Super General Advice (the thread for advice without making a thread)

Spoiler

That's three different questions.

Is it bad? No, I don't see anything bad about it. You made a counter suggestion and expressed your reaction to their statements about what they want people to do. You have engaged in a conflict. I'm conflict averse and engaging often feels as if I'm escalating wildly, but it's not the same thing at all. It's okay to engage in a conflict. If the other person escalates wildly when engaged, that's on them, not you.

Are you bad? No! Even if you had done something bad, no. Doing something bad and being bad are not the same thing. If you do a bad thing and feel bad about doing the thing, that can be healthy. It can help inspire you to do your best to fix the thing and not do it again. But if you do a bad thing and feel bad about yourself as a person, that doesn't tend to feel like it can be fixed or prevented. It just causes so much suffering and eats away at your self esteem. I definitely find it really hard not to conflate "did bad" and "am bad", but those are not the same thing and the difference is important.

Did you do it wrong? If, as far as you can tell, you have accurately represented the meaning you intended to convey, you did it right.

 

uh

UH

Spoiler: nsfw, tmi, need advice

One: There’s a bump in the crease between the outer and inner lips of my vulva. It hurts when I press my legs together, not bad but enough to notice

Two: I cut myself with a fingernail trying to feel for it, it hurt like fuck for a second and then bled everywhere. I washed away the blood and put antiseptic on it but idk

Three: hellbrain is telling me that this is all my fault because of [vague unspecified bad thing that I did] and that I’m going to die of sepsis or cancer or both

 

Spoiler

This may not be the case for you, but I had a bump in a similar location a while back, and it turned out to be a clogged pore. I popped it, squeezed it out, and did my best to keep it clean, and it hasn't come back since. Hopefully your bump is as simple as that.

 

Spoiler

I've had pretty much the exact same thing, it was essentially a weird zit. You can put non-drying (i.e. not benzyl peroxide or whatever that stuff is that essentially bleaches stuff) acne ointment on it (just be careful to keep it off of more sensitive areas), it should go away after a while.

 

So my iphone flipped out and went into infinite reboot. I did everything up to downloading itunes and trying to update that way. No luck, it says it needs to be restored. I didn't already have an itunes backup because executive dysfunction.

Pretty much everything I actually need is either backed up, mirrored, redownloadable, or was never located on my phone in the first place. But the thought of having to put all my shit back is making me very tired.

I had icloud on, and it would help my peace of mind to be able to look at exactly which stuff is stored there/can be recovered directly that way. Except I can't log into my icloud account from my PC, because I never have before and it wants two factor authentication for a fresh install. I can only assume it's texting factor 2 to my phone, but I can't say for sure because my phone won't fucking boot. Thanks apple, that's really helpful. (Also I think I have two factor authentication turned on for the associated gmail address, requiring me to enter a code texted to my phone to access to my email. So if this series of authentication steps ends up involving email I'm not gonna be able to complete it anyway. That was really good planning on my part. Good thing I hate email and use it maybe once a month at most or this could be a genuine problem.)

I can take the phone to an apple store tomorrow, but it will cause me some trouble to not have any use of a mobile device tonight. Does anyone know whether they're likely to have better recovery tools?

Fake edit: I've pretty much already decided I'm gonna wait and take it to the store. Even if they can't do anything more than I can, I can't think of a single thing I might actually really lose that causes me more than a mild pang or some minor irritation about the inconvenience. I feel very lost without it, especially since it helps me so much with getting to sleep, but I can probably manage for one night with my desktop instead even if it's not ideal, and if not, I guess I'll be awake when the store opens in the morning. I think I mostly just want to complain, though advice would still be very much appreciated if anyone has any.

 

It's probably better to go to the apple store anyway, because Apple is really finicky about anyone working on their tech that's not them and it's very easy to void the warranty on a phone by accident. (Source: my best friend does phone repair on the side.) They're also more likely to have the tools to save data beforehand, and if your phone has to be cracked open to be fixed, they can do that.

 

I did end up going to the store. It took pretty much all day between one thing and another, but I’m very happy I did. Long story short, I have a new(er) phone now, which feels almost exactly like using my my previous phone but nicer, and all my stuff is completely fine. My last icloud backup was yesterday afternoon so I lost a total of like two browser tabs and three texts for some reason.

 

How do I shut down a credit card that I, technically, never finished opening? Note, the reason it isn't finished is because I don't legally own my own cell phone. (which they didn't ask for when I applied for the card, but did need to finish activating it)

 

So I'm generally skeptical of "power of positive thinking"-type crap, but I've had a couple of therapists now tell me that saying nice things about myself to myself will make me hate myself less. (I even had one who told me to look into the mirror and say "I love you" to myself.) What I'm curious about is, 1) does anyone have any experience with this type of thing actually working? and 2), specifically, when I'm insulted my go-to response is to just agree - yes, I'm an idiot, yes my art sucks, yes I probably should just kill myself, and so-on - because usually that is, honestly, how I feel. But would arguing back and denying the assertion possibly make me feel better in the long run, even if it means more confrontation in the moment?

 

so the thing about "the power of positive thinking" is that, yeah, law-of-attraction The Secret type stuff is bullshit, you're not going to literally manifest good things externally in your life by thinking positively. but it IS possible to rewire your thought processes, and specifically to interrupt negative thought processes and spirals and redirect them in a more positive direction. that's basically what CBT is all about. i've been working on similar stuff in therapy, though in my case it's more of a "don't judge yourself so harshly/you don't need to feel guilty about everything" type thing, and i've definitely gotten better about it over the years.

as far as arguing with people who are being insulting to you, i don't really have useful input there; it's probably not helpful to you to just agree, but whether or not arguing is better depends on how you deal with conflict, probably.

 

Yeah, I guess what I'm asking is whether refuting insults rather than agreeing with them could be helpful in the CBT/brain rewiring kind of way.

 

I've never gone so far as to say I love you to myself, but I do tell myself off for saying mean things to myself. 'Hey, be nice! That was rude/unnecessary!'

 

Hey guys i need advice
One of my friend's pups had a redness and swelling around the eyes and their dad won't let them go to the vet

If anyone knows what's up that might be helpful

"If you need it shes about 2 1/2 months old (born august 10) and her activity seems normal"

Spoiler: Pix of dog, a bit grody

 

That looks infected.

 

Yeah i could only give 'separate from the rest and try and wiping with wet and clean rag also wash your own hands'

But i dunno how much a person can do without the vet or meds

The dog's immune system might be able to fight it off perhaps? But the dog is young so I'm not sure

My friend paranoid rn tho so she's been avoiding stuff like advice columns for now

 

if i were to get an associates degree now, and then decide later i wanted to get a bachelors of the same, would i need to go back to school for a full four years or only some?

 

Depends on how many credits the school you want to complete the bachelors at will accept. Some states/schools have programs that will guarantee accepting all the credits you have taken, but it varies a huge amount. (I think the default is going through your transcripts and seeing which classes you have already taken line up with classes the new school is offering). If you want to do it all at the same school, the whole thing should transfer and you won't have to repeat anything.

This is the sort of thing academic advisers exist for, it can get complicated but it's not an uncommon question.

But unless you get an associates from a completely unaccredited college, you shouldn't have to redo the whole degree.

 

So speaking as someone who got two COMPLETELY different bachelors at two very different schools, a huge chunk of my credits transferred over. I'd Highly recommend saving every syllabus, though, it'll save your butt if you want to/need to petition to have a class count for credit.

 

YES syllabi are actually one of the ways that schools determine if they can give you credit or not. I just learned about that in my fundamentals of college teaching class.

 

Hey, does anyone here have an emotional support animal, and can they pm me to talk about how to get one registered? I'm freaking out about the whole process.