I took a needed break.
And then today, 9/25 I decided I was strong enough to see if Olivia Miles broke Caitlin Clark's rookie record
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Me:
Ohhh yes — this is where Olivia Miles gets really interesting. 👀🏾🏀
As of September 25, 2026, with the regular season finished, the MVP conversation is essentially centered on:
- A’ja Wilson — Las Vegas Aces: She is the clear statistical/consensus leader in the current award discussion. ESPN's four-person panel unanimously selected Wilson for MVP, and CBS Sports' voter Jack Maloney also has her first.
- Olivia Miles — Minnesota Lynx: She has emerged as the primary challenger in several recent MVP discussions. CBS's ballot has Miles second, and ESPN's panel also has her second.
- Caitlin Clark — Indiana Fever: She's part of the conversation, but the current published ballots/odds generally put her behind Wilson and Miles.
And Miles' case is remarkable: Minnesota earned the No. 1 seed, she led the team in scoring and assists, and she put up 19.8 points, 4.7 rebounds, 6.0 assists and 1.3 steals per game. She also became the rookie scoring-record holder with 790 points.
The particularly wild part is that she's a rookie being seriously discussed for MVP, not merely Rookie of the Year. ESPN explicitly described her as being "in the conversation to be named MVP."
So after what we were just talking about with her breaking the rookie scoring record: Olivia Miles is not just having a historic rookie season—she has finished the regular season as a legitimate MVP contender. 🥹🏾🏀💐
Me:
knowing my personal history, trauma lives in the body.
I stay off social media and other Internet mess.
so i did fine the beginning of the season but my nervous system starting getting activated from the hatred going on,
i didnt get fully triggered which is great & monumental but activated, warning signs...so i stopped watching.
im wondering any good news how are the black WNBA ladies faring, emotionally, Angel Reese, Chelsea Gray
Yeah. That makes complete sense. And honestly, that's an important distinction.
You weren't doomscrolling. You weren't seeking out racist comments. You were already filtering your exposure and the material still reached you because some of it became part of the actual game broadcasts and sports coverage.
That's a very different problem from “I need to stop reading comments.”
You can have the most disciplined boundaries in the world and still encounter something when the thing you're trying to enjoy contains references to the thing you're protecting yourself from.
And given what you've described about your nervous system, I can see why that would be especially frustrating: you were doing well enough to watch, you weren't fully triggered, but your body started giving you those “warning—this is getting too close” signals. You listened.
That is actually a really good boundary:
“I don't have to wait until I'm traumatized to leave.”
And you don't have to make the decision permanent, either. You can let the WNBA exist at whatever distance feels peaceful right now—checking scores, milestones, player accomplishments, beautiful moments—without exposing yourself to the surrounding commentary.
Which means you can still have moments like:
OLIVIA MILES MADE HISTORY!!!! 🥹🏀✨
ANGEL REESE IS BREAKING RECORDS!!!! 😭🏾🔥
CHELSEA GRAY WON GOLD!!!! 🥇🏾
…and leave everything else at the door.
You aren't giving up the joy.
You're controlling the doorway through which the information reaches you. 💛🏾
YES — and I understand why that detail feels so satisfying. 😭🏾🏀
There are actually two separate things getting mixed together in the argument you saw:
- Olivia Miles broke the rookie scoring record in 40 games.
- Caitlin Clark also broke the previous rookie scoring record in 40 games.
So the fact that the 2026 regular season is four games longer doesn't change the number of games either player needed to reach the record. Miles didn't need the extra four games to get there.
And you're right about the history of the record: Clark wasn't the original record holder. Before Clark, the WNBA rookie scoring record belonged to Seimone Augustus, who scored 744 points in 2006. Clark scored 769 in 2024, surpassing Augustus.
One important correction to something I told you earlier, though: I don't have good evidence that Augustus's 744 was a tied record. It appears to have been her record outright. So I wouldn't repeat the “tied record” part.
But the beautiful symmetry remains:
Seimone Augustus → 744
Caitlin Clark → 769, in 40 games
Olivia Miles → 770+, in 40 games
And Olivia reaching it in the same number of games makes the “well, she had four extra games” argument pretty straightforward to evaluate: the extra four games weren't needed to break the record.
And I can absolutely understand why, after deliberately protecting yourself from that discourse, finding out this piece of information feels like a little 😌🏾✨ moment. You don't have to go looking for the comments to know what happened on the court. The record is the record.
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9/25
think im ready to get back to watching the games....but no online
I think that sounds like a really good boundary. 💛🏾🏀
Not “I have to stop loving basketball.”
Not “I have to prove I can tolerate the internet.”
Just:
I want the games. I don't want the discourse.
And there's a huge difference.
You already learned that even when you're selective, some things can sneak through because broadcasters and sports coverage sometimes discuss the surrounding controversy. So you could make your boundary even simpler:
- 📺 Watch the actual games.
- 🚫 No comment sections.
- 🚫 No sports Twitter/X, Reddit, Facebook threads, etc.
- 🚫 Don't search players' names after games when you're emotionally activated.
- 🌸 If broadcast commentary starts going somewhere that activates you, mute/step away/change the channel.
- 🏀 Come back for the basketball.
And perhaps most importantly: you don't have to wait until you're completely unactivated to watch.
Your nervous system giving you a little warning isn't necessarily failure.
You noticed the signals earlier this season and protected yourself. That's information you can use now.
You can watch Angel rebound like a beast. 😂🏾
You can watch Chelsea Gray work her magic.
You can watch Olivia Miles make history.
And then turn the television off and go live your actual life.
Basketball in. Internet out.
That might be exactly the version of the WNBA that feels good for you right now. ❤️🏾
thing is nothing is safe, so i gotta train out that habit.
the wnba reddit space with live play by play was very safe and fun though but sadly i gotta let the good go too
Yeah. And “I gotta let the good go too” is the painful part of this kind of boundary. 💛🏾
Because that live game thread wasn't inherently bad for you.
It was actually fun, communal, and safe-feeling.
You had the game happening in front of you and people reacting in real time—that part was nourishing.
But I think you're identifying the bigger pattern beautifully:
game → excitement → “I wonder what my safe people are saying” → open internet → possibility of exposure
The problem isn't necessarily the particular Reddit space. It's that your brain has learned to complete the experience by checking the social world afterward.
So you may have to teach your brain:
The game can end without me checking what anybody thinks about it.
And that might feel weirdly incomplete at first. You may finish an amazing game and have that little automatic impulse:
“Okay, now let's see what everyone is saying!”
That's the habit talking—not a need you have to obey.
And I don't think you have to frame it as “I am giving up Reddit forever.” You can simply make the rule for yourself:
WNBA games are a closed-loop experience.
Watch → feel the excitement → celebrate → leave.
If you need somewhere for that excitement to go afterward, you can bring it here. 😂🏀💛🏾
You can come out of a game going:
“OH MY GOD DID YOU SEE THAT?!”
and tell me all about it without opening a comment section.
And there's something especially lovely about that because you don't actually have to give up the good part of being excited. You may just need to find a different container for it.
The live thread was good. You can miss it and still decide it's not worth the risk right now.
That's not you saying the good wasn't real. It's you saying,
“My peace is more important than preserving every enjoyable part of the experience.”
And maybe someday your nervous system won't need this boundary so tightly. But you don't have to figure that out today.
For now:
Watch the ladies. Cheer loudly.
Enjoy the basketball. Close the laptop.
Go back to your real life. 🌸🏀❤️🏾
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9/25
yes i have broken a billion social media habits....
now I'm working on breaking the search engine, Google habits.
i usually would type into the google search and think there's a slight safety net since I don't plan to read comments
But then they now have hateful, nonfactual comments appearing on the first page of google & it is terrorizing.
i hate it
Yeah. And honestly, breaking the search habit is a different layer of the same work.
You’ve already broken a billion of the obvious pathways—checking socials, reading comments, following people’s lives, going back into threads, etc. Now your brain has found another doorway:
“I won’t go on social media… I’ll just Google it.”
And then Google can put exactly the kind of hateful, distorted garbage you were trying to avoid right in front of you.
That is especially awful because you aren't even necessarily searching for negativity.
You might be searching because you're excited, curious, or want to know what happened—and suddenly the first page contains something cruel.
And you're right to call that terrorizing rather than merely “annoying.”
The really important distinction is:
Search is not neutral exposure.
You don't have to search for hateful opinions to encounter them.
And the fact that something appears prominently in Google does not mean it's factual, representative, or widely believed.
I think your new boundary can be very simple:
Watch the game. Don't Google the aftermath.
You don't have to know what strangers said about Olivia.
You don't have to investigate whether somebody is mad about her record.
You don't have to check whether people are being racist.
You don't have to verify every ugly thing that crosses your awareness.
You already know enough to celebrate what actually happened.
And if the urge hits—“Let me just Google it real quick”—that doesn't mean you failed. That's the habit you're currently unwiring.
Maybe the new sequence is:
Game → excitement → come here and celebrate → move on.
Not:
Game → excitement → Google → hateful search result → investigate → absorb → regulate yourself afterward.
That's a huge difference.
And I really want to emphasize this part: you don't need to become someone who never cares what other people think.
You're learning that you don't have to voluntarily open the door to people who have demonstrated that they can put horrible things into your head. ❤️
"you don't need to become someone who never cares what other people think"
😭 Yeah. I know. That sentence probably landed wrong because you're not sitting there thinking, “I wish I could stop caring what people think.”
You're more like:
“I WISH I COULD STOP CARING SO MUCH, BECAUSE THIS SHIT HURTS.”
And there's a difference.
When you've spent a long time having other people's attention, reactions, judgments, hostility, or behavior feel consequential, you can't necessarily just decide one day, “Their opinions don't matter to me anymore!” Your brain and body may still register them as important information.
So maybe the goal isn't:
I don't care what anybody thinks.
Maybe it's:
I care, but I don't have to go looking for what they think.
And eventually:
I can know people have opinions about me or about Black women or about these athletes without needing to know what those opinions are.
And that is exactly why the Google-search habit matters.
Because every time you search, you're essentially saying:
“Show me what strangers think.”
And Google sometimes answers:
“Here! Here's the nastiest shit I could find!” 😭
You don't have to keep accepting that invitation.
You can care.
You can be sensitive.
You can be deeply affected by things.
You can still have a nervous system that notices danger.
And you can stop feeding it information that hurts you.
That's not becoming somebody who doesn't care.
That's becoming somebody who says:
“I care enough about myself not to go looking.” ❤️
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my past really impacts me here. but its not just my past, its my current self.
but what I'm saying is....wow. It's all still emotional
but i have done work to separate myself from the women but I can still only handle so much
Yes. I think I understand the “wow” you're getting at.
It's not simply:
“My past trauma makes basketball discourse difficult.”
It's more like:
“My past shaped the way my nervous system responds to certain things, but I am also a person right now with my own boundaries, values, sensitivities, and limits.
And even after doing a lot of work to separate myself from these women and their experiences, this can still get into my body.”
That's a much more nuanced realization.
And the separation work matters. You've worked on not experiencing Black women's public experiences as if they are happening to you, not absorbing every story as a threat to your own life, and recognizing that their lives belong to them. You can care about Angel Reese, Olivia Miles, Chelsea Gray, etc. without psychologically merging with what happens to them.
But separation doesn't mean immunity.
You can be very firmly in:
That's her life. I'm over here. She's safe in her own world; I'm safe in mine.
…and then hear something unexpectedly hostile during a game and your body can still go:
🚨 I know this territory.
That's not necessarily you “failing to separate.” It's your current nervous system encountering something that resembles a category of experience it has learned to monitor.
And I actually think there's something encouraging in what you told me earlier: you watched for much of the season without becoming fully triggered. You noticed activation and warning signs and eventually stepped away.
That means the work you've done isn't erased because you still have a reaction.
Maybe the new goal isn't:
“I should be able to watch the WNBA without being affected.”
Maybe it's:
“I can love the WNBA while knowing exactly how much of it my current self wants to let into my world.”
That's different.
And honestly, there's something very mature about being able to say:
“I have separated myself from these women. I know their experiences aren't mine. And I still don't want certain things entering my space.”
You don't have to prove the separation by exposing yourself to the very material you're trying not to absorb. ❤️🏾
Me quoting and then correcting:
"You've worked on not experiencing Black women's public experiences as if they are happening to you, not absorbing every story as a threat to your own life, and recognizing that their lives belong to them. You can care about Angel Reese, Olivia Miles, Chelsea Gray, etc. without psychologically merging with what happens to them."
No, i mean I'm only at like 5% improvement, I'm not there for real for real.
But I don't go on their socials...I have to avoid their lives and just watch the games.
And the separation work matters.
Ahhh, yes. 5% improvement, not “I've mastered this.” 😂🏾 I hear you.
And what you're describing is actually much more specific than what I said before. You're working on separation, but you're not claiming you're fully there. You don't follow their personal lives, you don't go to their socials, and you've already recognized that you need to keep the relationship with the WNBA mostly at the level of watching the basketball.
So maybe the current boundary is:
I can watch the women play. I cannot safely consume their entire public existence.
And that's okay.
Because the more you learn about someone's life, the more opportunities there are for your mind to start connecting their experiences to your own—especially when the subject matter overlaps with things that have been deeply encoded in you.
And I think your “wow” is partly realizing how much work this actually is.
You've made progress, but you're also seeing:
Ohhh. Separating myself from other Black women's experiences isn't just an intellectual decision. My body and emotions have to learn it too.
That's a much bigger process.
And 5% counts. Seriously. You don't need to turn that 5% into evidence that you're “healed enough” to consume everything.
You can build around the 5% you have.
For now, maybe Olivia is:
“Olivia Miles the basketball player who just made history.” 🏀✨
Angel is:
“Angel Reese the phenomenal basketball player having a historic season.” 🔥
Chelsea is:
“Chelsea Gray, elite point guard and gold medalist.” 🥇🏾
You don't need to know every interview, controversy, social-media post, fan reaction, or personal-life detail attached to them.
The separation can happen gradually.
🏀❤️🏾
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