Mum forced to defend decision to share photo of deceased son
WARNING: SENSITIVE CONTENT
An Australian influencer has been forced to defend her decision to share a photo of her deceased baby online after receiving backlash from her followers.
Veruca Salt posted the picture of her late baby son, Cash, as her lay embalmed in his coffin to her Instagram stories on Tuesday.
The post sparked heated debate online, with some defending Veruca's decision, while others found the photo to be too confronting to be shared to the internet.
The Gold Coast influencer has since spoken her truth and addressed the torrent of hate she received in the wake of the post.
'Ya'll come onto a grieving mothers Instagram and be shocked when you see that there is actually a dead baby. Genuine question, are you stupid? Are you slow?' she said in a video posted to Instagram stories.
'You want me to explain in detail the horrible things that have happened. How did he die? What happened with your baby daddy? . . . .But then you bitch and moan when you actually see it.
'He's embalmed in a coffin and he looks beautiful, so you can suck it.'
Many of the people who spoke out against Veruca took issue with the photo because they claim they were not presented with a content warning before the image appeared on their screen.
A sensitive content warning has since been added to the photo, warning users the image may be upsetting. Veruca's post addressing the backlash. Credit: Instagram
In a follow-up Instagram story, Veruca wrote an emotional response to air her experience as a grieving mother.
'I'm triggered every time I hear a mum complain about her baby being sick, pretending her kid having a cold is similar to them dying,' she wrote.
'I'm triggered at every pregnancy announcement, every birth video, every video of an older sibling meeting the new baby at the hospital, every video of a baby with their mum.
'My son's death isn't about you.'
Cash was just six weeks old when he tragically died of sudden infant death syndrome in February last year.
PerthNow has contacted Veruca for comment.
Lifeline: 13 11 14.
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People with insomnia are more focused on worries, problems, or noises in the environment, and are often preoccupied with not sleeping. Good sleepers, on the other hand, typically have dream-like, hallucinatory, less ordered thoughts before nodding off. Cognitive shuffling attempts to mimic the thinking patterns of good sleepers by simulating the dream-like and random thought patterns they generally have before drifting off to sleep. In particular, Beaudoin's research describes two types of sleep-related thoughts: insomnolent (or anti-sleep) and pro-somnolent (sleep-promoting) thoughts. Insomnolent thoughts include things such as worrying, planning, rehearsing, and ruminating on perceived problems or failings. Pro-somnolent thoughts on the other hand involve thoughts that can help you fall asleep, such as dream-like imagery or having a calm, relaxed state of mind. Cognitive shuffling aims to distract from or interfere with insomnolent thought. It offers a calm, neutral path for your racing mind, and can reduce the stress associated with not sleeping. Cognitive shuffling also helps tell your brain you are ready for sleep. In fact, the process of "shuffling" between different thoughts is similar to the way your brain naturally drifts off to sleep. During the transition to sleep, brain activity slows. Your brain starts to generate disconnected images and fleeting scenes, known as hypnagogic hallucinations, without a conscious effort to make sense of them. By mimicking these scattered, disconnected, and random thought patterns, cognitive shuffling may help you transition from wakefulness to sleep. And the preliminary research into this is promising. Beaudoin and his team have found serial diverse imagining helps to lower arousal before sleep, improve sleep quality and reduce the effort involved in falling asleep. However, with only a small number of research studies, more work is needed here. 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Read the original article. If you've been on social media lately - perhaps scrolling in the middle of the night, when you know you shouldn't but you just can't sleep - you might have seen those videos promoting a get-to-sleep technique called "cognitive shuffling". The idea, proponents say, is to engage your mind with random ideas and images via a special formula: It's popular on Instagram and TikTok, but does "cognitive shuffling" have any basis in science? The cognitive shuffling technique was made famous by Canada-based researcher Luc P. Beaudoin more than a decade ago, when he published a paper about how what he called "serial diverse imagining" could help with sleep. One of Beaudoin's hypothetical examples involved a woman thinking of the word "blanket", then thinking bicycle (and imagining a bicycle), buying (imagining buying shoes), banana (visualising a banana tree) and so on. Soon, Beaudoin writes, she moves onto the letter L, thinking about her friend Larry, the word "like" (imagining her son hugging his dog). She soon transitions to the letter A, thinking of the word "Amsterdam": "and she might very vaguely imagine the large hand of a sailor gesturing for another order of fries in an Amsterdam pub while a rancid accordion plays in the background." Sleep soon ensues. The goal, according to Beaudoin, is to think briefly about: "a neutral or pleasant target and frequently [switch] to unrelated targets (normally every 5-15 seconds)." Don't try to relate one word with another or find a link between the words; resist the mind's natural tendency toward sense-making. While the research into this technique is still in its infancy, the idea is grounded in science. That's because we know from other research good sleepers tend to have different kinds of thoughts in bed to bad sleepers. People with insomnia are more focused on worries, problems, or noises in the environment, and are often preoccupied with not sleeping. Good sleepers, on the other hand, typically have dream-like, hallucinatory, less ordered thoughts before nodding off. Cognitive shuffling attempts to mimic the thinking patterns of good sleepers by simulating the dream-like and random thought patterns they generally have before drifting off to sleep. In particular, Beaudoin's research describes two types of sleep-related thoughts: insomnolent (or anti-sleep) and pro-somnolent (sleep-promoting) thoughts. Insomnolent thoughts include things such as worrying, planning, rehearsing, and ruminating on perceived problems or failings. Pro-somnolent thoughts on the other hand involve thoughts that can help you fall asleep, such as dream-like imagery or having a calm, relaxed state of mind. Cognitive shuffling aims to distract from or interfere with insomnolent thought. It offers a calm, neutral path for your racing mind, and can reduce the stress associated with not sleeping. Cognitive shuffling also helps tell your brain you are ready for sleep. In fact, the process of "shuffling" between different thoughts is similar to the way your brain naturally drifts off to sleep. During the transition to sleep, brain activity slows. Your brain starts to generate disconnected images and fleeting scenes, known as hypnagogic hallucinations, without a conscious effort to make sense of them. By mimicking these scattered, disconnected, and random thought patterns, cognitive shuffling may help you transition from wakefulness to sleep. And the preliminary research into this is promising. Beaudoin and his team have found serial diverse imagining helps to lower arousal before sleep, improve sleep quality and reduce the effort involved in falling asleep. However, with only a small number of research studies, more work is needed here. As with every new strategy, however, practise makes perfect. Don't be disheartened if you don't see an improvement straight away; these things take time. Stay consistent and be kind to yourself. And what works for some won't work for others. Different people benefit from different types of strategies depending on how they relate to and experience stress or stressful thoughts. Other strategies to help create the right conditions for sleep include: If, despite all your best efforts, night time thoughts continue to impact your sleep or overall wellbeing, consider seeking professional help from your doctor or a trained sleep specialist. Melinda Jackson, Associate Professor at Turner Institute for Brain and Mental Health, School of Psychological Sciences, Monash University and Eleni Kavaliotis, Research Fellow in the Sleep, Cognition, and Mood Laboratory at Monash University, Monash University This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article. If you've been on social media lately - perhaps scrolling in the middle of the night, when you know you shouldn't but you just can't sleep - you might have seen those videos promoting a get-to-sleep technique called "cognitive shuffling". The idea, proponents say, is to engage your mind with random ideas and images via a special formula: It's popular on Instagram and TikTok, but does "cognitive shuffling" have any basis in science? The cognitive shuffling technique was made famous by Canada-based researcher Luc P. Beaudoin more than a decade ago, when he published a paper about how what he called "serial diverse imagining" could help with sleep. One of Beaudoin's hypothetical examples involved a woman thinking of the word "blanket", then thinking bicycle (and imagining a bicycle), buying (imagining buying shoes), banana (visualising a banana tree) and so on. Soon, Beaudoin writes, she moves onto the letter L, thinking about her friend Larry, the word "like" (imagining her son hugging his dog). She soon transitions to the letter A, thinking of the word "Amsterdam": "and she might very vaguely imagine the large hand of a sailor gesturing for another order of fries in an Amsterdam pub while a rancid accordion plays in the background." Sleep soon ensues. The goal, according to Beaudoin, is to think briefly about: "a neutral or pleasant target and frequently [switch] to unrelated targets (normally every 5-15 seconds)." Don't try to relate one word with another or find a link between the words; resist the mind's natural tendency toward sense-making. While the research into this technique is still in its infancy, the idea is grounded in science. That's because we know from other research good sleepers tend to have different kinds of thoughts in bed to bad sleepers. People with insomnia are more focused on worries, problems, or noises in the environment, and are often preoccupied with not sleeping. Good sleepers, on the other hand, typically have dream-like, hallucinatory, less ordered thoughts before nodding off. Cognitive shuffling attempts to mimic the thinking patterns of good sleepers by simulating the dream-like and random thought patterns they generally have before drifting off to sleep. In particular, Beaudoin's research describes two types of sleep-related thoughts: insomnolent (or anti-sleep) and pro-somnolent (sleep-promoting) thoughts. Insomnolent thoughts include things such as worrying, planning, rehearsing, and ruminating on perceived problems or failings. Pro-somnolent thoughts on the other hand involve thoughts that can help you fall asleep, such as dream-like imagery or having a calm, relaxed state of mind. Cognitive shuffling aims to distract from or interfere with insomnolent thought. It offers a calm, neutral path for your racing mind, and can reduce the stress associated with not sleeping. Cognitive shuffling also helps tell your brain you are ready for sleep. In fact, the process of "shuffling" between different thoughts is similar to the way your brain naturally drifts off to sleep. During the transition to sleep, brain activity slows. Your brain starts to generate disconnected images and fleeting scenes, known as hypnagogic hallucinations, without a conscious effort to make sense of them. By mimicking these scattered, disconnected, and random thought patterns, cognitive shuffling may help you transition from wakefulness to sleep. And the preliminary research into this is promising. Beaudoin and his team have found serial diverse imagining helps to lower arousal before sleep, improve sleep quality and reduce the effort involved in falling asleep. However, with only a small number of research studies, more work is needed here. As with every new strategy, however, practise makes perfect. Don't be disheartened if you don't see an improvement straight away; these things take time. Stay consistent and be kind to yourself. And what works for some won't work for others. Different people benefit from different types of strategies depending on how they relate to and experience stress or stressful thoughts. Other strategies to help create the right conditions for sleep include: If, despite all your best efforts, night time thoughts continue to impact your sleep or overall wellbeing, consider seeking professional help from your doctor or a trained sleep specialist. Melinda Jackson, Associate Professor at Turner Institute for Brain and Mental Health, School of Psychological Sciences, Monash University and Eleni Kavaliotis, Research Fellow in the Sleep, Cognition, and Mood Laboratory at Monash University, Monash University This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
