Hey, Jax.
I’ve noticed that things have been going very well for you recently. One might even say that almost all of your dreams have been coming true in the sense that opportunity after opportunity to accomplish your goals has presented itself & continues to do so. That’s pretty rad, dude. Grats & stuff.
I’ve also noticed that you’re still not prioritising self-care & daily maintenance activities like you need to be doing in order to sustain your existence in a less than “just surviving” kind of way. I thought we talked about this. I thought we agreed we were tired of barely scraping by each day. Remember how it’s important for us to be functioning well in order to accomplish our goals? Remember how we care about people & want to help them? Remember how we can’t help others if we’re not helping ourself get better first?
Now, I don’t wanna assume you’re not doing your best. I think you are doing better than you have been in a long, long time, possibly ever in some ways. I also don’t want to give you the classic, “Try harder to do better,” kind of talk because I know that can feel pretty invalidating of all the effort you have been putting in & all the work you have been doing thus far. I definitely want to commend you for your endeavours & thank you for your perseverance despite how difficult it’s been all these years. I’m truly grateful you never fully gave up. It may have felt like you did, but you’re still here. We’re still here. And that’s pretty huge in my book. I’m genuinely happy that you’ve made the choices you have so that we are where we are today, which is having this talk right now. We couldn’t be doing this if you hadn’t put in the work it took to get here. This is bigger than you think, actually.
So, I know things are still really tough on a daily basis. I know the pain is still nigh intolerable & constant. I know how terribly uncomfortable it is to be corporeal in the way we are, and I know how challenging it is to have developed the way we did. It’s okay, though. No, really. It’s just another flavour of life. It’s maybe a super rare & unusual one that requires a lot of time to acquire the taste for, but it’s possible to get to that point. At least, I think it is. I’ve heard of stranger phenomena happening. I just want you to know, though, that even though things are still pretty rough, even though you’re still suffering, even though you sometimes question why you should keep moving forward, it’s worth it to stick around because your experiences can help others. It’s true. It’s happened before, and it can happen again.
I know you’re a fan of logic & critical thinking so let’s just consider how we can increase the statistical probability of helping others real quick:
1) Continuing to stick around: if you’re still here, you might be able to help someone whereas if you’re not, you definitely won’t be able to, right? Yeah. Checks out.
2) Prioritising self-care: if you’re healthy, your ability to be productive will increase whereas if you’re not taking proper care of yourself, your capacity to be there for others will decrease. Yeah. That’s also solid reasoning. Got me there.
Okay, so, if we just do these two little things (just two!), the statistical probability of us being able to help other people goes up exponentially. We both want that. So how are we going to make sure we do these things?
For the first one, we just keep doing what we’re doing. Distract ourselves when things get to the point where we’re having intrusive thoughts, be extra compassionate & gentle in those moments, practice non-judgmental loving kindness, reach out to those we trust & who help us feel better, etc.
And what about the second one? That’s the one we struggle with the most. How can we try to prioritise self-care more? How can we push through that, “BUT I DON’T WANNA!!!!” feeling? It’s the worst, isn’t it? It’s like an amusement park filled to the brim with screaming toddlers who have been abandoned by their parents & we’re the only adults there, but we’re also wanting to scream with them and be rescued by someone.
Well, what do you think? Any ideas? This letter has been nice, right? Being here present with each other in this way? Being there for myself, with myself? That’s pretty new. Maybe we can do this more often? Maybe we can do things together? Maybe we can do the things we don’t wanna do together by supporting each other with love, affection, tolerance, patience, understanding, empathy, compassion, & more? Do you think we could do that? What would it look like if we did that? What would it feel like? Can we try it?
How about we try it right now? Let’s do the thing we don’t want to do: go to bed. I know you struggle with that. So do I, obviously haha. What’s keeping us from closing this laptop right now? Why are we so reluctant to wind down? Perhaps we should explore this another time since it’s approaching midnight & thinking about it too much will probably be counterproductive to the goal of actually going to sleep! Yeah, good call. Okay. I guess we can try…
Are you scared for some reason? Kinda? Maybe? I don’t know why I would be, though. That seems so weird & illogical; like, what do I have to be scared of anyway? We’re just going to bed? It’s okay. We don’t have to understand what’s going on to be able to work through it. It’s just a neural network, right? What’s that thing that Daimon says? “This is my neural network, and I can change it.” Yeah. That’s it. This is just a neural network, and we can change it. So let’s do it. Let’s do it together now.
Goodnight, world. Until tomorrow.
So much love to you all ❤
What Is Self-Love?
I haven’t made a blog post in a while.
I haven’t updated my social media accounts either.
So, why is this? Here’s the full story.
If I don’t know you very well, the answer I’ve probably given you is, “My health isn’t very good right now,” or “I haven’t been feeling very well lately.” If I trust you, I might have elaborated a bit by explaining that it’s primarily my mental health that isn’t optimal. If we talk on occasion, you might have heard me say that I struggle with depression, anxiety, complex PTSD, and other things. Even if you don’t know me personally, you might have come across me talking about mental health related subjects on one platform or another.
Since 2016, I’ve been on & off various social media sites including, but not limited to Twitch, Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, etc. I’ve tried making connections in various online communities because virtual socialisation is easier for me than in person human exchanges. The thing is, if you’ve been following me since 2016, you’ll notice that I have a pretty consistent habit of “disappearing” abruptly, especially when things are going well.
When I started streaming video games on Twitch, I did it because my depression had caused me to isolate to the point where I was having trouble leaving the house & interacting with other people. I figured that streaming would be a good way to try to start socialising again since it would be on my terms, I wouldn’t have to see or hear other people, just read text lines in the chat box, people would come to my stream if they were interested in the game I was playing, so there’d be an immediate common interest/ice breaker to facilitate the dialogue, and I could choose when I went live & end the stream whenever I was done socialising. It was a really great experience, but then, I started gaining some traction.
I remember people donating money, games, gear, etc. to the stream, subscribing monthly, other streamers shouting me out on their streams & on their Twitter accounts without me even asking them to (years later, even though I haven’t streamed in ages, some of those streamers STILL tag me in #FF tweets!), and I started getting a humble crew of regular viewers/supporters. I branded, I networked, I created a Discord Server, I dedicated a lot of my life to trying to improve my channel & broadcasts. And then, I remember 50+ live viewers at once, chat moving too quickly for me to follow, other streamers wanting me to game with them, getting overwhelmed, shutting off the stream/quitting from the game, & pretending that my system had crashed when streaming with a few others. It became too stressful for me. I couldn’t handle even that much attention. I took a break for a while and decided to focus on other things.
After streaming helped me to regain some ability to venture forth from my house, I found a local comic shop & allowed myself to get super into comics in a way I’d never been able to before, similar to what happened with games when I started streaming (& tried working at GameStop for a month, but hated it). I ended up worked at that comic shop for over a year & a half, which is the longest I’ve ever managed to work anywhere & it was one of the best experiences of my life thus far. In addition to working at the comic shop, I also started dabbling in cosplay & modelling, but just like what happened with streaming, when I started getting some recognition in these other communities, I ended up having anxiety attacks, overloading myself, then crashing & burning. I almost contracted with a talent agency for modelling, I landed a paid cosplay gig & got to attend PAX East, I started networking & gave a couple of interviews on a cosplay podcast, people started reaching out to collaborate with me on various creative & artistic projects. It was all amazing & wonderful, but it also straight up terrified me. I freaked out, and just like I did with streaming, I ended up quitting cosplay, modelling, and putting my life on hold again.
I just turned 30 in March, so 4 years ago, at the age of 26, I was recovering from a bad depressive spell, had a crazy few years of doing all kinds of fun & awesome things, but wasn’t ever able to really attend to the root of the problems that cause me to consistently spiral out of control when things seem to be going well. On one hand, we can say, okay, examining my early childhood, it’s obvious that I’m still struggling with self-worth issues due to never having felt fully safe or comfortable being who I am because I perceived all of the negative events that occurred as my fault somehow. That’s the crazy kind of stuff a child’s brain makes up when they don’t feel like they’re loved or accepted for who they are. That’s how inferiority (and superiority) complexes develop as well as the need to always be in control somehow. When you’re a child that doesn’t get what you need to learn how to be healthy, is it any wonder you grow up to be an unhealthy adult?
On the other hand, whatever traumatic experiences I underwent only account for part of what’s going on today. Receiving my autism diagnosis in 2018 helped to confirm what I had believed my whole life, but never could explain why I knew it to be true: there was something a little bit different about me. I had suspected I was on the spectrum since 2012, but due to a lot of widespread misunderstanding & misconceptions about what it means to be autistic in the medical & behavioural health professions, it took 6 years, a few misdiagnoses including bipolar depression & borderline personality disorder, and manyyyyy different psychopharmaceutical cocktails for me to finally find an expert in autism who was able to confirm what I already knew to be true in the first conversation we had.
Learning more about autism helped me to understand why I wasn’t responding to all of these different forms of therapy, psych meds, treatments, etc. that I’d tried over the years (since I was a child) as well as helped me to understand that I wasn’t actually broken or defective like I’d always believed. It helped me to understand that my brain was just wired differently. There are more neural pathways connected, especially in my prefrontal cortex & frontal lobe, which is why I struggle with executive functioning, like many autistics do. What this means is that because of the way my brain is structured on a neurological level, I’m prone to doing things like “burning the candle at both ends,” overdoing it, burning out, and then falling into a depressive state because I wasn’t able to self-monitor & regulate myself the way someone with a neurotypical brain structure might be able to. It means that things overwhelm, drain, & exhaust me that don’t for “most” people. It means that I have different a capacity for work output, consistency, and quality than the majority of human beings, which is neither a good nor bad thing. It just means I’m a bit unusual in how I operate on a very basic mechanical level. I’m still learning what it means to be me and what works & what doesn’t work for me. It’s a super tiring process to be 30 & still not even know how to function on a daily basis. I’m doing my best to learn & grow, but I won’t lie. It’s pretty slow going.
Now all of this brings me back to the original question that I asked: Why haven’t I updated in a while? The answers I gave above are all partially true, but the full answer is that I did it again. At the start of 2019, shortly after receiving my autism diagnosis, the psych meds I was on stopped working, I plunged into a super bad depression again, and I had to move back home with my parents. This past year I’ve been working on recovering by doing multiple types of therapy, trying different medications, and focusing on all aspects of my health. At the start of 2020, I finally got off all meds, was doing pretty well adjusting, and the past few months, things actually got pretty awesome in ways that were like a dream come true. Sure enough, however, I ended up pushing myself too hard again like I always do right as things were getting good, & I landed myself back into a depressive burn out episode.
Now what does all of this have to do with the title of this post, though? What does my journey of neuropsychological self-exploration, my trauma, my executive dysfunction, my autism, my ups & downs, my burn out, my depression, etc. have to do with self-love? It’s simple. Every day, I still struggle to make better choices, more effective choices that will facilitate my recovery & healing process. Each & every day, I continue to choose to do perpetuate unhealthy behaviours like neglecting my physical health needs by not going to bed early enough, not eating well, not exercising, etc. I make the choice to lay in bed wasting time on the internet instead of working on self-development by improving the skill sets I currently have, learning new things, organising my projects, cleaning my living spaces, etc. If I’m so aware of all of these behaviours, why do I keep doing them? Well, my friends, this is where I think the term self-love needs to be explored further.
In North American cultures, we often think of self-love as body positivity, “treating ourselves”, telling ourselves that the trauma we experienced is not our fault, etc., and while those all are valid & have a place, they’re actually not the backbone of what I believe self-love really is. If we think about how we treat others that we love, we would say that a lot of what it comes down to is simply validation, understanding, compassion, kindness, empathy, support, gentleness, patience, tolerance, and respect. If someone we love is having a hard time getting out of bed, we wouldn’t stand over them and yell at them, making them feel even worse than they already are. We would try to help them remember that it’s okay that they’re having a hard time, that we all struggle in life sometimes, and we would simply offer to do whatever we can to try to ease some of their pain & suffering. So here’s the real question that we all need to ask: why can’t we do this for ourselves? If you’re having a hard day, what kinds of statements are you telling yourself? Are you chastising or berating yourself? Are you feeling guilty because you think you “should” just be able to suck it up & carry on? Are you feeling discouraged & hopeless because you feel weak & alone? I know that I do.
If we love someone & they need us to take care of them, we won’t even hesitate to be there for them, so why aren’t we doing that for ourselves? If a human body & mind need certain bare necessities to be healthy, why wouldn’t we provide that for our own if we love ourselves? On some deep level, I’ve come to realise that I can have empathy & compassion for anyone but myself. I’m willing to be as patient & understanding for any other living being, but I can’t seem to do it when I need it myself. For some reason, from a really young age, I came to believe that I was unworthy of love, so I started closing myself off to it. I started to hate myself, started to self-harm, and became obsessed with death & couldn’t stop contemplating suicide. Thankfully I managed to stop self-harming in high school & while I still struggle with intrusive thoughts about self-harm & suicidal ideation, I don’t hate myself like I used to. I realised that it’s not so much that I want to die, but rather want to escape the hardships I face. The biggest hardship of all is this belief that I’m unworthy of love, however, and that’s something I learned & thus can UNLEARN.
I try to think about what it would look like if I loved myself. I have to continue to be realistic in my expectations because of my neurological differences, so I can’t hold myself to the same standards as everyone else, but I believe that if I allowed myself to feel love, I’d be able to create routines & follow them. I’d be able to prioritise good sleep hygiene, healthy diet, exercise, etc. as well as making a to do list (even if it’s just 1-3 things each day) and actually be able to accomplish it. If I loved myself, I’d take the time to find ways to work with my own biological & psychological needs to be able to become a person who is working toward accomplishing their goals instead of just languishing in bed. There’s more to be said on all of this, and while the core sentiment behind it all is that I am actively trying to work on these things, I also need to acknowledge where I’m at right now so I can make realistic, honest progress. Right now, I feel like I am lacking in self-love, and I believe I really need to meditate on what exactly it means to be someone who makes the time for self-care. While I feel like I’ve wasted so much of my life already, it’s still possible for me to accomplish many of my dreams, so what would be the benefit of giving up just cos I’m not moving as quickly towards my goals as I’d like to be? That seems irrational & impatient.
This is an incredibly long post that could even go longer, but I’ll end it here because this is all I want to say for now. If you stayed with me until the end, I thank you from the bottom of my heart because that’s what this post was: me revealing my heart to you. If you got something from this post, that’s great. If not, that’s okay, too. I don’t really blog for other people. I blog because it helps me to process what I’m going through when I write it out, and I share my thoughts publicly just in case there are some people out there who might derive some benefit reading them. I have nothing but love & appreciation for all of the living souls out there doing their best to work on themselves because it’s probably the most difficult task in the existence, but it’s also the most worthwhile pursuit, in my opinion. I send you all so much affection & my well wishes in your endeavours.
You are all in my heart, in my thoughts, & in my prayers. Hare Krishna ❤
Vulnerability & Shame
What makes you feel vulnerable? What triggers feelings of shame for you?
I encourage everyone to watch this incredibly informative & fascinating TEDxTalk on why we’re suffering so much as a species right now.
This is actually life changing stuff. If we can internalise & apply these paradigm shifts ourselves and help others do the same, we could help shift the cultural consciousness to a more positive one. It’s just a matter of sharing it with the right people as well as making sure we’re really applying these concepts in ourselves, too.
We can be the change we want to see in the world AND help change the world!
~*~
Here is a rough outline of the talk:
+ The ability to feel connected is the reason we’re here.
+ Shame is the fear of disconnection.
+ Those who don’t feel shame, can’t feel empathy & connection.
+ The less we talk about shame, the more we feel it.
+ Underneath shame is feelings of excruciating vulnerability.
+ Vulnerability is neither good nor bad, but it’s not comfortable.
+ Vulnerability is the birthplace of joy, creativity, & love.
+ Those who feel shame infrequently are willing to be vulnerable.
+ Being vulnerable requires courage, compassion, & authenticity.
+ We must not try to predict, control, perfect, blame, or numb.
+ We can’t selectively numb emotions like shame.
+ If we don’t allow ourselves to feel our shame, we can’t feel joy.
+ We must let ourselves be seen, deeply, & vulnerably.
+ We must love w/ our whole hearts w/o expectation.
+ We must practice gratitude & joy in moments of terror & grief.
+ We must believe that we’re worthy of love & connection.
~*~
The harder it is to open ourselves to the possibility of being vulnerable, the more likely we have experienced some form of trauma in our lives. The earlier on in our lives that we were exposed to something traumatic, the more ingrained those neural pathways are, meaning the more likely the roads that leads to us experiencing feelings like shame are well travelled. This doesn’t mean that it’s too late for us to do something about it even if we’ve lived most of our lives one way. It’s never too late to change our behavioural patterns, i.e. the things that cause us to think & feel the ways we do. The literal only constant in life is that all things, including people, change. It just means that it may not be possible to change on your own. This is why the field of clinical psychology exists.
If you’re struggling with any of the things I mentioned above, please do a web search for therapists who take your insurance & provide teletherapy so you can stay in the safety of your home. You can get the support you need to change your behavioural patterns & improve your quality of life for the better exponentially. It really is possible. If you are struggling to start the search for professional help, reach out to a loved one like a friend or family member to support you in the process of finding a therapist. Therapy is for everyone. Our society, our species would be healthier if we all took the time to work on improving ourselves with professional guidance & support.
I love you all so very much & care about you immensely. I simply want to help you in your journey of becoming the person you want to be & creating the life you’ve always dreamed of. Anything’s possible. You just have to take that first step & reach out.
This Too Shall Pass
“It’s funny, isn’t it? The things that matter? The truth is none of it matters. And the truth is all of it matters tremendously. It’s a wonder any of us ever get out of bed at all. And yet, we get out of bed.”
I’ve been watching the show Bojack Horseman, which is one of my favourite animated series, and this line hit me pretty hard because I actually rarely do manage to get out of bed. If I have showered or eaten, it’s a successful day for me, even if I end up returning to bed afterwards.
It makes me feel so concerned when I think that literally everyone in the world might be struggling to get out of bed, even the super successful, seemingly happy people – even the most disciplined, hard-working people with incredible amounts of willpower & ambition. It makes me worried because I think, “If even they have a hard time with this, what hope is there for people who literally have to summon all of their strength to leave their beds just to go to the bathroom?”
If people who got everything they wanted, who are living their dreams, who accomplished their goals, etc. still struggle to just live life, what hope is there for people like me whose frontal lobes are underdeveloped when it comes to inhibition, emotional regulation, task switching, etc. Yes, it’s possible to improve these skills & further develop these parts of the brain with lots of time & dedication, but when you’re trying to teach yourself how to improve teaching yourself stuff when you’re already like really bad at trying to teach yourself stuff, it just seems like you’re fighting this never ending uphill battle. After a while, you get tired, and you just wanna stop fighting. You wonder what the point of even trying is when you don’t feel like you’re making any progress, or if you are, they’re such small, slow improvements that are really easily undone if not continued to work at consistently that you’re still just as miserable, but now you’re miserable, stressed, & even MORE tired than you already were.
Sometimes, if you don’t have anything to prove to anyone, if there’s no external motivation, it becomes really hard to keep bothering to care or try. This may just be depression talking, but I think there’s a pervasive underlying apathy in our species that’s arisen for some weird reason. I think it’s part of why we all struggle to get out of bed. There’s this profound, “why even bother? What’s the point? What’s the use in trying?” I’m not sure how this happened or when everything changed to such an intense degree. Maybe it’s when we started having too much time on our hands so we can sit around and pontificate about this kind of stuff to begin with. Statistics have shown that people who have to work harder to just survive have lower rates of depression & suicide than those who have the privilege of lots of free time. It’s like free time is BAD for us. We need to be busy or our minds will turn against us.
It just sucks when that basic core survival mechanic of mustering the strength to push on through all odds & adversity seems to be lacking & the only reason you’re still alive is because you have people who are willing to care for you. Sometimes, it feels like you shouldn’t be allowing people to care for you when you don’t even want to be alive, but you don’t want to hurt those who do care. You don’t want to be so selfish, but you feel like just allowing people to care for you is also being selfish. It’s this horrible mental trap that just makes you feel worse. It all spirals out of control & you keep trying to distract yourself or reframe things or tell yourself that this is just negative thought patterns you’ve conditioned yourself into defaulting to for years. And yet, still, the idea of trying to bring yourself to do something else, to do anything at all sometimes, is just so painful it feels like every atom in your body is screaming this resounding, “NOO!!!!!”
It feels like every part of me is throwing a giant temper tantrum in unison & the force of it is keeping me stuck, frozen to the spot. I try to open myself up to a greater power, I try to let go of whatever these fears are, I try to release the attachment to being in control I know I still have on some level & embrace my powerless ness, but still, I’m paralysed. I try to surrender this sense of self, this idea of separate interest, I try to go deeper, but nothing changes, nothing shifts. I’m still stuck here, rooted to the spot, feeling the same emotions & bodily sensations, thinking the same thoughts. I feel like I’m trapped in a prison of my own skin, body, mind.
Ruminating on all of this isn’t helpful, but I’m told to not run away from it, either. I’m supposed to “sit” with my feelings. I’m supposed to be present & to simply observe without judging. I’m trying not to yell at myself for feeling how I do because that never helps. I’m trying not to chastise & berate myself for falling back into the same patterns as I always inevitably seem to do. I’m trying to be gentle, compassionate, & understanding with myself as I simply acknowledge that I’m having a hard time. I don’t need to make this into a bigger thing than it already is. I don’t need to give myself any more reasons to be distressed.
All I can do is take refuge in the one thing that’s consistently given me just the tiniest flicker of hope. It may not be a lot of hope, but it’s the one thing that I know is always true no matter what the situation is, no matter how bad things get, no matter how I’m feeling/what I’m thinking. The one constant in existence is change. The one thing that I know is always certain is that whatever is now will no longer be in the future. I can’t say what will be. I have no way of knowing. It could be better or worse than now, but it doesn’t really matter because all I know is that it WILL be different than what is right now. Every single moment in time, every single event, every single situation & experience is fully & totally unique. No two things are fully the same. Everything has its own slight variation from the other.
Because I know that the one thing I can count on is that everything is always changing & that every single thing is distinct from every other thing. If I can count on things always changing, this means, no matter how slim the probability given previous patterns & history, even if it’s a 0.000000000000000001% chance of it occurring, it’s still IS possible that maybe tomorrow, things will have shifted enough that I DO end up finding the strength/motivation to get out of bed & do something. Maybe, just maybe, later this same day it’ll happen. All I know is that nothing is static. All I can count on is for things to be different in each moment of each day of the rest of my existence. Everything is ever changing & just because I am not able to find the will to keep going right now, today, doesn’t mean I won’t eventually find it.
I can’t in good conscience close myself off to the possibility of a positive shift strong enough to reframe my paradigm in a life-changing way occurring because that would be the same as saying that I can predict the future. Maybe it feels like it will never happen given previous experiences, but that doesn’t mean it won’t. Even if it doesn’t happen, I still owe it to myself to remain open to the possibility because I never want to become THAT arrogant. I never want to be someone who says that they know what will happen. I never want to say never again heh. I’ve lived my whole life in an extreme place of absolutes & rigid thinking. It’s been limiting myself with this warped interpretation of reality that’s helped cause me to get to this feeling of being stuck in the first place. I can see that now. So I am trying to do something about it. It may not look like much on the outside, but that doesn’t mean I’m not trying my hardest to make changes. I’m just working on trying to effect change from within since that’s all I can do right now. Please forgive me. Please be patient with me.
I’m trying to be patient with myself despite feeling like I’m wasting my life away. I’m trying to not be upset with myself whenever another day passes, & I wasn’t able to get out of bed. I’m trying really hard to help encourage myself gently because decades of trying to “just do it” & overly stern self-talk made it all worse. I know I need to find a balance where I live even more in the now so I can “just do” things & not guilt trip myself if I fail at achieving my objective. I know there’s a healthier middle ground where I can push myself out of my comfort zone without overdoing it to the point where I have a meltdown & end up needing to recuperate from it for MONTHS at a time. I know there’s a better way, & I’m TRYING to get there.
I’m taking a long time trying to get there, but I’m still trying. I’m just going at my own very slow pace because I need to take steady, surefooted steps. If I’m not careful, I can misstep & fall, and for me, this has the same impact as straight up turning around & hightailing it back to where I came from. I’m so tired of regressing. I’m doing twice the effort & work to get anywhere because I just keep freaking out & retracing my steps in fear. I don’t want to do this anymore, so I’m going at a snail’s pace, which is incredibly frustrating, but at least this way, I can still keep moving forward. Little by little. Slow & steady. It’s all I CAN do, so I need to be okay with it. I have to accept what IS even if I don’t like it. That’s fine. I don’t HAVE to like it, but I do need to accept it if I want to keep moving forward.
I’m trying not to apologise for my limitations & instead just continue to do my best at working with them. I’m trying my best to not be ashamed at not being able to do the same basic things most others can do. I’m trying to not let myself feel all of these horrible negative things because they’re not true & not helpful. These thoughts & feelings don’t serve me, so I don’t need them. I can let them go. I will keep working to let them go. Life can be hard for everyone, but especially if you have illnesses or conditions that increase the difficulty setting when you’re already barely able to survive on Easy Mode.
It can be really, really hard. That’s okay, though. I can accept that it’s hard AND keep moving forward. One step at a time, one foot in front of the other. Even if I’m not able to walk at all sometimes. Maybe all I’ll be capable of is pulling myself across the ground with my hands. That’s okay, too. I’m still moving forward. And as long as I just STAY IN THE GAME, I still have a chance. I still have a chance to change, a chance to improve. Because there is ALWAYS a chance to change. That is the one & only thing that I will always have at every moment for the rest of my life. I know that anything is possible when the one constant in existence is that EVERYTHING changes. NOTHING can stay the same. And that, actually, is something that I can ALWAYS hold on to ❤
Stop Picking Your Scabs
A very close friend of mine who I have only the utmost respect & admiration for sent me this clip along with the message below it. Both the clip & his words resonated so deeply within me, I was inspired to write a post of my own about these subjects that I’ve been meditating on a lot lately.
“It occurred to me that ‘choose’ and ‘pick’ are synonyms. You can choose to learn from your mistakes and turn your pain into something kind, or you can pick your scabs and pick a fight.”
Josh Loomis, aka Blue Ink Alchemist
When I read those words, I thought about the fact that I have a habit of physically picking my scabs as a form of self-injurious stimming. It dawned on me how apt it was for me to do that because it seems a total reflection of how I do this internally/emotionally, too. When we pick our scabs, we reopen the wounds, and we don’t allow ourselves to heal properly. This is what life with complex trauma is like every day. This is what it means to have (c)PTSD.
While we didn’t necessarily choose to undergo the initial traumatic experiences that inflicted the original wounds, we do have the choice of how we tend to those wounds. Even if we are receiving the best treatment possible from medical professionals, if we are still picking the scabs, we run the risk of infection, of scar tissue developing, & so much more. It’s on us to do our part in conjunction with seeking out professional treatment because as this clip shows, if we don’t heal our pain properly, we run the risk of hurting others.
Even if we may not value ourselves very much, if we have any compassion in our hearts, if we do not want to perpetuate a cycle of hate, cruelty, abuse, & violence, it’s on us to make healthy choices & take personal accountability for the consequences of our actions, to learn to be mindful of what we are saying & doing. We all make mistakes. None of us is perfect, so there’s no point beating ourselves up over making the wrong choice here & there. That isn’t going to help anything & may actually make things worse. All we can do is acknowledge that we could have made a better choice, learn from the mistake, and do things differently next time. We cannot change the past. Dwelling on it, fighting it, lamenting it, and getting angry over what has happened will not change it. All we have control over is the present moment & with each choice we make in the present, we are shaping a future trajectory.
At any moment we can choose to step back & reevaluate what kinds of choices we have been making. It’s never too late to decide that we want to try a different approach. There’s nothing shameful about admitting that the way we’ve been doing things the majority of our lives hasn’t been working very well. There’s no need to be embarrassed. It takes courage to look inside ourselves, to reflect on our choices, i.e. the only things we truly do have control over, and it takes strength to make the choice to start doing things differently. It takes patience to see the change after implementing a new course of action, a new behavioral model, a new way of seeing things. These things may be hard, but it’s already incredibly difficult to just exist on a daily basis due to the extreme degree of the severity of pain & suffering one feels just being alive when they’re living with complex trauma & wounds they keep reopening, whether deliberately or not.
The first step in paving a new trajectory, in learning how to change our behaviors & our reality, is to acknowledge that we may not always be fully in control of ourselves, that we may not have all the information, and to accept personal accountability for the fact that each & every thought, word, & deed of ours has a direct, tangible consequence. We need to stop seeing ourselves as only victims & start giving ourselves more agency so we can take responsibility for how we may be hurting others with the choices we’re making, regardless of it being our intention or not.
Most people don’t intend to hit a child who runs into the street suddenly if they’re driving, but if they do hit that child & that child dies, that death is the driver’s responsibility. Similarly, if you say something that hurts another person, it doesn’t matter if you MEANT to hurt them or not. It’s done. It happened. You have to take responsibility for your actions & apologize. You have to learn what it is that you said, why it hurt that person, and what you could have done differently. Then & only then is it possible to reduce the likelihood of hurting someone like that again going forward. If we don’t even accept the fact that we might’ve done something wrong, how can we ever grow & change for the better?
How can we say that we truly care about other people, that we are compassionate & empathetic, that we actively strive to NOT hurt others because we know how much it SUCKS to be hurt, when we are not taking even the most basic of steps? It all starts with accepting that we are all both capable of being hurt AND hurting others, no matter how hard we might THINK we’re trying not to. The fact of the matter is, what we THINK only goes so far. What our intentions are only matters so much. We still need to be able to accept culpability when we hurt others & actively work on improving ourselves so that we don’t hurt them again in the same ways. It’s a constant process. It’s called growth. It’s never ending. Up until the moment we die, we can be actively striving to do this.
Let’s help one another understand that it’s okay to mess up. Let’s give each other space to acknowledge our wrongdoings, take accountability, apologize for hurting one another, and talk about what we could do differently next time. Before we dismiss someone or condemn them because we were hurt, let’s instead assume that there might have simply been a misunderstanding or miscommunication. Let’s consider that someone who hurt our feelings may not have meant to & that it’s possible they were only responding the way they did because we accidentally hurt their feelings, too. We can overcome these self-imposed cages of isolation we’re creating for ourselves. We can melt the ice that has frozen our hearts. We just need to allow ourselves the opportunity to learn, grow, & heal so we can discover how to help others do it, too. We can only be there for others if we have learned how to properly be there for ourselves. It’s okay. We can do this.
We can break the cycle ❤
Prema Dharma
During this incredibly difficult time, I’ve been fortunate to have a comfortable home, a good support system, & my needs mostly provided for by my parents & the State. I’m in relatively decent health & am an incredibly introverted person by nature who typically prefers to be alone, so for me, this seclusion hasn’t really been a hardship but actually quite a blessing in many ways. I’m grateful for the reprieve from worldly obligations/responsibilities & am doing my best to try to utilize this time to focus on healing, growth, & offering nourishment to the other souls who are suffering worse than I am. This time of external calamity has been & continues to be a wonderful opportunity for us all to work on sewing & watering seeds of compassion & devotion in our hearts & in the hearts of others.
This time of forced physical isolation, separation, & distance is an perfect opportunity to meditate on the concepts of union in separation, and what good association & devotional service actually mean in a deeper way, not just on the physical/external platform. I actually feel very grateful on so many levels but also recognize that I have been more fortunate than many & thus am very interested in doing what I can for those who are in greater pain & need than I am currently. I am trying to pay it forward, so to speak, & share the mercy that I’ve received in the hopes that it may help soothe some of the pain from the raging forest fires of material suffering we all feel.
Premadharma.org is a website dedicated to the teachings of the Bhakti Yoga tradition that have saved my life on numerous occasions & that continue to keep saving it every moment of every day. There are many other websites, fb pages/groups, youtube channels, & more resources including livestreamed daily classes, audiobooks, ebooks, etc. that are all freely offered for no reason other than to try & help mitigate the suffering we all experience just from being alive in this world. If you’d like to learn more, have any questions, and/or would like me to provide you with links to resources about specific subjects, please don’t hesitate to reach out.
My heart goes out to you all. I post these things because nothing else has helped assuage my daily suffering to the same degree that learning about/practicing these teachings has. Because I know just how unbearable it can get, I cannot in good conscience keep these teachings to myself. I love you all very much. Please continue to do your best to take care of yourselves & one another with compassion, patience, & understanding. We are all in this together.
Hare Krishna! ❤
Sorry, I’m Asimoving. Could you expound on that?
One of the most universally “autistic” struggles I undergo is requiring a certain level of precision of language in order to be able to process the new information I’m receiving in a meaningful way.
Because I don’t have a lot of the same basic social/cultural context most humans do, partly because I avoid mainstream media/news, partly because the autistic brain doesn’t intuit or infer stuff in the same way the allistic (non-autistic brain) does. Autistics typically require things to be clearly articulated & spelled out in ways that allistics can find redundant or overkill. The ability to be able to just “get” something without a ton of extra details & clarification can literally seem like some sort of magic osmosis process to autistics.
I realized that one of the issues I run into a lot when attempting to have important conversations with allistics is that they’ll often accuse me of interrupting them a lot, which is true & I do hate to do it, but it’s because I’m requiring additional information/further clarification on points being made. This can seem nitpicky or pedantic & people will accuse me of arguing over semantics.
The reality of the situation is that I’ve come to realize that my brain runs similarly to a computer, which is why I relate to robots/AI a lot. I have a base framework that I’m operating in. I have no ability to understand or relate things back to what hasn’t already been pre-programmed. If I come across a new set of data that I’ve never encountered before & have nothing to relate it back to, my processing speed will come to a halt until I acquire additional information to help me assimilate this data. The same thing happens if someone is using inaccurate or imprecise terminology. Because I, & afaik most other autistics, denote rather than connote, which means use words according to how they’re defined in the dictionary as opposed to how they’re used in common parlance if there’s a difference, and because allistics tend to do the opposite, there is a lot of confusion & miscommunication between allistics & autistics even on subjects that seem super simple & straightforward.
This is where the autistic literalism comes into play. It’s not that we’re overly literal. It’s that we are using different context than the majority of the world, so most humans are very uncertain as to why we are having difficulty understanding what to them are basic jokes, expressions, and statements people typically seem to just “get.” This is where the stereotype of autistics being slow or lacking in humor comes from. We’re not slow. We just don’t have the same framework we’re operating under. We find plenty of things funny. They just not be the same things most people find funny.
My mom & I came up with an expression that I can now use going forward when I feel that I’m struggling to understand what an allistic person is trying to communicate to me & require additional information to be able to process the conversation. When I need someone to clarify what they mean when using certain words or phrases, I’ll say that I’m “Asimoving” or having an “Asimov” moment. I could potentially even use “Asimov” as an interjection, depending on the person, as a way to say, “wait! I need further clarification here because I’m confused as to what it is you’re trying to say right now.” Obviously, this will all be dependent upon the CONTEXT lol I’ll be testing this new expression out with some friends of mine who I trust to give me good feedback.
If you want to know why I chose “Asimov” to be the word I’ll use in these situations going forward, the reason is because it was inspired by SciFi writer Isaac Asimov’s short story, “The Last Question.” In this story, humans asked a supercomputer that had the processing power to theoretically solve any problem a question it couldn’t answer. As the years went by & the tech progressed, the supercomputer continued to not be able to solve the problem, and when asked the question again & again, would continue to answer the same way,
“There is as yet insufficient data for a meaningful answer.”
When I heard that phrase, it was like something resonated inside of me super deeply. That’s how it feels when I’m trying to follow conversations sometimes. My brain is going going going, doing its thing processing all the new info coming in, then suddenly it goes to a full stop. It’s in these moments when I can get frustrated &, in turn, start to frustrated my conversational companion as I interrupt them every two sentences to ask for clarification. I don’t want to derail the convo or cause too many tangents to happen, but I genuinely will get so lost & confused that I’ll totally forget what the original point was to begin with. Hopefully explaining this & my intended usage of the word “Asimov” will help others to have a bit more patience with me when it comes to my request for extra attentive precision of language. I know not everyone will be willing to compromise & meet me halfway here, but at least I’ve devised a method on how to ask going forward.
Interpersonal Effectiveness
Just a gentle reminder about what effective communication entails.
Emotions can cause us to forget simple truths.
A fact of human psychology is that people respond better to gentle dialogue that’s geared toward facilitating comfort, safety, & validation. What that means is that if you’re serious in trying to change people’s paradigms, which is arguably one of the hardest things to do in life as people identify their paradigms as realities, it’s imperative that the person you’re speaking with is in a receptive mindset. You can correct someone until you’re blue in the face, but if you’ve not communicated in a manner that’s effective, it was nothing but a waste of time for everyone involved & can possibly cause the opposite of what the original intentions & desired results were to occur. This is a huge problem that we’re seeing in the online activist communities. This is why the phrases SJW & PC Policing have become very negative. Even the word intersectionality has acquired a bad connotation because of how the people who were using it were behaving.
Part of facilitating an effective interpersonal exchange is meeting someone halfway. You can have your goal for the conversation in mind when you go in, but you have to adapt & adjust how you are approaching the person as they reveal their own personal paradigm. If someone’s paradigm is so contrary to your own that you’re struggling to find common ground, it’ll be extremely difficult to effectively communicate anything to one another. We have to learn how others think & process things in order to figure out how we can get them to actually listen to what we’re saying & implement any desired changes they agree with.
We cannot force anyone to do anything against their will. This is a fact & a basic human right. To do that is to use violence to try to get what you want. The only respectful & ultimately positively productive way to facilitate change in our society is to treat all humans as individuals who are unique & deserving respect, regardless of what their faults & flaws may be. All humans have both strengths & weaknesses, including you & me, so we have to work with one another to develop strategies that are healthy & inclusive to the different ways people think/feel/act.
A lot of my life was spent bashing my head against the walls others threw up against me, but I was only hurting myself doing that. It made me look foolish & inconsiderate so it caused people to be even less willing to listen to me. I realized that I had to adjust the way that I was interacting with others if I wanted to successfully share my perspective on things. It’s very hard to do, & I’m always learning, growing, changing, adapting, etc., but it’s a very worthwhile endeavor. Ever since choosing to work on my outward presentation in discussions, I’ve had far more successful, positive, & productive interactions than negative ones. I hope to help others learn to develop similar modes & methods for communicating. One thing that I found to be extremely helpful was Marsha Linehan’s DBT module regarding interpersonal effectiveness.
If you haven’t already heard of Dialectical Behavioral Therapy, I highly recommend checking it out. There are many DBT groups that are covered by health insurance. I can’t stress enough how life-changing they can be! I struggled a lot the first time I took the IE module. Even the 2nd time I took it. 3rd time was still tricky, but it got better as I started to implement the suggested techniques in my real life interactions & really did my best to take what was advised to heart. I’m still learning, always learning, will never stop, but I can already tell that I’m leaps & bounds ahead of where I once was, and for that, I’m eternally grateful. My life has improved SO much just with me choosing to reflect on how I react to things & altering those behavior patterns. It’s hard work, but it’s fully possible for everyone to do. If you’re interested in learning more about this, please let me know! ❤
Thoughts About The Horror Genre
Omg, The Ring is on Netflix.
It came out when I was 12 & I remember feeling very uncomfortable watching it with all the girls in my grade who were laughing when something messed up happened. I didn’t wanna be “uncool” or made fun of so I tried to ignore the fact that I was disturbed by their reactions more than what was going on in the film.
I remember a couple of images got into my head & spooked me when I was alone in the night (I did have a fascination with creepy imagery though so while I was into it, I would have preferred my mind not try to play tricks on me) & just kept thinking that if I let anyone know about that, they’d never let me hear the end of it.
While I’m sure the film won’t affect me the way it did when I was younger since it was the first time I’d seen some of that kind of stuff, I’m going to rewatch it for nostalgic factor & hope that I can maybe lay some of that childhood tension that I still feel in my bones to bed. I am starting to think that a lot of why I developed so many psychological health issues is because I wasn’t allowed to process my reactions to things in a healthy way.
I remember everyone criticized the movie for being “so lame” & not as good as the original Japanese version, but there was just something that sat wrong with me that kids were not allowed to appreciate the horror of a disturbing situation for what it was & instead had to pretend to be amused or entertained by it lest they get labeled as weak & picked on. This just strikes me as a very unhealthy coping mechanism & it made it so that I internalized this toxic reaction to exhibiting emotional vulnerability. I started to bully & rip on others who would show sincere emotional reactions, too. I stopped being able to express how I was feeling about things for fear that people would reject me & ostracize me for being a “pussy.”
There is comedic horror, but there is also something to be said being able to appreciate the emotional horror of a situation even if the production value isn’t excellent. But regardless of all of that, I now don’t think it’s ever okay to make fun of someone for expressing emotional vulnerability even if you personally don’t feel the same way. ESPECIALLY if the person who is feeling disturbed or uncomfortable is a child. It’s very sad to me that kids get peer pressured into acting “tough” or more accurately, heartless, to be accepted. That’s pretty sick. Way sicker than anything that happens in these fictional horror movies, imho.
Nowadays, while I don’t really get “scared” by horror, it’s hard for me to even get spooked or creeped out because I’ve been so desensitized & oversaturated, I let myself cry if I feel the emotional horror of a story moves me to feel that way. It’s cathartic & it lets me know I’m still a human being with empathy & compassion. Horror is one of my favorite genres because it tells the story of the depths to which humans are capable of sinking. They’re cautionary tales to me. That’s what’s horrific, not necessarily the gore or violence or creepy imagery. It’s about the themes of emotional & psychological violence that’s what’s disturbing & I think I picked up on that when I was a kid since I lived in a real life horror story with my very own real life monsters terrorizing my dreams AND waking life. I didn’t find these films “funny” because I was a child & didn’t have any greater context other than knowing what it meant to feel unsafe constantly. I can laugh at things now, but I think being forced to hide the fact that I didn’t find these things funny at the time did some real psychological damage so I am speaking out against that now.
Things have ratings for a reason. We’re supposed to protect kids from watching things for a reason. They don’t have the emotional & intellectual maturity to understand what’s going on & while people can argue that they were exposed to all kinds of messed up stuff as a kid & they turned out fine, let’s really examine that stance. Did they REALLY turn out okay? Just take a look at our society, our world. Suicide, homicide, & mental illness rates are sky high. People are obsessed with all kinds of unhealthy & dangerous behaviors. Empathy & compassion are rare, undervalued traits. No one knows how to communicate with one another. We aren’t there for each other. No one feels safe or cared for. It feels like we’re alone in the world & everything is out to get us. Maybe if we could make some more room for emotional safe spaces for one another (AND ourselves), things wouldn’t be going the way they are. Just a thought.
And on that note, on to enjoy some silly old horror film with the hope that I can get some sort of closure/catharsis from this conscious, deliberate viewing as an adult. Maybe it won’t bring anything so profound & will just be a fun way to pass a few hours, but one can hope, right? ;P
Recent Thought Trains
Here is some of what I’ve been thinking about lately.
Part of my black or white, all or nothing, rigid thinking includes me vacillating between thinking that I have super awesome unique talents, skills, traits, and attributes that are worthwhile, positive, useful, helpful, and beneficial and feeling that my strong personality, preferences, opinions, and ways of expressing myself are too difficult for people to find worth tolerating or putting up with.
I often worry about things like finding a career that I love or a meaningful relationships when I wonder why anyone would bother accommodating me when I struggle so much with super basic “common sense” things that the majority of other humans just seem to innately pick up. I worry about people thinking I’m faking my confusion or inability to understand what they consider to be super basic and straightforward instructions when they see me using high level vocabulary and forming articulate arguments using advanced critical thinking when expressing abstract concepts in casual conversation. It gives me anxiety & dread to think that if I don’t try to dumb myself down, people might assume I’m looking for pity or hand-outs or trying to exploit the system by asking for additional resources and support in my daily life when I don’t seem to have a “severe developmental disability.”
The truth of the matter is that I haven’t even really started living my life fully out of fear because each time I’ve tried to venture forth by going back to school or getting another job, something’s always inevitably come to challenge me in a way that overwhelms me & send me running for the hills again. It’s not like I want to just waste away in my room all day every day. This genuinely makes me sad & stressed because I feel the minutes of my life just slipping away. I’m a normal person like everyone else in that I have hopes, dreams, goals, desires, etc. but because anytime I’ve tried to work towards an aspiration of mine, it feels like a million dangerous roadblocks get erected no matter what path I try to take, I get drained, discouraged, and disheartened.
Despite being a decently articulate & introspective individual, it’s very hard for me to explain in a detailed manner exactly what’s “wrong” with me in terms of why I need “disability” services. I don’t even know why I struggle a lot of the time or what it is that I do that’s inappropriate or ineffectual. Over the years, people have used certain language to describe my thought & behavior patterns and sometimes it’s been difficult to accept their assessments as accurate because I see everything from a totally different perspective, naturally. I almost feel incapable of seeing things from the “mainstream societal perspective” so I don’t think I’m the person to ask when it comes to my challenges a lot of the time. That being said, I’ve developed some defense mechanisms where I’ve been able to hide a lot of the qualities in me that would initially stand out to others as red flags or unusual/abnormal as a survival technique. This is called masking & because I’ve gotten so good at it in certain settings, a lot of external observers can’t tell what’s going on inside of me that’s causing me to feel like I’m struggling so much. This has actually worked to my detriment because now I don’t know how to explain these difficulties AND many others don’t even see me struggling.
The past few years or so, I’ve been trying to “unmask” more & be a bit more true to my authentic self so that outside observers could give me additional feedback on what they think might be going on so I can get more/better help. It’s also just exhausting to mask & it makes me feel like I’m being dishonest about who I am, which I absolutely hate, so I’m also doing this simply to feel more comfortable in my everyday life & interactions. However, the less I mask, other new obstacles arise that I’m having to learn how to contend with. I know that life is never going to be obstacle free, but it definitely gets tiresome to be working to minimize difficulties in one area only to discover ten more popping up somewhere else.
I know a lot of people in my life are unsure as to why I talk about Autism so much, and I know that many remain skeptical about my being on the spectrum in the first place despite having received an official diagnosis from a specialist. I know that others dismiss it as just “another label” & think I shouldn’t be putting so much focus into it. I just want y’all to understand that the reason this has been so important to me is because receiving this diagnosis has given me the language I was lacking when it comes to trying to explain a lot of the difficulties I face on a daily basis. Being autistic explains so much of why I feel, think, express myself how I do. I know this may be hard to understand when one’s grasp of what Autism is has been misinformed by stereotypes, outdated information, or limited personal experiences.
In the end, all I hope people can take away from me sharing my thoughts & feelings is that while a person may “look” or “seem” a certain way to you, that may not be the case. We are all very unique & have our own vastly different experiences, strengths, weaknesses, etc. and that’s great. The thing is, since we are all so different, this means we gotta try to understand, when others are struggling in ways we haven’t, we can’t possibly ever fully know what exactly they’re going through, no matter how similar it may seem to something we have experienced or something we have seen someone else experience. Instead of trying to offer advice or share personal anecdotes of how we underwent something we THINK is related, it’s more productive to wipe the slate clean and assume this is a fully new & unique situation we have never encountered before because that’s the truth of the matter. Every since situation that occurs, though it may seem similar to others, is fully unique & new, and thus needs to be treated that way. I advise trying to learn more about the specifics of each new situation, person, event, and ask about what you can do to be supportive to the people in that situation.
A lot of the time people won’t actually know what can be done, if anything, because that requires a lot of introspection & the ability to verbalize what might just be a jumble of nebulous feelings in a constructive & concise way. That’s a very rare & valuable skillset that has to be cultivated over a good amount of time with the help of professionals, especially therapists. Things are always changing, and this can be confusing, especially when it comes to the medical fields of psychology & neuroscience. There is still so much we don’t understand about our brains & bodies, so all we can do is be patient and work together to further our collective understanding to the best of our abilities. I hope that with continued efforts & courage, I’ll eventually be able to make significant headway when it comes to finding the appropriate resources for my personal situation, and that that will help me finally be able to actually start living my life in a more decided, deliberate, dedicated way.
Inshallah ❤
Jax Bayne 