Doing pretty alright today. Been in a bit of a weird mental state lately,
but mood has been mostly okay thanks to relentless avoidance. I know exactly
why we've been feeling off, and I'm intentionally not letting myself deal
with it until the time comes because otherwise it's going to be much worse.
We have to deal with a major, longstanding phobia this Friday and we're
really not looking forward to it. It's a medical trauma thing- don't worry,
we're physically fine, just a routine check that's still hell to deal with
every time. I'm just hoping it's quick so we don't have time to properly
panic about it. The longer we can make it without processing the situation,
the less likely our brain is going to flip out and make it worse.

Does remind me that we accidentally conditioned ourselves as a kid because
of this. We tried using a kitten poster as a calming influence by
intentionally conditioning ourselves to feel happy and calm when looking at
it. It helped a little, but we accidentally re-associated it with the phobia
and couldn't look at it without being afraid for a few months. Same goes for
songs we listen to more than once while it's happening. I guess if we ever
need an aversive, we have one ready to go. There's nothing quite like extreme
terror to make you stop doing something.

Other than that, we're doing okay. Chipping away at a big project build in
a Minecraft server, currently working on some apartment buildings. Excited
to decorate since that's my favorite part. Classwork has been going well
and I'm feeling confident about this quarter. It's finally cold enough that
we don't need air conditioning, which is nice because those are way too loud
and the noise is stressful. Heaters are nice and quiet. Our cats love them,
too. It's adorable to see them rolling around by the baseboards.

Hey, whoever's reading this- thank you. You're appreciated. You're enough as
you are, and you deserve to be happy. Go eat something if you haven't yet and
make sure you're not dehydrated, okay? Take care of yourself.