1. They don’t hide their anxiety, they hide their symptoms.
To have concealed anxiety isn’t to deny having it – only to do
everything in your power to ensure other people don’t see you struggle.
2. They have the most anxiety about having anxiety.
Because they are not comfortable letting people see them in the throes
of an irrational panic, the most anxiety-inducing idea is… whether or
not they’ll have anxiety at any given moment in time.
3. They come across as a paradoxical mix of outgoing but introverted, very social but rarely out.
It is not that they are anti-social, just that they can only take being
around others incrementally (which is mostly normal). Yet, on the
surface, this may come across as confusing.
4. They make situations worse by trying to suppress their feelings about them. They
are extremely uncomfortable with other people seeing them in pain, and
they don’t want to feel pitied or as though they are compromising
anyone’s time. Yet, they make things worse for themselves by
suppressing, as it actually funnels a ton of energy into making the
problem larger and more present than it already was.
5. They are often hyper-aware and highly intuitive. Anxiousness
is an evolutionary function that essentially keeps us alive by making
us aware of our surroundings and other people’s motives. It’s only
uncomfortable when we don’t know how to manage it effectively – the
positive side is that it makes you hyper-conscious of what’s going on
around you.
6. Their deepest triggers are usually social situations. It’s
not that they feel anxious in an airplane, it’s that they feel anxious
in an airplane and are stuck around 50 other people. It’s not that they
will fail a test, but that they will fail a test and everyone in school
will find out and think they are incompetent and their parents will be
disappointed. It’s not that they will lose love, but that they will lose
love and nobody will ever love them again.
7. It is not always just a “panicked feeling” they have to hide.
It can also be a tendency to worry, catastrophizing, etc. The battle is
often (always?) between competing thoughts in their minds.
8. They are deep thinkers, and great problem-solvers.
One of the benefits of anxiety is that it leads you to considering
every worst case scenario, and then subsequently, how to handle or
respond to each.
9. They are almost always “self-regulating” their thoughts.
They’re talking themselves in, out, around, up or down from something
or another very often, and increasingly so in public places.
10. They don’t trust easily, but they will convince you that they do. They want to make the people around them feel loved and accepted as it eases their anxiety in a way.
11. They tend to desire control in other areas of their lives.
They’re over-workers or are manically particular about how they dress
or can’t really seem to let go of relationships if it wasn’t their idea
to end them.
12. They have all-or-nothing personalities, which is what creates the anxiety.
Despite being so extreme, they are highly indecisive. They try to
“figure out” whether or not something is right before they actually try
to do it.
13. They assume they are disliked. While this is often stressful, it often keeps them humble and grounded at the same time.
14. They are very driven (they care about the outcome of things).
They are in equal proportions as in control of their lives as they feel
out of control of their lives – this is because they so frequently try
to compensate for fear of the unknown.
15. They are very smart, but doubt it. A high intelligence is linked to increased anxiety (and being doubtful of one’s mental capacity are linked to both).
Me. So, so glad I got past it and got proper help. Now I’m able to share that I have anxiety with students who do as well. Takes a load off you to be able to address it.
Vampires don’t like sunlight but moonlight is actually also sunlight
Tell that to the werewolves.
Moonlight is only about 14% reflected sunlight, with a different spectrum (some wavelengths gets more absorbed than others, some more reflected, etc). If the two spectra of moonlight and sunlight were compared side-by-side with no mention of their origin, they basically appear as two completely different light sources, one peaking at the yellow wavelengths and the other peaking at the blue-green wavelengths.
To summarize; moonlight is not sunlight, it is reflected sunlight with a lot of its information lost or altered.
Does this mean that, with the right set-up, you could make light sources which mimicked moonlight accurately enough that it sets off someone’s lycanthropy? I’m not sure what such a device would be useful for, but it’d be neat nonetheless.
Technically, yes. In practice, whether it’s simple to do so or not will depend on the exact mechanisms that causes the transformation. I suspect the easiest way would be to get a lamp that mimics sunlight and shine it onto a surface of lunar regolith trapped behind a thin layer of transparent material to protect against oxidation.
this is amazing thank you
Okay but consider that the moon and the earth drift apart juuust a little bit each year—assuming that one’s lycanthropy is triggered by the AMOUNT of moonlight since what lore I know of consists of transformation on the full moon—eventually we’re going to be far enough away from the moon that the symptoms of lycanthropy will disappear forever
Actually no! I just heard a bit on NPR about this two days ago :3
The Moon is slowly drifting away, but it’ll eventually reach a static orbit and stop; it’s not going to fly off into space. What will happen though is kinda weird. When the Moon stops drifting away, the Earth-Moon system will become tidally locked. After that point, only one side of the Earth will ever face the Moon again. So it won’t be that lycanthropy will disappear forever; it’ll just only happen on half of the Earth :] :] :]
That raises another question though; will having the full moon always out, even during the day, mean that lycanthropes will always be shifted, or will the direct light of the sun overpower its effects during the day :?
HOLYSHIT, TIDALLY-LOCKED LYCANTHROPY PLANET
THIS IS THE BEST HIGH FANTASY KINGDOM DIVISION IMAGINABLE
THE KING OF ALL WOLVES!!!! A BORDER WITH BORDER CONFLICTS AND ROGUES WITH DUAL IDENTITIES!!!!! AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHH
The moon is drifting away because it’s ashamed to be seen with us.
Dang it, stop giving me more awesome roleplaying world ideas!
“How do you do it? How do you risk your life every day—you’re fucking smiling all the time. How do you do it? [I’m kind of asking as Liam to Sam, but mostly as Vax to Scanlan as well.] You almost died yesterday as well. Why do you do it?”
Episode 45, Those Who Walk Away
And this, right here, is one of the reasons why I love Critical Role.
