(the replacement charger has arrived and with it copy-pasting!)
>>Think of gravity for comparison. Inside a gravity well, it looks like gravity is what sticks you to the planet's surface. But outside a gravity well, you can see that gravity actually governs the movement of bodies in relation to each other -- the stars and planets and galaxies aren't stuck together, but are dancing in motion. Two different perspectives of the same source.<<
That... almost makes sense. I can sorta buy it, but I can't... I may just not have a brain that can do that right now. Maybe I didn't download that module. But I don't have to understand the big pieces, necessarily, just figure out what I might need to do about them. Don't need to know machine code to use a computer.
>>Some people are like leaves, some are like fish. It depends not only on what they think about free will, but how they comprehend time itself.<<
I believe in free will, but I also believe in Purpose and Destiny. And reincarnation. It's a little scattershot and doesn't always fit together great, but here we are.
>>Navigating the timestream is not easy; it takes practice. This includes recalling stored memories on purpose, appreciating the now, and planning ahead. They all require different skills that take time to build. Different cultures have different tools. Buddhism and therianthropy are two examples of places to learn "in the now."<<
I'm pretty good at recall when I want it, and I certainly think about the future plenty, although resource problems make meaningful planning hard. And I imagine plenty of fiction. The now... I mean, I'm not actually sure how much I want to be better at the now? Like, yeah, I'm almost always considering the future or the past (or fiction), and when I'm not I'm usually either in flow or with my favorite people. And it would maybe be nice to be a little better at not thinking, but there's so much else to do... I've been told a lot of times I should care about it, but mostly not by people whose judgement I trust.
>>We're not talking just about the psychological issues like if you miss the developmental window for a given skill, it is difficult or impossible to learn later.<<
I do sometimes wonder if I just fuckin missed some kind of window on, like, self-care and household management and food management. Like, I don't know of any official thing saying that's a thing, but I get all the theory and it's still fucking impossible for me to do much of it. Then again, all of that is very colored by trauma. I certainly missed the window when one is expected to pick it up, but that's not the same thing at all as missing an essential window.
>>Sometimes imprint vulnerability can help with that, but this culture has very little fluency with creating and utilizing that in healthy ways.<<
"Imprint vulnerability"? I presume this is related to the kind of imprinting ducks do on their parents or whatever, but I'm not familiar with vulnerability in relation.
>>Self-compassion might help, especially the exercise about "What would you say to a friend with this issues?"<<
I mean, I know. Like, I would tell anyone else they need to give themself a break and that they can't do everything, and I should take my own advice, and that makes perfect sense, but instead of actually doing that my brain switches tracks to some other track of mean things. I think it's the one about how I'm so self-centered for ... well basically for existing, honestly. For some reason it's hard to remember right now what the thought process looks like, which is suspicious. I was thinking about it earlier. I suspect it's hiding on purpose. I was thinking that it's similar to this thing I first saw acknowledged in The Body Keeps the Score which is that I can understand why my thought process is unhelpful and illogical, and that just helps me keep it under wraps. It doesn't make me feel much better.
>> But you have indicated that you've worked on these problems, and done therapy, so you're not just whining.<<
I stopped therapy... wow, like, winter 2014ish, I guess? 2016? Ugh, time. My therapist broke up with me because she was shrinking her schedule and she thought I was her most healthy patient, I guess? I get that kind of thing from therapists. I think my articulateness and tendency to intellectualize throws them off. Or maybe she was right, it's not like I know her other patients. Regardless, it was a difficult time. I did look around a bit, but at the time my work was on a very strict 8:30-5:30 schedule, and therapists outside that time are hard to find, even in a large city. Especially since one has to find the right one. And ultimately, I feel like talk therapy has done most of the improvement work it can. It's a decent coping thing, I like having a sounding board, but I don't live with a gaslighter anymore and therapy is expensive. I think movement or art therapy might be able to get at some stuff I haven't been able to touch with words, but that shit is expensive, hard to find, and not covered by insurance. I'd also really love to try that group thing also described in TBKtS, the one where you are with a group and act out a scene as it did happen and as you would have liked it to. I cried when I read about it. But the people who specialize in that live literally hundreds of miles away, and also there's a pandemic on and meeting in groups is not safe.
>>Therapy works for some people.<<
I've found it so. Not so much the exercises, I can't engage in any homework that requires more than trying to redirect my thoughts and reground myself in, like, okay the odds of X catastrophe are pretty low actually because it turns into a failure spiral, but just having an ear I can trust to not be involved in my life is helpful.
>>Others prefer meditation,<<
My experiences with meditation have been pretty negative, but I reach something similar to a meditative state when following a dance routine. Unfortunately, I'd need solo classes with someone who can work with a dancer with mysterious chronic pain to safely get back into it, and I haven't seen anyone offering that skillset at all. Even if they did, affording it would likely be an issue.
>>hypnosis,<<
I'm considering trying it, but anything that involves giving up a skitch of control of my person is not to be attempted without a lot of caution and thought.
>>prayer,<<
I mean, I do pray sometimes, but I'm bad at keeping up religious practice on my own and highly skeptical of organized religion, even Pagan organized religion. Also, Pagan organized religion generally involves a) leaving the city and therefore transportation I can rely on and b) nudity. Yes, I'm a Pagan who can't deal with casual nudity (mine or others', I got twitchy when a guy changed his shirt at a party one time, it's awful) I know.
>>or enthogens.<<
I like to stay in touch with consensus reality, and there's concerns about it making things worse with my particular suite of things. My older brother is really into pharmacology, we've talked about it a lot, and so far it's not been worth the risks.
>>Some herbs or medications can fix the biochemistry aspects for some people.<<
Yeah, it took like three years to hit on the right med, but better living through chemistry is seriously working for me. My latest psychiatrist was willing to up the dose on the bupropion to the full 450, and my depression is, like, so much better, it might even end up cured on paper, like, in terms of the lil survey thing, if this keeps up. Anxiety is still a bitch, and it's not like I'm normal, but I'm like dancing around all the time to whatever music I'm playing at work, I feel light a lot of the time, I'm just straight up more cheerful, it's fucking awesome. It's not the "oh this is what having a memory and joy is like! I didn't know it was possible to feel this joyful!" from when I got on buproprion in the first place. It's more like someone took my baseline mood slider and flicked it up several notches. This makes things much more pleasant but doesn't fix my executive function.
>>Stacking-sorting games address the "stuck" problem of traumatic stress.<<
I do sometimes play Tetris and I tend to do things like shuffle a deck of cards and sort them by suite and order them king to ace when bored, but I haven't noticed any obvious psychological effects besides my brain sticking on tetris pieces like sometimes happens when I play video games for a while.
>>Timebinding activities can improve ability to put memories in their place and move on. This includes things like timelines and scrapbooks that help sequence events (from the perspective of a linear timeline in a temporal gravity well).<<
Hmmmm... this could be a very good idea. The best thing to do with a stubborn plot bunny is to write the damn thing down and get it out. I've joked about writing an autobiography. And maybe I'll feel less compelled to tell the stories if they're written down. It's a lot, but I've worked with large data sets before. Still... outside validation is a huge part of the need talking about this stuff fills. Ideally I wouldn't need someone to tell me that X incident was fucked for the hundredth time, but it seems I do.
>>For a nonlinear approach, consider collage, which helps show the connections between multiple things at the same time.<<
Ugh, collage. It's not something I've enjoyed in the past. Mind mapping has generally been an exercise in frustration, particularly if I'm expected to draw things. But it might be worth trying if I really run out of ideas. I have a hard time with outlines and timelines too, honestly, like, for writing. "Prewriting" in school, high school, writing an outline or a mind map or whatever, was always fucking torturous to get through. One would think I'd be great at outlines. But deciding where the focus belongs and reducing it down is really hard. I do better to write and sort later, but even working with a book I know backwards and forwards and didn't write, outlining is super hard. Timelines get too crowded because I go into too much detail.
>>By creating a reference, you can help your brain function more like you want it to, kind of like using a therapeutic wrap or brace to support a limb with lingering damage.<<
If you wanna stop thinking about a thing, write it down and get it off the mental "must remember" list, makes sense. ]
>>If you haven't found methods that work really well for you yet, just keep an eye on the field and maybe something new will catch your attention. What humans know about this would fit in a thimble, so plenty of new stuff is emerging.<<
So true. People say I have a lot of self-knowledge, and if that's true then IDK how the average person manages. And the mind is in a sort of similar position to physical illness 200 years ago, when they were grouping by symptom with little understanding of cause. I mean, obviously that's a false dichotomy and developing understanding of the bodymind as a whole is even more backward, but I find it striking anyway.
>>I'm working with this stuff myself right now. My mother passed away in December.<<
I did see that, I just felt very weird saying anything when I didn't have anything more useful than general sympathy to offer.
>>I'm writing down memories and stuff to help mark the transition, to work this into the story of my life. Deliberate, purposeful timebinding to handle a challenging situation.<<
That makes sense.
>>I've worked with these things enough in the past to have a good idea what works for me personally.<<
That's useful.
>>Maybe ask other people for examples, and record them somehow so at least you'll have those perspectives.<<
You know, I really should. Like, I've talked to my other relatives about all the stuff I didn't know about at the time that was messed up, but maybe it would be good to talk about some of the things that didn't suck. I know they happened. I spent years utterly convinced the other stuff didn't count because we had good days.
>>I was six. I was reading adult books myself at that age.<<
Same! My seventh birthday present was being allowed to read anything I wanted from the adult section without my parents reading it first. I read faster than they do, so that was a great present. My parents only ever warned me away from like two books. The Lord of the Flies and I think one other that isn't coming to mind right now. And for once they're right, I've looked into LotF and it would be distressing even now. I have no plans to ever read it. I've definitely read as a kid content some people would say I oughtn't have, but I firmly believe it did me more good than harm. My parents gave me a lot of freedom in a lot of areas. In some areas, this worked great, and reading was one of them.
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dancing_serpent
Re: Thoughts
Date: 2022-01-26 05:08 am (UTC)>>Think of gravity for comparison. Inside a gravity well, it looks like gravity is what sticks you to the planet's surface. But outside a gravity well, you can see that gravity actually governs the movement of bodies in relation to each other -- the stars and planets and galaxies aren't stuck together, but are dancing in motion. Two different perspectives of the same source.<<
That... almost makes sense. I can sorta buy it, but I can't... I may just not have a brain that can do that right now. Maybe I didn't download that module. But I don't have to understand the big pieces, necessarily, just figure out what I might need to do about them. Don't need to know machine code to use a computer.
>>Some people are like leaves, some are like fish. It depends not only on what they think about free will, but how they comprehend time itself.<<
I believe in free will, but I also believe in Purpose and Destiny. And reincarnation. It's a little scattershot and doesn't always fit together great, but here we are.
>>Navigating the timestream is not easy; it takes practice. This includes recalling stored memories on purpose, appreciating the now, and planning ahead. They all require different skills that take time to build. Different cultures have different tools. Buddhism and therianthropy are two examples of places to learn "in the now."<<
I'm pretty good at recall when I want it, and I certainly think about the future plenty, although resource problems make meaningful planning hard. And I imagine plenty of fiction. The now... I mean, I'm not actually sure how much I want to be better at the now? Like, yeah, I'm almost always considering the future or the past (or fiction), and when I'm not I'm usually either in flow or with my favorite people. And it would maybe be nice to be a little better at not thinking, but there's so much else to do... I've been told a lot of times I should care about it, but mostly not by people whose judgement I trust.
>>We're not talking just about the psychological issues like if you miss the developmental window for a given skill, it is difficult or impossible to learn later.<<
I do sometimes wonder if I just fuckin missed some kind of window on, like, self-care and household management and food management. Like, I don't know of any official thing saying that's a thing, but I get all the theory and it's still fucking impossible for me to do much of it. Then again, all of that is very colored by trauma. I certainly missed the window when one is expected to pick it up, but that's not the same thing at all as missing an essential window.
>>Sometimes imprint vulnerability can help with that, but this culture has very little fluency with creating and utilizing that in healthy ways.<<
"Imprint vulnerability"? I presume this is related to the kind of imprinting ducks do on their parents or whatever, but I'm not familiar with vulnerability in relation.
>>Self-compassion might help, especially the exercise about "What would you say to a friend with this issues?"<<
I mean, I know. Like, I would tell anyone else they need to give themself a break and that they can't do everything, and I should take my own advice, and that makes perfect sense, but instead of actually doing that my brain switches tracks to some other track of mean things. I think it's the one about how I'm so self-centered for ... well basically for existing, honestly. For some reason it's hard to remember right now what the thought process looks like, which is suspicious. I was thinking about it earlier. I suspect it's hiding on purpose. I was thinking that it's similar to this thing I first saw acknowledged in The Body Keeps the Score which is that I can understand why my thought process is unhelpful and illogical, and that just helps me keep it under wraps. It doesn't make me feel much better.
>> But you have indicated that you've worked on these problems, and done therapy, so you're not just whining.<<
I stopped therapy... wow, like, winter 2014ish, I guess? 2016? Ugh, time. My therapist broke up with me because she was shrinking her schedule and she thought I was her most healthy patient, I guess? I get that kind of thing from therapists. I think my articulateness and tendency to intellectualize throws them off. Or maybe she was right, it's not like I know her other patients. Regardless, it was a difficult time. I did look around a bit, but at the time my work was on a very strict 8:30-5:30 schedule, and therapists outside that time are hard to find, even in a large city. Especially since one has to find the right one. And ultimately, I feel like talk therapy has done most of the improvement work it can. It's a decent coping thing, I like having a sounding board, but I don't live with a gaslighter anymore and therapy is expensive. I think movement or art therapy might be able to get at some stuff I haven't been able to touch with words, but that shit is expensive, hard to find, and not covered by insurance. I'd also really love to try that group thing also described in TBKtS, the one where you are with a group and act out a scene as it did happen and as you would have liked it to. I cried when I read about it. But the people who specialize in that live literally hundreds of miles away, and also there's a pandemic on and meeting in groups is not safe.
>>Therapy works for some people.<<
I've found it so. Not so much the exercises, I can't engage in any homework that requires more than trying to redirect my thoughts and reground myself in, like, okay the odds of X catastrophe are pretty low actually because it turns into a failure spiral, but just having an ear I can trust to not be involved in my life is helpful.
>>Others prefer meditation,<<
My experiences with meditation have been pretty negative, but I reach something similar to a meditative state when following a dance routine. Unfortunately, I'd need solo classes with someone who can work with a dancer with mysterious chronic pain to safely get back into it, and I haven't seen anyone offering that skillset at all. Even if they did, affording it would likely be an issue.
>>hypnosis,<<
I'm considering trying it, but anything that involves giving up a skitch of control of my person is not to be attempted without a lot of caution and thought.
>>prayer,<<
I mean, I do pray sometimes, but I'm bad at keeping up religious practice on my own and highly skeptical of organized religion, even Pagan organized religion. Also, Pagan organized religion generally involves a) leaving the city and therefore transportation I can rely on and b) nudity. Yes, I'm a Pagan who can't deal with casual nudity (mine or others', I got twitchy when a guy changed his shirt at a party one time, it's awful) I know.
>>or enthogens.<<
I like to stay in touch with consensus reality, and there's concerns about it making things worse with my particular suite of things. My older brother is really into pharmacology, we've talked about it a lot, and so far it's not been worth the risks.
>>Some herbs or medications can fix the biochemistry aspects for some people.<<
Yeah, it took like three years to hit on the right med, but better living through chemistry is seriously working for me. My latest psychiatrist was willing to up the dose on the bupropion to the full 450, and my depression is, like, so much better, it might even end up cured on paper, like, in terms of the lil survey thing, if this keeps up. Anxiety is still a bitch, and it's not like I'm normal, but I'm like dancing around all the time to whatever music I'm playing at work, I feel light a lot of the time, I'm just straight up more cheerful, it's fucking awesome. It's not the "oh this is what having a memory and joy is like! I didn't know it was possible to feel this joyful!" from when I got on buproprion in the first place. It's more like someone took my baseline mood slider and flicked it up several notches. This makes things much more pleasant but doesn't fix my executive function.
>>Stacking-sorting games address the "stuck" problem of traumatic stress.<<
I do sometimes play Tetris and I tend to do things like shuffle a deck of cards and sort them by suite and order them king to ace when bored, but I haven't noticed any obvious psychological effects besides my brain sticking on tetris pieces like sometimes happens when I play video games for a while.
>>Timebinding activities can improve ability to put memories in their place and move on. This includes things like timelines and scrapbooks that help sequence events (from the perspective of a linear timeline in a temporal gravity well).<<
Hmmmm... this could be a very good idea. The best thing to do with a stubborn plot bunny is to write the damn thing down and get it out. I've joked about writing an autobiography. And maybe I'll feel less compelled to tell the stories if they're written down. It's a lot, but I've worked with large data sets before. Still... outside validation is a huge part of the need talking about this stuff fills. Ideally I wouldn't need someone to tell me that X incident was fucked for the hundredth time, but it seems I do.
>>For a nonlinear approach, consider collage, which helps show the connections between multiple things at the same time.<<
Ugh, collage. It's not something I've enjoyed in the past. Mind mapping has generally been an exercise in frustration, particularly if I'm expected to draw things. But it might be worth trying if I really run out of ideas. I have a hard time with outlines and timelines too, honestly, like, for writing. "Prewriting" in school, high school, writing an outline or a mind map or whatever, was always fucking torturous to get through. One would think I'd be great at outlines. But deciding where the focus belongs and reducing it down is really hard. I do better to write and sort later, but even working with a book I know backwards and forwards and didn't write, outlining is super hard. Timelines get too crowded because I go into too much detail.
>>By creating a reference, you can help your brain function more like you want it to, kind of like using a therapeutic wrap or brace to support a limb with lingering damage.<<
If you wanna stop thinking about a thing, write it down and get it off the mental "must remember" list, makes sense. ]
>>If you haven't found methods that work really well for you yet, just keep an eye on the field and maybe something new will catch your attention. What humans know about this would fit in a thimble, so plenty of new stuff is emerging.<<
So true. People say I have a lot of self-knowledge, and if that's true then IDK how the average person manages. And the mind is in a sort of similar position to physical illness 200 years ago, when they were grouping by symptom with little understanding of cause. I mean, obviously that's a false dichotomy and developing understanding of the bodymind as a whole is even more backward, but I find it striking anyway.
>>I'm working with this stuff myself right now. My mother passed away in December.<<
I did see that, I just felt very weird saying anything when I didn't have anything more useful than general sympathy to offer.
>>I'm writing down memories and stuff to help mark the transition, to work this into the story of my life. Deliberate, purposeful timebinding to handle a challenging situation.<<
That makes sense.
>>I've worked with these things enough in the past to have a good idea what works for me personally.<<
That's useful.
>>Maybe ask other people for examples, and record them somehow so at least you'll have those perspectives.<<
You know, I really should. Like, I've talked to my other relatives about all the stuff I didn't know about at the time that was messed up, but maybe it would be good to talk about some of the things that didn't suck. I know they happened. I spent years utterly convinced the other stuff didn't count because we had good days.
>>I was six. I was reading adult books myself at that age.<<
Same! My seventh birthday present was being allowed to read anything I wanted from the adult section without my parents reading it first. I read faster than they do, so that was a great present. My parents only ever warned me away from like two books. The Lord of the Flies and I think one other that isn't coming to mind right now. And for once they're right, I've looked into LotF and it would be distressing even now. I have no plans to ever read it. I've definitely read as a kid content some people would say I oughtn't have, but I firmly believe it did me more good than harm. My parents gave me a lot of freedom in a lot of areas. In some areas, this worked great, and reading was one of them.