The Wordsmith's Forge

As part of the three_weeks_for_dw project (running April 25-May 15), I'm posting some content just to Dreamwidth. This is a good opportunity to seek new readers for your blog and new blogs to read, and to recommend stuff you enjoy on other people's blogs to help them make new connections too. Previously we discussed "Skin Hunger," "Touch Aversion," "Primates Need Touch," "Self-Soothing and Self-Control," "Compassion and Gentleness," "Creating Safe Space," "Building Trust," and "Healthy Vulnerability."


Coping with Emotional Drop

After I wrote the installment on healthy vulnerability, I realized that there seems to be no unflavored description of the "emotional drop" phenomenon and appropriate aftercare. Everything detailed comes from the "sub drop" version in the kink community, and not everyone feels comfortable with kink. On the speculative fiction side, there is "con drop" but little discussion of it. So I'll just fill in this gap as best I can, though many of the resource links still point to kink articles. Hopefully other folks will start writing about other drop examples.

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As part of the three_weeks_for_dw project (running April 25-May 15), I'm posting some content just to Dreamwidth. This is a good opportunity to seek new readers for your blog and new blogs to read, and to recommend stuff you enjoy on other people's blogs to help them make new connections too. Previously we discussed "Skin Hunger," "Touch Aversion," "Primates Need Touch," "Self-Soothing and Self-Control," "Compassion and Gentleness," and "Creating Safe Space."  Skip ahead to "Healthy Vulnerability," "Coping with Emotional Drop."


Building Trust

Trust is an emotion, the feeling that someone will keep their promises and do good instead of harm. It is related to but distinct from reliance, the action of behaving as if someone is dependable, whether or not the emotion of trust is present. Trust can be given, damaged, and restored. Trust issues may arise when someone has difficulty trusting anyone after a betrayal. This is especially true for survivors of trauma. However, many different causes can impair trust.

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As part of the three_weeks_for_dw project (running April 25-May 15), I'm posting some content just to Dreamwidth. This is a good opportunity to seek new readers for your blog and new blogs to read, and to recommend stuff you enjoy on other people's blogs to help them make new connections too. Previously we discussed "Skin Hunger," "Touch Aversion," "Primates Need Touch," and "Self-Soothing and Self-Control."  Skip ahead to "Creating Safe Space," "Building Trust," "Healthy Vulnerability," "Coping with Emotional Drop."

Compassion and Gentleness

Compassion is a feeling of sympathy for hardships and a desire to help alleviate them. It influences our internal and external lives. Practicing compassion for others can promote spiritual and emotional growth. This can actually change the brain over time.

Self-compassion turns this virtue inward, expressing tenderness for your own difficulties and resolving to work on them. Being gentle or critical with yourself affects your biochemistry. It's a useful practice too.

You can test your level of self-compassion. There are strategies and exercises for self-compassion. This lovely meditation invokes loving-kindness both for others and for self.

Gentleness is the use of compassion to moderate power. It is controlled strength, used to help instead of harm. It is not the same as weakness. Typically people think of ways to be gentle with others.

However, you need to be gentle with yourself too. People often show more compassion to others than to themselves. This is especially common for women, but can happen with anyone. When things go wrong, be gentle with your own pain. Think about how you would treat someone else who was suffering in the same way. Take steps to recover from the setback. There are also tips for being gentle with yourself in general.

These things work together. Compassion is a motivation; gentleness is a method. Whenever you practice these virtues for the benefit of another, you improve your ability to use them with yourself, and vice versa. Helping others helps yourself. The world will always be full of challenges, but we can choose to buffer the impact of that by applying compassion and gentleness.

What are some ways that you practice compassion and gentleness? Where are some areas that you think need improvement, either within yourself or the wider culture?

As part of the three_weeks_for_dw project (running April 25-May 15), I'm posting some content just to Dreamwidth. This is a good opportunity to seek new readers for your blog and new blogs to read, and to recommend stuff you enjoy on other people's blogs to help them make new connections too. Previously we discussed "Skin Hunger" and "Touch Aversion."  Skip ahead to "Self-Soothing and Self-Control," "Compassion and Gentleness," "Creating Safe Space," "Building Trust," "Healthy Vulnerability," "Coping with Emotional Drop."


Primates Need Touch

As established in the previous two posts, the human species has a need for physical contact ranging from high to low. Some people even straddle the ends of the bell curve, experiencing both skin hunger and touch aversion. Touch is a prevailing factor in human development and interaction, as is the case for most other primates and many animals in general. This means a majority of people need it, and depriving them of it is not okay, any more than starving them to death is okay. Remember that this involves healthy touch; unwanted or inappropriate touch is not helpful and can do serious damage. The type and frequency of contact will influence how a person interprets touch, often with lifelong effects.

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As part of the three_weeks_for_dw  project (running April 25-May 15), I'm posting some content just to Dreamwidth. This is a good opportunity to seek new readers for your blog and new blogs to read, and to recommend stuff you enjoy on other people's blogs to help them make new connections too.  Skip ahead to "Touch Aversion," "Primates Need Touch," "Self-Soothing and Self-Control," "Compassion and Gentleness," "Creating Safe Space," "Building Trust," "Healthy Vulnerability," "Coping with Emotional Drop."


"What Is Skin Hunger?" 

Skin hunger is a need for healthy touch.*  It does not have to be sexual. Often nonsexual touch proves more satisfying, although many people try to meet skin hunger with sex. The real need is for caring contact. It may feel intimate even if it is nonsexual, especially if someone has gone a long time with little or no touching.

This is a natural need for humans in particular, but it also occurs in most primates and many other animals. Nurturing touch is especially crucial for children. They can actually wither, or even die, without enough skin contact. This is often described as "failure to thrive."

In a society that's increasingly touch-phobic, that means many people do not meet this basic survival need. They shy away from each other for fear of lawsuit or other reasons. This especially denies children caring touch from teachers or other caregivers -- which is child abuse, frankly, because it can cause measurable physical and emotional harm. Someone lacking healthy touch is more vulnerable to unhealthy touch, much as starving people will eat garbage in an attempt to survive. People need to regain an awareness of positive touch.

The "untouchable people" in society most often suffer from skin hunger. These include children outside of families, senior citizens, poor people, and those with almost any kind of disability. Other types of social isolation have similar effects. The lack of contact can cause depression, physical malaise, and other problems.

Touch has many physical and emotional benefits. It helps people feel connected to themselves and each other. It relaxes the skin and the muscles underneath. It soothes the mind. When you touch someone in a positive way, both of you benefit from the contact.

Are you touch starved? Think about how often you touch people or they touch you. List the different types of contact you experience on a typical day. Count how many people you touch regularly. If those lists aren't very long, you might be touch starved.

There are many ways to feed skin hunger.  Cuddle parties are gaining popularity in cities. The Cuddle Sutra offers ideas on poses.  Hug Therapy is a book on affectionate touch.

What are some of your thoughts about skin hunger and healthy touch?

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* Touch is a prevailing need for the human species.  However, some individuals do not identify as human, or have a physical or psychological aversion to touch.  People may have a very low or very high need for touch, and it's okay for that to be a range.  I'll deal with touch aversion in another post.

Here's a brilliant post about the kind of PTSD that builds slowly, a pervasive shift in worldview, rather than the kind that comes from a sudden major shock.  This is how it can form in people who aren't front-line soldiers but rather support crew, or cops, or people living in poverty or neglectful relationships.  

Now look at the part where it talks about society not being a safe place, everyone's out to get each other, no trustworthy connections, no safety net if something goes wrong, nobody to care if you live or die.  That's what we're making our world into every time we cut public services and support.  We're making it more like the place inside a PTSD sufferer's head.  "Every man for himself and devil take the hindmost" isn't a society.  It's madness.

 ... may cause behavior problems in children.  Some people have allergies to tobacco; if nothing else, children may act up because the smoke makes them miserable.  

Also it does not help to know adults around you are unwilling or unable to stop putting your life at risk.  That starting bugging me when I was, hmm, four or five?  It'd take longer for most kids, but at least some of them will notice that.

Toxic food isn't just for humans anymore. Scotts Miracle Grow deliberately coated birdseed with insecticide, which is toxic to birds, to keep insects from eating the birdseed.  As if it's not difficult and expensive enough trying to find human food that's actually edible, and trying to find ways of supporting wildlife in a world that mostly wants to kill everything that moves, now we have to worry about poisoned birdseed.  Terrific.

When these guys go to hell, Lucifer is going to have to hike over to the Pagan afterlife and say, "Hey, do you guys have any eagles I could borrow?  I have some guys who need their entrails pecked out by angry birds."

... with forced ultrasounds and forced information.  And while we're on that topic, the article also shows how Texas abuses health care providers by forcing them to do harm to some of their patients, when "first, do no harm" is supposed to be the primary groundrule of the whole profession.

This isn't harm that happens and then goes away.  Rape can do permanent damage.  Other psychological violations can do permanent damage.  Consider the cost of depression, antidepressants, counseling.  Consider the cost of women for whom that's the last straw and they cease to be functioning members of society; cease to hold a job (if they can even find one) and pay taxes, begin to soak up tax money through public aid.  Consider the cost to families of having someone -- a daughter, a wife, a mother -- who is shattered by this experience.  Who maybe has flashbacks when the topic of sex comes up, or the topic of children comes up, or who can't bear watching television anymore because politicians refuse to stop talking about what they're going to take away from women next, or who avoids the health care industry as too traumatic even when in need of positive care.  A slow creep of damage radiating outward like a spreading stain.  And there's not even any legal recourse for it, because it was legally mandated.

Now, when society allows, encourages, or commands human beings to harm each other, some bad things tend to happen.  First there's the damage to the victims themselves.  But there's also a negative effect on the perpetrators.  They tend to either break from sharing the suffering of the victims, or become indifferent to that suffering.  The latter inclines them to harm more people than the "acceptable" victims.  Consider, for example, the much higher rates of rape, child abuse, spousal abuse, etc. in the military.  Consider also how awkward it is when soldiers snap and shoot up their own base or a bunch of civilians.  A fluke?  No.  It's an obvious, predictable effect of removing people's ordinary ethics and training them to dehumanize others and use violence to solve problems.  If you're very careful about keeping soldiers sane and healthy, such incidents can be kept to a minimum, but they always happen; and if you run people ragged, they happen a lot more often and are worse.

Such things may seem to be unconnected but they all stem from a common cause.  When a society does not value its members and does not teach them to respect and care for each other, they tend to lose the qualities that make for healthy individuals and healthy societies.  This destroys the bonds that hold people together in smaller or larger groups. Eventually, you don't have a society anymore; you have anarchy, maybe contained in a leaking tub of what used to be a nation.  Don't believe it can happen?  There are not only plenty of historic examples, look at some places in Africa.  Central Europe, the Middle East, and South America have done it repeatedly too.  The results are ghastly.

So it's generally a bad idea to harm other people.  Anyone who advocates activities that harm other people -- aside from exceptional circumstances like self-defense -- is contributing to the problem and not somebody who should be in charge of anything, let alone a government.

This article is about defiance as a mental disorder.  Underneath, however, it's about how modern society makes people sick and then punishes them for being displeasing.  No safety or security are guaranteed: you only get food, shelter, clothing,  health care, and other survival needs if you can pay for them.  You are not guaranteed a job, or even the right to apply for a job; yet society demands that you have one and punishes you if you don't.  Lack of security makes people anxious and depressed.  People are then criticized and punished for that too.  They are criticized and punished for objecting to how things are or suggesting that things should be different.  And if they want to leave?  Leaving the country is ever more difficult, and requires the permission of another receiving country.  Suicide is illegal.

I am frequently reminded of how an abusive spouse smacks the victim around, claims to be in love, and insists that leaving is impossible.