5 things I can see, etc.

Co-opting a coping mechanism for the sake of content

I am a pretty anxious person. Through years of panic attacks, circular anxiety spirals, and rumination, I’ve found some coping mechanisms that work for me. Typically breathwork and/or guided meditation can take me out of a panic attack, but when I feel myself spiraling, if I catch myself before it gets too bad the 5-4-3-2-1 method can set me straight by distracting me enough to calm down. If you’re not familiar (count your blessings, truly), the 5-4-3-2-1 method, according to the University of Rochester Medical Center, is this:

5: Acknowledge FIVE things you see around you. It could be a pen, a spot on the ceiling, anything in your surroundings.

4: Acknowledge FOUR things you can touch around you. It could be your hair, a pillow, or the ground under your feet. 

3: Acknowledge THREE things you hear. This could be any external sound. If you can hear your belly rumbling that counts! Focus on things you can hear outside of your body.

2: Acknowledge TWO things you can smell. Maybe you are in your office and smell pencil, or maybe you are in your bedroom and smell a pillow. If you need to take a brief walk to find a scent you could smell soap in your bathroom, or nature outside.

1: Acknowledge ONE thing you can taste. What does the inside of your mouth taste like—gum, coffee, or the sandwich from lunch?

So, in the spirit of something I think about all the time, I’ve decided to co-opt it into a way of sharing what I’m into at the moment on a semi-regular basis. I’m not going to explain these every time I do this (I’m thinking I’ll try to do this monthly but please don’t hold me to it), but I will for now:

5 things I can see will include any kind of visual medium: movies, books, television, art, photography. 4 things I can touch will hold physical objects I’m enjoying — clothing, home goods, etc. 3 things I can hear will be music or podcasts. Audiobooks, maybe, if I ever get back into those. 2 things I can smell is pretty self-explanatory. I’m a fragrance and candle whore, so something in those categories. 1 thing I can taste will be food and bevs. Easy.

5 things I can see:

1. Buffy The Vampire Slayer. Right when lockdown started in 2020, my roommate and I were sitting on the balcony of our apartment and decided to take one of those “Which fictional character are you most like” tests, but one of the really in-depth ones that gave you a very long list of characters and sorted them by how similar you are with percentages next to each. One of my top characters was Willow Rosenberg, though now I’ve taken it again I’ve gotten some different answers. Here are my favorites: Blaine Anderson (84% match), Sookie St. James (78% match), Ann Perkins (81% match), Alice Cullen (85% match).
   Anyway, I didn’t know who Willow was, and when I revealed this to my roommate, she insisted we watch the pilot of Buffy together, since we were locked down at home with nothing else to do, anyway. The pilot quickly turned into multiple episodes a day which turned into it becoming one of my favorite shows of all time. It feels like a fall-coded show for me, probably due to all of the big bads and creepy vampires and demons, so I started rewatching it recently. I love Buffy Summers.

2. Heretic (2024). Holy shit, literally and figuratively. I saw this in theaters a few days ago and highly recommend seeing it on a big screen instead of at home on streaming to get the full effect. Hugh Grant traps two Mormon missionaries in a very entertaining and philosophical game of cat-and-mouse.

3. The Substance (2024). I have never had such a physical reaction to a movie before (maybe with the exception of when I saw Gravity (2013) and had one of my very first panic attacks) and I haven’t been able to stop thinking about it. I spent the entire last 20 minutes of it feeling like I was going to throw up. It’s obviously a very on-the-nose commentary on being a woman and fame and body image, but it takes all of that commentary and hits you on the head with it until you pass out and I want to simultaneously watch it 100 times and never see Monstro Elisasue ever again.

4. Chappell Roan on SNL. Specifically this cunty country performance of her new song The Giver. I don’t think I need to explain myself here.

5. Trap (2024). It was terrible and I loved it. If you’d like to read all of my shitty mostly-one-liner film reviews, follow me on Letterboxd.

4 things I can touch:

1. This waffle henley from Old Navy. I have never been so obsessed with a really specific item of clothing like I have become obsessed with this one. I’m an Old Navy die hard and have been for my entire life. They make good everyday basics that I can afford, and since I’m not in the Fancy $400 T-shirts As Basics tax bracket, I find myself shopping here with a frequency that might be embarrassing to SOME PEOPLE but those people are not me. Thank you Old Navy, I love you, please sponsor me and send me free clothes, or at least one of these henleys in all the different colors.

2. Dr. Martens Zebzag Suede Slingback Platform Mule in Muted Olive. I found myself wishing I had some kind of mule shoe but every time I went into a Journeys to try on a Birkenstock mule, I felt like they looked really strange on me. I wear my Dr. Martens Audrick platform Chelsea boots nearly every day, and I’m not exaggerating on that, because they’re comfortable and fit me perfectly. I’ve gone on several trips where the only shoe I have taken has been a Dr. Marten Chelsea and I’ve never gotten tired of them. I realized that I should find a mule that falls into the same category and I came across the Zebzag and fell in love, especially with the color. It helps me switch up my self-imposed “I only wear black shoes” policy, PLUS they’re extremely comfortable, AND they don’t make me feel like a granola poser like the Birkenstock mules do. Win-win-win.

3. CHRISTMAS DECORATIONS. Dear god. You may recall that I have an annoying complex about holidays from this long-winded essay I wrote about that very subject. However, I’m leaning into the Christmas spirit so hard this year that there’s absolutely no way I can feel a single ounce of sadness or melancholy about the holidays this year. Nope! Not me! IT’S CHRISTMAS AND I’M GOING TO BE HAPPY, GOD DAMMIT. I’ve started collecting silly little Christmas knick-knacks and lights and a Santa Snoopy that plays “Linus & Lucy” on the trumpet.

   I’ll share a photo of everything once I’ve finished decorating, but I’ve gotten started and I’m already feeling cozier than ever before.

4. This is not an object but I CAN touch it: my new scorpion tattoo! I was feeling some post-election dread and coped with it by going to the new tattoo shop around the corner from my house and getting a flash tattoo that I am now in love with. I’m a Scorpio rising, and I don’t know enough about astrology to know exactly how that ties into my personality, but I love my new creepy little scorpion.

   

   Thank you Stevie at Kind Tattoo Parlor :’)

3 things I can hear:

1. Imaginal Disk by Magdalena Bay. Specifically “Image” and “Death & Romance.” What a fucking album. Some folks on Twitter have been saying it’s “H&M” music or that “a different artist makes this exact album every year.” I think those folks are stupid and wrong. This album is perfect and this song is perfect.

2. Romance by Fontaines D.C. has been on a pretty heavy repeat in my household. Charting very high on the Carly Top 40. And now it’s a Grammy-nominated album! I can’t get enough of “Bug,” which I think is having its own little moment on TikTok right now—either that or my For You Page is scarily tailored to my Spotify history—as well as “Here’s The Thing.” Those two stand out but the entire album is a masterpiece. Bye Brat summer, welcome Romance fall.

3. “Everyone’s In Love With You” by David Byrne, but covered by Clairo. I saw Clairo at the Grand Ole Opry last week and she pulled out a cover of this that made me cry like a little baby in the nosebleeds of the Opry.
   “I'm jealous and a little proud / I want to kill and kiss you too / You belong to everyone who meets you / Everyone's in love with you”
   The children (yes, literally children, I felt like a grandmother in this crowd) around me were probably concerned for my well-being, and they would be correct. I was unwell. It’s a bit of a DB deep cut, and I thought I was maybe the only person who was still listening to it, but it turns out my girl Claire has been on the wave with me, and it was so sweet (and painful, and torturous, and nauseating, all in good ways) to hear her take on it.

2 things I can smell:

1. Glossier You Doux. I have been a Glossier You girl for years (and just a regular Glossier girl for a decade now), but I fell out of love with You when they changed up the formula sometime in the last few years. It stopped lasting on me and smelled a little different with my body chemistry. But, I was so stoked when they announced two new scents in the You line, and fell immediately in love with Doux (though Rêve is growing on me). It’s a woody, powdery fragrance that has notes of Palo Santo, Frankincense, Myrrh, and their signature musky Ambrox. It has more depth than the OG You, in my opinion, and I’m obsessed with it. I’m sorry that you can’t smell it through your screen, but if you see me in the next few months there’s a very high probability that I’ll be wearing it.

2. Clean linen scents in my home. I’m finding this the most in Capri Blue’s Blue Jean scent that I have in both a room spray and a candle. I go through phases with what I want my home to smell like, and right now I’m finding that I’m leaning toward a simple, clean smell. I don’t have in-unit laundry anymore (it’s been very hard but I’ve adjusted), so I think I’m probably just missing the smell of clean laundry straight out of the dryer that I’m not getting when my clothes have to make a trip home from the laundromat first.

1 thing I can taste:

1. Keeping this simple. Diet Coke, baby. Sorry to Addison Rae. I’m also on a bit of a strike from coffee while I figure out how much caffeine I can really have every day before I become clinically insane and anxious, so the amount of caffeine in a Diet Coke is working for me right now. I just bought a Diet Coke ornament for my Christmas tree. Things are getting serious.