My cat and my cell phone

Congrats!

I’m sorry you’re dealing with so many stressful things at once.

I just recently learned about some causes of vertigo along with a super quick thing to try to relieve it, and I thought I would share it under the chance it might provide some relief to at least one of the awful things. It came from a newsletter by a chiropractor I saw who many years ago. I know some chiropractors are quacks, but this one was incredible at recognizing patterns and was able to provide me extreme pain relief mostly just from simple stretches he taught me, so I have high respect for what he shares.

What are the causes I find that trigger vertigo?

1. Tight suboccipital muscles at the base of the skull.
2. Blocked sinus cavities not draining, backing up mucous and fluid into the middle ear cavity.
3. Fluid imbalances in the inner ear due to NSAIDS and antihistamines being used in excess.
4. Tight jaw muscles causing abnormal tracking of the jaw when opening and closing the mouth.
5. Very rotated fixated first cervical vertebrate pinching off the eustachian tube of the middle ear that is responsible for allowing drainage to occur to the back of the throat.

Then he provides this 1m video with a tapping technique that tracks 20 seconds.

Doesn’t speak to the sleeplessness and I’m not a medical professional. I’m just a concerned stranger who recently gained knowledge that could maybe be helpful to you?

I mean there’s all this *gestures vaguely*, but if I zoom into just my personal life, it’s been pretty good?

I adopted an amazing kitty on Jan 4. I’m still grieving the loss of my soul cat last year but the new girl has been a great gift in my life.

My job is very seasonal and 2025 was the most calm season of all 8 seasons I’ve done it. I work on software creation and support season, so most calm = the best season ever.

Then I went on medical leave to yeet my uterus and confirmed that I had adenomyosis, so pretty psyched to see how much this reduces my pain after I finish recovering.

So even with the shit show going on in the world, life goes on at the micro level and so far 2025 is shaking out better than ‘24.

Oh man, that makes me think back to college when I got an eyebrow piercing. I did it because I liked the looks but also as a social experiment, wondering how people’s reactions to me might change.

I expected the worst, but I found that it actually seemed to make most people approach me easier.

I think the lesson is that doing things that are highly visible draw attention. Some will be good, some might be bad, but it’s a conversation starter either way!

there is ZERO way to indicate to others that information.

Ah, you’re getting to a challenge that women have faced forever: “If I reject this man, will he decide to attack or kill me?” (Sources: 1, 2, 3, 4,5, 6)

Or just in general the concept that’s been named “Schrodingers Rapist.”

It would be a whole lot safer for many people if there was an automatic way to see into someone’s soul to know what they are like and what they are capable of. Are they a rapist? Do they have the potential to be? Will they reject me violently? Will they publicly humiliate me?

None of us can know those things. The best we can do is to try to establish strong social skills and pattern recognition, and work to avoid the situations that put us in danger (whether physical, social, or emotional). It’s hard and there’s no silver bullet.

While you want to put the onus on women to minimize the risk of a man being publicly humiliated, you’re ignoring the realities that women are dealing with the exact same kind of uncertainties (except statistically speaking, with much worse outcomes). There isn’t an easy answer here and it’s not one that falls on just one gender to resolve.

I don’t think laughing at someone is an acceptable response to any person being respectful to another person, and your assumption that I am saying that from my comment shows more about you than me.

Anyone who would laugh at another person just because of how they look or how much money they appear to have is a flawed, unkind person.

Anyone who approaches another person and doesn’t respect if they set physical or verbal boundaries showing they don’t want to be approached is also flawed and either socially unaware/challenged or themselves unkind. And sometimes an easy way to get one of those people to go away is to laugh at them.

It’s unlikely for a cold approach to anyone asking for a date to be successful. Unlike 80 years ago, people aren’t looking for their first romantic connection to turn into life-long marriage; they actually want to have an established rapport with a person before the first date. So if someone just asks another person out with no lead up, or in certain settings, sometimes that will be so disconnected from social realities as to be absurd.

Anyway, regardless of the social intricacies of appropriate places to approach and/or ask out another, believing that women (or men) are a monolith who all will react the same way in a given situation is out of touch, disrespectful, and points to a lot of deep-seated sexism. I hope you can work that out before you pass it onto your son or he’s likely to have a much harder time finding a relationship.

“Men are afraid that women will laugh at them. Women are afraid that men will kill them.” —Margaret Atwood

I think the guy you’re responding to is well down the path of believing that it’s “unsafe” to be laughed at.

We have a black cat. After a trip we left a black bag on the floor for a bit. She would get on the bag and if you walked by her without acknowledging her, she’d bop you on the foot.

If you acknowledged her, no bop. I could look right at her but if I didn’t say her name, I’d be bopped.

We left that bag on the floor for several more weeks to continue the game 😅