I Wanna Lick It All

During my first month with my therapist, I was given this worksheet to read and work on. She noticed that while I was talking with her, that my thoughts followed a lot of these. I wasn’t aware that my anxiety had brought me down paths of low self-worth and stinky thinking.  After a couple of weeks of talking with her, she gave me this worksheet to work on. 

While, at first, I thought these weren’t going to work out, I was very surprised to see just how easy they were to use . My homework at that time was to identify which sort of thinking I used on the regular and which ones would best challenge them for me. So, what do you think? Do any of the maladaptive thinking patterns sound like you? which ways would you like to untwist your thinking? 

lando and oscar finding out during the press conference about the pic george posted and oscar saying it's great 😭😭

how to pick a therapist

A friend recently asked how I found my therapist, who I absolutely adore. I was in a bad place when I first started seeing her, and she has helped me completely turn my life around. The fact is that I saw a lot of bad and mediocre therapists, then finally got lucky. That said, now that I know what a really good therapist is like, I do have some advice for finding one:

Do interview sessions with multiple therapists and take notes on what you like or don’t like. It’s not high maintenance or pushy to ask a lot of questions. You’re a customer looking for someone to provide a service - an expensive service, possibly for a long time. This is someone you will trust with your secrets and your health. Sometimes, your life.

If you’re in a dark place while searching, try to find a level-headed friend or family member to help you interview. The most frustrating thing about mental healthcare is that patients are often too vulnerable and ill to self-advocate and, as a result, often tolerate unacceptable behavior from their mental healthcare providers. Bad providers will blame patient dissatisfaction on patients being unstable. There is little accountability for their performance. If you can’t stand up for yourself, it helps to have a trusted third party that can either come with for interviews or, at the very least, who can talk with you after about your concerns and options. If a therapist asks why you want to bring someone with, simply say, “I’m not mentally able to self-advocate at this time. I am more comfortable having someone with me for support.”

Look for someone who does holistic therapy and/or who talks about using a variety of methods, depending on patient needs. Ask what types of methods they use and if they prefer one over others. A big part of therapy is teaching you a variety tools that will help you cope with stressors. You should expect your therapist to have more than one tool in their arsenal as well.

Ask their opinion on medication. I have met therapists who don’t believe in medication at all and some who won’t even work with patients that aren’t willing to medicate. Personally, I feel the only correct response is, “Medication is an important tool for some people, but it’s not the answer for everyone.”

Ask them what successful therapy looks like to them and what they think the most important things are to be successful in therapy. You want someone who talks about how different patients need different things. For some people, stability is the goal. Others have more specific objectives. The worst sort of therapist is one that uses the same structure for every patient because they’ve decided it’s the “right way.”

During interviews, you do want a therapist to mention that a patient has to be willing to change and give effort. However, you don’t want them to spend an excessive amount of time going on about how YOU have to do the work and “this won’t work if you’re not willing to give it your all” and blah, blah, blah. That is the sign of a therapist that will see therapy not working and immediately say, “Ah, not my fault. They weren’t doing the work,” absolving themselves of any extra work or creative thinking.

The final item is tricky to spot in an initial interview, but it’s crucial. Therapy requires a delicate balance. A good therapist can guide a session and push their patient without being domineering or dismissive. You can spot the domineering therapist fairly easily: they will tell more than they ask, make you feel uncomfortable or self-doubting, and will minimize your wishes or concerns about therapy. The lazy therapist is much more common. They’re not as harmful or obvious as the domineering therapist, but they probably won’t help you. They let you guide therapy, don’t ask many questions, and don’t challenge you. They will let you use therapy as a venting session or allow you to rehash the same handful of traumas without doing any work to process them in a new way. If you find yourself with a domineering or lazy therapist, fire them.

What has made my therapy successful is that my therapist is flexible, adaptable, and willing to try new things and new methods. There were periods where I was actually too ill to do any work, but she never addressed it like, “Ah, She Won’t Do The Work.” She just scheduled us for very frequent sessions and kind of quietly came up with things to keep me busy and stable, monitoring my state for safety until I reached a place where I was able to do the work.

When something didn’t work, it was never my fault, and she never spent any time lamenting that it hadn’t worked. She would just immediately say, "Okay, not this, then. I have something different planned for us to try next week.” Just like that, we were talking about what we were going to do next instead of thinking about the thing that failed.

The mental healthcare world, at least here in the US, is pretty fucked up. For a time, it was definitely doing me more harm than good, and I have trauma from my experiences with bad mental healthcare providers. I think it’s important to talk about patient self-advocacy and provider accountability. I hope the list above will help someone avoid bad providers and get the help they need. If you would signal boost this, I’d really appreciate it.

I'm literally looking at myself like you dumb bitch it’s a gd lego animation why are you writing this

but like The Inherent Gentleness of Landoscar

the gentle little voices they use in so many of their challenges compared to the Big Loud Fun Times With Loving Alphas that Lando's challenges with Carlos and Daniel had and with Oscar and the Prema boys !

the fact that Oscar never even properly raises his voice at all around Lando like he would with previous teammates and some of the Alpine videos. even when they're playing a big fun loud game of cricket outside and it merits shouting and yelling, Oscar never raises his voice at Lando. Lando is an absolute tiny terror, bellowing and shouting and whining at Oscar - and Oscar just giggles and ribs him gently in return. 

like, Oscar would fully allow himself to yell and get exasperated (jokingly) and make fun of all the other guys in his life - he’s Australian, it’s what he does! It would be weird if he didn’t!

but in the same way that even non fandom F1 fans picked up on Oscar’s accent softening and sounding more similar to Lando’s when they’re in videos together, Oscar massively softened the genetically and culturally coded sarcasm and ribbing when he noticed it didn’t always land the right way with Lando. and how even tho they have a perfectly healthy natural sense of competition between each other, Oscar never used to be at all shy about being competitive and a little cocky… until Lando, where Oscar now ducks his head and turns pink with embarrassment over the Sprint win being brought up and how Lando was always the one to bring it up and never Oscar. and it even turned into that gentle repetition of Lando’s expressions thing which he even does in a silly Lego video “team work makes the dream work” ??

and the thing is the more Oscar has specifically wanted to accommodate Lando’s preferences and quirks and habits, the gentler and quieter he’s become with him - which goes against every aspect of bromance logic that we as fans love so much ?? normally the best thing about Lando’s quirks and habits and contrariness is when his friends roast him about them or use them strategically to whip him up into hysterical giggles or screeching and possibly nearly break something or hurt himself in unserious ways.

but then there’s the fact that Lando is also a naturally shy person and he has as many quiet moods as he has hyperactive or excitable ones. and while he can have the more excitable ones with all of his friends and we get such great media content from them, it’s really only guys like Oscar and Max F who can also bring out his quieter and gentler moods on camera. 

and it’s literally fascinating to me that as a result that’s actually become more the default when Lando and Oscar are together - even down to never broadcasting when they spend time together outside of F1 commitments apart from mentioning it in passing. their time together is A Gentle Vibe and would feel weird to document bc it's at once so warm and friendly but also not A Big Deal!

and idk the fact that Oscar also doesn’t show overt bromance gestures of affection to Lando on camera or when specifically prompted by the media - but then he shows a consideration and attention to Lando that not even joking we only rly notice him do when it comes to Lily. and that most of Lando's other friends don't tend to show him apart from Max. and Oscar’s even like that w Lily where he doesn’t do the typical PDA or getting overly sentimental about her but he mentions her all the time to show how much a part of his life she is and isn't that more significant !! they’re his go-to for any question about himself that isn’t about racing - what Lando and Lily like and don’t like, how they tease him or give him a hard time, what he finds exasperating in a fond way about them. something about Oscar not rly caring if he’s a dynamic or at all fan popular person outside of racing and then being a mirror to reflect the much more interesting qualities of these two unique people who are in his life more than anyone else something something !!

but mainly it’s how the youngest and most closely competitive pairing on the grid are also the least overtly Manly Aggressive Men and don’t honestly seem at all concerned with trying to be so ! even the way they treated the usual mind games/fighting talk thing by just finding the whole concept amusing !! same with team orders where they just say ‘oh it was fair!’ and they’re both just so effortlessly What Is Gender that it rly is like they are watching The Men* from a distance most of the time and peacefully sharing silent communication with each other and speaking in voices so soft that The Men cannot even hear and like they just exist in this aura that makes us think they’re twins when actually their looks and their personalities aren’t twinning it’s just that they inhabit this wavelength exclusive to themselves and they do frighteningly well at pictionary and they coo these little thoughts at each other and it’s sometimes creepy but endlessly intriguing !!!

and how as fans there’s never any Top/Bottom Dominant/Submissive laws or even popular tendencies we literally all enjoy writing and thinking of them in fanon in every possible way and it always fits !!

just cool to me !

*with special exceptions at times for Lewis and Charles here - sometimes

Here’s a good one

I think my favorite genre of headcanons (specifically in the arcane fandom) are older people acting their age.

You give Sevika or Ambessa a phone and them being in the 40's-50's age range, they would most definitely hold it too far from their face, squint, and use their index finger to scroll to whatever videos or images they want to see next. Oh, and they don't consider volume to be an issue either. No headphones. No turning it down. You can't walk down the hall without hearing whatever obscure video they're watching.

Ambessa being a black mom would 100% be one of those to see a kid without socks or a coat on in reasonably calm weather - it's just hit 50 or 60 degrees outside in fall (10-15 Celsius) and her brows would knit together in frustration as she mumbles something along the lines of; "Where is that child's coat?"

Both of their Facebook profile photos would be some variation of the awkward mom/aunt angles where they're holding the camera too low so that they're looking down at it with the faintest hint of a smile (not Sevika though, I fear that lady is not about to smile on Facebook. Hell she doesn't post on social media at all, she just has it to occasionally be nosy)

Both Sevika and Silco need reading glasses. Neither of them wears them when they need to. But when they do the moment they're called on by someone or trying to read something they'll do that thing where they tilt their head down and look over the rims as if that'll somehow make seeing whoever/whatever they're trying to look at easier to see.

Like all the sexy headcanons are fun and all, but I do need more of these. I crave it like water.

Happy valentines day to everyone who has a crush on an animated car

ferrari and her devoted predestined

the original painting is by Alméry Lobel-Riche, but the colors/lighting idea came entirely from the lovely @/cuarto_sol on twt