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Home » How (Not) To Survive
EssaysFirst Coffee Thoughts

How (Not) To Survive

Elaine Barlow
Last updated: August 29, 2025 3:15 pm
by: Elaine Barlow
Original Publication Date: August 26, 2025
Reading time: 12 minutes
First Coffee Thoughts August 26th 2025
First Coffee Thoughts August 26th 2025
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Summary

Nothing that is happening in the world should be a surprise to you. If it is, you've been very delusional for a very long time and that's a YOU problem. Just because you CAN'T handle something, doesn't mean there is something wrong with those who can. Stop contributing to the problem and become part of the solution. It starts with YOU and ends with US.

First Coffee Thoughts (previously under “Musings” and “CoSo”) are blog versions of my #FirstCoffeeThoughts and #FCT multi-thread posts on CounterSocial. These are here for posterity and also to make them easier for people to read at a later time should they wish to.

#FirstCoffeeThoughts

When reality first started crashing down for a lot of people, I remember seeing so many posts on different platforms that all had the same feel to them … essentially, “Why aren’t more people freaking out like I am?” I even saw one guy post, “I don’t trust anyone who is not in a panic right now.” and I found that so disturbing because, in my reality, I don’t trust anyone who can’t be reliable in a crisis situation and whose irrationality could get others hurt.

Just because you CAN’T handle something, doesn’t mean there is something wrong with those who can.

Just because a break in your reality causes you to have a breakdown yourself, doesn’t mean that other people are just as vulnerable to truth.

Surviving is a CHOICE.
Surviving is an act of WILL.

How people react to crisis is personal and it’s only your business when it could mean the difference between you surviving or not.

Remember when Tom Cruise killed Tim Robbins in War Of The Worlds 2005 to save himself and his daughter?

How people respond to the break down of the reality that they are used to – or simply just prefer – tells you everything you need to know about them.

Panicked, delusional, dysregulated, irrational, selfish and angry people are dangerous and why were are here now.

The majority of people I have met in my life are willfully delusional 99% of the time because they can’t handle any reality other than their own. They see ONLY what they want to see and acknowledge only what directly affects them. They are oblivious to the truths of the world or actively pretend no other truth exists except for the ones they can handle.

The majority of people I have met in my life are also spiritually, mentally, and emotionally dysregulated and can’t handle anything outside of the reality they have crafted for themselves.They have knee-jerk reactions to everything and often have severe anger issues. They don’t incorporate the use of logic or reason into any aspect of their lives and live in a constant state of defensiveness and compartmentalization.

These kinds of people, in a true crisis, will get themselves and others killed.

You can’t help anyone if you’re not someone people can rely on in a crisis. You could actually cause yourself and the people you care about (and strangers) more harm by being unpredictable, angry, and incapable of logical or reasonable decision making when it counts.

Giving into “passions” is not the way to help yourself or the people you care about especially those in your world who need things only you can do and give.

Don’t make the world’s problems worse by choosing dysregulation.

I saw some posts this morning on Insta about how there is this “break from reality” by most of the population and what these people mean simply is that people AROUND THEM or people they know … are unwilling to live in the same reality as the one they are in. What these people are frustrated by is the fact that they seem to be the only one ABLE to function in this new reality … and that’s a THEM issue, not an everyone else problem.

Everyone lives in their own reality, including you.

Just because you CAN do something, don’t assume that other people should be able to either.
Just because you CAN’T do something, don’t assume that other people are just as incapable.
Just because something is EASY for you, don’t expect that it should be easy for everyone.
Just because something is HARD for you, don’t be angry or jealous that it seems easy for others.

Who you are is not the center or the default.
How you respond to life and reality is a YOU thing.
Not everyone is you or can be you or even wants to be you.

I survived a brutal childhood (and adulthood) by being smart, finding JOY and strength where I could, building mental strength, acquiring knowledge and education, and practicing passive resistance.

There is a wide spectrum between people who are unrealistically hopeful, delusional, and in denial and people who are fatalist, pessimist, negative, and broken, and those who doom prep, have no trust, and have already stocked their bunker. There is a lot in between all of those things.

When you see the world in truth, not in states of delusion or through a position of privilege, you don’t panic about things or fall apart at the first sign of “change from what you expect or want”.

As a stoic, as someone who uses reality-based thinking, as a marginalized person, as someone who has been abused, traumatized, and mistreated for decades of my life, as someone with chronic pain for 50+ years …  I live very much in the “real world” and can’t see anything other that what actually IS.

I didn’t develop into someone who relies on lies and delusions like hope or irrational positivity to navigate my life. I didn’t have the privilege of being able to only see what I wanted to see.

Because – contrary to popular belief – to be able to say no to things, to be able to talk back, to be able to simply quit your job, to be able to just walk somewhere without threat of death or harassment, to be able to freely stand around and panic and yell and scream about the world without getting shot, to be able to stand up for your rights without severe backlash, to be able to have success without having to be perfect, code switch, or ever do anything that makes anyone else uncomfortable  … all those things require 𝐏𝐑𝐈𝐕𝐈𝐋𝐄𝐆𝐄.

I didn’t survive my childhood by being irrational, angry, delusional, panicking, or trying to fight futile battles against those who had all the power, could beat me, whip me until I developed welts, threaten me, deny me rights, and had the position to be able to LIE ABOUT IT to everyone (including themselves) and make me look crazy. I survived by being smart, finding JOY and strength where I could, building mental strength, acquiring knowledge and education, and practicing passive resistance.

I would not have made it this far being F(reaked out) I(nsecure) N(eurotic) and/or E(motional).

None of what is happening in the world now should be a surprise.

If you are surprised by where we are, you are one of those delusional people I mentioned earlier, someone who has spent their world in a privileged, well crafted bubble equipped with a magic mirror that only showed you want you wanted to see in life.

Nothing that is happening now should be a surprise. If it is, you’ve been very delusional for a very long time.

Just because you spent your life living in a bubble of delusion and denial and didn’t see this coming, doesn’t mean that other people didn’t.

What’s happening in the world is not new, it’s history …

If anyone has been paying attention to anything that has ever happened in the entire history of the world, this has been building and on the cusp of breaking for well over 20 years. Ignoring what marginalized people have been trying to warn you about it for DECADES now is a YOU problem.

All of this has happened before and will keep happening:

  1. Until men stop being fearful, brutal, broken animals and get the support and healthy focus they need.
  2. Until white people stop being … well … white people.
  3. Until capitalism is replaced with something that focuses on equality and equity and not selfishness.
  4. Until delusion is no longer the acceptable standard lens through which life is viewed, experienced, and defined.

… and an even LONGER list of DEEPLY complex changes and levels of understanding among people.

People can only be who and what they are unless they have the support, the health, the reason, the education, the strength, and also the privilege, to be something different.

Judging people for how they survive in, react to, and move through life takes a lot of audacity and ego and if you have plenty of both to spare, maybe redirect it into ways of helping people instead of criticizing them or complaining that they aren’t reacting the same way you are.

Maybe they don’t want to.
Maybe they can’t.

People need to stop thinking about what everyone else is doing (or not), stop fixating on things they have absolutely ZERO power to change, and start focusing on what they need to do to be better by getting healthy, getting regulated, and helping others instead of criticizing them.

Panicked, delusional, dysregulated, irrational, selfish, under-educated and angry people are both WEAK and dangerous. They are the reason we got here in the first place; panicked, delusional, dysregulated, irrational, selfish, under-educated, angry, weak, and dangerous white people.

Don’t contribute to that. Don’t add to, or become, the problem.

Be better and become part of the solution.
It starts with YOU … but ends with US.

TAGGED:consensus realitycontrolcosocountersocialdelusiondysregulationfctFirst Coffe Thoughtslife lessonsrealitysocial mediastoicismsurvivalTim RobbinsTom CruisetruthWar Of The Worlds
VIA:Elaine Barlow (@thewebrecluse)

A Note From Elaine

This is my experience, not yours.

I don’t write reviews perse. I write about MY EXPERIENCE with media. If it resembles a review that’s because I’m trying to communicate what media means to ME which has absolutely NOTHING to do with YOU. The existence of my experience doesn’t invalidate yours in any way. If you are triggered by what other people write about art, that is a YOU issue and you should seek help for your emotional dysregulation problem instead of attacking or bullying others for expressing their SUBJECTIVE EXPERIENCE with art. You are not the center. Yours is not the default experience.

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Comments?

Because this is my life. Not a conversation.

I use this space to journal, to express myself, to have fun … to be me.
Who I am, how I express myself in my own space, my feelings and my lived reality are not up for debate and don’t need your commentary.
You’re a guest here.
Not everything you see online requires your input or opinion.
In fact, almost NONE of it does.
Learn to just enjoy and accept who people are.

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© 2009-2024 Elaine Barlow / ☰ / The Web Recluse.
All gif animations and drawn art by the amazing Christina Oei
No part of the materials available through the thewebrecluse.blog or thewebrecluse.com websites, their subdomains and any affiliated websites, may be copied, photocopied, reproduced, translated or reduced to any electronic medium or machine-readable form, in whole or in part, without prior written consent of Elaine Barlow.  Any other reproduction in any form without the permission of Elaine Barlow is prohibited.

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