I Am but a Dog Behind a Fence

Breaking away from our learned behavior, phones = bad, and more! [LINK DROP]

Hello! Welcome to the December installment of the Mental Hellth Link Drop. Let’s get into it:

I cannot stop returning to this video of a free-roaming dog squirming through a fence and then beginning to bark as if it has been forcefully caged. I know it’s just a silly video but it has haunted me, perhaps signaling something in my own subconscious that I need to explore—specifically that I’ve learned patterns of behavior that aren’t actually good for me, or that aren’t actually freeing, ones that cause me distress, but that I continue to enact because they feel safe and knowable. Much like the dog is clocking in at the barking factory, I continue to clock in at the patterns-I-know-are-bad factory.