Interesting article about anxiety. I’ve never seen it this way but it makes a lot of sense!

15 Things You Need To Know About People Who Have Concealed Anxiety

Brianna Wiest

 

PabloRomero

1. They don’t hide their anxiety, they hide their symptoms. To have concealed anxiety isn’t to deny having it – only to do everything in your power to ensure other people don’t see you struggle.

2. They have the most anxiety about having anxiety. Because they are not comfortable letting people see them in the throes of an irrational panic, the most anxiety-inducing idea is… whether or not they’ll have anxiety at any given moment in time.

3. They come across as a paradoxical mix of outgoing but introverted, very social but rarely out. It is not that they are anti-social, just that they can only take being around others incrementally (which is mostly normal). Yet, on the surface, this may come across as confusing.

4. They make situations worse by trying to suppress their feelings about them. They are extremely uncomfortable with other people seeing them in pain, and they don’t want to feel pitied or as though they are compromising anyone’s time. Yet, they make things worse for themselves by suppressing, as it actually funnels a ton of energy into making the problem larger and more present than it already was.

5. They are often hyper-aware and highly intuitive. Anxiousness is an evolutionary function that essentially keeps us alive by making us aware of our surroundings and other people’s motives. It’s only uncomfortable when we don’t know how to manage it effectively – the positive side is that it makes you hyper-conscious of what’s going on around you.

6. Their deepest triggers are usually social situations. It’s not that they feel anxious in an airplane, it’s that they feel anxious in an airplane and are stuck around 50 other people. It’s not that they will fail a test, but that they will fail a test and everyone in school will find out and think they are incompetent and their parents will be disappointed. It’s not that they will lose love, but that they will lose love and nobody will ever love them again.

7. It is not always just a “panicked feeling” they have to hide. It can also be a tendency to worry, catastrophizing, etc. The battle is often (always?) between competing thoughts in their minds.

8. They are deep thinkers, and great problem-solvers. One of the benefits of anxiety is that it leads you to considering every worst case scenario, and then subsequently, how to handle or respond to each.

9. They are almost always “self-regulating” their thoughts.They’re talking themselves in, out, around, up or down from something or another very often, and increasingly so in public places.

10. They don’t trust easily, but they will convince you that they do. They want to make the people around them feel loved and accepted as it eases their anxiety in a way.

11. They tend to desire control in other areas of their lives.They’re over-workers or are manically particular about how they dress or can’t really seem to let go of relationships if it wasn’t their idea to end them.

12. They have all-or-nothing personalities, which is what creates the anxiety. Despite being so extreme, they are highly indecisive. They try to “figure out” whether or not something is right before they actually try to do it.

13. They assume they are disliked. While this is often stressful, it often keeps them humble and grounded at the same time.

14. They are very driven (they care about the outcome of things).They are in equal proportions as in control of their lives as they feel out of control of their lives – this is because they so frequently try to compensate for fear of the unknown.

15. They are very smart, but doubt it. A high intelligence is linked to increased anxiety (and being doubtful of one’s mental capacity are linked to both).

http://thoughtcatalog.com/brianna-wiest/2015/12/15-things-you-need-to-know-about-people-who-have-concealed-anxiety/

Merry Christmas and Happy Full Moon in Cancer

Merry Christmas everybody! The Full Moon is in it’s natural home of Cancer today, which makes everyone want to hibernate and eat a lot. So go for it and have a wonderful day!!

Here’s some wonderful pictures of the Full Moon from around the world:

http://www.cleveland.com/metro/index.ssf/2015/12/full_moon_shines_on_christmas.html

Winter Solstice

Silvesterchläuse:
Archaic Winter Festival in Canton Appenzell Ausserrhoden
Photo: swissvista

The wheel of the year has turned and we are officially in Winter and Capricorn season. The Capricorn goat knows how to survive harsh conditions and pick it’s way over an impassable landscape. It’s a season of miracles. The seed of the Sun has been planted in the time of greatest darkness, and will start to grow in daylight hours. Such a beautiful time of year. I love all the ancient traditions of light in the darkness. You can see it on our city streets today.

Capricorn represents ambition, self mastery and hard work. It’s ruled by the planet Saturn which teaches us responsibility and maturity – and that we will reap what we sow. I think these are great themes to keep in mind when setting intentions for the coming year. I don’t believe in New Year’s resolutions, but I do believe in working hard towards what fulfills us and makes us happy.

We had a wonderful Grand Earth trine this week too! The Moon in Taurus (exalted!) enhanced by Jupiter in Virgo, and made real by Pluto (and Mercury) in Capricorn (evolution). This gives a grounded, positive boost to anything we begin this week!

Have a wonderful holiday!

Muhammad Ali's statement on being Muslim

If you can't listen to this man, you need to rethink your perspective.

JUST IN: Muhammad Ali releases statement "regarding presidential candidates proposing to ban Muslim immigration to the US" -- http://nbcnews.to/1jOOUeK

"I am a Muslim and there is nothing Islamic about killing innocent people in Paris, San Bernardino, or anywhere else in the world. True Muslims know that the ruthless violence of so called Islamic Jihadists goes against the very tenets of our religion.

We as Muslims have to stand up to those who use Islam to advance their own personal agenda. They have alienated many from learning about Islam. True Muslims know or should know that it goes against our religion to try and force Islam on anybody.

Speaking as someone who has never been accused of political correctness, I believe that our political leaders should use their position to bring understanding about the religion of Islam and clarify that these misguided murderers have perverted people's views on what Islam really is."

Krampus Night

If you’ve been naughty this year you might want to stay indoors tonight.

~ Krampus

“According to folklore, Krampus purportedly shows up in towns the night before December 6, known as Krampusnacht, or Krampus Night. Krampus, in Tyrol also called Tuifl, is a demon-like creature represented by a fearsome, hand-carved wooden mask with animal horns, a suit made from sheep or goat skin and large cow bells attached to the waist that the wearer rings by running or shaking his hips up and down. Krampus has been a part of Central European, alpine folklore going back at least a millennium, and since the 17th-century Krampus traditionally accompanies St. Nicholas and angels on the evening of December 5 to visit households to reward children that have been good while reprimanding those who have not.”

Text and pic: metro.co.uk

Photo: a participant dressed as the Krampus creature during “Krampus night” in Neustift im Stubaital

Saturn square Neptune

We’ve just had an astrological foreshadowing of 2016. The first square between Saturn in Sagittarius and Neptune in Pisces occurred on Thursday, underlined by Mercury’s conjunction with Saturn.

What does this mean? Our dreams receive a giant-reality-check-makeover.

All of this was further highlighted by Wednesday’s full Moon in Gemini.

Geminis, Virgos and Sagittarians REALLY felt the pressure to find clarity and the path forward. This is just the beginning! If we’re able to integrate this aspect we can find huge rewards down the road.

Saturn is the reality check. It is structure, discipline, maturity, time and timing. We reap what we have sown. Neptune is the planet of Magick and Belief. It’s the most spiritual and visionary of planets. It can awaken our consciousness or plunge us into escapist fantasies. The choice is ours.

When Saturn travels through Sagittarius, it brings a serious tone to our faith and inner truth. We need to follow a structure in order to experience freedom, walk our talk and apply ourselves with disciplined practice. Sagittarians around the world are becoming responsible in a new way.

Neptune is the visionary, and it’s natural home is Pisces. This dissolves our boundaries bringing vision, creativity, spirituality and music. There is no more separateness… we are all ONE. To quote Empowering Astrology: “Neptune does not entirely belong to our solar system. The view of life it teaches us originally belongs to other parts of the Milky Way.”

Neptune also brings the desire to escape reality.. leading us to drugs and distraction to escape the brutal realities of the world.

What happens when these two planets meet in a square? It’s an opportunity to structure our dreams – to make them real! This often happens through hard work which can be difficult for mystical types. As I said above the rewards are huge.

The other side is that illusions are shredded. People fall off their pedestals because their flaws become obvious. Are you playing out old, outworn patterns? Still going after the same people or situations that end up disappointing you? Time to snap out of it! If you’re lost in a fantasy or lying to yourself, the bubble will be burst in the upcoming months..

We’re in an interesting week astrologically. We’ll have a Gemini Full Moon tomorrow at 3 degrees and this one will oppose Saturn and square Neptune. We have some major things to figure out and commit to — things that must be in alignment with our hearts, our souls, and our higher good.

From Mystic Medusa: “This has been building all year, since last Xmas Eve actually, when Saturn first got into Sagittarius. A dream that you thought was sustainable and that was happening turns out to be based on quicksand.

A person you thought was your companion or staunch ally on the journey takes a side path away from you and you find out something dirty about them whilst you’re trudging onward. But there is no point berating them or even whining. They can’t hear you – your paths diverged a while back but you’re only now seeing it with Saturn Neptune.”

Where do witches come from?

"Circe" by Franz Stuck

Where do witches come from?

• By Alastair Sooke

10 October 2014

Ask any Western child to draw a witch, and the chances are that he or she will come up with something familiar: most likely a hook-nosed hag wearing a pointy hat, riding a broomstick or stirring a cauldron. But where did this image come from? The answer is more arresting and complex than you might think, as I discovered last week when I visited Witches and Wicked Bodies, a new exhibition at the British Museum in London that explores the iconography of witchcraft.

Witches have a long and elaborate history. Their forerunners appear in the Bible, in the story of King Saul consulting the so-called Witch of Endor. They also crop up in the classical era in the form of winged harpies and screech-owl-like “strixes” – frightening flying creatures that fed on the flesh of babies.

Circe, the enchantress from Greek mythology, was a sort of witch, able to transform her enemies into swine. So was her niece Medea. The ancient world, then, was responsible for establishing a number of tropes that later centuries would come to associate with witches.

The Three Weird Sisters from Macbeth, 1785 (The Trustees of the British Museum)

Yet it wasn’t until the early Renaissance that our modern perception of the witch was truly formed. And one man of the period arguably did more than any other to define the way that we still imagine witches today: the German painter and printmaker Albrecht Dürer.

Double trouble

In a pair of hugely influential engravings, Dürer determined what would become the dual stereotype of a witch’s appearance. On the one hand, as in The Four Witches (1497), she could be young, nubile and lissom – her physical charms capable of enthralling men. On the other, as in Witch Riding Backwards on a Goat (c 1500), she could be old and hideous.

Durer's influential etchings portrayed witches as young and nubile or old crones.
"The Four Witches" by Albrecht Durer

The latter print presents a naked crone sitting on top of a horned goat, a symbol of the devil. She has withered, drooping dugs for breasts, her mouth is open as she shrieks spells and imprecations, and her wild, wind-blasted hair streams unnaturally in the direction of her travel (a sign of her magical powers). She is even clutching a broomstick. Here is the matriarch of the witches that we find in popular culture today.

For art historians, though, the interesting question is what provided Renaissance artists with the model for this appalling vision. One theory is that Dürer and his contemporaries were inspired by the personification of Envy as conceived by the Italian artist Andrea Mantegna (c 1431-1506) in his engraving Battle of the Sea Gods.

“Mantegna’s figure of Envy formed a kind of call for the Renaissance of the witch as a hideous old hag,” explains the artist and writer Deanna Petherbridge, who has co-curated the exhibition at the British Museum. “Envy was emaciated, her breasts were no longer good, which is why she was jealous of women, and she attacked babies and ate them. She often had snakes for hair.”

A good example of this Envy-type of witch can be seen in an extraordinarily intense Italian print known as Lo Stregozzo (The Witch’s Procession) (c 1520). Here, a malevolent witch with open mouth, hair in turmoil and desiccated dugs clutches a steaming pot (or cauldron), and rides a fantastical, monstrous skeleton. Her right hand reaches for the head of a baby from the heap of infants at her feet.

This print was produced during the ‘golden age’ of witchcraft imagery: the tumultuous 16th and 17th centuries, when vicious witch trials convulsed Europe (the peak of the witch-hunts lasted from 1550 to 1630). “Across Europe, there was the Reformation and Counter-Reformation, the Thirty Years’ War, fantastic poverty and social change,” says Petherbridge. “Even King James in his text Daemonologie [1597] was asking: why was there such a proliferation of witches? Everybody assumed it was because the world had got so foul that it was coming to an end.”

As a result there was an outpouring of brutally misogynistic witchcraft imagery, with artists taking advantage of the invention of the printing press to disseminate material rapidly and widely. “Witchcraft is closely allied to the print revolution,” Petherbridge explains. Many of these prints, such as the powerful colour woodcut Witches’ Sabbath (1510) by Dürer’s pupil Hans Baldung Grien, can be seen in the British Museum’s exhibition.

By the 18th Century, though, witches were no longer considered a threat. Instead they were understood as the superstitious imaginings of peasants. Still, that didn’t stop great artists such as Goya from depicting them.

Los Caprichos, Goya’s collection of 80 capricious (or whimsical) etchings from 1799, uses witches as well as goblins, demons and monsters as vehicles for satire. “Goya uses witchcraft metaphorically to point out the evils of society,” says Petherbridge. “His prints are actually about social things: greed, war, the corruption of the clergy.”

Broom with a view

Goya did not believe in the literal reality of witches, but his prints are still among the most potent images of witchcraft ever made. Plate 68 of Los Caprichos is especially memorable: a wizened hag teaches an attractive younger witch how to fly a broomstick. Both are naked, and the print was surely meant to be salacious: the Spanish ‘volar’ (to fly) is slang for having an orgasm.

Around the same time, there was a vogue among artists working in England for depicting theatrical scenes of witchcraft. The Swiss-born artist Henry Fuseli, for instance, made several versions of the famous moment when Macbeth meets the three witches for the first time on the heath.

By now, though, the art of witchcraft was in decline. It lacked the strange imaginative force that had animated the genre in earlier centuries. In the 19th Century, the Pre-Raphaelites and the Symbolists were both drawn to the figure of the witch, whom they recast as a femme fatale. But their sinister seductresses arguably belong more to the realm of sexual fantasy than high art.

The one constant throughout the history of the art of witchcraft is misogyny. As a woman, how does this make Petherbridge feel? “At the beginning when I was looking at these images, I was quite distressed because they are so ageist,” she says. “Of course, now I’ve stopped being shocked by them, and I think that they are saved by their excess, satire and invention. Artists were often drawn to these scenes because they offered drama. They were free to spread their wings and come up with all kinds of bizarre imagery. Yes, these scenes represent the demonisation of women. But often they are keenly linked to social critique. Witches are the scapegoats on which the evil of society is projected.”

Alastair Sooke is art critic of The Daily Telegraph

Choose Her Every Day (Or Leave Her)

Great sentiment about love that’s been circulating around this week! We had a New Moon in Scorpio on Wednesday, and this article is a reflection of the emotional depth and commitment reflected in this sign. check it out:

”Choose Her Every Day (Or Leave Her)” by Brian Reeves

I spent 5 years hurting a good woman by staying with her but never fully choosing her.

I did want to be with this one. I really wanted to choose her. She was an exquisite woman, brilliant and funny and sexy and sensual. She could make my whole body laugh with her quick, dark wit and short-circuit my brain with her exotic beauty. Waking up every morning with her snuggled in my arms was my happy place. I loved her wildly.

Unfortunately, as happens with many young couples, our ignorance of how to do love well quickly created stressful challenges in our relationship. Before long, once my early morning blissful reverie gave way to the strained, immature ways of our everyday life together, I would often wonder if there was another woman out there who was easier to love, and who could love me better.

As the months passed and that thought reverberated more and more through my head, I chose her less and less. Every day, for five years, I chose her a little less.
I stayed with her. I just stopped choosing her. We both suffered.

Choosing her would have meant focusing every day on the gifts she was bringing into my life that I could be grateful for: her laughter, beauty, sensuality, playfulness, companionship, and so … much … more.
Sadly, I often found it nearly impossible to embrace – or even see – what was so wildly wonderful about her.

I was too focused on the anger, insecurities, demands, and other aspects of her strong personality that grated on me. The more I focused on her worst, the more I saw of it, and the more I mirrored it back to her by offering my own worst behavior. Naturally, this only magnified the strain on our relationship … which still made me choose her even less.

Thus did our nasty death spiral play itself out over five years.
She fought hard to make me choose her. That’s a fool’s task. You can’t make someone choose you, even when they might love you.
To be fair, she didn’t fully choose me, either. The rage-fueled invective she often hurled at me was evidence enough of that.

I realize now, however, that she was often angry because she didn’t feel safe with me. She felt me not choosing her every day, in my words and my actions, and she was afraid I would abandon her.

Actually, I did abandon her.

By not fully choosing her every day for five years, by focusing on what bothered me rather than what I adored about her, I deserted her.
Like a precious fragrant flower I brought proudly into my home but then failed to water, I left her alone in countless ways to wither in the dry hot heat of our intimate relationship.

I’ll never not choose another woman I love again.
It’s torture for everyone.
If you’re in relationship, I invite you to ask yourself this question:
“Why am I choosing my partner today?”

If you can’t find a satisfying answer, dig deeper and find one. It could be as simple as noticing that in your deepest heart’s truth, “I just do.”
If you can’t find it today, ask yourself again tomorrow. We all have disconnected days.

But if too many days go by and you just can’t connect with why you’re choosing your partner, and your relationship is rife with stress, let them go. Create the opening for another human being to show up and see them with fresh eyes and a yearning heart that will enthusiastically choose them every day.

Your loved one deserves to be enthusiastically chosen. Every day.

You do, too.
Choose wisely. ॐ”

Full Moon in Taurus

Excellent advice for Taurus: 

Bauhaus School Halloween

Spectacular creativity. Wish I could have been at this party!

Definitive Proof Nobody Did Costume Parties Like the Bauhaus

Friday, October 31, 2014, by Rachel B. Doyle

Photo by Karl Grill via The Charnel-House

Most people attribute Germany’s Bauhaus school with the following: being on the vanguard of minimalist design, the paring down of architecture to its most essential and non-ornamental elements, and the radical idea that useful objects could also be beautiful. What may be overlooked is the fact that the rigorous design school, founded by modernism’s grandsire Walter Gropius, also put on marvelous costume parties back in the 1920s. If you thought Bauhaus folk were good at designing coffee tables, just have a look at their costumes—as bewitching and sculptural as any other student project, but with an amazing flamboyance not oft ascribed to the movement.

These Bauhaus shindigs were nothing like typical Halloween parties, where everyone expects to find a few topical doppelgängers. Back in Weimar, competition among the creatives was fierce: students and teachers like artists Wassily Kandinsky, Paul Klee, Piet Mondian, László Moholy-Nagy; architect Mies van der Rohe; and furniture designer Marcel Breuer all tried to out-do one another by designing uniquely fantastical creations. According to Farkas Molnár, the late Hungarian architect who was a Bauhaus student in the early ’20s, the school’s renowned typography studios and cabinet-making workshops were taken very seriously, but “the greatest expenditures of energy, however, go into the costume parties.”

Photo via The Charnel-House

“The essential difference between the fancy-dress balls organized by the artists of Paris, Berlin, Moscow and the ones here at the Bauhaus is that our costumes are truly original,” Molnár wrote in a 1925 essay entitled “Life at the Bauhaus.” “Everyone prepares his or her own. Never a one that has been seen before. Inhuman, or humanoid, but always new. You may see monstrously tall shapes stumbling about, colorful mechanical figures that yield not the slightest clue as to where the head is. Sweet girls inside a red cube. Here comes a witch and they are hoisted high up into the air; lights flash and scents are sprayed,” he continued.

The parties began as improvisational events, but later grew into large-scale productions with costumes and sets made by the school’s stage workshop. There was often a theme to the evenings. One party was called “Beard, Nose, and Heart,” and attendees were instructed to show up in clothing that was two-thirds white, and one-third spotted, checked or striped. However, it’s generally agreed that the apotheosis of the Bauhaus’ costumed revelry was theMetal Party of 1929, where guests donned costumes made from tin foil, frying pans, and spoons.Attendees entered that party by sliding down a chute into one of several rooms filled with silver balls.

Photo via The Charnel-House

The theater workshop responsible for many of these resplendent events was led by Oskar Schlemmer, a charismatic painter and choreographer best known for his Triadic Ballet, an avant-garde dance production that premiered in 1922. The three-part play with different colors and moods for each act was widely performed throughout the twenties, and became something of a poster child for the Bauhaus movement.

Photos via The Charnel-House

The Triadic Ballet’s 18 costumes were designed by matching geometric forms with analogous parts of the human body: a cylinder for the neck, a circle for the heads. Schlemmer made no secret of the fact that he considered the stylized, artificial movements of marionettes to be aesthetically superior to the naturalistic movements of real humans. These elaborate costumes, which were generally too large for their wearers to sit down in, totally upped the ante at the Bauhaus school’s regular costume balls.

Photos via The Charnel-House

Although there aren’t many photos of Bauhaus luminaries wearing the costumes they labored over in the name of socializing, thankfully Farkas Molnár has chronicled some of their style proclivities:

Photo via The Charnel-House

“Kandinsky prefers to appear decked out as an antenna, Itten as an amorphous monster, Feininger as two right triangles, Moholy-Nagy as a segment transpierced by a cross, Gropius as Le Corbusier, Muche as an apostle of Mazdaznan, Klee as the song of the blue tree,”Molnár wrote in 1925. “A rather grotesque menagerie…”

Photo via The Charnel-House

Walter Gropius used to dress up as Le Corbusier? It doesn’t really get better than that.

Photo via The Charnel-House

· Bauhaus Online [Official site]
· Oskar Schlemmer’s Bauhaus Costume Parties (1924-1926) [The Charnel-House]
· Exhibitionism: Bauhaus – Art As Life at the Barbican [Theatre of Fashion]
· All Bauhaus posts [Curbed National]
· The Ultimate Guide to Dressing Like an Architect for Halloween[Curbed National]