How not to be a dick to someone with a birthmark / skin condition

Unless you know me personally outside of the virtual sphere and has been around while summer, you probably don’t know I have a prominent red port wine stain on the left leg. Growing up with a birthmark that goes from the top of my thigh to the bottom of my knee has been a challenge when it comes to body positivity and self-acceptation.

Obviously, it’s been there my entire life and I often forget its even there until a stranger decides to start staring at it a bit more heavily or children point at it in the streets. A lot of people are confused because it has a red tint instead of the usual brownish color. The reason behind that is kind of confusing and gets really sciency but I’m willing to explain if anyone is really curious.

I often get asked if I had an accident, if I got badly bruised, if someone hit me or if I burn myself, or as a memory I cherish a lot as a child if I “fell in a swimming pool of blueberries when I was young”. When I was younger, it never really bothered me, I was super cute and super smart so you know who cares. But as I got older and started caring more about my appearance, I started to be self-conscious. Not because of how I looked, but because I was tetanized thinking about the reactions people could have when seeing it.

My friends and family always say they can’t imagine me without it and I wish I loved this part as much as they do, but because of the way people have reacted over the years, I find it very difficult not to want to hide it. One of the most painful thing someone might have said was, while discovering it, “Omg it’s such a shame”. Never asked why, don’t want to, but you know I guess this person considered my birthmark was so important it was ruining the rest of the good I had in me. High school has been a major struggle in the “relation” I had with my birthmark. I started despising it, doing everything I could to pretend it wasn’t there. I felt bad wearing shorts during summer because it was “out there for everyone to see”.

I cried a lot.

I hated it for “ruining my life”, I hated my parents for “making me with this awful part”, I hated people with “regular legs or body”.

But I grew out of it. We all have our personal struggles and battles, the only difference as a dear friend of mine would say is that “the only difference with your struggle is that it’s for the eyes of everyone to see”.  Anyway, I guess the moral of the story is this: if you meet someone who has a noticeable birthmark, scarring, or really any sort of feature that’s out of the ordinary there are a few things to remember:

1. Don’t be afraid to be curious! I’m never offended by someone asking about my birthmark. It’s not something you see every day and I get it! That’s cool. But…

2. Think before you ask. While I don’t mind curiosity, make sure your questions aren’t rude or ostracizing. If you make the person feel like a freak you aren’t going to be welcomed very warmly.
3. Don’t act alarmed. I can see myself in the mirror. Yes, I know it’s there. This seems like it would be understood, but I can’t tell you the number of times people have stared at me wide-eyed in shock. And that’s not very good for the self-esteem department.
4. .” What happened?” is hardly ever a good question to ask. In my case the answer is, “nothing”. But in case the person actually was in an accident the odds of them wanting to replay if for a stranger are basically zero.

5. I won’t feel bad if you complain about a spot you have on your forehead. Yes, my “condition” is worse but it doesn’t prevent me from understanding the little desagreements we experience in life. Just try to be reasonable

The Anxiety Trick Hidden Behind the Politics of Migration

What is the anxiety trick?

The anxiety trick is this: you experience discomfort and you get fooled into treating it like danger. You become afraid of fear itself.

What do we do when we’re in danger? We only have three human reactions: we fight, we flight or we freeze. If it looks weaker than us, we fight it. If it looks stronger than us, we run away or deny it and if it looks way unobtainable we freeze. That is all we have for danger.

When people experience the fear of a panic attack or a phobic encounter, they instinctively treat it as a danger. They try to protect themselves with a variation of those fight, flight or freeze.

And this is what the world of politics materialises in today.

Especially if we focus on the refugees’ crisis, people experience discomfort as migrants from politically instable states flee their country to come find a new home. Those migrants are instantly treated as danger as they represent a misshape in our daily life. As they all are in a weaker shape and position, economically, socially and politically speaking, we fight them, push them away. Climate change seems so stronger and powerful than us that we would rather denying it, focusing on other “more important issues” as our beloved new president of the United States is doing.

You might wonder then why don’t people come to see this pattern, of repeated episodes of fear that never actually translate into the feared outcome, and why don’t they lose their fear gradually?

The answer lies right here: they took safe and protective steps and it didn’t end up in a catastrophe. They tend to believe that these steps they took prevented the catastrophe from happening. But this process only leads us to worrying more about what will happen “next time”. It convinces us that we are terribly vulnerable and must constantly protect ourselves at any cost. Closing borders, creating visas from migrants from “unsafe countries”, issuing mandates against strangers, fearing the unknown, those are all examples of protective steps we take when facing migration.

But the truth is that people get through the experience because the experience is not actually dangerous. Nevertheless, it is understandably hard for people to recognize that at the time. They are more likely to think they had a narrow escape that leads them to redouble their protective steps: they believe that if they did not suffer from any kind of economic recession or terrible internal conflict it is because they decided to avoid letting refugees enter their countries. It’s the protective steps which actually maintain and strengthen the anxiety trick, which makes you believe that if you avoided a catastrophe or in this case for example, terrorist attacks, it is because you closed all possible way of entrance for the migrants. And you’re going to get more stuck in the habit of “protecting yourself” by these means.

This is how the problem gets embedded in history. You think you’re helping yourself and your country but you’ve been tricked in making it worse. Because you protect yourself against something that is not necessarily dangerous and this makes the fear worsens over time.

So how do you overcome that?

The thing that makes phobias so persistent inherently implemented in our society is that anything we do to oppose, avoid, escape or distract ourselves from this “threat” is turned against us and makes it a more persistent part of our life.

All too often, our politicians or representatives get the idea that exposure means going into a place or situation where you’re likely to be in danger, for example the country or a camp and don’t feel any anxiety or danger. That’s not the point. The point is to go there and feel the danger but be sure to stay there and let this fear of danger leave first. Always keep in mind that exposure is practice with fear, and do nothing to oppose, avoid, or distract from the fear during exposure.

The way to disarm the Trick is to increasingly spend time with that fear of danger and unsureness, to expose yourself to the thoughts and sensations, and allow them to subside over time.