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

does anyone have a social script for reacting to sympathy-sorries that isn't deflection?

 

Can you clarify what you mean? Like, people saying "sorry" to you when they feel bad for you?

 

yeah, like "sorry for your loss"/"sorry that happened" type stuff

 

'Thank you' or 'thanks for your kind words' or something like that usually works

 

@LadyNighteyes @Hisuian Typhlosion like a week late but thank you for the replies

As it turns out, the place I was looking at was chocka with asbestos and lead paint and had been sitting vacant for several years at least, so it was a non-starter :P tbh I still might have gone for it but they wanted cash only. In the end I'm probably going to have to either settle for something like that or a mobile home, though - the real estate market is absolutely nuts in my area and just getting worse. Fortunately I'm not in a hurry so I'm just staking out the real estate websites and waiting for something to jump on. Or for the market to crash.

Looking into this place got me in contact with a realtor, at least, so when I do find something I want I'm going to probably contact and hire them as my agent for the process. This type of paperwork activates turbo inattentive ADHD mode for me XD

 

This, and "thank you, I feel like [x]" is my go to. You don't have to actually talk about your feelings if you don't want to, but in case you're dealing with someone who says sorry habitually, it's sometimes helpful to offer them a ground in your own feelings so they don't continue feeling like they need to appease you somehow.

 

Can anyone rec a good resource for creative writing prompts and tips for beginners? Don't have to be the same thing, can come from different sources. I'm trying to get into writing stuff but at an adult level but still basic and when I try to Google stuff I get subpar prompt generators and stuff for kids who aren't even out of elementary

 

aren't there a couple daily prompt blogs on tumblr? or I bet there are a few subreddits

 

writing-prompt-s is one of the most prolific on Tumblr, and they post a lot of good ones.

 

I hadn't thought to use social media, thanks!

 

What's the proper meaning of "psychotic break", if there actually is one? It's not easy to google and it's absolutely not a term to learn the meaning of via osmosis.

(Clarification: I see it used a lot in discussion of media, ranging from jRPGs to The Locked Tomb. I want to make sure I use it correctly if it's ever applicable, and also that I'm better-equipped to say, eg, "I don't think that's the right term to use" when people apply it more broadly than should be.)

 

"Psychotic break" is a colloquialism rather than a medical term, but it usually refers to an episode of intense, active psychosis symptoms. Because it's a colloquial term and psychosis is... not well understood and heavily stigmatized by the general populace it does sometimes get thrown around to mean "acted Really Crazy(tm) for a while" or "went briefly but generically insane" or "is a broken shell of a person after an event" but usually when people who have experienced psychosis symptoms, ime, talk about having a psychotic break they mean "symptoms severe enough it became hard to function." It's not a thing exclusive to having a psychosis disorder either, I know people who have had what I would consider psychotic breaks due to things like too little sleep and too much stress and caffeine during college finals, or a particularly intense bout of uti psychosis.

It's also not just generally having symptoms: it's an intensity of symptoms and disruption of the person's baseline state. Basically an informal term for a psychotic episode. There are some people with psychosis disorders who don't like "break" or don't like "episode" but I've always found it useful to indicate periods where my life experience was actively and harshly interrupted by my symptoms.

 

Thank you! That's really helpful.