linkspammity spam

[firecat]

I've read a lot of thoughtful, knowledgeable, compassionate stuff about depression and suicide in the past week. These are two of the best public pieces of writing I've seen about it.
http://theshadowsanctuary.wordpress.com/2014/08/12/on-suicide-shaming/
http://xiphias.livejournal.com/744129.html

It's about time some folks began to question the pressure-cooker metaphor of emotion management. Absolutely, stress can cause illness, but expressing your anger doesn't necessarily relieve that stress. The article eventually gets around to pointing this out, but first it gets all tangled up in claiming that expressing anger constructively or "clearly and firmly" helps your health and in suggesting that you might want to avoid getting angry more than occasionally. Most people I know don't have a lot of control over how much they get angry, although they have some control over how they express it.
http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20140729-is-it-bad-to-bottle-up-anger

A woman spends a weekend being a "slouch-and-spreader" on public transit. I have uncomfortable reactions to the tumblrs about men who do this (e.g. http://savingroomforcats.tumblr.com/). On the one hand I think they're funny, and men do sometimes seem to aggressively take up space in public. On the other hand, I don't like it when people are judgemental about how much space others are taking, as if all humans are supposed to fit inside the same sorts of boxes you have to prove your airplane carry-on baggage fits into.
http://www.bustle.com/articles/34279-why-do-guys-spread-their-legs-when-sitting-on-the-subway-my-weekend-of-sitting-like

A doctor writes about becoming a patient after sustaining an injury. Part 1 of 4.
http://laurietobyedison.com/discuss/2014/06/at-the-will-of-the-body-part-i-pain/
"It is not clear to me whether it is a side effect of having gone to medical school or an inborn personality trait, but I have always had a rather distant relationship with my body. This, I believe, is not completely uncommon. David Sedaris, in an essay called “A Shiner Like A Diamond” (in Me Talk Pretty One Day) says that he and his brother thought of their bodies as “mere vehicles . . . machines designed to transport our thoughts from one place to another.” (p. 133)"

"In Praise of Idleness" by Bertrand Russell (1932): I tried really hard to find some choice quotes for this essay but everything was irretrievably attached to everything else (which is the way really good essays work).
http://www.zpub.com/notes/idle.html

Comments

Footnote (legnote?)

[thnidu]

Not trying to defend people who take up more space than they should in public transit (etc.). But sometimes I (a man) have had twists in my underwear, or such, that made it /very uncomfortable/ to sit with my legs parallel-forward in front of me: a situation that I don't think happens with female anatomy.

Re: Footnote (legnote?)

[firecat]

Right, that's another example where an observer doesn't really know what's going on but sometimes feels free to judge anyway.

Re: Footnote (legnote?)

[bibliofile]

The only guy I still want to mock was the guy on the suburban express train who begrudgingly gave me room to sit down at all (on a crowded train, in rush hour) and insisted on keeping his (not small) briefcase on the seat rather than on his lap or the floor. Thus, a random woman was less important than his briefcase, and that's just silly.

(I took the train for decades when I lived in Chicago. This guy stood out!)

Re: Footnote (legnote?)

[thnidu]

Better had he stood UP.

Re: Footnote (legnote?)

[firecat]

That's mockable all right.

[bibliofile]

Oh, that doctor's blog post? That's my friend! She's such a good writer and thinker about these subjects.

[nellorat.livejournal.com]

The BBC piece on expressing anger did support my guess about the details of what they said: it's productive mainly if you do so in ways that reduce anger-generating events in the future. This also goes along with the finding that people who got angry more rarely had other good ways of coping with situations.

One way in which I think almost everyone can reduce anger--feelings, not just expression--is to try to negotiate with others about the kind of things that make you angry, instead of getting angry inside but not showing it--repeated over time--and then blowing up. Learning to speak up can be very difficult & I think it's one thing talking therapy can be good for.

I think it's also quite possible to control one's own feelings of anger in other ways, including self-talk and emotionally letting go of the past. And I actually do have quite a bit of control over my anger this way. But I think that's much, much harder than speaking up & takes years of practice.

[leafrider.livejournal.com]

Really interesting links! I find that I want to comment on each one, and lacking in time at the moment I'm just going to say that the article on "slouch and spread" made me think about some experiences I've had on buses and airplanes, and wonder about them. Some of the people photographed just looked to me as if they were relaxing, or were chubby enough that they really did need the extra space, or in a bad mood and didn't want to interact. But some, wow, they seemed to go out of their way to take up a LOT of space for no good reason. I can recall a few times being the last person to get on a crowded bus and not being able to find space anywhere. Spending the entire trip barely on the edge of a seat (school buses don't have anything to hold onto and don't even allow you to stand), and actually getting a horrible cramp in the leg that I had to put all my weight on to keep from falling on the floor at every turn. All because people couldn't scrunch over in their seat just a little more. I also hate to fly anymore because when I used to have to take business trips (which weren't fun to begin with) it seemed I always had to fly across country for hours behind the person who found it necessary to recline their seat into my lap. Or sat beside the person who insisted on having their arm on the armrest with their elbow nudging me in the ribs. Sigh.

Anyway, thanks for sharing these links. I might share some of them myself later.

[firecat]

Yep, some people are aggressive about laying claim to as much space as possible.

As for flying, I lay the blame firmly on the airlines, which keep making the seats narrower and closer together, and then encourage passengers to blame other passengers, especially larger passengers.

[leafrider.livejournal.com]

I agree about the airlines being at fault! There was a brief time when American reduced the number of seats (they advertised it, and actually did it), and during that time I preferred them over the others because finally there seemed to be a humane amount of space. But that didn't last long, as I understand it.

[firecat]

Share away, the more the merrier!