, I will become confident.
• Never let them see you sweat.  Lies, white lies: "I feel GREAT today!"
• Smile.  Firm Handshake or positive greeting.  Up the interpersonal energy.
• Sit apart from yourself and "puppeteer" yourself.
• "Faking it," when your reputation or job is at stake can be used as a positive technique when you get panicked in a work/social/public setting.
• Later, at home, in private: decompress.  Cry.  Rage.  Shake it out.  PLEASE do NOT make this a habit—or you will repress anxiety, this leads to future panic attacks & physical ailments.

So there you go.  ...Yoga has helped me, not just as an exercise, but as a frame/state of mind.  Making a vision board and focusing mindfully on it each new day + LI has helped me reintegrate and retrain my thought processes.  And I've often found that if you're not too much of an asshole while honing your acting skills, you can actually fake it until you make it, and Jedi mind trick not only everyone else, but yourself into a state of "alrightness" as well.

...Just thought I would let you know.  Please take it from me, the person who has been banned and ostracized from everyfuckingthing... Like, I get it, indifference is [particularly my] kryptonite... but you know, ppl are ppl, and that's just something I've had no choice in dealing with, all my fucking life (whether it be the "your IQ's offset from mainstream's IQ" -therefore you don't connect/mesh well with others aspect; or my personal idiotic favorite of "just because you're female, you could take my man or break up my family" factor -when the accusors paid no attention to the asexual element).  :p  ...I promise you, your loneliness won't kill you, it will just make you STRONGER.  You will come up with different routines + be able to productively distract yourself, and then you will come out the other end being proud/groomed to be able to survive even worse!

*coughs* ---> Loneliness by Kurzgesagt – In a Nutshell

But here is one thing I believe we can all immediately come together on...  I learned this from the church in SL that I've been going to for about a year or so now  ...But before you go all, freak-out running away from me, I did add my own little open interpretation/twist so that this should be palatable for everyone (and keep in mind, these guys seem really cool... I've been going there in my succubus/dark fae avatar long enough to earnestly tell you so)...

So, please interpret this for whatever religion/outlook you practice/have on life, as it is more important to join forces in order to make this prayer/thought more powerful: 

1) Let us thank our higher power for the end of COVID-19.
2) Let us thank our higher power for silencing fear and panic.
3) Let us thank our higher power for clarity and wisdom of those guiding the crisis. 

Keep in mind why this works:

• Jesus made a covenant with humanity, that He already sacrificed Himself for us, which includes things like COVID-19.  Call upon His name and know that these things have already been sorted, "...on Earth as it is in Heaven..."
• The power of thought (such of "The Secret"), is to focus on the light at the end of the tunnel while trusting that this has already been taken care of, simply because it is so.  It's true that thought is very powerful (like if you've ever played The Sims and you can tell what they need based on their picture-based thought bubbles... If there is unexplainable energy, aliens, or whatever that can help us... and they can read minds via pictures -like how you play The Sims... you're gonna wanna picture something awesome and not ruminate on negative BS -so as to not confuse them into granting what you actually want).
• And in some forms of Wicca/Paganism, there's a Wheel Of The Year cycle of the God/Goddess; as S/He sacrifices themself, so S/He eventually comes back and brings forth the cycle of the day's/season's rebirth.  Trust that this is already taken care of, and therefore, so are we.

...Hopefully, this message can find you no matter what faith you have or what POV you are.  Let it comfort you that there's strength when we do this simultaneously, because the power of this thought/prayer of these 3 very important things, has already come to fruition.

Meanwhile, I am one of those essential workers.  I'm honored to possibly go down like a warrior.  As I believe that is one of the best things I have to offer RL.  And that's not to say that others are not warriors for staying home, because I believe they're actually the alpha warriors.  I totally get it.  ...I just wanted to point out that the best way I've been able to deal with this is to: understand what's going on and how to be safe, first and foremost, of course... But also, by having the ability to put that all in the back of my mind and pretend as if everything is still as normal as it ever was.  Like, yup, SL is still my great escape, and burp and fart jokes still ensue at work.  And I am ever grateful for them.

I am grateful for all the leader-like ppl who seem to unknowingly sport purple/white chakras.  They see the bigger picture.  I believe it falls somewhere into the lines of, "if your number is up, it's up, and there's nothing you can do ...So you might as well enjoy and make the best of what you have, right now." <---

Feeling good starts with being grateful for the smallest of things (i.e. "I am grateful I can breathe," "I am grateful for my arms and the ability to move," "I am grateful for the internet," etc.), until you are overwhelmed with enough positive energy & sorta feel like Superman.

Plus, it is definitely a lot easier to greet each day with a smile instead of unease.  Truly.  I mean, I love being right, and sometimes it's fun to be a downright undefeated bitch about it, but you know what the most rewarding thing is?  When you just shmooze ppl with a smile and your bubbly personality... They can only really come at that with the same positive energy back ...and then before you know it, you're onto bigger and better things!  Promise.

Another thing was said to me too, that applies here... If you're super lucky, you have good friends that stick around.  If you're just plain lucky, you have family members that back you up too.  But, no matter what, you will always luckily have yourself  ...So make it a great place inside your head, not only because you are "stuck" with yourself until the end, but also because you should lead by example by being your own best friend, too!  You deserve that kind of pleasantness!

And if you need to take the momentary disassociation approach... How would you react if someone was hurting your best friend?  Would you be pissed?  Would you give the abuser a "what for?"  Would you do absolutely anything to defend your best friend, to the death, even?  ...Well, then why would you allow anyone (including yourself) to do that to you?  Respect yourself, because you have value!  When you respect yourself, you're better able to respect others.  And in these tough times right now, we could sure use some self-love and self-respect!

It might be easy to fall down the rabbit hole right now *eyes all the drunk/bored drivers as she goes to work* but believe me, things could always be WAY worse.  You are going to pull-thru ...I mean, if I did, you can too.  Now is a perfect time to take advantage of entertaining your artistic and intellectual self, so you're more lucid to the bigger picture here (especially later on when this all subsides).

Anyhoo, that's all my thoughts on appropriate tools for the moment right now.  Hope they help you, even if just a little bit.  Thank you for doing your part in this!  Know that I love you all (thanks, especially for letting me pretend I'm somewhere between the female version of George Carlin and Maleficent, LOL).  ...Please stay safe and honor our legacy as human beings by enjoying the best of what we all have right meow.  =^w^=  We can do this... ban together on ideas, and beat this invisible enemy with our intellect.

...Talk at you next time with hopefully some awesome pix of The Havens "Spring Has Sprung" Build Contest!  ^♥^  Until then, "Hoppy, uh, Spring!"  ;)

---> I can't fucking read this!