5 htp in chronic treating fatigue

It's been one week since he stopped talking. I have a lot of great things going for me and trying to focus on that and remain grateful but can't stop ruminating over the situation and his words. I'm trying to enjoy life and the trip I'm currently on that's fully funded by my institution. ( Helping with the refugee crisis and achieving health equity. I have my therapist appointment coming up soon ( she's also Muslim yay). I feel sad having to start this process all over again. It's already been hard my parents are trying there best to look and I feel so embarrassed and bad that I had just told them about this guy and wanting to inquire more and willing to meet him and his family.
Recap : I was talking to a brother, and things seemed to be going well. We discussed various aspects of our future together, including religious practices and family values. He would often talk about our future, which made me hopeful and excited. However, after not hearing from him for a day, I was suddenly hit with a message saying we are not compatible and that it's not his fault for wanting someone who comes from a fully Muslim household.
He mentioned my Christian mother as a negative, despite me being a practicing Muslim (I was born Muslim) and striving daily to get closer to the deen. My dad is Muslim, and my parents are still married. I grew up primarily with my dad's side of the family and was raised with strong Islamic values. My mom, although Christian, pushed me to learn how to read the Quran and to understand its meaning, and she raised me to be Muslim. On top of that, I have aunts who are devout Muslim women and all wear hijab ..... So him saying I have no Muslim women role models is hurtful and false. He has known from start my mom is Christian. The thing I agree only with is me traveling alone which I think was really the main factor but I had said if we were married I wouldn't travel alone without a mahram id obliged to the Hadith. This is the first and only time I'm traveling alone.
The messages below I feel it was very hurtful and disrespectful . ( I pray 5 times a day Tahajjud trying to read the Qu'ran more and memorize. I grew up in a joint family with my paternal side. My mom raised me Muslim Alhumduliah parents are still married. My mom in fact has expressed for my dad to take us to do Hajj and the importance to do it. I'm not a hijabi yet but am working towards it.) No means am I'm saying I'm perfect I have my flaws.
Him: Hey Salam, let me break it to u. me and u we are not compatible to be honest. I have to be really careful picking up who I share life with. U know women are crazy over here they initiate most of the divorces, because u follow how u feel not god , that's exactly the type of partner that's a no go for me. I told u I'm super traditional like we don't have exiled ppl in my family we don't marry kafer women to get confused kids tbh we don't do divorces because we don't just pick up any white woman from the street. My issue with u to be honest even tho ur a good person, u don't really come from a Muslim house and u don't have a Muslim woman role model. Basically ur mother is not Muslim so she can't set an example of what a Muslim woman is like. And again to be honest I dont find this my fault I'm looking for a traditional person and just normal Muslim that follow the deen in their life actions. Plus ur too busy for me ur focused in ur career too much and I don't want to change that. Like I don't want to come and be with u and I have to change u. Like I think i was trying to tell u last time I didn't get to continue talking, i wouldn't know what to do but kill myself if I have a woman brought shame to my family like my sister or any of our woman. So this is big for us Muslims and it seems that u don't understand those stuff.
Me: I have my aunts and grandmother who are Muslim women as influences. Allah yerhamha
(all hijabis)
Him: But still that's not like ur mother. Like half of ur other family is Christians. And what I meant by direct influence or a woman Muslim role model is like u seeing how ur mother treats ur father in a Muslim matter on everything she does, and I'm sorry ur mother is not Muslim so she won't be able to do that. So now u wanna tell me u act more like ur aunt than ur mom? U don't wear hijab just like ur mom, u care about ur career a lot like u told me like ur mom. So I didn't know that would be an issue knowing that ur not raised in a fully Muslim family. I thought i should be fair and give it a chance and not judge u according to ur family. Because u could have been exactly what I wanted. And btw I didn't say I want just an eastern woman, I said I want a Muslim woman u tend to find them more over there. And there is Muslim women here who wear the hijab and do what a Muslim does regardless because there is no law that says u can't be Muslim fully. So don't think it's because of u being western is the main problem, u being influenced a lot by the west that is the problem, so we could have been still talking. Since u said that u were traveling to overseas it just made me know I'm gonna have a lot of problems, it actually got me sad that we are not compatible.
The truth sometimes hurt, I didn't want to lie to you. I was gonna tell you the situation how it is so u don't be confused and I owe u that.
He sent 2 voice messages after the text that just disrespected me, my family and upbringing. Handed it by telling me he hopes I change to find a better man.
I did agree and acknowledge that it isn't right of me to travel alone. But at first had originally told me wasn't mad that just if we were married wouldn't travel alone which I'm fine with and prefer.

Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Content Warning: Domestic Abuse
***
We pulled off I-51 a little after midnight, stopping at a truck stop which was couched between the highway and a large forest.
We waited in the van for ten minutes or so. Trent had increased the sonar radius to its maximum of 30 miles a little over an hour ago. Somehow the red pings had kept up with us, holding a steady distance of around 20 miles. Considering we were averaging around 80 mph, and a coyote's top speed is only around 40 mph, we figured they had been enhanced in some way. Either that, or they shape-shifted into something faster. Regardless, now that we had stopped, we waited to see if the demon spawn would try and close the distance. Luckily, or unluckily, they didn't. They kept their 20 mile buffer, but we noticed they were beginning to spread out along the circumference of that boundary.
"We're close. They know that, so they're trying to trap us in." Trent said.
"Trying to?—more like they have."
We considered whether we should stay in the van and keep watch, but we figured that would do us little good. At their speed, they could be on us in ten minutes, which means we would need to stay up all night and keep tabs on their positions. Trent offered to stay up, of course, but I shut him down.
"The demon doesn't want to kill us now. You said it yourself. Plus, we need our rest. If they come, they come."
Trent didn't like it, but he acquiesced.
The truck stop had all the essentials: a gas station and mini mart with showers and an attached McDonald's, a large parking lot for truckers to idle and sleep, and even a section with lodging for those who wanted a more comfortable night's rest. I told Trent that he should take advantage of the showers, and after a little convincing, he agreed. While he was cleaning himself up, I patrolled the dingy, half-stocked aisles of "Daisy's Quick Mart". I probably would have been appalled at the quality of the store had I actually been paying any attention to it whatsoever. But I wasn't. I was thinking hard about what awaited me tomorrow.
During the drive, I had asked Trent why the demon would want us to return to the crash site. What did he mean that I would be 'confronting a dark entity in a place he couldn't help me'? He seemed hesitant to answer, but my little stunt outside the storage facility seemed to have sufficiently motivated him.
"When I said I've never done this before, I meant it." Trent started. "I've never done this exact thing before—meaning I've never projected someone into the past."
"So, I'm time traveling?" I asked.
"No—don't think of it like that." Trent paused, trying to come up with a good explanation. "It's more like I'm opening a window for you to look through: not a door. You're going to see the past, but you can't interact with the physicalities there. But that doesn't mean you can't interact with anything."
There was a space of silence as Trent tried to let me work out his meaning for myself. "I don't get it. Are you saying there's something I can interact with? Like what?" And then it hit me. "The demon. The demon can interact with me? Meaning what? It can kill me?"
"Meaning… I'm not exactly sure. You're going to be in a kind of psychic space. If it does damage, it won't be to your body. It'll be to your mind—or spirit. But I don't know what the limits of that damage could be. I just don't have those answers."
"If you've never done this, how do you know any of it will work?"
"That's an easy one." Trent answered. "Because it's been done to me."
There was silence.
"Look, if I know anything, I know my tech. Don't doubt that this will work. It's my job to make sure it does. I just need you to be in the right mental for this. Just because it knows your coming doesn't mean it automatically has the upper hand. It won't be able to see you unless you make contact with it first. In other words, you have to initiate contact. As long as you remain a spectator, you should be okay. Trust me. Just don't make contact."
I started pacing faster—fast enough to catch the attention of the overnight shift worker, a young man whose name I can't quite remember. I know it started with a "J". Jake, maybe? Anyway, he asked if I was alright, to which I responded in the affirmative. He left me alone for another couple passes, but when I almost ran into one of the shelves, he stood up and said, "Uh—I'm going to have to ask you to stop running around. I don't want you to hurt yourself."
I must have stared daggers at him, because he recoiled from my gaze. What's gotten into me? I thought. Then, steadying myself, I apologized. I looked around and grabbed the nearest edible looking piece of merchandise: a bag of Swedish Fish, and placed it down on the counter. "Just this, please."
The cashier rang me up. It was surprisingly cheap.
"Are you sure you're alright?" the young man asked. He was tall with brown hair. He seemed tired—maybe even more tired than me. But he also seemed kind.
I smiled as best I could and said, "No, I'm not. But there's not really anything you can do. Hell, there might not be anything I can do." I furrowed my eyebrows at my own response, realizing that imminent death may have broken my verbal filter.
On the other hand, the cashier did not seem surprised at all. "Ah, I see. It's one of those problems." He responded. "Well, hey, for what it's worth, you seem like one of the resilient ones. I think you'll be alright."
I only smiled and nodded at his mildly cryptic comment. Looking back, the whole interaction was a bit strange, but I had way too much mental clutter to recognize that in the moment. I took my Swedish Fish and walked through the anteroom which led to McDonald's. I found an open yellow booth that wasn't littered with crumpled straw sleeves and sat down, chomping mindlessly on my little red fish until Trent returned. When he arrived, he took my place, and I went to shower. After we were both clean and fed, we returned to the van. The pings were still pushed safely out of harm's way. But that didn't mean we were out of harm's way. Trent asked me if I wanted to sleep in the van, saying that "it'd be the safest place."
I thought it over. He was right, obviously. The van was not only outfitted with weapons I couldn't even begin to understand, but it was also our escape, and it would be just as difficult, if not more difficult to break into than the studio-style motel rooms with their wood doors and big windows. Still, if this was going to be my last night on earth, I wanted to sleep in a bed. A real bed. Trent understood and said he'd stay parked right outside my room for the night.
After purchasing a key from the night attendant, I moseyed over to the cement walkways which connected the twenty or so rooms. Mine was room #56, which I thought was odd since, like I said, there were only 20 rooms. I lugged in my tomato plushie and dad's old book and placed them on the queen mattress.
"I'll be right outside." Trent said after I collapsed onto the bed.
"Trent," I called out, stopping him half-way through the door.
"Yeah?"
All the blood in my body rushed up to my face as I realized my unfiltered mouth almost reflexively said the word "stay". I stared at Trent, my heart beating, my face hot. I considered asking him to sleep on the floor like my dad, but that would be childish and impolite. The alternative was to share my bed… Or I could take the floor.
"I'll just be right outside." Trent said before my mind processed a solution. "Come by if you need anything. I'll be up most of the night anyway."
"Okay," I replied in a faint voice.
Trent shut the door.
I sat atop the bedsheets and acquainted myself with my new living space. A feeling of regret closed over me as I considered that even sleeping on a carseat would have been better if it meant I didn't have to be alone. With a sigh, I turned on the bedside lamp and grabbed the book and stuffed tomato, using the tomato as a backrest as I slipped my legs under the covers and situated the book upright on my thighs. I cracked it open and was immediately blasted with a puff of dusty, old book scent. It was ripe at first, and I turned my head away to sneeze, but as I perused through the pages, the scent grew on me. It reminded me of the days growing up when I'd step into dad's study and read through one of the many volumes on cryptic topics which were at least two college degrees above my Lexile range.
I was only a couple minutes into browsing the collection of different scientific and philosophical works when I came across a page which contained highlighted text. This was unusual, as my dad would never mark up his books. He was a purist on that point. I rubbed my thumb over the yellow lines, and sure enough, it was highlighter.
The highlighted text was part of a small book by Carl Jung called "Synchronicity". There were a total of three pages that were marked, and they advanced like this:
Page 5:
The philosophical principle that underlies our conception of natural law is causality*. But if the connection between cause and effect turns out to be only statistically valid and relatively true, then the causal principle is only of relative use for explaining natural processes… That is as much to say that the connection of events may in certain circumstances be other than causal, and require another principle of explanation.*
Page 19:
…there are events which are related to one another experimentally, and in this case meaningfully*, without there being any possibility of proving that this relation is a causal one, since the "transmission" exhibits none of the known properties of energy…a situation which does not yet exist and will only occur in the future could transmit itself as a phenomenon of energy to a receiver in the present…Therefore, it cannot be a question of cause and effect, but of a falling together in time, a kind of simultaneity... "synchronicity"*
Page 22:
A young woman I was treating had, at a critical moment, a dream in which she was given a golden scarab. While she was telling me this dream I sat with my back to the closed window. Suddenly I heard a noise behind me, like a gentle tapping. I turned round and saw a flying insect knocking against the window pane from outside. I opened the window and caught the creature in the air as it flew in. It was the nearest analogy to a golden scarab that one finds in our latitudes, a scarabaeid beetle, the common rose-chafer… which contrary to its usual habits had evidently felt an urge to get into a dark room at this particular moment.
I flipped through the rest of the pages of the book. There was no more highlighted text, but there was a message on the last page which read:
Matthew 7:7-8
I'll meet you in the darkest place.
He also included his typical smiley face which had an ovular shape and three sprouts of hair which I now realized kind of resembled my tomato plushie. It was my dad's writing, of course. But why? And how? What did this mean?
The motel had a Bible stashed away in the nighstand drawer. I got it out and looked up the verses which read the following:
Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you: for every one that asketh receiveth; and he that seeketh findeth; and to him that knocketh it shall be opened.
I spent maybe an hour ruminating on all of this. The whole discourse on energy and causality and a "falling together in time" just seemed so right. It was clear that my dad definitely did know what I was going through, but for whatever reason, he made it seem like he was oblivious. Why had he hidden that from me? I felt like I was being pulled in two directions. On the one hand, my dad loved me enough to leave this note, maybe even knowing the exact moment I'd need it. But on the other hand, he had neglected my struggles throughout my entire childhood. He even lied at times. Was this really enough to make up for all of that?
And then there was the section about the future transmitting energy to the past. I read back through the whole paragraph and the original writer had meant it to say this as something that wasn't possible, but my dad's highlighting made it seem like he wanted to flip the meaning. The future does affect the past. I thought about where I was headed and wondered if I would soon discover that for myself.
Lastly, dad's message. The Bible verse reminded me of the first time I prayed; how I reached out to God and received peace as an answer to my prayer. Now I feel like I'm actively seeking… something, but I don't know yet what I'll find. And then there's knocking. At first that reminded me of the story with the beetle tapping on the window, but then I went back even deeper in my memory and dug out the monster tapping at my window, and the words my dad spoke to me in order to set my mind at ease: "you're a superhero. And you know what your greatest superpower is? Your greatest power is you get to tell the monsters what to do. Because the monsters are only as strong as the stories you tell about them…so if you're ever scared, honey, just dream up a better story."
I was crying into my stuffed tomato now. I felt like all the blinking pieces of my life had finally been pulled together into a completed puzzle. This was all by design. My entire life, filled with so much chaos and confusion, was actually preparing me for this moment. And my dad thought I had the tools and strength enough to get through it. I flipped through the book one more time, thinking maybe he had left some other hidden comment—some formula to defeat this demon and return home. But there was nothing. Only that one comment: "I'll meet you in the darkest place."
What's the darkest place, dad? Is that where I'm going? Are you saying you'll be there, too?
With those thoughts in mind, my eyes became heavy shutters which, with a slight pressure on the pulley, winded shut. My swimming thoughts and firework-like fears dissipated, and I returned to a precious childhood memory. It was after an evening soccer practice. Summer. Dad was driving me to Dairy Queen. I got a cherry-dipped twist cone. I was happy.
So, so happy.
***
I woke up to sunlight blaring through my windows. Shit, I overslept, was my immediate thought. I threw off my covers and opened the front door. A glance at the clock showed 1:13 PM. I shouldn't have even been allowed to stay checked in this long. Damn, am I gonna get double-billed for this?
I heard a rummaging sound around the corner of my motel room. It sounded like a squirrel was trying to find an afternoon snack in one of the garbage bins. I stepped outside. The sun was extremely bright, to the point where I had to squint and put my hand over my eyes to even see the ground in front of me. I was trying to walk toward the van, but somehow I ended up in front of the trash bins where the animal's tail was sticking out from a turned-over, silver garbage can. Its tail was wagging excitedly, and I remember thinking that it was much too large to be a squirrel.
The animal bent down as if biting onto something, and I heard the sound of its growl as it struggled to tug whatever it was free from the barrel. Inch by inch, the creature backed out of the canister, and more of its sharp, sticky hair was revealed. I heard something snap, then the creature leapt back and I saw what it was chomping on. My eyes widened in horror as the pink tube of a human intestine was pulled taut like the end of a tangled hose. Blood and entrails were spilling out of the human's opened gut. And then, behind the canine, I saw the person's face. His face was pale white, his eyes closed, and his hair was slicked back… It was Trent.
Before I could react, I heard footsteps approaching from behind. I whirled around and saw my dad. But—no, it wasn't him. It was someone wearing a paper-mache face mask that was painted to look like my dad. The forehead of the mask was already beginning to crack, white specks breaking off like sawdust. Through the cracks, I could see the figure's true form. I didn't know darkness had its own type of light, but that's the only way to describe it. It was as if malevolence itself was reified into a skin which was actually an amalgamation of millions of little, oozing parasites that leached into the nearby light. When it finally spoke, the demon's voice was a full octave lower than the old man's at the deli. And it had an earth-stilling gravitas.
"Today's the day!" He sang and reached into his pocket. His lips curled upward into a foxy smirk. "You have no idea how long I've waited for this day." He said and held up a razor blade. Half his facade had already fallen apart, and now I could see the bugs up close, writhing in what was either horror or ecstasy. And his scent… it was somehow more rank than the rabid coyote rummaging through the trash can with Trent's cut open body inside. The demon closed in on my position, and in one, decisive motion, he brought the blade close to his chin, then sliced it across my throat. "Wake up!" He screamed.
I jumped out of my bed and grabbed my throat, feeling the cold sting of its quick slice. Hyperventilating, I patted the area down, trying to hold the blood in, but when I removed my hands, I saw they were dry. It was only a dream, I thought. Gray light was only beginning to filter in through the drapes. I'm in my hotel room. I'm safe. I tried consoling, but the pragmatic mental massages weren't enough to hold the force of my knees buckling. I dropped onto the carpet and cried for a long while.
Outside, rain was beginning to fall.
***
By the time I met up with Trent, I had already composed myself and decided to keep my dad's message and the nightmare to myself. None of it seemed particularly productive from a logistical standpoint, anyway. And I wanted to focus on the mission.
We stopped by McDonald's and bought a couple cups of coffee. Trent asked if I wanted any food, and I declined. Black coffee seemed like the only thing my stomach could take at the present moment. I could tell Trent was hungry, but he tried playing it off (I guess to be respectful of me?) I told him to knock it off and get something to eat. I didn't need my Charon getting lightheaded and dropping the paddle before he finished rowing me to Hell. He didn't care much for my joke, but he ordered a couple Chicken McGriddles at the kiosk anyway.
There were maybe ten patrons spread throughout the restaurant. We sat down at the same booth from the prior night, this time across from one another. Trent spent the first ten minutes or so babbling about our fuel supply and the logistics of the trip from here on in. Practical stuff. I've come to realize that's how he deals with his stress. He talks it out in short, durable sentences. I mostly nodded and watched as what looked like a storm front closed in on the truck stop. The sky was overcast, and there were darker clouds in the distance. The rain was still only a patter, but a middle-aged man wearing a yellow bow tie on the wall-mounted TV confirmed that there would be heavier rain and thunderstorms very soon.
After the worker delivered Trent's food and he ate it in record time, I posed the one question that was still on my mind.
"How do I fight him?" I asked.
Trent finished a large gulp of his coffee, then looked at me. It was the first substantial thing I'd said all morning; Trent could tell something was off with me, but he figured there was no point in asking what it was. "By 'him', I assume you mean the demon?"
I nodded.
Trent licked his teeth clean. "You could try praying again."
"I'm serious," I responded.
"I'm serious, too. It worked before, didn't it?"
"You mean at my house?"
Trent nodded.
"I thought you weren't a religious man?"
"I'm not. Just a practical one. If praying worked before, maybe it'll work again."
"That's the best you've got? A maybe?"
"No, I've got a lot of shit better than a maybe." He answered. "It's just not accessible where you're going. Which is why I recommend not making contact on the first run."
"First run? So we're going to do this more than once?"
"At least," Trent answered. Then, seeing my expression, he continued. "What? You thought this was going to be a one-and-done? We have to conduct some research first. I did tell you this was new for me, right?"
Somehow Trent's response had set my mind at ease a little. I was going to have more than one chance. Of course, why wouldn't I be able to go back more than once?
"Why didn't you tell me this earlier? It would have gone a long way in easing my mind."
Trent lifted his hands in defense. "Sorry, I just thought that was a given. I mean, what we're doing is dangerous, just like I said, but it doesn't mean we aren't going to approach this as safely and scientifically as possible. However, there is a different problem with running multiple trials."
"The Organization?"
"That's right," Trent said like a proud parent. "Our little experiment will be like a giant spotlight, and the longer we wait around after it's on us, the greater the chance we'll have unwelcome company."
"So, safe but speedy."
"Safe but speedy. Exactly."
***
We fueled up and were back on the road a little after 8:00. From that point on, Trent and I were absolutely silent. I had the distinct feeling of being in the eye of a storm. The pings moved closer commensurate with our progress toward the crash site. The cloudfront continued its advance. And I noticed a haze beginning to descend onto the road ahead of us. It was fog.
We meandered further inland, the forest thickening around us until the rain almost stopped entirely—the leaves drinking it up before it fell onto our windshield. I kept my eyes on the radar. We were approaching the large yellow circle which indicated we had arrived. As we pulled closer, I began to feel things. Fear. Eeriness. Doubt. Then happiness. Hope. Love. Normally feelings like these had a clear source to picture, but these sensations came on in waves without any discernible reason. It was almost as if they were blinking into existence inside me.
"Here we go," Trent said like an airline pilot readying his crew for turbulence.
I still recall the exact moment we crossed the boundary into the area of higher energy. It was like something just "clicked" in my brain, and all of a sudden everything felt so much closer. The sound of the rain against the trees was almost right next to my ear. The trees in the distance would oscillate between their position a half-mile out, then suddenly seem five meters away. If I focused on something long enough, it began to radiate those same ethereal particles as when Trent released Ava's "phase lock". I checked to make sure the shifter wasn't set to "TD". Sure enough, it was still in drive.
"Can you see them?" Trent asked. "The shifts?"
"Yeah," I said in a dreamy voice. I felt like I was driving through a wonderland.
"It's the energy. I barely notice a difference. A bit of movement in the trees, but not much else. But I'm sure for you, it's a whole experience."
"What is this?" I raised my hand and caught some of the pixel dust dripping off the sun visor. It disappeared when it made contact with my hand.
"It's a kind of radiation. Everything emits it, just in different quantities. I'm still not exactly sure how it relates to the other realms, but I'm guessing it's a kind of primordial matter that helps connect our worlds."
"It's beautiful," I exclaimed. "I wish I could see the world like this all the time."
"Maybe you will," Trent whispered.
As we arrived at the crash site, I began to get glimpses of the past. My childhood dreams and memories were pushing their way out from my subconscious. I noticed an increased number of blinks, which were validated by Ava who reported the following: "Currently detecting 14,350 novel emergences and 2,777 controlled agents. Net anomalies: 2,777."
"That's a lot of blinks." I remarked. "Why doesn't Ava include them in the net anomalies?"
Trent turned his head so I could see his smirk. "Because blinks aren't anomalies."
I thought about it for a second. Blinks aren't anomalies. "I never thought about it that way."
"It's hard to think about it that way when 'normal' for most people means not picking up on a fundamental aspect of reality. But that doesn't make it any less real."
We continued past the epicenter of the yellow circle. "Are we not stopping?" I asked. "I think we already passed the crash site."
"It doesn't have to be exactly at the site," Trent said. "Plus, we don't want to stop on the side of the road and risk getting some civilian involved. There's a field about half a mile up ahead. I'm going to pull off the road and set up camp there.
The "field" that Trent was referring to was actually a large clearing that dipped down into several trench-like troughs which were filled to the brim with fog like witches cauldrons. Further on in the distance, I saw open fields, probably used for farming, and then a large hill where the trees once again reasserted themselves. We had pulled off the road and up a small incline where the trees had already been broken down, leaving a trail for us to drive through. When we surfaced at the edge of the clearing, Trent pulled us onto a flat bed of dried mud which was maybe thirty yards long.
"Here," he said with a sigh.
We both sat for a minute, looking around at the field. We had finally arrived. The rain was beginning to pick up, and the dark sky made it almost impossible to discern the time of day.
"You ready?" Trent asked.
I looked at him. Really looked at him. In his blue eyes. Was I ready? Did it even matter?
"Let's do this," I said.
***
This was the first time I was really able to inspect the back of Trent's van. He had talked up his gear a lot, and honestly, I was impressed. Not in the way that a scientist is impressed by another scientist's lab—I wasn't any kind of expert—but it still seemed remarkably well managed. Now that I was in a state where my vision had been enhanced, I could actually see the enigmatic particles circulating through the pneumatic tubes which were coiled like the pipes and valves of an elaborate wind instrument. The walls of the van, itself, were glistening white, making it easier to make out everything else inside. Along the floor were five overturned columns. Each column was dark and had a vibrating quality, as if they were charged with energy. Then atop the center three columns was a small altar which supported an apparatus with two skinny, metal arms holding a silver halo. At present, the arms were folded and the halo was suspended a few inches above the altar, faced-down. I thought maybe I'd see particles exuding from it, but instead it was emitting visible waves which bent and warped everything they touched.
"That thing is emitting a lot of energy." I remarked, gesturing toward the halo.
Trent stepped in between the columns and started pulling out the packages he had stuffed in there yesterday. "Just wait till' it's on."
Most of the packages contained only a single piece of equipment, and were otherwise packed with foam peanuts. We carefully removed each box and set them on the ground outside. I asked if the rain would damage any of the stuff inside, to which Trent only laughed and continued lugging out the boxes. When they were all out, Trent removed a box cutter from his pocket and went one-by-one opening them. There were eight pieces in total.
"What is it?" I asked as we fished the first item out.
"It's another apparatus, like the one inside. Except it'll mount on the ground out here."
I pulled out what looked like a metal tripod.
"Good, that'll go on the bottom."
"Where are we setting it up?"
"Over here," Trent said and stepped five paces away from the van. He coordinated himself up so he was centrally aligned with the inner ring, then stomped a few times. "This is the spot."
As we continued to work, I asked Trent about how the whole contraption works.
"Do you remember the first time we were in the van? When we had to escape from the semi-truck?" Trent asked and connected a secondary mounting apparatus on top of the tripod. It had four spider-like legs that made right angles and stuck into the ground.
"Of course," I said. "The 'phase lock'."
"Yeah," Trent said and gestured toward the metal stick that was in my hand. I handed it to him. "The phase lock is a seal on the level of energy that the van is allowed to release. It also controls its dispersion pattern so that it releases its energy in a steady wave. This allows Ava to scan for anomalies without causing us to become an anomaly." Trent stuck the plank into the neck of the tripod.
"So when you released the phase lock, we started emitting more energy."
"That's right." Trent confirmed. "Enough to create an alternate route through a different realm."
"So we blinked into a different realm, then back, just to avoid that truck?"
"That's right."
"But why couldn't we just move out of the way?"
"Because it had locked onto us. It was tracking our motion and adjusting its course based on the amount of energy we were emitting. So in order to escape, we had to radically skew our potential energy and then use it to shift."
"Couldn't he have just followed us?"
Trent connected four more pieces to the device which now looked like an elaborate teepee. He was fishing in the last box when he spoke again. "Yeah, he could have. But it was highly improbable that he would have found us." Trent returned from the bottom of the box with another silver ring in hand. "Think of it like this. Let's say you're trying to escape from some bad guy who's coming after you, and you enter a new room you've never seen before. Would you prefer this room to have three doors to go through, or ten?"
I thought about his riddle for a second, then responded, "It depends where they go."
Trent fastened the ring atop the teepee. "Let's say they all lead to random places, or let's say they're all closets that lead nowhere. The key is that more is better, because the more doors he has to check, the less likely he is to pick the correct one. Make sense?"
"So we opened up a bunch of doors and escaped through one at random?"
"Hence the gear 'TD', for 'Trap Door'."
I marveled at the insights, but not for long. Trent hopped back in the van and pulled a lever that I hadn't seen until now. The two metal arms raised the inner ring until it was perpendicular with the altar. Then Trent clicked one of three red buttons along the back wall, and I saw what looked like a large, glass eye suspended in a magnifying glass protruding from the wall, aligned with the center of both rings. A couple seconds later, the glass eye began to focus the energy which was being fed to it from the pneumatic tubes, and a blue pyramid of light projected from it into the first ring, then from the first ring into the second ring. All three pieces were aligned at slightly diminishing heights, so the cylinder of light beamed through the second ring, into the ground.
"Alright, time for the first trial."
I felt the nerves starting up in my stomach. Trent sensed this and hopped out of the truck. It was raining quite hard now, though it was still warm. Both Trent and I were soaked, but that hardly concerned us. He reached out and put his hand on my shoulder. "I know you're feeling scared." He said. "But trust me on this. You're going to do fine. Just keep in mind what we talked about. Stay a spectator. Okay?"
I looked into his blue eyes, which seemed especially gray in the dark. Still, Trent's voice was reassuring. All I had to do was trust him. Trust myself. Trust my dad. And it was all going to turn out right.
"I'm ready," I said.
Trent was still for a second, holding my eyes in his. Then he guided me behind the outer ring and into the cylinder of light.
"I should step into it now?" I asked, afraid I'd be called away immediately.
"It's not on yet, so don't worry. I still have to press another button."
I followed Trent's instructions and stood in the blue light which was centered on my chest. Then I watched as Trent ran into the back of the van and posted up next to the glass eye. "Ready?" He yelled out. It was hard to hear him over the rain, but I yelled back. "Ready!"
The next thing I saw was a blinding blue light beam from the van. I heard what sounded like a laser, then saw the cylinder oscillate, expanding and compressing. When the energy reached the second ring, I saw everything around me light up—it looked brighter than noon on a cloudless day. Then the oscillations made their way to me, and I was swallowed up whole.
***
When I came to, I was in the backseat of a car. I felt my butt rumbling. Everything was dim and quiet. And then I heard a woman's voice from in front of me.
"Mark, please, not with Lauren in the back."
The man, who I now identified as my father, pulled the cigarette away from his lips and blew the smoke at my mom. He eyed the back seat where I was sitting, using one of five markers that hadn't rolled off my lap to color a rabbit in my animal color book.
"The kid's fine." he said and took another drag.
"Mark," my mom repeated.
I saw my dad raise his hand in a rapid motion. "I said she's fine, Cheryl. Now check the map and make sure we're going the right away. I can't see shit with all this fog."
I took a moment to make sure I was really in the back seat. I patted myself. I clearly had weight. Then I tried touching the car. At first, my fingertips met a solid surface, but when I tried to press through, my hand slipped into the car. I quickly pulled my hand away as if I had reached into a fire.
That's when I heard the little three year old next to me start crying. I turned and saw that little-me had dropped another couple markers onto the ground and was struggling to reach them.
"Hey!" my dad shouted. "What did I say about crying?"
"Quit it, Mark. She just dropped her markers." said my mom; she turned to help me pick them up.
"What did you say to me?" Mark spat with a voice full of guile. He reached out and pushed her back into her seat. "Don't," he commanded. "She has to learn how to deal with life."
"Deal…" My mom started in disbelief. "Deal with life? Do you hear yourself? What's gotten into you?"
"Sometimes shit happens. It doesn't give her the right to cry. You helping her is just going to reinforce her behavior."
"Her behavior? What about your behavior? You're acting like a total dick."
I didn't even have a moment to react before my dad's hand was across my mom's face. I felt the slap more than I heard it, my own face seeming to swell with the force of the blow. I saw my mom cover her mouth and lean away. Then little-me began to cry even louder, which only challenged my dad to step up his own volume.
"Everyone needs to get a fucking grip before I crash this car." My dad shouted and took another drag. The scariest part was I couldn't tell if he was warning us or threatening us. I felt the sudden urge to do something. There was no way this was real. I was definitely in some fantasy concocted by the demon. He wanted to turn me against my dad. That was the only explanation for something like this. My dad was a good man, not… this.
As I contemplated what to do, I saw a small, golden light appear behind little-me's window. Apparently she saw it, too, because her cries hushed as she traced the wisp with her eyes. After a second, the wisp transformed into a bunny rabbit, reminiscent of the one she was coloring. The rabbit hopped alongside the window, then did a couple circles in place. I watched little me let out a playful laugh and reach toward the window.
"What's going on back there?" my dad asked with a scowl. Apparently the only sound more disturbing than cries were laughs.
I looked back to the front and saw my mom wiping blood from her lip. Her expression was miserable. "Leave her alone, Mark."
"I'll do whatever I damn well want to do, Cheryl. It's my kid back there."
My mom was quiet.
When I looked back toward the rabbit, it was no longer a rabbit but a person. Or at least it looked like a person. The figure radiated pure gold, and atop his head was what appeared to be a King's crown. I recalled Allison's experience of seeing the sun-like figure in her moment of distress. Was that what was happening here? Was this really all true?
"Hey!" My dad shouted, eyeing little-me from the rear-view mirror. "What are you reaching at?"
I looked and saw the golden figure extending his hand toward the window, and little me's hand was reaching back. "Mom, dad, it bright." little-me said.
"What's bright, honey?" my mom asked.
"Don't encourage her, Cheryl."
"Someone there!" little me shouted happily and dropped the rest of the markers and the coloring book onto the ground.
"Who's there?" asked my mom.
"Cheryl, I swear to God. Sit the fuck down."
Everything from that moment on happened so quickly I barely had any time to process it. My mom lifted out of her seat to either get little me's attention or help me pick up my coloring book. My dad responded by grabbing onto her throat, letting go of the steering wheel entirely. He threw her back against the car door, and her head hit the window so hard, the glass cracked. My dad had dropped his cigarette, and I could smell smoke coming from under his seat, but that didn't seem to bother him at all. He turned toward little-me at the same moment my three-year-old hand reached out and grabbed onto the golden figure, whose hand diffused through the window. When my dad turned, I got a whiff of the most awful smell that I wouldn't have been able to place had I not had that nightmare last night. He grabbed onto little-me's shoulder and tugged her away from the golden figure that was trying to pull her the other way. My dad's facade began to crack, and I could see those dark bugs crawling out from the pores in his arms, marching down toward little-me.
I reacted.
I grabbed onto my dad's arm and pulled him off little-me. I heard the sound of my shirt ripping as she was torn from his grip and pulled out of the car, diffusing through it like a ghost. My brief victory was immediately overturned as I saw what was now clearly the demon smiling at me, his wretched fingers curled around my forearm.
"Caught you," He sneered.
Then the whole world once again diffused into countless numbers of particles, only this time, instead of riding through it, I felt like I was falling through an elevator shaft with each floor darker than the last. The further I fell, the less I became aware of my surroundings, and the more I felt a deep sense of loneliness. It was as if I was the only person in the whole world: and the whole world was a prison designed entirely for me. This went on for so long, I began to forget who I was. Where I was. What was.
And then I landed.
***
Source Used:
Jung, Carl. Synchronicity. Translated by Sonu Shamdasani, Princeton University Press, 2010.

Hi guys, so doc sent me to do ultrasound for gallbladder due to upper abdomen pain and right shoulder pain (occasional) and I wasn’t even aware I had gallstones for the past 10 years. So she sent me to recheck. She ordered to check all organs as I’ve been diabetic type 2 for couple years.
Sounds like fatty liver disease which may also explain extreme fatigue past year or so. She’s out of the office rn so I’m stuck waiting to hear back. I’m 38yr old and yes overweight since having 3 kids. About 245 (bk was 130)… see results below. Not sure how it says negative ultrasound yet there’s fatty liver and it is a larger size imo.

• Impression
  1. Fatty change of a normal sized liver. No hepatic mass is seen. 2. Cholelithiasis. No sonographic evidence of acute cholecystitis. 3. Otherwise technically limited but negative ultrasound of the abdomen. WS: 129674-RAD Signed By: Jerome Cordes, MD on 6/9/2024 2:16 PM Narrative US ABDOMEN COMPLETE HISTORY: Evaluate for stones. COMPARISON: CT of the abdomen and pelvis with contrast 05/21/2014. TECHNIQUE: Multiple ultrasound images of the abdomen were obtained. FINDINGS: Ultrasound penetration is limited by the patient's body habitus, dense liver and gas-filled loops of peristalsing bowel. This results in obscuration of the pancreas, portions of the vascular structures and generalized image degradation. Liver: The liver demonstrates increased echogenicity compatible with fatty change. Liver length is normal at 15.3 cm in the RIGHT midclavicular line. There is no evidence of a space occupying hepatic mass. Gallbladder and Bile Ducts: There is cholelithiasis present with multiple mobile gallstones visualized the largest measuring 10 mm, mixed with a small amount of gallbladder sludge. There is no gallbladder wall thickening or pericholecystic fluid present. The common duct is not dilated. The common bile duct measures 3 mm. Spleen: Within normal limits in size. Pancreas: Obscured. Right Kidney: There is no evidence for renal mass, nephrolithiasis, hydronephrosis or abnormal echogenicity. The RIGHT kidney measures 12.0 x 4.2 x 4.8 cm. Left Kidney: There is no evidence for renal mass, nephrolithiasis, hydronephrosis or abnormal echogenicity. The LEFT kidney measures 12.1 x 4.4 x 4.5 cm. Aorta and IVC: The visualized aorta and IVC are unremarkable.*

26M 5’10” 165 lbs
Prescriptions: mirtazipine, singular, Zyrtec, nasonex, symbicort, descovy generic
Possible related diagnosis: wall thickening of gallbladder
About 10 years ago my appendix ruptured and I had several surgeries, including them going into my stomach through my bellybutton. So I have scar tissue all the way deep in my bellybutton.
Tests done: endoscopy, colonoscopy, ultrasound, blood tests, stool sample tests, urine tests. Just took another sample at urgent care 20 minutes ago.
I have a dermatology referral coming up, but not scheduled yet (not happy with my pcp)
I vape nicotine and thc
Bellybutton symptoms- recurring infection of bellybutton. Leaks puss and stinks. Red and swollen, deep in bellybutton. Painful when touching deep in bellybutton. Mupirocin gets rid of the infection, until it comes back. The first infection happened January 2023. My second was February 2024, and I’ve had four bellybutton infections just in 2024. I don’t want to use the mupirocin because it is not a long term fix, and I don’t want the infection to become resistant. started today leaking puss and blood for the fourth time this year
Secondary symptoms- recurring fungal (not confirmed) infection of feet (stinky, yellow, white lines on nails). Muscle fatigue.
Unknown stomach issue- started in January 2023 with extreme pain like when my appendix burst, nausea and stool full of bile (yellow, burning, very soft). Tests done, nothing found. The extreme pain mostly went away, but I still get nausea and stool full of bile to this day. The only medicine to really help is pepto bismal. Also, my body does not break down certain foods. My list includes peas, nuts, spinach, onions, peppers, carrots, and zucchini. There are chunks in my stool. Example, diced onions keep their full shape/color if I swallow one unchewed.
My doctors eventually thought my stomach issues were due to the descovy. I started that in December 2020.
What do you all think is going on?

Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
We pulled off I-51 a little after midnight, stopping at a truck stop which was couched between the highway and a large forest.
We waited in the van for ten minutes or so. Trent had increased the sonar radius to its maximum of 30 miles a little over an hour ago. Somehow the red pings had kept up with us, holding a steady distance of around 20 miles. Considering we were averaging around 80 mph, and a coyote's top speed is only around 40 mph, we figured they had been enhanced in some way. Either that, or they shape-shifted into something faster. Regardless, now that we had stopped, we waited to see if the demon spawn would try and close the distance. Luckily, or unluckily, they didn't. They kept their 20 mile buffer, but we noticed they were beginning to spread out along the circumference of that boundary.
"We're close. They know that, so they're trying to trap us in." Trent said.
"Trying to?—more like they have."
We considered whether we should stay in the van and keep watch, but we figured that would do us little good. At their speed, they could be on us in ten minutes, which means we would need to stay up all night and keep tabs on their positions. Trent offered to stay up, of course, but I shut him down.
"The demon doesn't want to kill us now. You said it yourself. Plus, we need our rest. If they come, they come."
Trent didn't like it, but he acquiesced.
The truck stop had all the essentials: a gas station and mini mart with showers and an attached McDonald's, a large parking lot for truckers to idle and sleep, and even a section with lodging for those who wanted a more comfortable night's rest. I told Trent that he should take advantage of the showers, and after a little convincing, he agreed. While he was cleaning himself up, I patrolled the dingy, half-stocked aisles of "Daisy's Quick Mart". I probably would have been appalled at the quality of the store had I actually been paying any attention to it whatsoever. But I wasn't. I was thinking hard about what awaited me tomorrow.
During the drive, I had asked Trent why the demon would want us to return to the crash site. What did he mean that I would be 'confronting a dark entity in a place he couldn't help me'? He seemed hesitant to answer, but my little stunt outside the storage facility seemed to have sufficiently motivated him.
"When I said I've never done this before, I meant it." Trent started. "I've never done this exact thing before—meaning I've never projected someone into the past."
"So, I'm time traveling?" I asked.
"No—don't think of it like that." Trent paused, trying to come up with a good explanation. "It's more like I'm opening a window for you to look through: not a door. You're going to see the past, but you can't interact with the physicalities there. But that doesn't mean you can't interact with anything."
There was a space of silence as Trent tried to let me work out his meaning for myself. "I don't get it. Are you saying there's something I can interact with? Like what?" And then it hit me. "The demon. The demon can interact with me? Meaning what? It can kill me?"
"Meaning… I'm not exactly sure. You're going to be in a kind of psychic space. If it does damage, it won't be to your body. It'll be to your mind—or spirit. But I don't know what the limits of that damage could be. I just don't have those answers."
"If you've never done this, how do you know any of it will work?"
"That's an easy one." Trent answered. "Because it's been done to me."
There was silence.
"Look, if I know anything, I know my tech. Don't doubt that this will work. It's my job to make sure it does. I just need you to be in the right mental for this. Just because it knows your coming doesn't mean it automatically has the upper hand. It won't be able to see you unless you make contact with it first. In other words, you have to initiate contact. As long as you remain a spectator, you should be okay. Trust me. Just don't make contact."
I started pacing faster—fast enough to catch the attention of the overnight shift worker, a young man whose name I can't quite remember. I know it started with a "J". Jake, maybe? Anyway, he asked if I was alright, to which I responded in the affirmative. He left me alone for another couple passes, but when I almost ran into one of the shelves, he stood up and said, "Uh—I'm going to have to ask you to stop running around. I don't want you to hurt yourself."
I must have stared daggers at him, because he recoiled from my gaze. What's gotten into me? I thought. Then, steadying myself, I apologized. I looked around and grabbed the nearest edible looking piece of merchandise: a bag of Swedish Fish, and placed it down on the counter. "Just this, please."
The cashier rang me up. It was surprisingly cheap.
"Are you sure you're alright?" the young man asked. He was tall with brown hair. He seemed tired—maybe even more tired than me. But he also seemed kind.
I smiled as best I could and said, "No, I'm not. But there's not really anything you can do. Hell, there might not be anything I can do." I furrowed my eyebrows at my own response, realizing that imminent death may have broken my verbal filter.
On the other hand, the cashier did not seem surprised at all. "Ah, I see. It's one of those problems." He responded. "Well, hey, for what it's worth, you seem like one of the resilient ones. I think you'll be alright."
I only smiled and nodded at his mildly cryptic comment. Looking back, the whole interaction was a bit strange, but I had way too much mental clutter to recognize that in the moment. I took my Swedish Fish and walked through the anteroom which led to McDonald's. I found an open yellow booth that wasn't littered with crumpled straw sleeves and sat down, chomping mindlessly on my little red fish until Trent returned. When he arrived, he took my place, and I went to shower. After we were both clean and fed, we returned to the van. The pings were still pushed safely out of harm's way. But that didn't mean we were out of harm's way. Trent asked me if I wanted to sleep in the van, saying that "it'd be the safest place."
I thought it over. He was right, obviously. The van was not only outfitted with weapons I couldn't even begin to understand, but it was also our escape, and it would be just as difficult, if not more difficult to break into than the studio-style motel rooms with their wood doors and big windows. Still, if this was going to be my last night on earth, I wanted to sleep in a bed. A real bed. Trent understood and said he'd stay parked right outside my room for the night.
After purchasing a key from the night attendant, I moseyed over to the cement walkways which connected the twenty or so rooms. Mine was room #56, which I thought was odd since, like I said, there were only 20 rooms. I lugged in my tomato plushie and dad's old book and placed them on the queen mattress.
"I'll be right outside." Trent said after I collapsed onto the bed.
"Trent," I called out, stopping him half-way through the door.
"Yeah?"
All the blood in my body rushed up to my face as I realized my unfiltered mouth almost reflexively said the word "stay". I stared at Trent, my heart beating, my face hot. I considered asking him to sleep on the floor like my dad, but that would be childish and impolite. The alternative was to share my bed… Or I could take the floor.
"I'll just be right outside." Trent said before my mind processed a solution. "Come by if you need anything. I'll be up most of the night anyway."
"Okay," I replied in a faint voice.
Trent shut the door.
I sat atop the bedsheets and acquainted myself with my new living space. A feeling of regret closed over me as I considered that even sleeping on a carseat would have been better if it meant I didn't have to be alone. With a sigh, I turned on the bedside lamp and grabbed the book and stuffed tomato, using the tomato as a backrest as I slipped my legs under the covers and situated the book upright on my thighs. I cracked it open and was immediately blasted with a puff of dusty, old book scent. It was ripe at first, and I turned my head away to sneeze, but as I perused through the pages, the scent grew on me. It reminded me of the days growing up when I'd step into dad's study and read through one of the many volumes on cryptic topics which were at least two college degrees above my Lexile range.
I was only a couple minutes into browsing the collection of different scientific and philosophical works when I came across a page which contained highlighted text. This was unusual, as my dad would never mark up his books. He was a purist on that point. I rubbed my thumb over the yellow lines, and sure enough, it was highlighter.
The highlighted text was part of a small book by Carl Jung called "Synchronicity". There were a total of three pages that were marked, and they advanced like this:
Page 5:
The philosophical principle that underlies our conception of natural law is causality. But if the connection between cause and effect turns out to be only statistically valid and relatively true, then the causal principle is only of relative use for explaining natural processes… That is as much to say that the connection of events may in certain circumstances be other than causal, and require another principle of explanation.
Page 19:
…there are events which are related to one another experimentally, and in this case meaningfully, without there being any possibility of proving that this relation is a causal one, since the "transmission" exhibits none of the known properties of energy…a situation which does not yet exist and will only occur in the future could transmit itself as a phenomenon of energy to a receiver in the present…Therefore, it cannot be a question of cause and effect, but of a falling together in time, a kind of simultaneity... "synchronicity"
Page 22:
A young woman I was treating had, at a critical moment, a dream in which she was given a golden scarab. While she was telling me this dream I sat with my back to the closed window. Suddenly I heard a noise behind me, like a gentle tapping. I turned round and saw a flying insect knocking against the window pane from outside. I opened the window and caught the creature in the air as it flew in. It was the nearest analogy to a golden scarab that one finds in our latitudes, a scarabaeid beetle, the common rose-chafer… which contrary to its usual habits had evidently felt an urge to get into a dark room at this particular moment.
I flipped through the rest of the pages of the book. There was no more highlighted text, but there was a message on the last page which read:
Matthew 7:7-8
I'll meet you in the darkest place.
He also included his typical smiley face which had an ovular shape and three sprouts of hair which I now realized kind of resembled my tomato plushie. It was my dad's writing, of course. But why? And how? What did this mean?
The motel had a Bible stashed away in the nighstand drawer. I got it out and looked up the verses which read the following:
Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you: for every one that asketh receiveth; and he that seeketh findeth; and to him that knocketh it shall be opened.
I spent maybe an hour ruminating on all of this. The whole discourse on energy and causality and a "falling together in time" just seemed so right. It was clear that my dad definitely did know what I was going through, but for whatever reason, he made it seem like he was oblivious. Why had he hidden that from me? I felt like I was being pulled in two directions. On the one hand, my dad loved me enough to leave this note, maybe even knowing the exact moment I'd need it. But on the other hand, he had neglected my struggles throughout my entire childhood. He even lied at times. Was this really enough to make up for all of that?
And then there was the section about the future transmitting energy to the past. I read back through the whole paragraph and the original writer had meant it to say this as something that wasn't possible, but my dad's highlighting made it seem like he wanted to flip the meaning. The future does affect the past. I thought about where I was headed and wondered if I would soon discover that for myself.
Lastly, dad's message. The Bible verse reminded me of the first time I prayed; how I reached out to God and received peace as an answer to my prayer. Now I feel like I'm actively seeking… something, but I don't know yet what I'll find. And then there's knocking. At first that reminded me of the story with the beetle tapping on the window, but then I went back even deeper in my memory and dug out the monster tapping at my window, and the words my dad spoke to me in order to set my mind at ease: "you're a superhero. And you know what your greatest superpower is? Your greatest power is you get to tell the monsters what to do. Because the monsters are only as strong as the stories you tell about them…so if you're ever scared, honey, just dream up a better story."
I was crying into my stuffed tomato now. I felt like all the blinking pieces of my life had finally been pulled together into a completed puzzle. This was all by design. My entire life, filled with so much chaos and confusion, was actually preparing me for this moment. And my dad thought I had the tools and strength enough to get through it. I flipped through the book one more time, thinking maybe he had left some other hidden comment—some formula to defeat this demon and return home. But there was nothing. Only that one comment: "I'll meet you in the darkest place."
What's the darkest place, dad? Is that where I'm going? Are you saying you'll be there, too?
With those thoughts in mind, my eyes became heavy shutters which, with a slight pressure on the pulley, winded shut. My swimming thoughts and firework-like fears dissipated, and I returned to a precious childhood memory. It was after an evening soccer practice. Summer. Dad was driving me to Dairy Queen. I got a cherry-dipped twist cone. I was happy.
So, so happy.
***
I woke up to sunlight blaring through my windows. Shit, I overslept, was my immediate thought. I threw off my covers and opened the front door. A glance at the clock showed 1:13 PM. I shouldn't have even been allowed to stay checked in this long. Damn, am I gonna get double-billed for this?
I heard a rummaging sound around the corner of my motel room. It sounded like a squirrel was trying to find an afternoon snack in one of the garbage bins. I stepped outside. The sun was extremely bright, to the point where I had to squint and put my hand over my eyes to even see the ground in front of me. I was trying to walk toward the van, but somehow I ended up in front of the trash bins where the animal's tail was sticking out from a turned-over, silver garbage can. Its tail was wagging excitedly, and I remember thinking that it was much too large to be a squirrel.
The animal bent down as if biting onto something, and I heard the sound of its growl as it struggled to tug whatever it was free from the barrel. Inch by inch, the creature backed out of the canister, and more of its sharp, sticky hair was revealed. I heard something snap, then the creature leapt back and I saw what it was chomping on. My eyes widened in horror as the pink tube of a human intestine was pulled taut like the end of a tangled hose. Blood and entrails were spilling out of the human's opened gut. And then, behind the canine, I saw the person's face. His face was pale white, his eyes closed, and his hair was slicked back… It was Trent.
Before I could react, I heard footsteps approaching from behind. I whirled around and saw my dad. But—no, it wasn't him. It was someone wearing a paper-mache face mask that was painted to look like my dad. The forehead of the mask was already beginning to crack, white specks breaking off like sawdust. Through the cracks, I could see the figure's true form. I didn't know darkness had its own type of light, but that's the only way to describe it. It was as if malevolence itself was reified into a skin which was actually an amalgamation of millions of little, oozing parasites that leached into the nearby light. When it finally spoke, the demon's voice was a full octave lower than the old man's at the deli. And it had an earth-stilling gravitas.
"Today's the day!" He sang and reached into his pocket. His lips curled upward into a foxy smirk. "You have no idea how long I've waited for this day." He said and held up a razor blade. Half his facade had already fallen apart, and now I could see the bugs up close, writhing in what was either horror or ecstasy. And his scent… it was somehow more rank than the rabid coyote rummaging through the trash can with Trent's cut open body inside. The demon closed in on my position, and in one, decisive motion, he brought the blade close to his chin, then sliced it across my throat. "Wake up!" He screamed.
I jumped out of my bed and grabbed my throat, feeling the cold sting of its quick slice. Hyperventilating, I patted the area down, trying to hold the blood in, but when I removed my hands, I saw they were dry. It was only a dream, I thought. Gray light was only beginning to filter in through the drapes. I'm in my hotel room. I'm safe. I tried consoling, but the pragmatic mental massages weren't enough to hold the force of my knees buckling. I dropped onto the carpet and cried for a long while.
Outside, rain was beginning to fall.
***
By the time I met up with Trent, I had already composed myself and decided to keep my dad's message and the nightmare to myself. None of it seemed particularly productive from a logistical standpoint, anyway. And I wanted to focus on the mission.
We stopped by McDonald's and bought a couple cups of coffee. Trent asked if I wanted any food, and I declined. Black coffee seemed like the only thing my stomach could take at the present moment. I could tell Trent was hungry, but he tried playing it off (I guess to be respectful of me?) I told him to knock it off and get something to eat. I didn't need my Charon getting lightheaded and dropping the paddle before he finished rowing me to Hell. He didn't care much for my joke, but he ordered a couple Chicken McGriddles at the kiosk anyway.
There were maybe ten patrons spread throughout the restaurant. We sat down at the same booth from the prior night, this time across from one another. Trent spent the first ten minutes or so babbling about our fuel supply and the logistics of the trip from here on in. Practical stuff. I've come to realize that's how he deals with his stress. He talks it out in short, durable sentences. I mostly nodded and watched as what looked like a storm front closed in on the truck stop. The sky was overcast, and there were darker clouds in the distance. The rain was still only a patter, but a middle-aged man wearing a yellow bow tie on the wall-mounted TV confirmed that there would be heavier rain and thunderstorms very soon.
After the worker delivered Trent's food and he ate it in record time, I posed the one question that was still on my mind.
"How do I fight him?" I asked.
Trent finished a large gulp of his coffee, then looked at me. It was the first substantial thing I'd said all morning; Trent could tell something was off with me, but he figured there was no point in asking what it was. "By 'him', I assume you mean the demon?"
I nodded.
Trent licked his teeth clean. "You could try praying again."
"I'm serious," I responded.
"I'm serious, too. It worked before, didn't it?"
"You mean at my house?"
Trent nodded.
"I thought you weren't a religious man?"
"I'm not. Just a practical one. If praying worked before, maybe it'll work again."
"That's the best you've got? A maybe?"
"No, I've got a lot of shit better than a maybe." He answered. "It's just not accessible where you're going. Which is why I recommend not making contact on the first run."
"First run? So we're going to do this more than once?"
"At least," Trent answered. Then, seeing my expression, he continued. "What? You thought this was going to be a one-and-done? We have to conduct some research first. I did tell you this was new for me, right?"
Somehow Trent's response had set my mind at ease a little. I was going to have more than one chance. Of course, why wouldn't I be able to go back more than once?
"Why didn't you tell me this earlier? It would have gone a long way in easing my mind."
Trent lifted his hands in defense. "Sorry, I just thought that was a given. I mean, what we're doing is dangerous, just like I said, but it doesn't mean we aren't going to approach this as safely and scientifically as possible. However, there is a different problem with running multiple trials."
"The Organization?"
"That's right," Trent said like a proud parent. "Our little experiment will be like a giant spotlight, and the longer we wait around after it's on us, the greater the chance we'll have unwelcome company."
"So, safe but speedy."
"Safe but speedy. Exactly."
***
We fueled up and were back on the road a little after 8:00. From that point on, Trent and I were absolutely silent. I had the distinct feeling of being in the eye of a storm. The pings moved closer commensurate with our progress toward the crash site. The cloudfront continued its advance. And I noticed a haze beginning to descend onto the road ahead of us. It was fog.
We meandered further inland, the forest thickening around us until the rain almost stopped entirely—the leaves drinking it up before it fell onto our windshield. I kept my eyes on the radar. We were approaching the large yellow circle which indicated we had arrived. As we pulled closer, I began to feel things. Fear. Eeriness. Doubt. Then happiness. Hope. Love. Normally feelings like these had a clear source to picture, but these sensations came on in waves without any discernible reason. It was almost as if they were blinking into existence inside me.
"Here we go," Trent said like an airline pilot readying his crew for turbulence.
I still recall the exact moment we crossed the boundary into the area of higher energy. It was like something just "clicked" in my brain, and all of a sudden everything felt so much closer. The sound of the rain against the trees was almost right next to my ear. The trees in the distance would oscillate between their position a half-mile out, then suddenly seem five meters away. If I focused on something long enough, it began to radiate those same ethereal particles as when Trent released Ava's "phase lock". I checked to make sure the shifter wasn't set to "TD". Sure enough, it was still in drive.
"Can you see them?" Trent asked. "The shifts?"
"Yeah," I said in a dreamy voice. I felt like I was driving through a wonderland.
"It's the energy. I barely notice a difference. A bit of movement in the trees, but not much else. But I'm sure for you, it's a whole experience."
"What is this?" I raised my hand and caught some of the pixel dust dripping off the sun visor. It disappeared when it made contact with my hand.
"It's a kind of radiation. Everything emits it, just in different quantities. I'm still not exactly sure how it relates to the other realms, but I'm guessing it's a kind of primordial matter that helps connect our worlds."
"It's beautiful," I exclaimed. "I wish I could see the world like this all the time."
"Maybe you will," Trent whispered.
As we arrived at the crash site, I began to get glimpses of the past. My childhood dreams and memories were pushing their way out from my subconscious. I noticed an increased number of blinks, which were validated by Ava who reported the following: "Currently detecting 14,350 novel emergences and 2,777 controlled agents. Net anomalies: 2,777."
"That's a lot of blinks." I remarked. "Why doesn't Ava include them in the net anomalies?"
Trent turned his head so I could see his smirk. "Because blinks aren't anomalies."
I thought about it for a second. Blinks aren't anomalies. "I never thought about it that way."
"It's hard to think about it that way when 'normal' for most people means not picking up on a fundamental aspect of reality. But that doesn't make it any less real."
We continued past the epicenter of the yellow circle. "Are we not stopping?" I asked. "I think we already passed the crash site."
"It doesn't have to be exactly at the site," Trent said. "Plus, we don't want to stop on the side of the road and risk getting some civilian involved. There's a field about half a mile up ahead. I'm going to pull off the road and set up camp there.
The "field" that Trent was referring to was actually a large clearing that dipped down into several trench-like troughs which were filled to the brim with fog like witches cauldrons. Further on in the distance, I saw open fields, probably used for farming, and then a large hill where the trees once again reasserted themselves. We had pulled off the road and up a small incline where the trees had already been broken down, leaving a trail for us to drive through. When we surfaced at the edge of the clearing, Trent pulled us onto a flat bed of dried mud which was maybe thirty yards long.
"Here," he said with a sigh.
We both sat for a minute, looking around at the field. We had finally arrived. The rain was beginning to pick up, and the dark sky made it almost impossible to discern the time of day.
"You ready?" Trent asked.
I looked at him. Really looked at him. In his blue eyes. Was I ready? Did it even matter?
"Let's do this," I said.
***
This was the first time I was really able to inspect the back of Trent's van. He had talked up his gear a lot, and honestly, I was impressed. Not in the way that a scientist is impressed by another scientist's lab—I wasn't any kind of expert—but it still seemed remarkably well managed. Now that I was in a state where my vision had been enhanced, I could actually see the enigmatic particles circulating through the pneumatic tubes which were coiled like the pipes and valves of an elaborate wind instrument. The walls of the van, itself, were glistening white, making it easier to make out everything else inside. Along the floor were five overturned columns. Each column was dark and had a vibrating quality, as if they were charged with energy. Then atop the center three columns was a small altar which supported an apparatus with two skinny, metal arms holding a silver halo. At present, the arms were folded and the halo was suspended a few inches above the altar, faced-down. I thought maybe I'd see particles exuding from it, but instead it was emitting visible waves which bent and warped everything they touched.
"That thing is emitting a lot of energy." I remarked, gesturing toward the halo.
Trent stepped in between the columns and started pulling out the packages he had stuffed in there yesterday. "Just wait till' it's on."
Most of the packages contained only a single piece of equipment, and were otherwise packed with foam peanuts. We carefully removed each box and set them on the ground outside. I asked if the rain would damage any of the stuff inside, to which Trent only laughed and continued lugging out the boxes. When they were all out, Trent removed a box cutter from his pocket and went one-by-one opening them. There were eight pieces in total.
"What is it?" I asked as we fished the first item out.
"It's another apparatus, like the one inside. Except it'll mount on the ground out here."
I pulled out what looked like a metal tripod.
"Good, that'll go on the bottom."
"Where are we setting it up?"
"Over here," Trent said and stepped five paces away from the van. He coordinated himself up so he was centrally aligned with the inner ring, then stomped a few times. "This is the spot."
As we continued to work, I asked Trent about how the whole contraption works.
"Do you remember the first time we were in the van? When we had to escape from the semi-truck?" Trent asked and connected a secondary mounting apparatus on top of the tripod. It had four spider-like legs that made right angles and stuck into the ground.
"Of course," I said. "The 'phase lock'."
"Yeah," Trent said and gestured toward the metal stick that was in my hand. I handed it to him. "The phase lock is a seal on the level of energy that the van is allowed to release. It also controls its dispersion pattern so that it releases its energy in a steady wave. This allows Ava to scan for anomalies without causing us to become an anomaly." Trent stuck the plank into the neck of the tripod.
"So when you released the phase lock, we started emitting more energy."
"That's right." Trent confirmed. "Enough to create an alternate route through a different realm."
"So we blinked into a different realm, then back, just to avoid that truck?"
"That's right."
"But why couldn't we just move out of the way?"
"Because it had locked onto us. It was tracking our motion and adjusting its course based on the amount of energy we were emitting. So in order to escape, we had to radically skew our potential energy and then use it to shift."
"Couldn't he have just followed us?"
Trent connected four more pieces to the device which now looked like an elaborate teepee. He was fishing in the last box when he spoke again. "Yeah, he could have. But it was highly improbable that he would have found us." Trent returned from the bottom of the box with another silver ring in hand. "Think of it like this. Let's say you're trying to escape from some bad guy who's coming after you, and you enter a new room you've never seen before. Would you prefer this room to have three doors to go through, or ten?"
I thought about his riddle for a second, then responded, "It depends where they go."
Trent fastened the ring atop the teepee. "Let's say they all lead to random places, or let's say they're all closets that lead nowhere. The key is that more is better, because the more doors he has to check, the less likely he is to pick the correct one. Make sense?"
"So we opened up a bunch of doors and escaped through one at random?"
"Hence the gear 'TD', for 'Trap Door'."
I marveled at the insights, but not for long. Trent hopped back in the van and pulled a lever that I hadn't seen until now. The two metal arms raised the inner ring until it was perpendicular with the altar. Then Trent clicked one of three red buttons along the back wall, and I saw what looked like a large, glass eye suspended in a magnifying glass protruding from the wall, aligned with the center of both rings. A couple seconds later, the glass eye began to focus the energy which was being fed to it from the pneumatic tubes, and a blue pyramid of light projected from it into the first ring, then from the first ring into the second ring. All three pieces were aligned at slightly diminishing heights, so the cylinder of light beamed through the second ring, into the ground.
"Alright, time for the first trial."
I felt the nerves starting up in my stomach. Trent sensed this and hopped out of the truck. It was raining quite hard now, though it was still warm. Both Trent and I were soaked, but that hardly concerned us. He reached out and put his hand on my shoulder. "I know you're feeling scared." He said. "But trust me on this. You're going to do fine. Just keep in mind what we talked about. Stay a spectator. Okay?"
I looked into his blue eyes, which seemed especially gray in the dark. Still, Trent's voice was reassuring. All I had to do was trust him. Trust myself. Trust my dad. And it was all going to turn out right.
"I'm ready," I said.
Trent was still for a second, holding my eyes in his. Then he guided me behind the outer ring and into the cylinder of light.
"I should step into it now?" I asked, afraid I'd be called away immediately.
"It's not on yet, so don't worry. I still have to press another button."
I followed Trent's instructions and stood in the blue light which was centered on my chest. Then I watched as Trent ran into the back of the van and posted up next to the glass eye. "Ready?" He yelled out. It was hard to hear him over the rain, but I yelled back. "Ready!"
The next thing I saw was a blinding blue light beam from the van. I heard what sounded like a laser, then saw the cylinder oscillate, expanding and compressing. When the energy reached the second ring, I saw everything around me light up—it looked brighter than noon on a cloudless day. Then the oscillations made their way to me, and I was swallowed up whole.
***
When I came to, I was in the backseat of a car. I felt my butt rumbling. Everything was dim and quiet. And then I heard a woman's voice from in front of me.
"Mark, please, not with Lauren in the back."
The man, who I now identified as my father, pulled the cigarette away from his lips and blew the smoke at my mom. He eyed the back seat where I was sitting, using one of five markers that hadn't rolled off my lap to color a rabbit in my animal color book.
"The kid's fine." he said and took another drag.
"Mark," my mom repeated.
I saw my dad raise his hand in a rapid motion. "I said she's fine, Cheryl. Now check the map and make sure we're going the right away. I can't see shit with all this fog."
I took a moment to make sure I was really in the back seat. I patted myself. I clearly had weight. Then I tried touching the car. At first, my fingertips met a solid surface, but when I tried to press through, my hand slipped into the car. I quickly pulled my hand away as if I had reached into a fire.
That's when I heard the little three year old next to me start crying. I turned and saw that little-me had dropped another couple markers onto the ground and was struggling to reach them.
"Hey!" my dad shouted. "What did I say about crying?"
"Quit it, Mark. She just dropped her markers." said my mom; she turned to help me pick them up.
"What did you say to me?" Mark spat with a voice full of guile. He reached out and pushed her back into her seat. "Don't," he commanded. "She has to learn how to deal with life."
"Deal…" My mom started in disbelief. "Deal with life? Do you hear yourself? What's gotten into you?"
"Sometimes shit happens. It doesn't give her the right to cry. You helping her is just going to reinforce her behavior."
"Her behavior? What about your behavior? You're acting like a total dick."
I didn't even have a moment to react before my dad's hand was across my mom's face. I felt the slap more than I heard it, my own face seeming to swell with the force of the blow. I saw my mom cover her mouth and lean away. Then little-me began to cry even louder, which only challenged my dad to step up his own volume.
"Everyone needs to get a fucking grip before I crash this car." My dad shouted and took another drag. The scariest part was I couldn't tell if he was warning us or threatening us. I felt the sudden urge to do something. There was no way this was real. I was definitely in some fantasy concocted by the demon. He wanted to turn me against my dad. That was the only explanation for something like this. My dad was a good man, not… this.
As I contemplated what to do, I saw a small, golden light appear behind little-me's window. Apparently she saw it, too, because her cries hushed as she traced the wisp with her eyes. After a second, the wisp transformed into a bunny rabbit, reminiscent of the one she was coloring. The rabbit hopped alongside the window, then did a couple circles in place. I watched little me let out a playful laugh and reach toward the window.
"What's going on back there?" my dad asked with a scowl. Apparently the only sound more disturbing than cries were laughs.
I looked back to the front and saw my mom wiping blood from her lip. Her expression was miserable. "Leave her alone, Mark."
"I'll do whatever I damn well want to do, Cheryl. It's my kid back there."
My mom was quiet.
When I looked back toward the rabbit, it was no longer a rabbit but a person. Or at least it looked like a person. The figure radiated pure gold, and atop his head was what appeared to be a King's crown. I recalled Allison's experience of seeing the sun-like figure in her moment of distress. Was that what was happening here? Was this really all true?
"Hey!" My dad shouted, eyeing little-me from the rear-view mirror. "What are you reaching at?"
I looked and saw the golden figure extending his hand toward the window, and little me's hand was reaching back. "Mom, dad, it bright." little-me said.
"What's bright, honey?" my mom asked.
"Don't encourage her, Cheryl."
"Someone there!" little me shouted happily and dropped the rest of the markers and the coloring book onto the ground.
"Who's there?" asked my mom.
"Cheryl, I swear to God. Sit the fuck down."
Everything from that moment on happened so quickly I barely had any time to process it. My mom lifted out of her seat to either get little me's attention or help me pick up my coloring book. My dad responded by grabbing onto her throat, letting go of the steering wheel entirely. He threw her back against the car door, and her head hit the window so hard, the glass cracked. My dad had dropped his cigarette, and I could smell smoke coming from under his seat, but that didn't seem to bother him at all. He turned toward little-me at the same moment my three-year-old hand reached out and grabbed onto the golden figure, whose hand diffused through the window. When my dad turned, I got a whiff of the most awful smell that I wouldn't have been able to place had I not had that nightmare last night. He grabbed onto little-me's shoulder and tugged her away from the golden figure that was trying to pull her the other way. My dad's facade began to crack, and I could see those dark bugs crawling out from the pores in his arms, marching down toward little-me.
I reacted.
I grabbed onto my dad's arm and pulled him off little-me. I heard the sound of my shirt ripping as she was torn from his grip and pulled out of the car, diffusing through it like a ghost. My brief victory was immediately overturned as I saw what was now clearly the demon smiling at me, his wretched fingers curled around my forearm.
"Caught you," He sneered.
Then the whole world once again diffused into countless numbers of particles, only this time, instead of riding through it, I felt like I was falling through an elevator shaft with each floor darker than the last. The further I fell, the less I became aware of my surroundings, and the more I felt a deep sense of loneliness. It was as if I was the only person in the whole world: and the whole world was a prison designed entirely for me. This went on for so long, I began to forget who I was. Where I was. What was.
And then I landed.
***
Source Used:
Jung, Carl. Synchronicity. Translated by Sonu Shamdasani, Princeton University Press, 2010.

I think i have PTSD. She blames me for everything that happen in her life, i can’t have friends, i can’t leave the house, i’m always under stress because of her, lost count of how many times she treated me like crap and never apologized or felt ashamed of it. I’m just done. 5 years. I can’t desl with this anymore. I’m empty. She sucked the life out of me. She don’t wanna get better. She just wanna make my life a living hell. Tired of being acussed of shit i didnt do, tired of getting a shower or be without signal cause if i dont say what i’m doing all the time she changes to a complete different person. I feel crazy. I’m done. Sorry if theres mystakes i’m shaking writing this.

I met him when I was still 18 and he was 23 on a video game. We connected from the start and kept continuously playing with each other. After that he would always text me around 10-11 pm (he works from 1-9) so we could hang outside of just playing. At around 3 months of knowing each other he started texting me pretty late at around 1am even sometimes as late as 5-6am (in those 3 previous months we had talked every night). He would also sometimes not text me at all where there was also a whole week where he didn’t text me (it was also a week before my birthday which he didn’t remember!). I texted him during that week but he seemed mostly disinterested as we played a game and he didn’t ask me to join him on vc to watch something together as we usually did. He came back after that 1 week, said it’s been a while and then we went back to our usual routine of talking every night except he kept doing this thing where he wouldn’t text me at all some days(mind you he never texted me in the mornings, only anytime after 9pm). At around that time as well, we exchanged snapchats (we used discord up until then) and when I would sometimes text him in the mornings, he would be pretty dry and end the convo quickly. At around 5 months of us knowing each other, I had asked him what we were (since it was confusing because he would call me pretty and address me with endearments) and he said “idk I haven’t thought of it before, but I really(x5) like you” therefore confirming that this was some sort of situationship. At 7 months of knowing each other, he started acting differently and calling me more intense endearments like my soul, my life (in our first language that isn’t English, but we come from different countries so it’s long distance), he would also start to text me more frequently (before 9pm!) and call me even when he was at work. At 8 months of knowing each other he asked me to be his girlfriend and I said yes because I really like him and stuck with him until then because of that. It has been really great since then and he treats me really well. After we started dating, I asked him why he had just asked me to date him after 7 whole months and he said that when we met he had just broken up with his ex (which I think he was in a relationship with for around 3 years) and that they were still in contact after their breakup for a while and that he wanted fully cut things off with her before we started dating. He had previously mentioned that he had an ex but he never explained this before we started dating so it was a big shocker for me and it significantly changed my view of our relationship prior to dating (maybe felt a bit betrayed knowing that those days where I was waiting for him to text me he was talking to her instead, although I can’t be sure that’s true cause he didn’t provide any specifics). However, the real issue comes now which is that I come from a conservative/religious family and I’m not really allowed to be in contact with guys. My younger brother (bit of stalking me) found out that I was still talking to my bf (my brother had previously found out that I was talking to my bf when me and my bf had just met and told my mother to which she told me to stop talking to him because I don’t know his intentions and it’s wrong. I then told my bf that my family is against it and cut contact with him but we started talking again a while later and broke no contact and all this was at around 1-3 month time). After finding that out, my younger brother informed my older brother and my older brother threatened to take away most of my things or confiscate them as well as possibly ground me. He told me to block my bf and stop talking completely. When I told my boyfriend he told me to calm down and that everything will be okay and that I should just listen to my family and wait until the heat dies down so we can properly talk again (that was when I asked him what we should do). Therefore I’m super conflicted rn as my bf isn’t giving me any proper talk and my family is very disappointed in me. Any advice on how I should approach this situation will be very helpful. I’m currently thinking of breaking it off with my bf as I don’t want to risk anything but at the same time I rlly love him and I still want to stay with him (he’s been treating me really well and I really enjoy his company). I’ve also provided context on our relationship because i thought it could be important.
TL;DR started dating my bf after 8 months of talking and it’s been 2 months now but my family doesn’t want me to keep dating him. Any advice?

I'll preface this with the obvious: play how you want for your own table! If you're after a tactical wargame, go for it!
A lot of times, when I see discussion around GMs throttling the proverbial gas pedal mid-fight or viciously attacking PCs that are dying 2, there's a lot of discussion around the "logic" of it, e.g.: "Attacking a dying PC is logical if there's a cleric in the party" or "Monsters/animals would perceive active creatures as more threatening than unconscious ones".
This is interesting to me because people in this subreddit tend to be more RAW-focused than many other games, but RAW is rarely brought up in these discussions.
GM Core (and the Gamemastery Guide) actually advises on these situations in a few places, starting on Page 25 especially.

Unexpected Difficulty sidebar (Page 25)

Paraphrase: This recommends letting players stomp creatures if it's too easy, unless it's supposed to be a climactic battle, in which case reinforcements or the NPC sacrificing something significant and escaping might be appropriate. If it's too hard because of GM things like overpowered abilities or hazardous terrains, consider adjusting down as well, but otherwise roll with it unless it's too frustrating or leading to a TPK.
My example: A mandragora can create an extreme DC will save to avoid being sickened 1 on a success, 2 on a failure, and 2 + slowed 1 on a critical failure. 2 of these creatures doing their shriek is likely to push the party from some successes with some failures into failures with some critical failures. And suddenly their high accuracy with attacks gets pushed to extreme for their level instead with a poisoning to boot. This doubling up can make 2 mandragoras very scary for a party of level 3s--perhaps saving the second screech until near the end would be better for the encounter. Or if you've already used both, perhaps removing the confused condition from the poison, capping the duration on the slow, giving circumstance bonuses to wretching, or only letting confusion last one round instead, might compensate for this unexpected difficulty.
Another example: Fighting a fire giant near a lava pit with recurring fire damage is cool, but if your party doesn't have any AoE healing, it might be better to make the lava magically burble and spit out at a random individual for double damage instead. Or alternate between the two as needed, or simply reduce its frequency.

Choosing Adversaries' Actions (Page 26)

Here we see advice that matches common advice: most creatures don't have even good knowledge of the PCs, so avoiding your players cool abilities or aiming squarely at their weaknesses won't make sense. But yes, some creatures and NPCs will research the PCs ahead of time or spy on them and take some notes.

Attacking unconscious PCs

Directly addressing one of the key points of conversation here:

Adversaries usually don't attack a character who's knocked out. Even if a creature knows a fallen character might come back into the fight, only the most vicious creatures focus on helpless foes rather than the more immediate threats around them.

Of course, it's not saying a GM can't do it, but it is saying that such a thing should be reserved largely for "the most vicious creatures". I would say this fits for BBEGs on their last legs, daemons, and sakhils more than beasts, demons, or even terrasques. Obviously, it's open to interpretation and it's not a specific list of creatures or anything, but I think it's important to remember that even with bestiaries full of vicious and nasty creatures, "only the most vicious" should behave like this.
My example: The only PC death I've had in a game I've GM'd came when I explained the stakes and we agreed to it. This malevolent ghost tied to the kineticist's (legendary games' version) backstory wants to hurt that PC more than it wants to avoid destruction, and it knows that the best way to do that is to make that PC watch his friend die while helpless to stop it. This low-moderate encounter against a single ghost became a desperate attempt to keep the summoner alive, who became wounded 1, 2, then an entire final round where it survived with just a trickle of HP left before slaying the summoner. (I've had other very close calls, wounded 3 PCs, a few near-TPKs, a TPKO in Fists of the Ruby Phoenix, etc., but this is the only real death.)

Tactics

As the GM, you're roleplaying these foes, and you decide their tactics. Most creatures have a basic grasp of simple tactics like flanking or focusing on a single target. You should remember that they also react based on emotions and make mistakes—perhaps even more than the player characters do... Running adversaries is a mix of being true to the creature and doing what's best for the drama of the game. Think of your encounter like a fight scene in a movie or novel. If the fighter taunts a fire giant to draw its attention away from the fragile wizard, the tactically sound decision is for the giant to keep pummeling the wizard, but is that the best choice for the scene? Perhaps everyone will have more fun if the giant redirects its ire to the infuriating fighter.

Let's break this down.

• Creatures should react emotionally (well, maybe not the mindless ones haha)
• Creatures should make mistakes
• Creatures should sometimes react emotionally and make mistakes more often than PCs
• Creatures should sometimes change strategies due to players' narrative dialogue and roleplay
• They do usually know how to focus fire and flank
• There should be tension and navigation between true to the creature and best for the drama
• Tactics is not the priority
• Drama and fun are the priorities

Sometimes sound tactics is also dramatic and fun! But it's important to keep this in mind. My advice: use the whole monster and prioritize the fun toys and showing off the various abilities more than just wrecking your PCs' faces in.
My example: I ran two separate groups of PCs (level 3-4) against a Poltergeist (level 5). After its first AoE attack that hit all the PCs and crit one or two, everyone was scared shitless. Now, I could've just spammed that attack every round, stayed naturally invisible, and likely killed some PCs or forced them to retreat. But I instead used telekinetic maneuvers to throw a PC over a railing and down a stairwell, varied attacks to focus on a specific PC to knock them to dying, used frighten often even though it breaks invisiblity, and sometimes just spent turns going undetected so they'd have a round to panic about where it might be before using frighten and attacking.
Also, just because a creature is capable of making 4 attacks and there's 4 PCs with 1 PC dying does not mean that the creature should hit the dying PC. Sound tactics are not the priority! If it's fun and good drama, raises the stakes, then yes, it may make sense to include the dying PC in the attack. Otherwise, killing a PC just because it technically could is rarely good drama.
An aside: During the brouhaha over the dying rules briefly reverting to wounded increasing impact on recovery checks (fixed by day 1 errata), someone who was extremely upset about this said they already kill and TPK their players all the time and this will just make that worse. When I asked why they're being killed so often, it was basically because he had his enemies focus on swarming individual PCs and killing them while they're unconscious and dying (that's -6 AC!). I pointed out that the book says to rarely do that, so he could try changing tactics first to be more in line with the book, and I was accused of babying my players and condescending them by denying them a fight against superior tactics before being ignored. To each their own, but I think it's important to remember that the bestiary creatures were designed with the GM Core mindset of running for drama over tactics!

Ending the Encounter

Surrender

Either side is capable of surrendering, and initiating surrender can shift the game out of encounter mode in favor of a negotiation. Of course, the losing side is kind of powerless here and may just be slain outright, but it's a good option for potential captors or beasts that just want one PC as a meal rather than the whole party.

Total Party Kills

This TPK section was added in GM Core, but was hinted at in the following text only found in the old Gamemastery Guide (you may need to switch "Prefer Remaster" to off to read this quote):

If the PCs decide to flee, it’s usually best to let them do so. Pick a particular location and allow them to escape once they all reach it. However, if they’re encumbered or otherwise slowed down, or if enemies have higher Speeds and a strong motive to pursue, you might impose consequences upon PCs who flee.

This allowance of fleeing is often hinted at in many AP encounters: hard fights often do not pursue beyond the room they started in, especially true for haunted houses.
The GM Core has good advice in general for handling TPKs with your group, but I'll focus on what's relevant here.

TPKs are rarely unavoidable.

This is true both mechanically and narratively.

Usually it becomes evident at some point during the session—whether to everyone or only to you—that disaster looms. What the players do with this insight is up to them, but you have more control and can take steps to avoid the TPK. For example, perhaps the PCs' foe gets distracted by something, an ally arrives to help the heroes, or the villain captures them instead of slaying them outright. The simplest path is to just allow a clear escape route the PCs can take—perhaps with a few characters still falling along the way. It isn't entirely your responsibility to defuse the TPK, but offering such opportunities gives players more say in their characters' fates.

While what's offered here are narrative options,--with at least one PC death as the simplest cost in exchange for an escape--there are mechanical options you can use as well.
My mechanical example: 3 of the 5 PCs are dying. The Thrasfyr Demoralizes and Grapples the sorcerer instead of landing the finishing blow, then attacks the 5th PC at MAP. Oops, a crit! 4 of the 5 PCs are now dying. Now the sorcerer has to risk a 3 action Heal against a DC 5 flat check, or Escape and try to bring up one ally, or maybe the sorcerer is restrained and must Escape first! The tension has increased, the situation is riskier, but a TPK has a higher chance to be avoided. The sorcerer burns a hero point to ensure a Heal goes off, then the Thrasfyr fights the party while keeping the sorcerer in his clutches every round, ensuring the party is facing his MAP instead of his full power while also keeping the sorcerer in a tough spot with tough decisions to make. (Notably, not spamming the infinite use AoE attacks and especially not on the already dying allies allows the close fight to edge until the heros overcome.)
My mechanical advice: You do not have to fudge dice to save your PCs from a TPK--you can choose less deadly attacks or other tension increasing abilities before committing to killing one of them. I don't fudge, that crit is a crit baby!
My narrative example: The lava giant in a combat-as-sport scene had everyone dying but the sorcerer--the last one standing, backed up to the edge of a lava pit, and low on hp. The giant offers the sorcerer a chance to recover his hp before rerolling initiative for a glorious duel. While the lava giant was 2 levels above the sorcerer, the giant didn't get a chance to heal, and the sorcerer flew over lava pits while dodging thrown rocks and slinging spells. The lava giant then airwalked over, massive greathammer in hand, putting the sorcerer in Reactive Strike range. Deciding to Fly away before casting the spell, the sorcerer was crit and left barely alive before getting the spell off. The lava giant failed the save, took barely enough damage to go out and fell, body tumbling into his own lava pit. The PCs and the lava giant developed mutual respect through this, and spent time treating his wounds while he told them stories of his past battles.
While avoiding a TPK through deus ex machina might feel bad for the players, being captured (potentially with those who failed all their recovery checks dying) may make sense and feel appropriate. So may surrendering to a vicious beast who sees you are no longer a threat before stealing your ally away to feast on their corpse. These are still frankly serious mechanical and narrative consequences with real weight to them, and they can happen outside of encounter mode once the last PCs standing surrender.

tl;dr

When it comes to running creatures, according to the GM Core itself:

• Perfect tactics is not the priority
• Killing downed PCs is for "only the most vicious creatures" (even in a game full of vicious creatures)
• Creatures and NPCs react emotionally and make mistakes
• Drama and fun are the priorities

I consider this to be the mindset the designers had while building their bestiary as well.
Play how you want though, don't @ me.

42 yo F, generally pretty healthy, on Buspar and Spironolactone, 5'3, 196 lbs
From November to March I was sick almost constantly and took 3 courses of antibiotics. In March I was diagnosed with Pylori and had triple therapy. My hunger cues vanished during one of the courses of antibiotics and haven't come back, although I can eat when I sit down to a meal. I've also been experiencing some bloating/tightness that makes me burp a lot. My mouth is really dry, but I think that correlates to starting omeprazole for the ulcer.
I have had an endoscopy, colonoscopy, RUQ ultrasound and pelvic ultrasound, along with my regular bloodwork. CA 125 was normal as was all my yearly bloodwork. My GI says the ulcer can cause appetite loss, my PCP says its the gallstones, and I remain concerned that something more serious is being missed.
My PCP said that anything serious like cancer would have already been spotted with my previous tests, but I can't shake my concern. I'm 3 weeks into treating the ulcer and see a surgeon in two weeks about my gallstones.
Is long term appetite loss really a common symptom with either ulcers, gallstones, or the amount of antibiotics I've been on?

1. Married over 3 years
2. Live in one of the most expensive cities in the world, for nearly two years I paid over 3k in bills monthly for us, albeit groceries she would pay here and there.
3. She doesn’t fulfil much of her rights, unless it benefits her. So much so, I felt sexually used and I stopped wanting to partake.
4. She is a narcissist, and has a victim complex. Every time we had major issues, I either suggest or directly tell her to go to her mom’s house nearby, so we can have space or to end it. Only for her to realize her wrongs, make promises, and break them. I can’t go to my mother’s house ome for various reasons, so I follow the ayah in surah Baqarah. Why? Because she has been physically abusive…
5. That’s right, she has assaulted me many times. Once even attempting to take my life, with hers, in a car crash.
6. Each time, she wanted to run home and tell her family she’s done. Only to come back non chalant a few days later, or same day, as if nothing happened. I’d send her back sometimes when this happens, for my safety.
7. She herself, and on recording, has stated many many times that there is nothing wrong with our marriage from my end. She is clearly attracted to me she says, as well as has love for me. She acknowledged it was her mental health issues, that she continues to follow and allow. I’ve tried getting her help many times but these therapists only serve her ego.
8. She prays. Consistently. But the entire thing is hypocritical. It’s great that she prays, but when I finally as a last straw show her the abundance of Hadiths and verses in Quran where Allah says women of her kind will be in hellfire, and that her deeds will not go above her shoulders in acceptance, and that she will be cursed by Allah for her transgressions against me; she simply doesn’t care. She tries to act like it, but only when it serves her methodical interests.
9. For years I gaslit myself, thinking I’m the issue someway somehow. That as a man I take ultimate responsibility for my marriage, and I must model good conduct for her at the very least so that I’m no hypocrite. Little did I know, after ruling out every possibility I could imagine, she does this on purpose. She knows what she’s doing.
10. I supported her through her final years in education, what do I get in return? More manipulation and toxicity that would never fly if it were the opposite.
11. Without a shred of doubt I can I have grew from this, I have no regrets. I tried all I could, I’m no stranger to conflict mediation or mental health, and I was the most understanding direct and straightforward with communication before during and after any argument she would cause. After any argument, I reset within an hour at the most. The next day, it’s like she never did me wrong in my mind; I always just want to move on, and I never expect her to justify, apologize, etc. in fact, I discourage it, so her ego doesn’t have her in defensive mode. That’s what leads to her getting physical eventually. All I ever asked of her at this point, was don’t start arguments and dress modestly outside the home - as she has been for years in the marriage but always acts brand new when I point something revealing or tight out.
12. Her innocent image, and my empathy nearly went down the drain the day she went to her mom’s house during an argument. That’s when everything went downhill for good. Our families got involved. — I stopped working awhile back to focus on this, and to get to the bottom of it. Either we move forward together or not. So many long conversations, for it to go out the other ear.
13. Until now, her family generally thinks I’m abusive, and controlling. In fact, my family members mostly think the same! No matter what I told mine, they didn’t bother to listen intently. She even called my father and told him, for the first time, all the things I’ve done to her the past months! This was days after he tried mediating over the phone.
14. I proceeded to have a terrible phone call with him, yelling back at the top of my lungs so angry that I get this treatment when if this was my sister none of us would treat her this way. She successfully did a smear campaign, as she planned to. Ruining relationships I hold dear.
15. To be clear: I am yet to tell her family her wrongs. That’s the love and decency I hold. Not love for her as a wife, just as a human being who can change. We aren’t our choices of past, but we are what we choose today, as long as we continue trying to stick to them in goodness. She hasn’t tried, even till now.
16. As a man, it’s not easy telling loved ones, and her own parents, that she was abusive. I do not wish to partake in that game of self-victimisation, even if mine is the truth. As men, we aren’t afforded that in society, I know I never have. Lately, she has been at home, due to her family telling her to stop coming to her mom’s every issue she has. Perhaps they are noticing that something more is going on, since I’m not replying my to their messages. I, after all I went through don’t need to go explain all to them or anyone. Allah knows my pain, Allah knows my struggles. I tried my best to be honourable about this, and in my conduct, and I had a great cost enduring all this for so long. Alas, I don’t regret it, I don’t get sad for those years spent. I’m grateful for all the lessons taught, and the resiliency Allah has reminded me that I have. I know my worth, and my value. The only thing that hurts, is she doesn’t fight against her nafs, and I don’t need to fight it for her. I was about to end it all recently, the day she called my father. She won’t stop, she will continue going great lengths to destroy someone so great to her. There is no reason she has, nor I can assign that she does this other than her deep psychological issues.
17. Trust me, I thought of it all. I even asked her many many times if there was something she’s hiding, and if she is I will swear by Allah to hide it for her, and we simply end it amicably and decide the mutual divorce story to share to our families so they don’t ask more questions. she declined, every time. I can only conclude she is pure evil, I have never in my entire life met someone like this; and it sucks, cause she is so loving and incredible under all of it. I can imagine her inner battle, cause I’ve been through it when I was younger. Except she doesn’t choose to try and change. She loves it.
18. So as I recharge at home, asking her to give me space, I now take it day by day, planning the speech to give to her family, when we both go and she confesses, taking accountability for her acts. Then, I’ll get my mehr back and we split ways. I just hope I’m alive still by then.

To clarify:

1. I knew about marriage very very well, before going in, and I vetted her at length. I’m also not a ‘simp’, or believe in ‘happy life happy wife’. To add, there has never been intimacy issues, or anything that I ask other then for her to work on her communication skills as they as toxic. I gave her a space for her to have support, love, and peace, more so knowing that I am fine with space apart or even going the entire day in the same home without talking if needed. It brings out a side of me that’s crazy, and she loves it. I am not contemplating just cause of her, it’s the hardship I’ve been through for these years; just for it to fall apart with my own family for what? How dare my family, my own father, believe her without trying to unbiasedly understand and hear me out. She knows the power she has in today’s society, and she abuses it, willingly. That’s dangerous power. But her ‘power’ is all Allahs will, and Allah is the best of planners. I just worry she makes it all worse, and it ruins my jobs and future in the community view. I don’t want to have to restart my entire life I built here.

Day 1: Chuya: his loyalty
Day 2: Akutagawa: his relationship with Atsushi (saving him, keeping his promise, etc...)
Day 3: Mori: saving Dazai when he tried to kill himself
Day 4: Koyo: giving documents to Kyoka about the truth about her family and ability
Day 5: Higuchi: saving Akutagawa
Day 6: Hirotsu: treating his subordinates with a lot more mercy than the PM required
Day 7: Kajii: putting up with Chuya's drunken ranting
Day 8: Tachihara: sparing Yosano
Day 9: Q: existing (didn't get other answers)
Day 10: Oda: encouraging Dazai to be the one who saves people
Day 11: Atsushi: saving Kyoka
Day 12: Dazai: saving Chuya in Stormbringer
Day 13: Kunikida: saving Aya
Day 14: Ranpo: taking the initiative to lead the ADA in the later seasons during Fukuzawa's absence
Day 15: Yosano: saving people over and over again
Day 16: Kenji: sparing Tetcho and offering to look for Jouno with him, and saving his village
Day 17: Tanizaki: saving his sister
Day 18: Kyoka: stopping Moby Dick
Day 19: Fukuzawa: being a great father figure to Ranpo
Day 20: Francis: saving Louisa from Zoopark and befriending a bald guy
Day 21: Lucy: helping Atsushi
Day 22: John: being a temporary leader of the Guild
Day 23: Mark: didn't get any answers
Day 24: Margaret: helping Nathaniel
Day 25: Poe: writing books
Day 26: Lovecraft: entertaining people
Day 27: Nathaniel: helping Margaret
Day 28: Louisa: helping Francis in the slums
Day 29: Jouno: giving Aya that note
Day 30: Tetcho: putting Jouno above justice
Day 31: Teruko: killing Fukuchi
Day 32: Fukuchi: saving Teruko
Day 33: Ango: clearing Dazai's criminal records
Day 34: Katai: functioning as agency's information broker
Day 35: Fyodor: protecting Aya (this one got the most likes so yea)
Day 36: Sigma: siding with the agency and the work he did in the casino
Day 37: Nikolai: saving Sigma

Take the promotion or the new job offer?
Hi all, I (F26) would like to get your advice on my current job situation. My background in education is international law.
I have been working in my company for 3.5 years, I got promoted two times. This is my first professional job in the legal field. The pros about the job: nice colleagues, love my clients, flexible both in terms of hrs you work and you can work from anywhere in the world. So I have been taking advantage of this and i sometimes go to other countries to work from their and combine it with a few days off (easy to travel within Europe). Also environment is rather more informal and we have great parties inside and outside the office.
Now the cons: we got acquired by another company and new management is changing company structure, are making terrible decisions and not taking our feedback into account. No transparency in a lot of things (like salary scales), the pay is also not very high, no real benefits , people are stressed from the workload and some people left in the past couple of months.
I have also been demotivated in the past couple of months due to the way management has been treating us and I don’t really feel challenged anymore as I feel like I learned everything I could.
I have had some interviews for a new job and just got an offer 3 days ago from a bank. This job would be in a new area (still in the legal field) that I am also interesting in learning more about. They do seem def more organized with a clear structure and the salary is a little bit higher than my current position (almost the same). But keep in mind this is a rather junior position as I will learn a new field. In this job, you work 4 days a week (2 days from the office) and they told me I can work from certain countries (EU countries) and also some others like US and Canada (this is a plus bcs my mom and brother live there) for a limited period of time , however it seems to be more monitored like getting a pre-approval from your manager.
At the same time, my current job wants to promote me to a more managerial position that would be less operational and more about helping and guiding people to do their best. So there are definitely new things I can learn from this position. But the new offer appeals to me a lot as well because I think it would be beneficial to gain experience in more areas I like in my 20s, a new environment could be great for me as the current company drained my energy a bit and I mean it on the non-transparency (they still have to let me know how much I could be making with the promotion- ikr lol). Sometimes I feel like we are an episode from the office. The only two downsides would be the managerial experience I can get from the promotion and less flexibility on remote work.
I am happy to receive any advice or insights, thank you. :)

I’m in a MCOL in the northeast. City of about 250k people. I work in public but not big 4. I’m in audit. I’ve been here for two years and want out, public audit is misery. I wanted to get into FP&A or a F500 but my area has few options and it’s been impossible to get a senior position, they all want me to basically start at entry level if they even respond to me. I currently make 64k and have been senioring for half a year. If I stay here I’ll be bumped to 71k at EOY and probably get senior title also. We get no bonus or 401k match.
I got an offer for a role at a smaller F500 bank for an “Auditor -Commercial credit/credit risk” at 75k but I found out it’s really just an internal audit position. I never really wanted internal audit. Performance bonus of 7% which would take me to 80k but this is not guaranteed, 100% match up to 5% of base salary 401k match. Raises are like 2-3% every year. I’d be 2-3 years away from a promotion to “Lead Auditor” which is a bit concerning but I confirmed with them that they’d be treating me as an experienced staff at the very least. 5 weeks of PTO.
Would an internal audit role open opportunities to branch out into FP&A or pursue controllership down the line? Or would this role make me get stuck in internal audit??
It doesn’t feel like enough money either. I wanted to grab a role making 85k and I didn’t really think that was asking too much but it seems like getting more than 75k is difficult right now, which feels wrong because I’ll be making 71k in six months. I just want to stop working 70 hour weeks and want to be sure I’m on a path that can net me 200k a year eventually. I’m just not sure if that’s internal audit. Really worried it would be difficult to go to FP&A from internal audit.

So, a couple of weeks ago, I posted my success story about healing from vulvodynia/pudendal neuralgia using mind body syndrome healing techniques. I got a lot of messages and comments asking a multitude of questions, so I decided to make a post about it.
My Symptoms;

• Burning at entrance of vagina
  
• Burning with urination
  
• Itching around labia
  
• Tailbone pain
  
• Odd nerve sensations around vulva; i.e. tingling, odd pressure around urethra and clit, cold sensations, hot sensations, pulsing, stinging, and sandpaper like feeling.
  

My symptoms kicked off with an initial insult. I had a UTI which led to a YI due to antibiotics, and when I used 3-Day Monistat, crap hit the fan. I had a terrible allergic reaction to the medication, even though I had used it many times in the past, this time I actually sustained chemical burns from it. This led to constant burning pain and PFD for a little over 8 months before I came across TMS, Tension Myositis Syndrome. I learned that our brains are the epicenter for relaying pain messages from our bodies. When we hold our hand over a hot stove, our nerve fibers send a message to our brains to move our hand before we cause damage to ourselves. Pain is a danger signal that let's us know that something is going on and to either move away or take it easy before we get hurt. Pain does not always mean there is something horribly wrong with our bodies. Like when you get a papercut, It's such a small injury but it hurts really bad.
However, sometimes that danger signal can be left in the "on" position and cause pain to become chronic. Our brains can learn pain as it can learn anything else, and unfortunately this is how chronic pain begins.
For example: I had a bad reaction to monistat. I went to a doctor who was not empathetic in the slightest about my pain, blamed me for it, and continued to misdiagnose me with a STD that I did not have. Within this visit I understood 2 things: She doesn't know what happened to me, and she's blaming me for "doing this to myself". It wasn't until 5 doctors later that anyone actually listened to me and suggested that I had chemical burns. By this point, I had constant burning, extreme fear and despair over my symptoms, I was spiraling. Sadly, the fear and attention I was feeding my symptoms had made my pain chronic. I was traumatized by this experience as well, which I held that stress and fear in my pelvic floor, causing it to involuntarily tense up and lead to tight muscles which caused oxygen deprivation to the area and resulted in pain. So, emotional upset > tense muscles > cut off oxygen/blow flow to pelvic floor > pain. See how emotions can affect pain? The more anxious and scared I got, the worse my pain became and I started to develop more symptoms over time which caused more anxiety and more pain. It was a vicious cycle.
How did I heal? I came across TMS by accident and at first I shrugged my nose at the concept, but then I began to notice weird things. My pain would flare in mornings, go away during the day and come back at night. My pain was inconsistent and sometimes be a 3/10 and others be a 10/10. I also had a breakdown moment and scream and cried until I felt "empty" like all the repressed emotions I had finally spilled out of me, and I was pain free for a week after. I also had a 9-da book cure after reading Alan Gordon's book. From this, I learned that my pain stemmed from my fear surrounding my symptoms long after my vulva healed from the chemical burns because my brain learned and memorized that sensation. My brain also associated that sensation with my fear and anxiety, so anytime I got anxious or scared, it would flare up my symptoms. Through TMS healing techniques, I ended up losing my fear of symptoms. I started viewing them as a protective guard dog because they cropped up when I was fearful or anxious and wanted to warn/protect me. I stopped paying attention to them, slowly got back to exercising, sitting for a few minutes at a time, and wearing pants to prove to my brain that I was safe and okay. When a flare would come about, I met it with compassion and understanding, and utilized somatic tracking. Eventually over time and with gentle exposure therapy and somatic tracking, I healed. I had to retrain my nervous system and brain to not expect pain when I did certain activities because after a while my brain perceived danger with things like sitting, touch, and even urinating.
Tension myositis syndrome (TMS), also known as tension myoneural syndrome or mindbody syndrome, is a condition that causes physical symptoms that are not due to structural abnormalities. TMS is caused by emotional tension that signals the brain to reduce blood flow to the body, which can lead to oxygen deprivation and pain.
A good example of a mind body pain cycle would be phantom limb syndrome when a person can lose a limb and their brain sees that missing limb and will cause a pain response due to that missing limb. So amputees will swear that they can still feel their missing limb. The pain is very real and it’s because our brains are in full control of our pain response.
How do we know if our pain is brain/nervous system/TMS related? I will tell you.
Here are some questions to think about as structural pain behaves differently then neuroplastic (TMS) pain/brain pain:

• Have you had test after test and everything always turns out normal?
  
• Has structural causes been ruled out?
  
• Do your symptoms move around (You get an itch on your pelvic floor, then your glute then your leg?
  
• Do your symptoms come and go? (They are better in the morning but worse at night/vice versa; they happen before your menstrual cycle but are better during your menstrual cycle; they seem to vanish when you're distracted or on vacation, etc.)
  
• Do your symptoms seem to vanish when you're sick or have something else going on in your body?
  
• Are your symptoms inconsistent? Is the pain 1/10 sometimes but then they're 7/10 at other times? Do they change location?
  
• Do you have other possible mindbody syndromes like stress headaches, IBS, anxiety?
  
• Does your pain ebb and flow with your emotional state?
  
• Did the symptoms start out of nowhere? You just woke up with them one day?
  
• Did they start with a physical injury but you did not heal within the expected amount of time? (6 weeks to 3 months)
  
• Are doctors unable to find a cause for your pain?
  

These are things that are indicative of mindbody syndrome/TMS. Structural pain does not behave in the way described above. I am going to include some learning resources as one cannot heal from TMS without educating themselves about pain science and TMS. This is not a magic pill, it does take work. But! You can heal from this. Once you begin to unlearn the pain, it will fade. Once you take away the "I'm sick" or "I'm broken" narrative and replace it with empowerment, the pain will fade. If you deprive the pain of fear and attention, IT WILL FADE. You will heal. I did and you can too!
I hope that this post helps you! I really truly do and I apologize for it's length. I want you to recover. It doesn't matter if you've been in pain for 6 months or 15 years, you CAN heal and I don't want you to give up or lose hope about that. You can use these techniques and this knowledge for virtually any chronic pain condition as it can also help in pain management. I wish you an easy road to recovery.
Here are some resources to help teach about TMS and how to heal from it... Bare with me. This comes from my research of over a year.
TMS Healing Books:
Alan Gordon's The Way Out
Unlearn Your Pain
Headache In the Pelvis
Pain science:
Brain Creates Pain
Predictive Coding
How To Determine Cause of Chronic Pain
How To Reverse Chronic Pain
Lorimer Moseley - Why Things Hurt
Pain, the brain and your amazing protectometer - Lorimer Moseley
Success Stories:
Vulvodynia Success Story
Vulvodynia Success Story 2
Pelvic Pain Healed
Pelvic Pain Pudendal Neuralgia
Pudendal Neuralgia
Pelvic Pain (PN) Healed
Psychotherapy for Chronic Pain
Menda Health (Takes Insurance in CA)
Somatic Tracking For Chronic Pain and Symptoms

I’ve been lifting weights at the gym since 2021, 3-5 times a week on average. I’m 130lbs and 5’8. I do have a past history of anorexia from about the years 2015-2020 and was underweight for many years in the past. Now I eat well and feel i’m at a healthy weight for my body.
However, I go through phases where leg day absolutely destroys me the following day. For example, I did leg day yesterday and went pretty hard (i’m quite sore today). Today i’ve been absolutely exhausted, my body feels heavy, it feels like im walking with an additional 50lbs on my shoulders. This has been happening a lot lately. the day after leg day has become a write off energy wise.
In general, I’m a very energetic person and don’t struggle with fatigue.
Curious if anyone has this happen, and if they’ve made any connections as to how to best prevent it? I’m wondering if it has anything to do with my past of under eating and my body being weaker? I don’t know

I also have the immortal trait

Hi all, I (F26) would like to get your advice on my current job situation. My background in education is international law.
I have been working in my company for 3.5 years, I got promoted two times. This is my first professional job in the legal field. The pros about the job: nice colleagues, love my clients, flexible both in terms of hrs you work and you can work from anywhere in the world. So I have been taking advantage of this and i sometimes go to other countries to work from their and combine it with a few days off (easy to travel within Europe). Also environment is rather more informal and we have great parties inside and outside the office.
Now the cons: we got acquired by another company and new management is changing company structure, are making terrible decisions and not taking our feedback into account. No transparency in a lot of things (like salary scales), the pay is also not very high, no real benefits , people are stressed from the workload and some people left in the past couple of months.
I have also been demotivated in the past couple of months due to the way management has been treating us and I don’t really feel challenged anymore as I feel like I learned everything I could.
I have had some interviews for a new job and just got an offer 3 days ago from a bank. This job would be in a new area (still in the legal field) that I am also interesting in learning more about. They do seem def more organized with a clear structure and the salary is a little bit higher than my current position (almost the same). But keep in mind this is a rather junior position as I will learn a new field. In this job, you work 4 days a week (2 days from the office) and they told me I can work from certain countries (EU countries) and also some others like US and Canada (this is a plus bcs my mom and brother live there) for a limited period of time , however it seems to be more monitored like getting a pre-approval from your manager.
At the same time, my current job wants to promote me to a more managerial position that would be less operational and more about helping and guiding people to do their best. So there are definitely new things I can learn from this position. But the new offer appeals to me a lot as well because I think it would be beneficial to gain experience in more areas I like in my 20s, a new environment could be great for me as the current company drained my energy a bit and I mean it on the non-transparency (they still have to let me know how much I could be making with the promotion- ikr lol). Sometimes I feel like we are an episode from the office. The only two downsides would be the managerial experience I can get from the promotion and less flexibility on remote work.
I am happy to receive any advice or insights, thank you. :)

My mother has always been controlling. She’s used a bunch of tactics to control: crying, yelling, the silent treatment. But there are also times where she is fiercely loyal, generous, thoughtful and kind. I’ve had a really confusing and complicated relationship with her. Days where I’ve had a great laugh with her and a good time, days where she guilts me for not spending more time with her and invades my privacy.
She’s had a problem where her legs have progressively gone numb, and on top of that now has blood cancer. I’m torn up over it and I lost my amazing father only 3 years ago, also to sudden cancer that took him in less than 2 months of us knowing. I do love my mom and I hate to see her in declining health.
On the other hand, my one sibling moved all the way across the country and can’t help with her. My other sibling who was living with her and helping her struggles with addiction and is currently in jail for possession with intent to sell charges. I live 1.5 hours away from her so now I’m the designated one of my siblings to have to watch out for her. It’s an exhausting job. Texts daily, calls nearly daily, and she wants to dig in and know all the details of my life. She would regularly go through our rooms as kids/teens and I have always been sensitive with her because of that and have resisted giving her too many details due to her overbearing nature.
My first wedding was so stressful because of her. She wanted to be in control of everything and make every decision and we fought a few times during the planning. I’m engaged again and have been for about 4 years because I literally just struggle to start the process because she will find a way to step in again and will take over some part of it. But I’d also break her heart if I eloped so……???? We just don’t get married because I can’t handle either scenario.
If you’re still reading this, here’s a last example. We just traveled by plane to go see my sibling. She paid, for the flights which was very nice. My significant other and I got a separate place to stay and she stayed with my sibling. Halfway through the trip she asks to come back to stay with me in my rental instead of at my siblings house because his blankets “smelled bad.” This was hard on us because we were looking forward to some time together and for my sibling to kindof “be taking care of” her for a few days. But the truth came out, my sibling had another house guest while she was there (because of an upcoming graduation of my siblings child) and my mom treated them so poorly and acted so jealous. Said this poor young woman “usurped” her time with my sibling. Couldn’t stop talking about her. Became upset and spoke poorly of her loud enough for her to hear. It was embarrassing. My sibling was stressed out and tense from our mom not being kind and welcoming.
So I’m at this crossroads now where I’m feeling like I’m stuck and I would feel guilty forever if I didn’t shoulder the weight of having to be the responsible child who lives close to her and helps her, and also feeling like I’ll never get to go out and explore and live my own life because my mom just needs me too much.
I’m feeling like I’m coming off as a selfish jerk right now, but I genuinely needed to put this out there and get it off my chest.

Hi. I'm (25) in a bit of a panic.
As the title of the post said, I have no idea how to get this to work. I've been gradually cutting her off more and more because of her litany of massive issues (listed frankly below) and now she is getting even worse and refusing to give me the money I need to at the very least get my prescriptions.
I am on SSDI for my autism (which I hate having to rely on but I haven't been able to find a job after nearly 5 months of searching so... yeah), I ahve applied for "food stamps: as most people call it, I've listed a TON of my things for sale online, I'm scrounging around for favors I can do or things I can make and sell with what's left aroudn my apartment, I'm wiaitng for paperwork to go through on the Biolife place where I will literally be selling my blood to make the money needed to just... survive with a slight bit of "joy" as I've started calling anything outside of just the bare minimum to survive...
it's bad but i would rather live under a literal bridge in the middle of a zombie apocalyspe-nuclear wasteland hybrid than go back to being trapped at her house.
I need new glasses, my phone is basically a fire hazard now and the contract is way too expensive and tied to my Mother but I can't afford a new phone right now and she won't split my number, I need my medications and food, I need toilet paper and soap and other just.... basic stuff.
I'd like to be able to get a pack of cookies, or some jello, or maybe even splurge and get a kids meal at chipotle ($4.87! It's my go-to eat out aside from the meal deals at the bodega near me that get me points I can use to get free loafs of bread or pints of milk and stuff), things like that.
I live in my own apartment, have for over 2 years now, and she's been worse and worse the more independent I become. She uses ehr medical knowledge as a psyche NP against me all the time and tries to get me on more and more medications, many in the same class as ones that I've gotten HORRIBLE side effects from in the past. She says I'm bad with money for having a heavily budgeted out $100/week for food, household needs, and a little bit of "joy" (usually $10-$20, for both eating out and little treats at the store).
She's cvalled my degree useless and gotten mad at me for having bad grades in classes I historically struggle in. She's called me all kinds of nasty things and threatens me on occasion but is smart enough to walk it back a few seconds later. She is brushing aside VERY messed up things that happened in the past, like brushing aside my appendicitis for a few days or not buying me any new underwear for nearly a year when I was a little kid (*I was doing all the laundry at that time (8) and she didn't notice until she saw I had exactly 7 pairs and they were all basically shredded to force them to fit).
Keep in mind she was a millionaire for YEARS and has a massive issue with spending way too much on stuff like nordstroms or impulsively buying new cars and stuff, that she has a hoarding problem disguised by how it's all contained and neatly sorted in closets and stuff in her massive house, and that I can't trust a word she says because this is the same person who also toldme that I could only make $700/month on SSDI before they start cutting into my pay out and I lose my insurance, when in rality its around $950/month, my insurance only costs a grand total of $40 a month and not $400, and that I can make up to $1,700 a month before they reevaluate my case. It also has to be consistent for 3 months and a bunch of other stuff doesnt facotr in like Biolife.
Sorry for the long post, I just... any tips? I've shared with family, and it's only making it worse.

"I am going to be 48 years old in a few weeks. I have been diagnosed with Borderline Personality Disorder since I was twenty years old. Much of my life, I have met all of the criteria of this disorder, and I have had a long, hard road ahead once it dawned on me that it was true. I have a fundamental dysfunction in my personality. I cannot cope with the world because at my core, I am unable to maintain stability as a functional adult for long periods of time due to my impulsive nature and my ability to forgive and love unconditionally. I don't know how to reconcile those traits with a healthy and successful life. My relationships are 'ride or die,' with me as the enabledoormat/reactionary drama queen. I tend to date men who need constant, obsessive attention and servitude, with them being the dominant to my submissive, their ego to my down-to-earth, and they are the Narcissist to my Borderline. I don't want to romanticize like so many JokeHarley memes, but this has been the way that it has gone for far too long.
My upbringing wasn't even close to being abusive. I was the only child, and my parents stayed married. I was sheltered, with no physical or sexual abuse; both of my parents were good people who loved me. It wasn't easy; we lacked money but never love. We struggled, but there were so many things that were different than for most people, in cool ways and in ways that were not cool. But never was I considered 'normal.'
One of the challenges of being Borderline is the difficulty in being our own therapist. Not because of this new 'favorite person' misinformation, but because we struggle with justifying anything. We see very little wrong with the way we are; we just need to know how we can make others understand that it's okay that we are intense, unpredictable in a predictable way, and humanly sensitive to everything that affects us. We insert ourselves into everything so we can let it all affect us. We claim that we didn't realize that we're supposed to change because we see no problem with the way we are; it's other people who are concerned, and we are not concerned with what people think (except when we are). So why do we have to change? It's our life, the one that is unmanageable and dysfunctional, and giving us unhoused vibes. This is still our life, and it's not easy to get through that we need to act accordingly because we don't care about your self-esteem; why do you care about ours?
So, we are often pushed into admitting that we can potentially be a little bit much. We are painted into the roles of the serial killer and the horrible Narcissistic Personality Disorder twin flame that nobody trusts because we follow our hearts (and we tend to hold grudges). Our dynamics are different, but we all follow astrology. Our sign is 'complete psycho' most of the time. I have been trying to figure out how to make it so we can get along with the world and it is not our enemy...but people keep messing up the whole situation.
People with borderline personality disorder may exhibit fear of abandonment through intense and unstable relationships. They might go to great lengths to avoid real or perceived abandonment, such as clinging to others, becoming quickly and intensely attached, or displaying extreme reactions (anger, panic, or depression) when they anticipate abandonment.
Abandonment fears can lead to impulsive actions to prevent separation or worse, therefore it's important to seek professional help for a comprehensive understanding and support. Additionally, individuals with BPD may engage in frantic efforts to avoid abandonment, such as making frantic, impulsive gestures to maintain a connection, even if those actions are not in their best interest. They might experience intense feelings of emptiness when alone and may go to extremes to fill that void. These behaviors can strain relationships, making it challenging for individuals with BPD to establish and maintain stable connections with others. Therapy, particularly dialectical behavior therapy (DBT), is often recommended to help manage and address these challenges.
Patterns of instability in borderline personality disorder (BPD) refer to consistent and recurring disruptions in various aspects of a person's life. This instability typically manifests in the following areas:

1. Relationships: Individuals with BPD often experience tumultuous relationships marked by extremes of idealization and devaluation. Their attitudes and feelings toward others may change rapidly, contributing to a cycle of intense, yet unstable, interpersonal connections.
   
2. Self-Image: BPD can involve an unstable sense of self. Individuals may struggle with a fluctuating self-identity, feeling uncertain about who they are, their values, and their life goals. This instability in self-perception can lead to a lack of direction and purpose.
   
3. Emotions: Emotional instability is a hallmark of BPD. Intense and rapidly shifting emotions, such as anger, anxiety, and sadness, can be challenging to regulate. Mood swings may occur in response to external events or perceived threats to relationships.
   
4. Impulsivity: Impulsive behaviors in areas like spending, substance abuse, reckless driving, or unsafe sexual practices are common in individuals with BPD. These actions often stem from a desire to alleviate emotional distress or avoid perceived abandonment.
   

These patterns of instability can significantly impact a person's daily functioning and relationships, making it crucial for individuals with BPD to seek professional help for effective management and support. In the context of borderline personality disorder (BPD), impulsivity refers to engaging in behaviors without careful consideration of the consequences. Individuals with BPD may display impulsive actions in various areas of their lives, such as:

1. Spending: Reckless and impulsive spending, often beyond one's means, is common in individuals with BPD.
   
2. Substance Abuse: Engaging in impulsive and risky behaviors related to substance use, including alcohol and drugs.
   
3. Sexual Behavior: Unplanned and impulsive sexual encounters, sometimes without regard for potential consequences, can occur.
   
4. Reckless Driving: Impulsive and risky driving behaviors, such as speeding or dangerous maneuvers.
   
5. Self-Harm: Engaging in impulsive self-harming behaviors as a way to cope with intense emotions.
   

Impulsivity in BPD can be driven by a desire to alleviate emotional pain, boredom, or to avoid perceived abandonment. Developing coping strategies and emotional regulation skills through therapy, particularly dialectical behavior therapy (DBT), can be beneficial in managing impulsive behaviors associated with BPD.
Identity disturbance in borderline personality disorder (BPD) refers to a pervasive and unstable sense of self. Individuals with BPD may struggle with a coherent and consistent understanding of who they are, which can manifest in several ways:

1. Self-Image Fluctuations: A person with BPD may experience rapid shifts in self-perception, ranging from feeling exceptionally positive to extremely negative about themselves. This can occur within short periods.
   
2. Uncertainty About Goals and Values: Individuals with identity disturbance may have difficulty establishing and maintaining long-term goals or consistent values. They might struggle with defining their life direction and purpose.
   
3. Chameleon-Like Adaptation: Some individuals with BPD may adopt different personas or behaviors in different social situations, often as a means to fit in or avoid rejection. This can lead to a lack of stable and authentic self-expression. Intense Fear of Abandonment: The fear of abandonment can exacerbate identity issues, as individuals may shape their identity based on the perceived expectations or desires of others, leading to a lack of a stable core sense of self.
   

Addressing identity disturbance in BPD often involves therapeutic interventions, such as dialectical behavior therapy (DBT) or psychodynamic therapy. These approaches aim to help individuals explore and develop a more stable and authentic sense of self.
Dissociation in borderline personality disorder (BPD) refers to a coping mechanism where individuals disconnect from their thoughts, feelings, memories, or sense of identity. This disconnection can occur as a response to stress, trauma, or overwhelming emotions. Dissociative experiences in BPD may include:

1. Depersonalization: Feeling detached from oneself, as if observing from outside the body.
   
2. Derealization: Perceiving the external environment as unreal or distorted.
   
3. Amnesia: Gaps in memory, especially related to stressful events or periods of intense emotion.
   
4. Identity Confusion: Momentary lapses in awareness of one's identity or feeling unsure about who they are.
   

Dissociation serves as a way for individuals with BPD to manage distress, particularly when emotions become too overwhelming. However, it can interfere with daily functioning and contribute to difficulties in relationships. Therapy, especially approaches like dialectical behavior therapy (DBT) and trauma-focused therapy, may help individuals develop healthier coping mechanisms and address dissociative experiences.
Certainly, here are some examples of dissociative experiences that individuals with borderline personality disorder (BPD) may encounter:

1. Depersonalization: Feeling as though you are watching yourself from a distance, almost like being an observer rather than an active participant in your own life.
   
2. Derealization: Perceiving the external world as strange, unreal, or distorted. You may be on a heavy trip off mushrooms and wandering around the closet park in the middle of the night feels different when you are over 40. It hits different, and you can get in a lot more trouble than experimenting teenagers. You're not holding a job long under these circumstances.
   
3. Amnesia: Having periods of time where you cannot recall significant details or events, especially those associated with heightened emotional states or trauma. If you are being sedated for trying to call the same number over and over at three am because you desperately need to move to
   
4. Identity Confusion: Brief moments of not recognizing oneself or feeling uncertain about personal identity, values, or goals. Taking in the attributes of your signiotg
   

It's important to note that dissociative experiences can vary widely among individuals, and not everyone with BPD will necessarily experience these examples. If you or someone you know is experiencing dissociation or other symptoms associated with BPD, seeking professional help from a mental health practitioner is crucial for appropriate diagnosis and support.
Suicidal ideation in borderline personality disorder (BPD) involves persistent thoughts about death, dying, or the desire to end one's life. Individuals with BPD may experience varying degrees of suicidal thoughts, ranging from fleeting notions to detailed plans. Some aspects of suicidal ideation in BPD include:

1. Frequency and Intensity: Suicidal ideation can be a chronic feature, with thoughts occurring regularly or intermittently. The intensity can range from vague thoughts to detailed plans.
   
2. Impulsivity: Individuals with BPD may be prone to impulsive behaviors, and this impulsivity can extend to suicidal acts or self-harming behaviors during periods of emotional distress.
   
3. Sense of Hopelessness: Suicidal thoughts in BPD can be linked to a pervasive sense of hopelessness, often fueled by challenges in relationships, identity, and emotional regulation.
   
4. Coping Mechanism: For some, suicidal ideation may serve as a coping mechanism, providing a perceived escape from emotional pain or a means to regain control.
   

Addressing suicidal ideation in BPD requires immediate attention from mental health professionals. Therapeutic interventions, such as dialectical behavior therapy (DBT) and cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT), can be effective in helping individuals manage intense emotions and develop healthier coping strategies. If you or someone you know is experiencing suicidal thoughts, it's crucial to seek help from a mental health professional or a crisis hotline immediately.
Mood swings in borderline personality disorder (BPD) are characterized by rapid and intense changes in emotional states. These fluctuations can occur in response to various triggers or even without apparent cause. Key aspects of mood swings in BPD include:

1. Intensity: Emotions can shift from one extreme to another rapidly, with individuals experiencing intense feelings of joy, anger, sadness, or anxiety.
   
2. Instability: The duration of mood swings can be brief, lasting only a few hours or days. This instability contributes to the challenge of predicting or managing emotional states.
   
3. Triggered by Interpersonal Events: Mood swings in BPD often correlate with interpersonal stressors, such as perceived rejection, criticism, or the fear of abandonment.
   
4. Impact on Relationships: The intensity and unpredictability of mood swings can strain relationships, as others may find it challenging to understand or respond to the rapidly changing emotional landscape.
   

Therapeutic approaches, particularly dialectical behavior therapy (DBT), focus on helping individuals with BPD recognize and regulate their emotions, providing skills to manage mood swings effectively.
The term "Cluster B" refers to one of the four personality disorder clusters outlined in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5). Cluster B personality disorders share certain features, including dramatic, emotional, and erratic behaviors. This grouping includes the following personality disorders:

1. Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD): Characterized by instability in relationships, self-image, and emotions, along with impulsive and self-destructive behaviors.
   
2. Narcissistic Personality Disorder (NPD): Involves an exaggerated sense of self-importance, a preoccupation with fantasies of unlimited success, and a lack of empathy for others.
   
3. Antisocial Personality Disorder (ASPD): Characterized by a disregard for the rights of others, impulsivity, deceitfulness, and a lack of remorse after harming others.
   
4. Histrionic Personality Disorder (HPD): Involves a need for attention, dramatic and seductive behavior, and intense emotions that may be perceived as shallow.
   

These personality disorders within Cluster B share some common traits, such as difficulties in forming and maintaining relationships, impulsivity, and emotional dysregulation. However, each disorder within the cluster has distinct features and diagnostic criteria. The clustering is a way to organize and understand patterns of personality pathology for diagnostic and treatment purposes.
Diagnosing borderline personality disorder (BPD) typically involves a comprehensive assessment by a mental health professional. Several tools and methods are used to gather information, including:

1. Clinical Interviews: A mental health professional conducts thorough interviews to assess the individual's symptoms, emotional experiences, and history of relationships. These interviews may involve discussions about mood, identity, impulsivity, and interpersonal difficulties.
   
2. Diagnostic Criteria: The assessment often involves evaluating the individual against established diagnostic criteria, such as those outlined in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5). Meeting specific criteria is essential for a formal diagnosis.
   
3. Structured Interviews: Mental health professionals may use structured interviews designed to elicit specific information related to BPD symptoms. These interviews help standard ize the diagnostic process.
   
4. Self-Report Questionnaires: Individuals may be asked to complete self-report questionnaires designed to assess various aspects of personality, emotional experiences, and interpersonal functioning.
   
5. Collateral Information: Information from family members, close friends, or other relevant sources may be considered to gain a more comprehensive understanding of the individual's behavior and relationships.
   

It's important to note that a diagnosis of BPD should be made by a qualified mental health professional based on a thorough assessment. Early diagnosis and intervention are crucial for individuals with BPD to receive appropriate treatment and support.
Here's the continuation of the edited text:
Cluster B Personality Disorder #clusterb #clusterbs #bpd-dbt #dbt #fearofabandonment #linean
This revised version addresses spelling, grammar, and ensures clarity in expression. Let me know if there are any further edits or adjustments you'd like to make!

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