Post me a .GIF - Tell me a story!

I think I accidentally did the drugs.

Trachalio wrote:

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Behold.... and Chill
*many more in the link

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farley3k wrote:

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That first one makes me twitch hard when then gif doesn't sync

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Delbin wrote:

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Hmm, I'm undecided on how I feel about this one. On the one side, great use of tech, nice innovation. On the other hand, we're raising a bunch of sissies. Go outside, fall off the swing, get a needle in the arm, hurt yourself. It's all part of life, growing up and understanding the way things work. Sheltering people from things that hurt takes away their ability to adapt and grow.

It always reminds me of Jade Empire. Way of the closed fist or open palm. There was one bit in there from the closed fist side that said by helping that person, you're robbing them of the chance to actually do it themselves and become stronger for it. I kinda feel like that applies here. Not sure, need more time on this one.

BlackSabre wrote:

Hmm, I'm undecided on how I feel about this one. On the one side, great use of tech, nice innovation. On the other hand, we're raising a bunch of sissies. Go outside, fall off the swing, get a needle in the arm, hurt yourself. It's all part of life, growing up and understanding the way things work. Sheltering people from things that hurt takes away their ability to adapt and grow.

It's fine. It makes a needful thing easier and helps show kids that shots aren't that scary or painful. No one is going to have their future ruined because they were less scared in a doctor's office.

To the larger point, I think encouraging pain where there doesn't need to be any is a sick reverence to a form of toxic masculinity. Those kids will likely face plenty of hardships and pain in their lives without someone actively working to harm them so they don't become "sissies."

bnpederson wrote:
BlackSabre wrote:

Hmm, I'm undecided on how I feel about this one. On the one side, great use of tech, nice innovation. On the other hand, we're raising a bunch of sissies. Go outside, fall off the swing, get a needle in the arm, hurt yourself. It's all part of life, growing up and understanding the way things work. Sheltering people from things that hurt takes away their ability to adapt and grow.

It's fine. It makes a needful thing easier and helps show kids that shots aren't that scary or painful. No one is going to have their future ruined because they were less scared in a doctor's office.

To the larger point, I think encouraging pain where there doesn't need to be any is a sick reverence to a form of toxic masculinity. Those kids will likely face plenty of hardships and pain in their lives without someone actively working to harm them so they don't become "sissies."

Just to add to bnpederson's response - kids can be buttholes about things they're afraid of. And when last I checked, telling kids something is no big deal and they shouldn't be afraid, or telling them to suck it up and be tough never actually solved any problem, stopped any troublesome behavior, or generally produced desirable results. Sometimes it probably did damage. Yes, you're an adult, and you understand the momentary unpleasantness of a shot or drawing blood is exactly not at all a big deal, but fears (and kids) aren't rational, and those butthole behaviors are defense mechanisms.

So here's the nurse's, and the parents', choice: struggle with your child in a public setting, wasting theirs and the staff's time with a temper tantrum, or use some relatively inexpensive technology to distract the kid and actually get something done.

Also, if I were a parent, I would want my child to absolutely understand and face their fears. But I wouldn't want them to think of themselves as weak for having them. And if it takes a few tries with the headset for the kid to steel themselves and understand that the shots are simply not that bad, then that's much better than fighting them through it.

When I was about 11 or 12, a plane crashed on final approach to Pittsburgh International Airport (USAir Flight 427). I was out riding my bike in our neighborhood at the time of the crash. It crashed into a hillside overlooking a shopping center where we had gone grocery shopping basically the entirety of my life. This place was visible from my neighborhood. I heard the boom, and saw the smoke. I ran inside, and saw the news.

My parents had been out shopping at a place on the far side of the airport from our home, and as it turns out, the interchange to get on the highway that goes to the airport is right next to this shopping center, and the crash site. Traffic was backed up for miles and my parents were stuck in it. I had no one but my older sister, who was equally shocked, to talk to for a few hours after the crash (this was before cell phones). In that time, watching the news, I realized, for the first time in my young life, that planes can crash, and that plane crashes are ostensibly unsurvivable. Rather quickly, I developed an intense fear of flying.

At that point, the last time I had been on a plane was a trip to Disney World when I was 8 or so. I didn't fly again until I was 19 - when an opportunity to take a 2 week trip through the UK and earn some college credit presented itself, and my desire to go overseas was stronger than my fears. But oh man, that flight was torture, even though it was entirely routine. Since then, I've flown roughly once a year on average, and man, does it ever get easier. Travel still produces a decent amount of anxiety, but for all the regular reasons travel makes anyone anxious - packing everything you need, leaving early enough to get through security and avoid missing your flight, baggage worries, etc. Flying is now about as mundane as driving for me. But it was a journey to get to this point.

I knew all the statistics - how many flights happen on a daily basis with no incidents, how rare plane crashes are, how cars are more dangerous - none of that was really useful for dispelling my fears. Early on, when trying to calm myself, I did something similar to what this VR headset does - distract myself. On the flight to the UK, there was an in-flight entertainment system available to me. I watched TV and listened to music, and tried not to whiten my knuckles at every little shake of turbulence. On later flights when I was older, I'd just get a few shots of vodka (I wasn't a drinker, but it certainly worked). Distractions. Coping mechanisms. And ultimately, familiarity. Am I a sissy? Maybe. But I got over my fear in a way that worked. Let the kids be distracted by the VR at first, and later, by the mundanity.

The gif shows the elf thing sticking some kind of burning rock on the kid's arm. It doesn't look to be distracting from the pain so much as it's framing it as a brave and necessary thing. Which vaccination injections are, but a child is more likely to understand that lesson when it comes in a fantastical story. That's a big part of why we have stories in the first place.

I'm with vargen. This is not hiding pain, this is re-contextualizing it is order to get over that initial hump of irrational and unfounded fear and anxiety.

Suggesting it's more 'tough' or 'manly' or 'strong' to just suck it up and feed that fear instead of coping with it... that sounds about as useful as looking an angry person in the face and saying "Why don't you just calm down"

Would have loved to have been able to stick a VR thing on my niece one time when she had a splinter in her foot when she was 4 or 5. She was totally freaked out that her grandma (a mother of three and a nurse for around 30 years) was about to poke her with a needle to get this splinter out. It didn't help that three grown ass adults were trying to hold her down. After listening to her scream and cry for like 10 minutes I got them to back off and was able to calm her down and get her to let them do it mostly by just treating her like a person instead of a child and keeping her distracted for the minute or so it actually took to remove the splinter. Afterward she even admitted that it wasn't so bad.

This discussion makes me think of when I was about 5, and both me and my infant sister needed some sort of vaccine. The pediatrician injected me first while my sister watched, then when it was her turn, she just sat calmly until the very end when she let out a small whimper. There are many ways to keep kids calm during vaccinations, and this seems like one good option.

Yeah, my wife has a lifelong medical phobia from bad experiences. I really don't appreciate the 'sissy' language, even absent the homophobic overtones.

But there is something to be said for teaching people to deal with things. A shot is mild discomfort. If the child isn't taught to deal with mild discomfort, what happens when serious sh*t goes down?

Nevin73 wrote:

But there is something to be said for teaching people to deal with things. A shot is mild discomfort. If the child isn't taught to deal with mild discomfort, what happens when serious sh*t goes down?

It's not like the VR makes it hurt less. (Though it may well reduce the impact of the pain; the brain is magic.) Seems like this is exactly teaching a child to deal with discomfort by correctly contextualizing it.

Unless I completely miss my guess, the VR character experiences pain with a purpose, to accomplish some larger goal. Sure, the VR goal is "stop the bad guys", but I've gotta think a 5-year-old understands that a whole lot better than "maybe prevent a serious illness (which you also have no experience with or understanding of) some time in the future".

So this is a way of sneakily explaining to the child in a way the child can understand that this thing is going to hurt a bit, but it's for a good reason.

I couldn't find a .GIF of it (though I swear that's how I first saw it) - but here's a video of a doctor who keeps young children from crying during shots, by simply distracting them with a flurry of activity.

The VR thing reminded me of this. While we can only speculate about what is said in the VR session and if it builds up to "pain with a purpose" or not - I can't help but wonder if it doesn't also work by simply taking the kids' mind off the shot. Instead of letting them build up anxiety over the shot in their mind, this lets them be distracted up to the moment - and then the actual shot is truly no big deal.

In short, I wonder if it isn't (partly or in whole) as much about being a simple distraction as it is about what's being said.

The only critique I've potentially got about this would be that I can forsee this making the shot-receiving experience take longer - depending on however long the VR movie is, as opposed to "just getting a shot". And that's a small price to pay in my opinion.

bnpederson wrote:
BlackSabre wrote:

Hmm, I'm undecided on how I feel about this one. On the one side, great use of tech, nice innovation. On the other hand, we're raising a bunch of sissies. Go outside, fall off the swing, get a needle in the arm, hurt yourself. It's all part of life, growing up and understanding the way things work. Sheltering people from things that hurt takes away their ability to adapt and grow.

It's fine. It makes a needful thing easier and helps show kids that shots aren't that scary or painful. No one is going to have their future ruined because they were less scared in a doctor's office.

To the larger point, I think encouraging pain where there doesn't need to be any is a sick reverence to a form of toxic masculinity. Those kids will likely face plenty of hardships and pain in their lives without someone actively working to harm them so they don't become "sissies."

So I believe I chose my words poorly. Not trying to push a masculine approach to sucking it up and dealing with it by any means.

Simply suggesting that going through hardship when you're younger and have the love and support of your parents will make it easier later in life when you have to do things on your own. Not having a go at this particular piece of technology, I think I'm more against sheltering our kids from life. I'd rather instil in them the skills and abilities to deal with what life throws at them while I can protect them and help them through it.

I think a healthy mix can be achieved.

Not that we need to belabor this discussion on the GIF thread, but I hope we can all agree that every individual is different, and having as wide a variety of options available to patients and care-givers is a good thing.

No! I refuse to let you turn my children into cowards with your SJW molly-coddling!

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wolfstar76 wrote:

I couldn't find a .GIF of it (though I swear that's how I first saw it) - but here's a video of a doctor who keeps young children from crying during shots, by simply distracting them with a flurry of activity.

The VR thing reminded me of this. While we can only speculate about what is said in the VR session and if it builds up to "pain with a purpose" or not - I can't help but wonder if it doesn't also work by simply taking the kids' mind off the shot. Instead of letting them build up anxiety over the shot in their mind, this lets them be distracted up to the moment - and then the actual shot is truly no big deal.

In short, I wonder if it isn't (partly or in whole) as much about being a simple distraction as it is about what's being said.

The only critique I've potentially got about this would be that I can forsee this making the shot-receiving experience take longer - depending on however long the VR movie is, as opposed to "just getting a shot". And that's a small price to pay in my opinion. :)

This reminds me of when I got a vaccine booster at 28ish and the nurse jiggled my arm as she stuck me with the needle. I could barely tell. The brain is super easy to manipulate.

I would be distracted too, if the nurse jiggled while sticking me with the needle.

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Mixolyde wrote:

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This is patently unhelpful for people with drinking problems....

He says adding it to his wife’s pinterest board.

Reaper81 wrote:
Mixolyde wrote:

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This is patently unhelpful for people with drinking problems....

He says adding it to his wife’s pinterest board.

Ya know whats really not helpful for people with drinking problems? That one notebook being upside down. begins drinking heavily to forget or maybe that's just me