u/New_Girl3685

I’m sorting out what I want to do next and struggling to figure out what to prioritize. Of my options, there’s one that my intuition just does not like for some reason, but provides stability, safety, consistent people—things my fried nervous system and lonely self wants. My other options prioritize adventure, rebellion, independence, exploring—things that also feel important, and appeal to that younger version of myself that wants to run toward the world and follow her heart. Both these things feel important but also specifically predicated on my CPTSD in ways no therapists I’ve talked to have been able to touch.

from your experience, is there an order or certain priorities people recovering from CPTSD should take seriously? I want to heal—that’s paramount—but it’s hard for me to see whether that would happen better by leaning hard into a consistency that feels stifling but might calm down my nervous system, or to embrace that big wild lover part, trusting that being myself will give me the energy and vigor to get out of this rut.

I’ve been in freeze for a long, long time, and just want to embrace being young while I still can. I’ve gotten better before so I know I can; I had a big heartbreak but want to get back on track of having an authentic life that is mine. But I worry running too fast too hard toward adventure that my brain and inner child want could tip over into disaster if my nervous system can’t hold up to it—and that embracing stability could lead to worsening depression if I just continue to feel stuck.

any lived advice very appreciated! thank you all.

I work in costume design and production design, and am trying to update my website. Unfortunately, I keep hitting a stumbling block where I don't have good stills of my work to use, despite having done a lot. Other designers' websites have very glossy, high definition images that look great, but I can't figure out where they got these stills, since screenshots obviously ain't it. I feel like this must be obvious info since so many designers have great-looking portfolios but I can't figure out how to do this.

The one piece of advice I saw said to start from a download of the movie and pull from there, but I don't know how to safely do that, and it feels like having to pirate a movie I worked on for stills can not be the answer here. Are productions supposed to give me stills to use? Is there a better way to pull them myself? Please help.

I'm back to trying to fix up my portfolio but a big stumbling block for me is finding good stills of the work I've done for TV, film, and commercials. Other designers' websites have very glossy, high definition images that look great, but whenever I try to take screenshots they look like garbage. I feel like this must be OBVIOUS info since so many designers have great portfolios but I can't figure out how to do this.

The one piece of advice I saw said to start from a download of the movie and pull from there, but I don't know how to safely do that. There's gotta be an easier, good-looking way. Help.

I was talking about this with u/dramatic_exit_49 a while back and it's still bothering me, so I figure it might be time to open a space to talk. I don't really have a complete thesis statement, but I'd like to discuss with other fans how this last season and its treatment of Black patients is reading to everyone else.

Something that really bothered me about this last season was the way Black and brown patients were treated. The show likes to talk about how patients of color are impacted by racist treatment, usually by infodumping a statistic during a case. But zooming out from what the show talks about, and looking toward how the show actually treats its patients of color, I feel like we see a different story that is shockingly in line with the conventional ignorance, downplaying, and abuse that patients of color have to face.

I was particularly struck this season by the case of Jackson, the Black law student who has a psychotic episode, is tazed by a security guard, and sedated and strapped down by the hospital. That story was terrifying, but I respected how nuanced the bones of the story immediately were: the college kid having a breakdown, the horrifying sedation response by the hospital, his sister feeling unheard and getting no answers, his parents and the history of mental illness that has not been shared with their kids. There's depth in that story, lots of perspective, and lots of pain.

Except the show did not embrace any of that nuance, or really sit with the horrors being put on this bright, young Black man who had set himself up to thrive. While the security guard is an easy joke, clearly framed as a racist idiot, the show does not similarly question the hospital's immediate response to Jackson by tying him down and sedating him so heavily he is unconscious for most of the rest of the story. No one offers a real explanation to Jackson's sister that justifies this treatment toward him. Tellingly, we never hear Jackson explain himself in his own words. He is sedated and locked away and, offscreen, talks to the white psychiatrist, but beyond "hearing voices" we do not get a real perspective on what Jackson is going through. We mostly hear about him, after sedation, through the interpretation of the white psychiatrist who explains him to his family. Introduced screaming, Jackson is treated violently by hospital staff, muted, and then vanishes. The key character in this story is not treated as a perspective worth listening to.

While this may be subjective, when Jada, Jackson's sister, arrives, the hospital and story seem to treat her as a problem for asking questions. (again, subjective; but it felt like the responses to her from the PItt's doctors were much more dismissive than those reserved for white family members in similarly frightening storylines.) And when Jackson's parents sit down to discuss the hidden history of mental illness in the family, the focus is not on why they might have kept that history hidden, and whether the why is the real horror in this story, but simply that they did and Jada feels betrayed. The inherent moral, as Javadi talks with Jada at the end, is that it is common for families not to discuss mental health and they should; but there is no real examination on the part of the show as to why a Black family might not feel safe even acknowledging mental unwellness, and might distrust disclosing them—even though we just saw what happens when a Black student reveals a mental health issue: he is treated as violent by the hospital, sedated, locked away, and—metatextually—removed from the story itself.

Jackson's was the story that most stood out to me for aiming at pat messaging without actually exploring why its Black characters might not trust the healthcare system. But there were other storylines this season that felt oddly reductive or dismissive of actually exploring Black patients' pain and experience of the healthcare system, even while dropping perfunctory lines about it. Amaya, the woman suffering from extreme pain due to PCOS, takes the time while barely holding on to explain to her two white doctors that she had a hard time getting diagnosed, and mentions offhand it's part of the way women of color are treated by the medical profession. But that's it: after that one line, the story's focus is on McKay as the good doctor, making up for all the "bad" ones and finding the twisted ovary. I wanted to hear more from Amaya! I wanted to see from Amaya what a lifetime of getting dismissive treatment has taught her about the healthcare system, and explore that. Just having characters mention offhand that they do not get listened to is not enough—The Pitt could, and should, be exploring this systematic abuse fully.

The answer that usually comes up in Pitt fanspaces when we talk about patient treatment is that the story is not about the patients, it's about the doctors, and we can't spend time on every single patient. However, that is simply not true, and we see time and again that the show does make space for patient storylines it deems important: Roxy, the white cancer patient this season, took several episodes to quietly slip away. Last season, we spent multiple episodes, with the white kids of the dying old man and the white parents of the fentanyl overdose case; their grief and pain was treated by the doctors within the show and the writers without as something worth respecting, as much-needed rooms and limited episodes were given over to these characters so they could grieve and talk and expand. This season, Jackson's case was clearly important, and did take up several episodes: but not Jackson himself, offscreen and unconscious, and not his family struggling with it. Jackson was reduced to a case study on how schizophrenia can randomly appear, not the disturbing ways our current healthcare system responds to it and certainly not about how racism warps care, turning already horrifying situations into brutal, dehumanizing traumas. Jackson is sick, and vanishes. Amaya is sick, and the white doctor saves her. Louie is sick, and dies, and the story looks to the white characters to talk about it.

I feel like the Pitt loves to talk the talk about being progressive by making a point to speak about how Black patients are ignored, but onscreen itself it continues this history by downplaying, minimizing, or making Black patients out to be problems.

Would love to hear from other fans, particularly Black fans in this sub, if they feel the same way about this or have noticed nuance I missed. full disclosure that I am white, and so may have missed or misinterpreted many things; this post is meant just to open discussion, not be "the" post on this topic, and I hope other people share their impressions and thoughts.

I take tri-lo-marzia (.180 mg/.215 mg/.250 mg per .025 mg) and right after starting a pack I fell off the wagon. I want to start again and am wondering if it would be ok to use this pack that has all the pills except the very first one, or if it would shock the system too much and it’s important to start with the first pill?

i know this is a deeply silly question but I’d like to not waste the whole pack if it won’t make a difference.

Hi all. Having a bit of a spiral at the moment and need to work out my ideas with people who understand how trauma/cptsd works.

I received a job offer this week that originally I was excited for. It was in a city I was interested in, in work related enough to my niche field that I could figure it out, and it would give me the chance to finally get out of my parents' house and live on my own again. The entire job search, before this offer, has been structured around that panicked need to leave: I moved back in with them two years ago, and it was a horrible decision that totaled my mental health. I've known for a long time that I have to get out of here and go low contact if I'm going to survive, so getting this job originally felt like a godsend.

However, since receiving the offer, I've continued to have a nagging, deep intuition feeling of don't take this job. Whenever I try to center and come back to my most grounded self, that's what I come back to. But when I line up all the pros and cons, this job checks the boxes I thought I wanted: far away from parents, independent living, enough structure that I probably won't rot/depress myself away (I moved back in with them originally because I was deeply depressed, lonely, and unemployed—I think I need people around me to live, and the external structure of a job and having coworkers who need me there everyday helps.)

I accepted the job, on the reasoning that getting grounded and calm and making sure I had people around me (in the form of coworkers) would be the best way forward. But ever since I accepted, I've been in panic mode, feeling like I betrayed myself, and abandoned myself all over again by doing the "smart" thing instead of the intuitive thing. I go through this a lot. It always feels like the "smart" option is opposed to the "intuitive" option, and I usually go with the smart option and regret it.

Do any of you deal with something like this, and how do you resolve it? For a while when I was really doing great with healing and was using radical self-love, there was no binary between smart and intuitive—it was just what I wanted, and I chose it. It was great. Smart and intuitive just went hand in hand, and I made choices that felt right for me. (it was sort of like the DBT wise mind concept, but whenever I've tried it not in this self love state I just remain fragmented between the rational and emotional parts).

Without that internal sense of self love*, I feel like I'm totally lost on how to make smart choices. Accepting this job seemed right because it would be very grounded and stable, which I think is what I need—but I also need to feel like I have my own back, and trust myself, and to me that means experiencing the trust, which points to that I should have trusted that intuition and said no. My analytical side is great at making pros and cons list, but my emotional side is only good at yelling "yes!" and "no!" and not helping with the planning, though when it does pay off it REALLY pays off.

I am going around and around in circles. I tried to talk myself through this and listen to all my parts and make the wisest decision, but my intuition is still panicking and saying no, don't do this, go backpacking instead, trust me. I feel like I've abandoned my emotional side all over again, but I'm also scared of trusting it and being right back where I was, unemployed with no way out of this house, or trying to follow it but doing so in a foolish, delusional way.

I also think, as a side point, that there is so much grief here that it's hard to see straight. I'm trying to figure out if the intuition saying no is just grief that things didn't work out with my parents.

Are there good ways to approach decisions when it's hard to know what you really want? Is it better to just follow my intuition if I'm not sure, or stick with the facts since that will help my short-term goals? Any advice at all about navigating decisions, and fear, and trauma, and all of this....would be SO appreciated.

Also sorry this is so so long.

tl;dr rational brain always fights intuitive brain, and I'm not sure which to trust if I can't get them to come together as one.

(*I call it self love, but I think parts work would call it Self. I only ever felt Self as a child and during this one brief period of healing, and I'm trying hard to work my way back to it.)

Hi all, hope this is ok to post in here. I was watching some old episodes tonight and it occurred to me that while I can name a few famous people who were inspired by Uhura (Whoopi Goldberg, Sally Ride), I can't think of anyone who has specifically mentioned being inspired by Sulu. A lot of people seem inspired by George Takei and his life in general, but I can't recall ever seeing someone famous say that seeing Sulu onscreen as a kid impacted them.

That seems weird, but I couldn't find anything (after a little googling) that explained it. Uhura's impact, particularly with the Civil Rights movement and MLK, is really well documented, and I'm not sure why it seems like Sulu didn't have a similar impact on Asian-American kids watching Star Trek in the sixties.

The one thing I thought of that might explain it is there was such a huge lack of opportunities for Asian actors in the 70s through—well, now, that maybe any kids who were inspired by Sulu to go into acting just didn't become famous enough to give interviews and credit him as an inspiration. That seems like a feeble theory, though.

Curious to hear if there are people who were inspired by Sulu who just didn't show up in my (brief) search, and if there aren't, what people think the reasons behind that might be. Thank you!