What?
This is a weird coincidence. I just finished watching Lizzie McGuire yesterday and the last episode was precisely about not letting snobs ruin your enjoyment of something. She and her mates went to watch a live recording of a toddler show and got made fun of by Kate.
Yes, I’m a middle aged woman who likes re-watching shows from when I was younger. Anyone doesn’t like that, that’s a them problem. I could have done with a mate like Gordo as a kid though. He’s very A Team friendly.
It’s a thing among some antivaxxers, or at least among my sister who taught her kids that they “don’t believe in soap”.
Her toddler got ill during lockdown and had to be taken to A&E, so she left her other kids with us. One of them, after going to the loo, said she only used water to wash her hands because she’s “allergic to soap”. I said you go right back to the bathroom and wash your hands with soap. To no one’s surprise, she didn’t have an allergic reaction.
This sister is so antivaxx she actually tried to have my mum taken off her ventilator.
Nice try, shark.
Wow, the adrenaline thing is crazy!
Thanks, my cancer scares both turned out to be non serious things. There is a cancer gene that affects the women in my family, so that’s why after the second scare I realised I had to do something.
I think there’s hope for you in that you’re still able to go through with it (unlike me, who just avoided them, even if it meant dying of cancer).
I had a panic attack just from my GP saying I need a blood test. He even prescribed by lorazepam to take for the test. I didn’t though.
I had a really good therapist for my phobia. In the first session she encouraged me to look at a picture first. I started crying and panicking but she got me to a point where I could look at it and not freak out. The next stage was videos, which took me a while longer to conquer. I felt at that point that I’d never get past it, but she really managed to calm me down to the point where I could. Then it was handling needles and she gave me some to take home, including the finger prick ones. I managed to get as far as letting my ex and my nephews stab me with it but I never got as far as doing it to myself. The third session was when I managed to do a draw. It took 45 mins to psyche myself up. I had her put the fan on me, have some baseball highlights playing on the computer and I had my Tamagotchi uni with me.
I asked her to just pierce the vein and take it straight out so I had a reference for the pain level. Then after more psyching up, I had her do a full draw from my other arm. And I didn’t even get dizzy or feel sick. She even gave me the vial to take home. It was so quick, I didn’t even have time to choose a date for my Tama.
The good thing about it was the therapist let me know I was always in control. If I felt uncomfortable, we stopped. I always felt safe, and that’s probably why your experiences haven’t helped, but probably just reinforce the fear.
I also get emotional flashbacks in certain situations (possible CPTSD, I’m still trying to get my head around it, I’ve blocked out a lot of my childhood), which my last therapist just dismissed as self esteem issues. I can’t adequately put into words just how useless she was.
I spent 25 years avoiding blood tests due to an intense phobia. After two cancer scares (the second I put off getting checked for a whole year, because of the fear of having a blood test), I decided I needed to do something about it, so I got CBT on the NHS. After three sessions I managed to get a stab in the vein first, then a full practice one without the usual panic attack I got just at the thought of having one. The guided exposure therapy was the bit that helped.
For me it was more a primal fear of someone coming at me with a sharp object. Rather than the “I’m scared I’ll bleed out” stuff on the fears checklist.
CBT sucked for my autism related anxiety issues (had a useless therapist for that one), but for my phobia, the exposure therapy worked really well.
I hope you’re able to find something to get you past your phobia.
Hmm. I’m starting to suspect you may be a shark in a man suit.
TIL I learnt that I am a destroyer of civilisations!
Unlimited powaaaaaaa!
One other interesting thing is brown fat. Dr Karl told this story loads of times on the 5live science podcast, so it’s bound to be in one of the 2010 or 2011 episodes.
Iirc: a group of women went to Antarctica and put on a lot of body fat beforehand. But even after that, the cold was enough to make their bodies turn their white fat into brown fat and they lost a ton of weight.
Not the Dr Karl episode: https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/articles/5nrBw8X5NhXxv04J7H1vn2J/the-body-fat-that-can-make-you-thin
So the answer is live somewhere freezing for a bit if you want to lose weight.
(In my case, for some reason eating chocolate helps keep my tummy fat down. I ballooned after giving it up, even though the rest of my diet was the same.)
My understanding is that humans pretty much use about the same amount of calories a day, whether sedentary or not. If you spend more on exercise, your body spends less on other things.
https://www.science.org/content/article/scientist-busts-myths-about-how-humans-burn-calories-and-why
The amount your body uses just to stay alive dwarfs what you’d burn from adding cycling to your day.
Edited to add the “much” that I somehow deleted.
I’ve seen it spelt both meow and miaow in the UK. My old Little Oxford dictionary (1986 edition) only has the miaow spelling, with mew as the variation. Meow isn’t even in it.