Trauma – PTSD

Question:

I’ve tried to clean this up to make it easier for people to read, should anyone else be reading this Anyone, of course, is welcome to jump in to the sea of possibilities? or is that dip in.

Whaddya mean, ”Is that dip in?” Of course I’m in 8). – Hide quoted text — Show quoted text – [...] Lionheart: Are you able to be touched by other people? averti: Physically? Not really. I mean, I don’t cringe or anything, but it’s hard–sometimes exhausting–to decode touching as anything other than either an attack or s*xual in nature. Lionheart: I meant non-physically. You had said that you liked it when other people were non-physically touched by you. averti: Oh, I get it now. Yes, for the most part. Some aspect of it is a control thing–which I gather is a side of me that doesn’t really impress you favorably.

I still think so but I didn’t phrase it properly; I think it is a side of my behavior–as far as it is revealed here–that dones’t really impress you(s) favorably. I’d be interested to hear more about this. What aspect of it is what kind of control "thing"?

Control is a basic human drive, I believe, and not a bad thing automatically. Why do you live in a house? Partly to avoid getting rained on, and partly to ”control” your situation. Between people, it often looks like each one is singing a diferent song, and once in a while, at random, two notes form a harmony. In many relationships I have had, not only did we take some effort to both be singing the same song, a lot of the time there was a conductor 8). Usually but not always me. I look on this as a fairly benign and respectful form of control; others may disagree. Lionheart: I’m trying to think of why you might think that. Can’t remember saying anything about it. What does bother me is the control you exert over how much you let people have access to you. I’ve seen you wiggle around all over the place and put up all manner of shields (apparently) trying to prevent people from being able to know you. I’d be interested to hear more about this too. I generally define the exertion of control over how much I let people have access to me as boundary-setting.

I’m afraid I have a lousy sense of boundary–possibly due to early training, possibly due to difficulty in believing what I’m told regardless of who’s telling me 8). Seems like the ethical thing to do is to control MY sphere in such a way that the issue of boundaries never comes up, rather than to be setting up requirements for how I want other people to treat me. Larger issue is that I am not at all sure that there is a ”me” to know. Maybe I AM just a set of shifting reactions. TV

Thanks for your thoughts, yall. a.

Response:

I’ve tried to clean this up to make it easier for people to read, should anyone else be reading this Anyone, of course, is welcome to jump in

to the sea of possibilities? or is that dip in. – Hide quoted text — Show quoted text – [...] Lionheart: Are you able to be touched by other people? averti: Physically? Not really. I mean, I don’t cringe or anything, but it’s hard–sometimes exhausting–to decode touching as anything other than either an attack or s*xual in nature. Lionheart: I meant non-physically. You had said that you liked it when other people were non-physically touched by you. averti: Oh, I get it now. Yes, for the most part. Some aspect of it is a control thing–which I gather is a side of me that doesn’t really impress you favorably.

I’d be interested to hear more about this. What aspect of it is what kind of control "thing"? Lionheart: I’m trying to think of why you might think that. Can’t remember saying anything about it. What does bother me is the control you exert over how much you let people have access to you. I’ve seen you wiggle around all over the place and put up all manner of shields (apparently) trying to prevent people from being able to know you.

I’d be interested to hear more about this too. I generally define the exertion of control over how much I let people have access to me as boundary-setting. TV — For more information about this service, send e-mail to:

Response:

– Hide quoted text — Show quoted text – I’ve tried to clean this up to make it easier for people to read, should anyone else be reading this Anyone, of course, is welcome to jump in [...] Lionheart: Are you able to be touched by other people? averti: Physically? Not really. I mean, I don’t cringe or anything, but it’s hard–sometimes exhausting–to decode touching as anything other than either an attack or s*xual in nature. Lionheart: I meant non-physically. You had said that you liked it when other people were non-physically touched by you. averti: Oh, I get it now. Yes, for the most part. Some aspect of it is a control thing–which I gather is a side of me that doesn’t really impress you favorably. Lionheart: I’m trying to think of why you might think that. Can’t remember saying anything about it. What does bother me is the control you exert over how much you let people have access to you.

Don’t you? Doesn’t everybody? (Not a defensive question–I just see the desire for and the exertion of control as a basic human trait.) I’ve seen you wiggle around all over the place and put up all manner of shields (apparently) trying to prevent people from being able to know you.

Maybe I only want you to get what I am willing to give. Or able to give. – Hide quoted text — Show quoted text – averti:  Not controlling the person, but making a difference in the situation. [...] Lionheart: I’m inclined to ask you how does it feel to you? In a previous post you referred to your previous friends as just "f*ckbuddies". I wondered if that term reflected a lack of satisfaction on your part, a sense that there was something missing. averti: There’s always something missing. We were born with something missing, and then life proceeded to either take more away or remind us of the universal missing-ness. Lionheart: What was missing when you were born? averti: Hedonia? Faith? Trust? Are people born with those things and then their surrounding influences beat them out of them? Lionheart: I choose to believe people are born with the potential for goodness, for perfection even.

That’s encouraging. That there are people that believe things like that, I mean. – Hide quoted text — Show quoted text -I think surrounding influences beat a lot of that out of people, yes. But I think the potential remains and can be nurtured. I suppose people must also be born with trust. And that can be destroyed. But it also can be nurtured back to  a pretty good state of health, I think. [...] Lionheart: I’m confused because the idea I took exception to below was that you warned me that you are most dangerous when you appear to be most safe. I can see no useful purpose for warning people  about how dangerous you are (especially, or maybe only here on the net), and this *particular* warning that you are most dangerous when you appear most safe could only serve to send people in the opposite direction. averti: That’s part of the risk I take, then. Lionheart: I’m confused. Why do you feel you need to take the risk? It’s beginning tot occur to me that you may actually feel that the kindest thing you can do for people is warn them away from you. ? averti: A number of people have said that, over the years. I think I am trying to be fair to the other person and yet retain some measure of my self-ness. It’s also a kind of gating device, almost an entrance exam (for both). YOU are not afraid of me; therefore it’s possible we can continue to dialog. Lionheart: While I can understand this, I’ll tell you how it makes me feel. I feel like I’ve secretly been given a test that I hadn’t agreed to take. I don’t like that. averti: I can see how you wouldn’t. But you are testing me as well– it’s maybe a difference in terminology. Lionheart: I’m not sure that I am, although yea, usually I guess there is mutual testing, but generally through honesty, rather than through adopting a pose or role.

Ah! I see a part of a clue. I’m not adopting a pose or role. More like dressing the window with the goods I want the buying public to see. You’re not the first person to get the impression that I am posing and, er, role-ing. I really AM this unusual, and to many people, hard to believe, therefore potentially sneaky or something. Years ago in asar, it came about that there was a kind of territorial dispute in a 3-cornered way between me and 2 women. (I’m oversimplifying so it sounds a little dumb.) I used to get emails by the score from people saying ”I just don’t believe any of this, I don’t believe that there are people like you that do the things you do…” So, once burned, maybe I’m being selectively revelatory HERE in order to avoid getting bogged down in THAT sort of thing. I think I’m testing ME as much or more than I am anybody else; is there an actual personality in here that other people might relate to? You take a little risk, expose a little of yourself, and see how the other person responds. That would be the typical test. In fact, I read in a book that it’s okay to do this

That settles THAT, then.  Would you take it personally when a sn*ke extends his tongue to test your scent? Lionheart:

Oh, sorry. Not known. I’m not sure who you’re comparing to that long skinny reptile. You? or the other?

Me 8). But if you have bad associations I guess I’ll retire the metaphor 8). averti: People who are automatically or reflexively afraid of me–or what they think of me–cause me pain. One avoids pain, realistically, BEFORE it is introduced. Lionheart: Yea, but you’d be generalizing if you regarded a group of people who don’t yet know you as likely to cause you pain.

True. Based on a lot of data, though. I’d say you can generalize, up to a point and with appropriate evidence. A bunch of realy big guys wearing all black leather and carrying weapons are more likely to cause you pain than a bunch of earnest middle aged women survivors of abuse (just to pick a random couple of examples).imo

Hehehehe. No, that’s not true, in this context. Being rejected by a bunch of middle aged women hurts me far more than being jumped on by bikers; I can always fight back there, but I can’t fight back against the disapproval of people who legitimately don’t like or trust me. Plus, it’s my quirk, and it doesn’t really have much to do with s*x, but even the thought of women disapproving of me pains me. Rejecting me outright or hollering at me or verbally fighting with me, not so bad. averti: A number of people in asdis ARE or have been afraid of me–though I think it’s not ME but what I remind them of–and perhaps it’s only responsible to warn those people off. Lionheart: Well, I think what you’re saying is that you’re afriad of people. So you try to act really scary so that you can flush the dangerous ones out into the open. Correct me if I’m wrong

Oh, I know there are next to no dangerous ones. I’m afraid of people on a higher level 8). – Hide quoted text — Show quoted text – [...] averti: I don’t want to harm, but I also don’t want to be cried wolf at, which has been happening around the ng for about 3 years… tell me, who do you know who enjoys being greeted with hysteria? I don’t. Lionheart: Um. There seems to be a simple solution. Stop giving people secret tests to see if they’re scared of you or not? averti: How can I stop it? I didn’t start it. Why not suggest that I stop flinching when a loud noise goes off behind me? asdis is FULL of hypervigilant people who are forever checking other people for potential harm. MY potential harm is that somebody will metaphorically drop dead of heart failure before I can establish that I am not out to get them. Lionheart: you seem to be 180 degrees off from the position you took earlier. Which I’ve seen you do quite a few times. Are you aware of adopting a position, and then a conversational turn later either disowning that position or behaving as though completely unawarae that you ever held the position?

Often. Dissociation aggravates that tendency, as I’m sure you already know. I’ve seen that several times. It’s my perception. I don’t know what to make of it. I’m giving you my perception here as feedback, fyi. There’s no hostile intent.

Got it. – Hide quoted text — Show quoted text – [...] averti: Well, I read up on the m*sons over the weekend; I have as much historical data as anybody else in the world, since there’s no living survivor of the crusades or the Original Knights of Malta etc 8). Lionheart: Yup, written by whom, for what purpose, with what agenda, based on facts from where? averti: Bunch of agenda nuts on one side, bunch of m*sons on the other, far as I can tell. I’m tired of that, though. I have apologized to Songbird for the upset, if not the actual issue. But I refer to the generalization from a particular. I think it’s unhealthy and counterproductive. Lionheart: It certainly can be. It is however also a necessary cognitive skill, without which we could not transform chaos into order. And how many particulars does it take before one can comfortably generalize? What seems to happenn all too often is that if people don’t like the generalization suggested by a particular, they refuse to acknowledge the particular(oh it’s just anecdotal evidence) and don’t look for more to see if there’s a pattern. averti: You’re right. But i don’t generally look for patterns; I swim just as well–or as poorly–in chaos as I do

… read more »

Response:

I’ve tried to clean this up to make it easier for people to read, should anyone else be reading this Anyone, of course, is welcome to jump in to the sea of possibilities? or is that dip in. Whaddya mean, ”Is that dip in?” Of course I’m in 8).

<groan If it has even the slightest resemblance to a pun, you’re on it, aren’t you? Seize the possibilities . – Hide quoted text — Show quoted text – [...] Lionheart: Are you able to be touched by other people? averti: Physically? Not really. I mean, I don’t cringe or anything, but it’s hard–sometimes exhausting–to decode touching as anything other than either an attack or s*xual in nature. Lionheart: I meant non-physically. You had said that you liked it when other people were non-physically touched by you. averti: Oh, I get it now. Yes, for the most part. Some aspect of it is a control thing–which I gather is a side of me that doesn’t really impress you favorably. I still think so but I didn’t phrase it properly; I think it is a side of my behavior–as far as it is revealed here–that dones’t really impress you(s) favorably. I’d be interested to hear more about this. What aspect of it is what kind of control "thing"? Control is a basic human drive, I believe, and not a bad thing automatically. Why do you live in a house? Partly to avoid getting rained on, and partly to ”control” your situation. Between people, it often looks like each one is singing a diferent song, and once in a while, at random, two notes form a harmony. In many relationships I have had, not only did we take some effort to both be singing the same song, a lot of the time there was a conductor 8). Usually but not always me. I look on this as a fairly benign and respectful form of control; others may disagree.

I don’t know if I disagree or not; I still don’t even know what you’re talking about. You said, I think, that you are for the most part able to be touched in non-physical ways by other people, and that some aspect of that is a control thing. I don’t understand that. I agree generally with points you make, such as control not automatically being a bad thing; in fact, I’m inclined to think just the opposite. But I don’t get the link you’re making for yourself between control and being touched. – Hide quoted text — Show quoted text – Lionheart: I’m trying to think of why you might think that. Can’t remember saying anything about it. What does bother me is the control you exert over how much you let people have access to you. I’ve seen you wiggle around all over the place and put up all manner of shields (apparently) trying to prevent people from being able to know you. I’d be interested to hear more about this too. I generally define the exertion of control over how much I let people have access to me as boundary-setting. I’m afraid I have a lousy sense of boundary–possibly due to early training, possibly due to difficulty in believing what I’m told regardless of who’s telling me 8). Seems like the ethical thing to do is to control MY sphere in such a way that the issue of boundaries never comes up, rather than to be setting up requirements for how I want other people to treat me.

Maybe I’m splitting hairs, but whether you call it boundary-setting or controlling your sphere, the two seem awfully similar to me. If you never want the issue of boundaries to come up, seems you’d have to make your sphere small enough so that it can be controlled without bumping up against other people’s stuff. Which may be what Lionheart was saying. Larger issue is that I am not at all sure that there is a ”me” to know. Maybe I AM just a set of shifting reactions.

Could be. But I sort of doubt it. TV Thanks for your thoughts, yall. a.

TV — For more information about this service, send e-mail to:

Response:

– Hide quoted text — Show quoted text – ……. averti: I look on this as a fairly benign and respectful form of control; others may disagree. TV: I don’t know if I disagree or not; I still don’t even know what you’re talking about. You said, I think, that you are for the most part able to be touched in non-physical ways by other people, and that some aspect of that is a control thing. I don’t understand that.

I think he’s saying that he allows people to, for example, pantomime touching him maybe only using words, and he can allow people to say things that touch him inside, but that being physically touched or held is very difficult for him to sort out and very stressful.  So, he keeps others at bay a lot to reduce some of that stress and to keep himself safe.   Have I got it, averti? I agree generally with points you make, such as control not automatically being a bad thing; in fact, I’m inclined to think just the opposite. But I don’t get the link you’re making for yourself between control and being touched.

I think I do.  Touch, a simple hand on someone’s arm or even a finger, can be an invasion of sorts and can be overwhelming.  If he has trouble sorting out what the touch means and is caught between strong impulses, he’s going to find touch uncomfortable emotionally.  If he has trouble relaxing and letting people close enough to touch him, when he does get touched it’s also likely to be stressful and unpleasant.  If he has trouble letting himself be gentled and taken care of, then allowing someone to touch him is going to be stressful.  So the easiest and safest thing to do is to not let people close enough to touch him, because it’s so uncomfortable.  This would not necessarily preclude him touching someone else, though.  That would be a more obvious control thing, where he can touch someone else and take care of them, but they’re not allowed to handle him in a similar way because he’s too uncomfortable being taken care of.  If he’s in control, he’s not very vulnerable. How’s that, averti? – Hide quoted text — Show quoted text – Lionheart: I’m trying to think of why you might think that. Can’t remember saying anything about it. What does bother me is the control you exert over how much you let people have access to you. I’ve seen you wiggle around all over the place and put up all manner of shields (apparently) trying to prevent people from being able to know you. I’d be interested to hear more about this too. I generally define the exertion of control over how much I let people have access to me as boundary-setting. I’m afraid I have a lousy sense of boundary–possibly due to early training, possibly due to difficulty in believing what I’m told regardless of who’s telling me 8). Seems like the ethical thing to do is to control MY sphere in such a way that the issue of boundaries never comes up, rather than to be setting up requirements for how I want other people to treat me. Maybe I’m splitting hairs, but whether you call it boundary-setting or controlling your sphere, the two seem awfully similar to me. If you never want the issue of boundaries to come up, seems you’d have to make your sphere small enough so that it can be controlled without bumping up against other people’s stuff. Which may be what Lionheart was saying.

BINGO!  I think this is how averti manages to appear invisible even to people who know he’s right there.  He shrinks his sense of self down to a speck too small to be in anyone’s way or cross their boundary, so they walk right through him.  There’s also safety in being unseen sometimes. Larger issue is that I am not at all sure that there is a ”me” to know. Maybe I AM just a set of shifting reactions. Could be. But I sort of doubt it.

Oh, there is, averti.  (And you’re stark naked under that armour.)                                 -babs — "Excuse me while I dance a little jig of despair."

Response:

Lionheart: I’m trying to think of why you might think that. Can’t remember saying anything about it. What does bother me is the control you exert over how much you let people have access to you. Don’t you? Doesn’t everybody? (Not a defensive question–I just see the desire for and the exertion of control as a basic human trait.)

Yup, it’s a question of how *much* control. Boundaries separate people from other people, but if they’re sort of flexible and permeable they will also allow people to be affected and non-physically touched by each other. If they’re rock  solid, they lead to isolation. I think people who over-control their accessibility to others are compensatingn for having had no control earlier on.   I’ve seen you wiggle around all over the place and put up all manner of shields (apparently) trying to prevent people from being able to know you. Maybe I only want you to get what I am willing to give.

No doubt. And respecting people’s boundaries means not pressuring people to give more than they can.  But shields work both ways. They keep other people out, but they keep you in. Or able to give. You’re not the first person to get the impression that I am posing and, er, role-ing.

I thought you had already admitted to this. I really AM this unusual, and to many people, hard to believe, therefore potentially sneaky or something. So, once burned, maybe I’m being selectively revelatory HERE in order to avoid getting bogged down in THAT sort of thing.

Somehow I doubt that your experience a few years ago on another ng is *the* reason you’re so cagey (imo) . I think I’m testing ME as much or more than I am anybody else; is there an actual personality in here that other people might relate to?

This I can appreciate. It has been said that people outside ourselves are among the most useful mirrors we have, with which we can examine and learn about ourselves. So far I see that all of you  is moving towards a more temperate approach here. Other than that, I see you as "a shifting set of perceptions". iow, I see a whole in one respect, but otherwise I don’t. I’d say you can generalize, up to a point and with appropriate evidence. A bunch of realy big guys wearing all black leather and carrying weapons are more likely to cause you pain than a bunch of earnest middle aged women survivors of abuse (just to pick a random couple of examples).imo Hehehehe. No, that’s not true, in this context. Being rejected by a bunch of middle aged women hurts me far more than being jumped on by bikers; I can always fight back there, but I can’t fight back against the disapproval of people who legitimately don’t like or trust me.

Is it just me, or is this really contradictory? If people *legitimately* don’t like or trust you, that must mean you’re unlikeable and untrustworthy. It seems also *legitimate* for people to disapprove of you if you’re unlikeable andn untrustsworthy. So  no, you couldn’t beat them up for it. otoh, you could develop qualities that people in general regard as positive, admirable and trustworthy. I’m thinking here. So iow, the responsibility would be up to you to behave in certain positive ways. But wrt bikers, you wouldn’t feel any such responsibility, you could just sink to their level. Is it the responsibility that bothers you? Or do you feel the disapproval of such women is *always* legitimate, regardless of how you behave? Plus, it’s my quirk, and it doesn’t really have much to do with s*x, but even the thought of women disapproving of me pains me. Rejecting me outright or hollering at me or verbally fighting with me, not so bad.

So its the silent disapproval that’s the worst? I’m wondering if you were ever manipulated this way. Lionheart: Well, I think what you’re saying is that you’re afriad of people. So you try to act really scary so that you can flush the dangerous ones out into the open. Correct me if I’m wrong Oh, I know there are next to no dangerous ones. I’m afraid of people on a higher level 8).

I’m sorry, I have many different meanings for higher level and thus don’t know what you intend here. Higher in status? on the elevator? on an evolutionary scale? Or do you mean that your fear exists on a higher level? Such as, for example? Lionheart: you seem to be 180 degrees off from the position you took earlier. Which I’ve seen you do quite a few times. Are you aware of adopting a position, and then a conversational turn later either disowning that position or behaving as though completely unawarae that you ever held the position? Often. Dissociation aggravates that tendency, as I’m sure you already know.

I’ve tried to help out by leaving in your previous conversational turn so you could remind yourself of what you had said. It doesn’t seem to make any difference. In the absense of any opinion expressed by you about this I’m wondering if you are making an excuse? I hope not. I’m inclined to recommend you get some "cooperation and communication" happening. Of course, I have no qualifications to make such a recommendation. [...] I don’t recall seeing advising people that one is about to withdraw from a conversation for such and such reasons as one of the guidelines. Aren’t there any guidelines for dismantling a conversation? Seems like there would be.

They’re guidelines for keeping communication going. Um, the only guideline for stopping that I’ve seen is taking "timeouts" when things have gotten too heated. But in books on boundary setting in relationships, come to think of it, there is talk of letting a person know you find a certain behaviour unacceptable and will not intereact as long as that behaviour persists. I don’t recall seeing it listed as a barrier either. Somehow, though, i think it would not be considered particularly effective. I don’t know. Might depend on what you had hoped to accomplish. I sense that you have more of a feeling for forward motion in human interchange than I do. I identify with my cats; we’ll talk a while, we’ll fight a while, we’ll sleep, and then we’ll be pretty much as we were before.

Hmmmm. Yes,s I’d say I have more of a desire for forward motion. Though I don’t much like the word "forward". I think for inward motion, motion towards, lessening of distance. I really, maybe that’s not the most important thing either. What I most want is to feel affected by a person. I want to feel changed. I want to feel. I feel cheated and sort of duped. I feel like I wasted my time. averti: Well, I don’t care for ”cheated.” I have put a good deal of effort and will power into not cheating people; certainly not on an emotional level. I’m pretty much doing the best I can with what I have to work with. As for wasting time, only you can decide that.

This sounds kind of defensive. If you didn’t think I was attacking you,  how might you have responded? Lionheart: This is all an experiemtn to me. I’ve been trying to figure out reaasons or ways to not withdraw back into myself. Fairly recently it hit me that maybe being more *real*, expressing more of my self and my personality might make a difrference. So I’ve been experimenting. So far no conclusive results. averti: I wish you well with it. You’re certainly ”realer” to me, even over the things that you don’t like.

Thank you. I further think it’s an odd attitude for somebody who values communication. For what that’s worth. Lionheart: I value communication only so far as it promises to help me achieve commun-ion with others. averti: Ah! Divided by a common language 8).

would you care to elaborate? – Hide quoted text — Show quoted text – Lionheart: If I give up on that possibility (which I usually do), then I give up on the communication/conversation. averti: So we can’t converse any more? That feels like a loss. In fact, feels like I either scared you off or failed to measure up to some tests on your part 8). Lionheart: neither, yet. I was speaking about what is my habit, or a recurring behaviour that I have not yet found a way to stop. I think the universe keeps failing my test. Well then let’s dismantle THAT and build a Jungle Gym for the littles.

Oh, okay. That’s that then. Well, that was easy. Lionheart And perhaps my test is skewed. Lionheart

– For more information about this service, send e-mail to:

Response:

– Hide quoted text — Show quoted text – Lionheart: I’m trying to think of why you might think that. Can’t remember saying anything about it. What does bother me is the control you exert over how much you let people have access to you. Don’t you? Doesn’t everybody? (Not a defensive question–I just see the desire for and the exertion of control as a basic human trait.) Yup, it’s a question of how *much* control. Boundaries separate people from other people, but if they’re sort of flexible and permeable they will also allow people to be affected and non-physically touched by each other.

Yes, I guess so. At least in principle. If they’re rock  solid, they lead to isolation. I think people who over-control their accessibility to others are compensatingn for having had no control earlier on.

Fits me. But we can’t rule out additional life experience. I think if I had been treated like a Golden Child, I still would have a sizable measure of suspicion and distancing. Just from paying attention to the world around me. People ARE dangerous. I didn’t make that up; it’s a fundamental principle. You don’t build a wall like a smart filter; a wall keeps everybody out, by default. I’ve seen you wiggle around all over the place and put up all manner of shields (apparently) trying to prevent people from being able to know you. Maybe I only want you to get what I am willing to give. No doubt. And respecting people’s boundaries means not pressuring people to give more than they can.  But shields work both ways. They keep other people out, but they keep you in.

For the most part, I have no problem with that. I don’t see sheilds as being that bilateral; I can, and often have, kept ”you” at the required distance but still ventured out when I need to and want to. Or able to give. You’re not the first person to get the impression that I am posing and, er, role-ing. I thought you had already admitted to this.

”Admitted?” Sounds creepily close to ”confessed.” I really AM this unusual, and to many people, hard to believe, therefore potentially sneaky or something. So, once burned, maybe I’m being selectively revelatory HERE in order to avoid getting bogged down in THAT sort of thing. Somehow I doubt that your experience a few years ago on another ng is *the* reason you’re so cagey (imo)

No, of course not. There isn’t a THE reason. However, net-experiences with the unusual dynamics involved may be more easily seen as fitting a pattern, I believe. Whether the pattern proves out in the next situation is a related but different matter. ”Once burned, once shy” or maybe ”Once burned, forever suspicious.” . I think I’m testing ME as much or more than I am anybody else; is there an actual personality in here that other people might relate to? This I can appreciate. It has been said that people outside ourselves are among the most useful mirrors we have, with which we can examine and learn about ourselves. So far I see that all of you  is moving towards a more temperate approach here. Other than that, I see you as "a shifting set of perceptions". iow, I see a whole in one respect, but otherwise I don’t.

Well, it’s in my interests to be more temperate if I want to get anywhere 8). Shifting, I imagine I will always be. There are many here who appear to not be a ”whole” of any identifiable sort. – Hide quoted text — Show quoted text – I’d say you can generalize, up to a point and with appropriate evidence. A bunch of realy big guys wearing all black leather and carrying weapons are more likely to cause you pain than a bunch of earnest middle aged women survivors of abuse (just to pick a random couple of examples).imo Hehehehe. No, that’s not true, in this context. Being rejected by a bunch of middle aged women hurts me far more than being jumped on by bikers; I can always fight back there, but I can’t fight back against the disapproval of people who legitimately don’t like or trust me. Is it just me, or is this really contradictory? If people *legitimately* don’t like or trust you, that must mean you’re unlikeable and untrustworthy.

Not if you distinguish between facts and feelings. There have been a number of people in this ng who have had ”legitimate” negative reactions to me (what’s an illegitimate reaction, anway? 8)). But the things that they have complained that I have ”done” are not necessarily true. By objective standards. Hence the now-tiresome ping-pong game of ”You triggered me!” serve returned with ”You triggered yourself.” It seems also *legitimate* for people to disapprove of you if you’re unlikeable andn untrustsworthy.

That’s correct. Except that ”unlikeable” is highly subjective, whereas ”untrustworthy” is often projective. ”You remind me of my abusive father” or whatever is a statement of how somebody feels–not a statement that I am her father or that I am abusive. So  no, you couldn’t beat them up for it. otoh, you could develop qualities that people in general regard as positive, admirable and trustworthy. I’m thinking here.

I don’t have the sense that that’s an ”other hand.” I have a gradient of possibilities between total hostility and s*cking up, no? Or to put it less harshly, how authentic is admirability and trustworthiness if it’s put on like a disguise? So iow, the responsibility would be up to you to behave in certain positive ways. But wrt bikers, you wouldn’t feel any such responsibility, you could just sink to their level.

Strange phrase. How is trying preserve my life sinking to somebody else’s level? I imagine, if I may so presume, that you have not had much experience with peer-to-peer violence. Most people haven’t. It is a very measurable victory to b*at somebody nearly to d*eath before they can do the same to you. And I have had to fight against indulging in that kind of pleasure for years. Talk about s*ductive! But that’s a side issue and a potentially freaky one… Is it the responsibility that bothers you? Or do you feel the disapproval of such women is *always* legitimate, regardless of how you behave?

I hadn’t given the legitimate part of it that much thought. Mostly, I tend to want to be approved of for myself. Or segments of myself. Criticism from women gets in through the wall. Plus, it’s my quirk, and it doesn’t really have much to do with s*x, but even the thought of women disapproving of me pains me. Rejecting me outright or hollering at me or verbally fighting with me, not so bad. So its the silent disapproval that’s the worst?

You can’t do anything with it, can you? There is a dynamic in our culture that says when a woman tells a man ‘’stop bothering me” the bothering becomes the issue. And the man is left with little ground upon which to stand. (Works the same way with the s*xes reversed, but not as often.) Dismissal is a powerful weapon, and IMO too often used. I’m wondering if you were ever manipulated this way.

Certainly. Everybody who was raised in a family (‘cept maybe a family of wolves) has been manipulated this way. Lionheart: Well, I think what you’re saying is that you’re afriad of people. So you try to act really scary so that you can flush the dangerous ones out into the open. Correct me if I’m wrong Oh, I know there are next to no dangerous ones. I’m afraid of people on a higher level 8). I’m sorry, I have many different meanings for higher level and thus don’t know what you intend here. Higher in status?

There aren’t any of those 8). on the elevator?

Heh. on an evolutionary scale? Or do you mean that your fear exists on a higher level?

Yes. Such as, for example?

I’ll have to work on that one and get back to you. I’m not very much acquainted with the idea that you can quantify an emotion. Lionheart: you seem to be 180 degrees off from the position you took earlier. Which I’ve seen you do quite a few times. Are you aware of adopting a position, and then a conversational turn later either disowning that position or behaving as though completely unawarae that you ever held the position? Often. Dissociation aggravates that tendency, as I’m sure you already know. I’ve tried to help out by leaving in your previous conversational turn so you could remind yourself of what you had said.

Thank you, but my mind doesn’t work that way. It doesn’t seem to make any difference. In the absense of any opinion expressed by you about this I’m wondering if you are making an excuse?

I doubt it. My ratio of explanations to excuses tends to run a thousand to one. I hope not. I’m inclined to recommend you get some "cooperation and communication" happening. Of course, I have no qualifications to make such a recommendation.

You have as much as anybody. I think we mean different things by those terms, though. – Hide quoted text — Show quoted text – [...] I don’t recall seeing advising people that one is about to withdraw from a conversation for such and such reasons as one of the guidelines. Aren’t there any guidelines for dismantling a conversation? Seems like there would be. They’re guidelines for keeping communication going. Um, the only guideline for stopping that I’ve seen is taking "timeouts" when things have gotten too heated. But in books on boundary setting in relationships, come to think of it, there is talk of letting a person know you find a certain behaviour unacceptable and will not intereact as long as that behaviour persists.

NOw, see, I find that (personally) super-duper manipulative. And very common in groups of this sort. … read more »

Response:

– Hide quoted text — Show quoted text – <snipping to the part I wish to address Have you ever considered that the REAL basic difference between you and me–or anybody and anybody else–is that I KNOW I’m alone and I accept it? You may tell me I’m way off base here, but the above statement strikes me as one that could only be made by a very lonely person.  It even strikes a chord in me. Good reading 8). Of COURSE I’m a very lonely person. I was born that way (it seems). It’s not even quantifiable as loneliness most of the time–more like some kind of pre-existing human condition.

Ah, the existential human dilemma.  Or one of them.  Were you born that way or born into an environment that made you feel that way?   Of course, most people come equipped with the cure; if you’re lonely, go out and find some people to be with…

It has to be the right people, although I guess just being around people with no connection is sometimes better than being alone. Chatting with the pharmacist is a form of connecting. But what is really great for me is people who I connect with on a number of levels – emotional, intellectual and have a lot of interests in common with and who understand me pretty well.  Kindred spirits, you know? In fact it is something I’ve talked about more than a few times.  It is a recurring theme in some science fiction, in which aliens who communicate telpathically somehow get inside the head of a human being and comment on how incredibly alone human beings are. Part of the price we pay for all this critical facility, I imagine. I don’t think people are wired to derive full satisfaction from other people; elsewise we would have more St. Francis’ and fewer war criminals.

No, I suppose the environment in which we evolved didn’t give an evolutionary advantage to kindredness of spirit. The other night in feeling the depths of my pain, I was telling my friend how I missed my alters, because for a little while I wasn’t all alone in my body. This also reminds me of a discussion some friends of mine had years ago. One asked the other "Are you lonely?" To which after a long silence he responded, "Either always or never."  To which she responded, "I knew you were going to say that." <nod. It’s an odd question–to me it would be sort of along the lines of ”are you breathing?”

Well we were all about 17 or 18 at the time. Always struck me how the line can seem so thin that we can be unsure as to whether we are never or always lonely.  And yet I can relate to this  too. Can you? Up to the point where I try to imagine ”never.”

Funny, I rarely think of myself as being lonely nowadays.  I suspect the never part of the answer was along the lines of not needing people. Although for me it would never have truly been accurate to say I don’t need people so much as to say that my life was more peaceful in the absence of people, and peace was a cherished commodity. I have hinted at what used to dilute the loneliness for me: s*x, in many complicated and subtle forms. But that can only carry one so far.

Yup, reminds me of a song with the line "looking for love in all the wrong places."  Been there myself years ago, but clearly not to the same extent. – Hide quoted text — Show quoted text – Uh huh. So why are you here? Information. If I know what’s up with me and ALSO what’s up with YOU, I’m that much ahead in the big figuring-it-out challenge. That’s MY support. If it doesn’t jibe with yours, well–I’m very used to that 8). You don’t have to answer this (obviously), but what I mean is if you aren’t comfortable with it, I can understand that.  Just wondering if you see healing from emotional trauma as occurring on an intellectual level? Mostly. I can’t see how you could clearly divide the intellectual part from the emotional part. But I have some experience in th intellectual part, and not much in the emotional part–heck, I wouldn’t even know when I was getting ”healed.”

Sometimes I don’t know until something happens that brings back a vivid recollection of what I felt etc a year, two years ago. I don’t know.  I think there is an intellectual "knowing" that is very different from a gut level or emotional kind of "knowing". I can know so many things intellectually, but not feel them.  Like all the ab*se heaped on me wasn’t my fault.  I could tell you the logic of it, I could write an essay on it, but there are still times when in my gut, in my heart I do believe I did deserve it and still deserve to d*e as a result. I suppose the intensity and frequency has been diminishing. Oh, and guess what?  I see inconsistencies in your responses – probably between what you state as your purpose/motive and how you react to things.  Now of course you are certainly the only person on this newsgroup who ever displays any inconsistencies.  Possibly the only person on Earth I am consistent in that too.

Congratulations! Of COURSE you see what you saw. I’m just as confused and self-deluded and bewildered as anybody else. Don’t know what it is about you or your virtual presence, but something makes me want to keep kinda poking at you about the feeling stuff. I don’t know what to say about that.

Well you could say "Cut it out!" But since you haven’t I’ll probably continue to poke at you from time to time. – Hide quoted text — Show quoted text – <snip Why would you do that? And, just to get everything here on this one thread, just because you can is not much of an answer, imo. It wasn’t intended to be profound. It’s been a common answer, though, for hundreds of years, employed by people from DeS*de to Wild Bill Hickock to Hemingway to, I suppose, Dennis Rodman. There are so many things that you *can* do. You *cana* become the epitome of honourable conduct. No I can’t. I’m not mentally and emotionally capable of that. You *can* become a shining light of compassion. Not unless the package includes becoming a hypocrit and losing a good deal of my critical faculties 8). Are you saying that seeing someone’s frailties, "faults", "errors" precludes you from feeling or giving compassion? No not at all. It’s not ABOUT them, it’s about me. I just don’t have it to give, deserved or otherwise.

I see glimmerings of evidence to the contrary Oh and by the way, I think you might be painting yourself into a corner :0 (now where are those other 8 people, oh and the one with the other approach…?) Some of the things you seem to say you cannot do or become or achieve appear to me to be things you are beginning to do, to become, to achieve. Really?

Yup.  I love to see people change in positive ways.  I find ASD to be the most interesting ng I’ve posted to, the most challenging in many ways.  And I see people struggling and learning, including you.  And me. I think I’ve learned an awful lot by being involved and observing the dynamics here. – Hide quoted text — Show quoted text – If you mean, anybody is capable of these things, maybe. I doubt it, but my doubt about other people’s workins is not as well-informed as my doubts about me. You are undoubtedly very aware of your doubts about you, but if you are anything like the rest of us dissoids, you are not the best judge of whether those doubts are realistic or not.  And your doubts and assessments of yourself are likely to be stronger/harsher than other people’s, altho I realize that for you here at asd that is not entirely true in some cases (re: your "prickly pear status"). No, these are good points. Seeing yourself in a mirror that was previously cracked–and adding more cracks on your own.

Yup or focusing on the existing ones rather than the overall image. <snip Ah, that’s all folks. Got a spare carrot?

 Define spare? Best wishes, Todoe Thank you very much,

You are welcome a.

– "May fortune favor the foolish."                                    Captain James T. Kirk        About to attempt time travel to retrieve      2 humpback whales from the past to save the world.              ( "Voyage Home"  Star Trek movie.)                       O.W.L. Productions — For more information about this service, send e-mail to:

Response:

– Hide quoted text — Show quoted text – I’d say you can generalize, up to a point and with appropriate evidence. A bunch of realy big guys wearing all black leather and carrying weapons are more likely to cause you pain than a bunch of earnest middle aged women survivors of abuse (just to pick a random couple of examples).imo Hehehehe. No, that’s not true, in this context. Being rejected by a bunch of middle aged women hurts me far more than being jumped on by bikers; I can always fight back there, but I can’t fight back against the disapproval of people who legitimately don’t like or trust me. Is it just me, or is this really contradictory? If people *legitimately* don’t like or trust you, that must mean you’re unlikeable and untrustworthy. Not if you distinguish between facts and feelings. There have been a number of people in this ng who have had ”legitimate” negative reactions to me (what’s an illegitimate reaction, anway? 8)).

Feelings are always legitimate; they just are and so it’s pointless to judge them. Perceptions (which lead to feelings) are where the problems lie. Your perceptions are *developed* through experience. You see what you expect to see.  Each of us has our own uniquely skewed or distorted lenses through which we see the world. I took you to be saying that their perceptions were legitimate, hence relatively conforming to reality.   But the things that they have complained that I have ”done” are not necessarily true. By objective standards. Hence the now-tiresome ping-pong game of ”You triggered me!” serve returned with ”You triggered yourself.”

Therre’s a difference between someone outside of me triggering me (I’m still responsible for my feelings) and me triggering myself. There may be a tiresome ping pong game going on, but you haven’t described it correctly. It seems also *legitimate* for people to disapprove of you if you’re unlikeable andn untrustsworthy. That’s correct. Except that ”unlikeable” is highly subjective, whereas ”untrustworthy” is often projective. ”You remind me of my abusive father” or whatever is a statement of how somebody feels–not a statement that I am her father or that I am abusive.

No. It’s a statement of how someone’s perceptions are affected by their past. It’s a statement about how someone *now* is triggering them through reminding them of some abuser from the past. If you are the trigger, your actions may be a little bit abusive (just enough to be a reminder) or even benign. If someone says they don’t trust you, that’s a statement about their feelings, and not about you. Funny how often people equate "I don’t trust you" with "you’re calling me untrustworthy".  Equqally as often, I suppose, people say "you’re untrustworthy" when they reallly mean "I don’t trust you." So  no, you couldn’t beat them up for it. otoh, you could develop qualities that people in general regard as positive, admirable and trustworthy. I’m thinking here. I don’t have the sense that that’s an ”other hand.” I have a gradient of possibilities between total hostility and s*cking up, no?

I would say you can choose where you want to be on the scale of "reactive’ and thus totally within other people’s control, or "proactive" and thus in charge of yourself.  All behaviour is *chosen*; that doesn’t mean it’s *put on*. Some is just chosen with more forethought, and some with less. I’m wondering if you were ever manipulated this way. Certainly. Everybody who was raised in a family (‘cept maybe a family of wolves) has been manipulated this way.

That’s irrelevant to your recovery and healing. Aren’t there any guidelines for dismantling a conversation? Seems like there would be. They’re guidelines for keeping communication going. Um, the only guideline for stopping that I’ve seen is taking "timeouts" when things have gotten too heated. But in books on boundary setting in relationships, come to think of it, there is talk of letting a person know you find a certain behaviour unacceptable and will not intereact as long as that behaviour persists. NOw, see, I find that (personally) super-duper manipulative. And very common in groups of this sort. ”Act like/talk like I want you to or I will shun you.” It’s everybody’s right, to be sure, to decline to ”interact.” But the framing or the subtext to this routine says to me ”I know what’s best, you are bad.”

 You realize that you’re saying that if person A says to person B "I find your beating up on me unacceptable and I will not interact with you as long as that behaviour persists" that’s manipulation??? Really?? I call it taking responsibility for oneself and establishing a healthy boundary. You’re talking like somebody, here, who doesn’t believe that other people have a right to boundaries. The subtext to this routine is "I know what’s best _for_me_; you are bad _for_me." That is not only everyone’s right, but everyone’s responsibility.   – Hide quoted text — Show quoted text -Lionheart a. And perhaps my test is skewed. Lionheart — For more information about this service, send e-mail to:

– For more information about this service, send e-mail to:

Response:

– Hide quoted text — Show quoted text – I’d say you can generalize, up to a point and with appropriate evidence. A bunch of realy big guys wearing all black leather and carrying weapons are more likely to cause you pain than a bunch of earnest middle aged women survivors of abuse (just to pick a random couple of examples).imo Hehehehe. No, that’s not true, in this context. Being rejected by a bunch of middle aged women hurts me far more than being jumped on by bikers; I can always fight back there, but I can’t fight back against the disapproval of people who legitimately don’t like or trust me. Is it just me, or is this really contradictory? If people *legitimately* don’t like or trust you, that must mean you’re unlikeable and untrustworthy. Not if you distinguish between facts and feelings. There have been a number of people in this ng who have had ”legitimate” negative reactions to me (what’s an illegitimate reaction, anway? 8)). Feelings are always legitimate; they just are and so it’s pointless to judge them. Perceptions (which lead to feelings) are where the problems lie. Your perceptions are *developed* through experience. You see what you expect to see.  Each of us has our own uniquely skewed or distorted lenses through which we see the world. I took you to be saying that their perceptions were legitimate, hence relatively conforming to reality.

We seem to come from different backgrounds as far as these types of things are concerned. Don’t you acknowledge the existence, for instance, of _fake_ negative reactions? Used as a weapon to further ones’ own ends at the cost of another person’s? And saying that everybody has skewed and distorted lenses is perfectly true, but it doesn’t give one person license to hurt another person due to faulty perception. But the things that they have complained that I have ”done” are not necessarily true. By objective standards. Hence the now-tiresome ping-pong game of ”You triggered me!” serve returned with ”You triggered yourself.” Therre’s a difference between someone outside of me triggering me (I’m still responsible for my feelings) and me triggering myself.

Seems like. ”I’m still responsible” sounds like we are saying much the same thing; that every person owns their responses. If those responses are reasonable and accurate, that’s one thing. If the responses don’t seem to fit with the reality of what’s going on, that’s a different thing. There may be a tiresome ping pong game going on, but you haven’t described it correctly.

That’s not for you to decide, is it? It seems also *legitimate* for people to disapprove of you if you’re unlikeable andn untrustsworthy. That’s correct. Except that ”unlikeable” is highly subjective, whereas ”untrustworthy” is often projective. ”You remind me of my abusive father” or whatever is a statement of how somebody feels–not a statement that I am her father or that I am abusive. No. It’s a statement of how someone’s perceptions are affected by their past. It’s a statement about how someone *now* is triggering them through reminding them of some abuser from the past.

But no-one *now* IS triggering them. It’s not like some of us are marching through wearing swastikas, looking for Jews to frighten and enrage. My point is that if I remind somebody of some badness in the past, that’s too darn bad, but ”reminding” is not something that I did. ”You made me remember” may be even more of a bizarre reaction than plain triggering. If you are the trigger, your actions may be a little bit abusive (just enough to be a reminder) or even benign. If someone says they don’t trust you, that’s a statement about their feelings, and not about you. Funny how often people equate "I don’t trust you" with "you’re calling me untrustworthy".  Equqally as often, I suppose, people say "you’re untrustworthy" when they reallly mean "I don’t trust you."

I think you’re right there. Now, does this imply that when somebody tells me either one–”I don’t…” or ”You’re calling me…”– that I’m supposed to refrain from being hurt by that notification? So  no, you couldn’t beat them up for it. otoh, you could develop qualities that people in general regard as positive, admirable and trustworthy. I’m thinking here. I don’t have the sense that that’s an ”other hand.” I have a gradient of possibilities between total hostility and s*cking up, no? I would say you can choose where you want to be on the scale of "reactive’ and thus totally within other people’s control, or "proactive" and thus in charge of yourself.

I dislike the term ”proactive” but I follow your meaning.  All behaviour is *chosen*; that doesn’t mean it’s *put on*. Some is just chosen with more forethought, and some with less. I’m wondering if you were ever manipulated this way. Certainly. Everybody who was raised in a family (‘cept maybe a family of wolves) has been manipulated this way. That’s irrelevant to your recovery and healing.

I would prefer you don’t take that tone with me. Your opinion of what is and isn’t relevant wrt me is interesting, but it’s not a ruling of some kind. Any ”recovery” that I might arrive at without consideration of my predatory nature and that of humandkind in general would be faulty. – Hide quoted text — Show quoted text – Aren’t there any guidelines for dismantling a conversation? Seems like there would be. They’re guidelines for keeping communication going. Um, the only guideline for stopping that I’ve seen is taking "timeouts" when things have gotten too heated. But in books on boundary setting in relationships, come to think of it, there is talk of letting a person know you find a certain behaviour unacceptable and will not intereact as long as that behaviour persists. NOw, see, I find that (personally) super-duper manipulative. And very common in groups of this sort. ”Act like/talk like I want you to or I will shun you.” It’s everybody’s right, to be sure, to decline to ”interact.” But the framing or the subtext to this routine says to me ”I know what’s best, you are bad.”  You realize that you’re saying that if person A says to person B "I find your beating up on me unacceptable and I will not interact with you as long as that behaviour persists" that’s manipulation???

If the ”beating up” part is so subjective as to constitute a _lie_, yeah 8). Just a few words’ difference between ”I am unhappy” and ”You make me unhappy”–but a very important difference. Come to that, I would say that any ukase like ”Because of this one thing that I claim you do, I refuse to interact with you” to be manipulative on the face of it. It’s holding out a presumed reward of some value–the pleasure of your company–in return for some concessions in behavior. Really?? I call it taking responsibility for oneself and establishing a healthy boundary. You’re talking like somebody, here, who doesn’t believe that other people have a right to boundaries.

No, I’m talking like somebody who doesn’t believe that other people have more right to boundaries than I do. Just because I choose not to play the ”Be nice to me or I’ll pick up my marbles and go home” game, doesn’t mean that boundaries are not important to me. The subtext to this routine is "I know what’s best _for_me_; you are bad _for_me." That is not only everyone’s right, but everyone’s responsibility.

Undeniable. However, in this group as well as in life in general, it’s sometimes the case that a person _doesn’t_ know what’s best for them; this is not after all alt.terrific.judgement 8). I’m not suggesting that people don’t have the right to be mistaken. But why should anybody else fall into the mistake when they don’t want to?

Response:

- Hide quoted text — Show quoted text – ……. averti: I look on this as a fairly benign and respectful form of control; others may disagree. TV: I don’t know if I disagree or not; I still don’t even know what you’re talking about. You said, I think, that you are for the most part able to be touched in non-physical ways by other people, and that some aspect of that is a control thing. I don’t understand that. I think he’s saying that he allows people to, for example, pantomime touching him maybe only using words, and he can allow people to say things that touch him inside, but that being physically touched or held is very difficult for him to sort out and very stressful.  So, he keeps others at bay a lot to reduce some of that stress and to keep himself safe. Have I got it, averti?

Pretty much. It extends to not being ”touched” emotionally by a lot of the standard things–somebody elses’ troubles, for example. Which can tend to make me appear callous when at most I am only detached. I agree generally with points you make, such as control not automatically being a bad thing; in fact, I’m inclined to think just the opposite. But I don’t get the link you’re making for yourself between control and being touched. I think I do.  Touch, a simple hand on someone’s arm or even a finger, can be an invasion of sorts and can be overwhelming.  If he has trouble sorting out what the touch means and is caught between strong impulses, he’s going to find touch uncomfortable emotionally.  

Or the instance of touch triggering excessive reaction. One of the last physical acts of v*olence I ever did was in unplanned reaction to being grasped from behind by a derelict (at the corner of Haight and Ashbury in San Fran, of all places.) Noses being softer than elbows, I put the poor jerk in the hospital. It was clear he _wasn’t_ trying to kill me–ten seconds later. This can happen in an emotional sense as well, though it plays out more like ”You’re trying to emotionally jerk me around” rather than ”you’re trying to kill me.” If he has trouble relaxing and letting people close enough to touch him, when he does get touched it’s also likely to be stressful and unpleasant.  If he has trouble letting himself be gentled and taken care of, then allowing someone to touch him is going to be stressful.  So the easiest and safest thing to do is to not let people close enough to touch him, because it’s so uncomfortable.  This would not necessarily preclude him touching someone else, though.  That would be a more obvious control thing, where he can touch someone else and take care of them, but they’re not allowed to handle him in a similar way because he’s too uncomfortable being taken care of.  If he’s in control, he’s not very vulnerable.

You got it. And there are, of course, many phases of s*xual touching where one of the partners is clearly in control. Indeed, it feels very safe to me to associate with people who come right out and ASK to be controlled. How’s that, averti?

You a smart one, babs 8). – Hide quoted text — Show quoted text – Lionheart: I’m trying to think of why you might think that. Can’t remember saying anything about it. What does bother me is the control you exert over how much you let people have access to you. I’ve seen you wiggle around all over the place and put up all manner of shields (apparently) trying to prevent people from being able to know you. I’d be interested to hear more about this too. I generally define the exertion of control over how much I let people have access to me as boundary-setting. I’m afraid I have a lousy sense of boundary–possibly due to early training, possibly due to difficulty in believing what I’m told regardless of who’s telling me 8). Seems like the ethical thing to do is to control MY sphere in such a way that the issue of boundaries never comes up, rather than to be setting up requirements for how I want other people to treat me. Maybe I’m splitting hairs, but whether you call it boundary-setting or controlling your sphere, the two seem awfully similar to me. If you never want the issue of boundaries to come up, seems you’d have to make your sphere small enough so that it can be controlled without bumping up against other people’s stuff. Which may be what Lionheart was saying. BINGO!  I think this is how averti manages to appear invisible even to people who know he’s right there.  He shrinks his sense of self down to a speck too small to be in anyone’s way or cross their boundary, so they walk right through him.  There’s also safety in being unseen sometimes.

Well, my sphere is naturally small. I think. It’s not only just dangerous to be out there interacting with all kinds of people on all kinds of levels, it’s exhausting. This unseen business is backfiring one me, though, more and more. (Not just the physical discomfort and indignity of being walked through.) Larger issue is that I am not at all sure that there is a ”me” to know. Maybe I AM just a set of shifting reactions. Could be. But I sort of doubt it. Oh, there is, averti.  (And you’re stark naked under that armour.)

You peeked 8).                                 -babs — "Excuse me while I dance a little jig of despair."

– In the future, everything will be older.

Response:

– Hide quoted text — Show quoted text – <snipping to the part I wish to address Have you ever considered that the REAL basic difference between you and me–or anybody and anybody else–is that I KNOW I’m alone and I accept it? You may tell me I’m way off base here, but the above statement strikes me as one that could only be made by a very lonely person.  It even strikes a chord in me. Good reading 8). Of COURSE I’m a very lonely person. I was born that way (it seems). It’s not even quantifiable as loneliness most of the time–more like some kind of pre-existing human condition. Ah, the existential human dilemma.  Or one of them.

I was existential before existential was cool 8). Were you born that way or born into an environment that made you feel that way?

I assume that no newborn infant comes equipped with a complex attitude like that–so I was being hyperbolic in saying that I was ”born” that way. It was nurture–or lack thereof. Of course, most people come equipped with the cure; if you’re lonely, go out and find some people to be with… It has to be the right people, although I guess just being around people with no connection is sometimes better than being alone.

Well, no, not for me. My major configurations seems to be (1) alone, and (2) with one or two others. I’m not so sure that ”connection” has a one-to-one, er, connection with not feeling alone, anyway. Chatting with the pharmacist is a form of connecting.

Especially mine: she’s a knockout 8). But what is really great for me is people who I connect with on a number of levels – emotional, intellectual and have a lot of interests in common with and who understand me pretty well.  Kindred spirits, you know?

In theory, yeah. I’m happy for you that that part works. – Hide quoted text — Show quoted text – In fact it is something I’ve talked about more than a few times.  It is a recurring theme in some science fiction, in which aliens who communicate telpathically somehow get inside the head of a human being and comment on how incredibly alone human beings are. Part of the price we pay for all this critical facility, I imagine. I don’t think people are wired to derive full satisfaction from other people; elsewise we would have more St. Francis’ and fewer war criminals. No, I suppose the environment in which we evolved didn’t give an evolutionary advantage to kindredness of spirit.

It seems to be a luxury in which one can indulge after the necessary conflict and clashing has been taken care of. – Hide quoted text — Show quoted text – The other night in feeling the depths of my pain, I was telling my friend how I missed my alters, because for a little while I wasn’t all alone in my body. This also reminds me of a discussion some friends of mine had years ago. One asked the other "Are you lonely?" To which after a long silence he responded, "Either always or never."  To which she responded, "I knew you were going to say that." <nod. It’s an odd question–to me it would be sort of along the lines of ”are you breathing?” Well we were all about 17 or 18 at the time.

Ah. See, girls ARE smarter than boys 8). At 17 I knew there was a h*ll of a lot wrong, but I couldn’t peek into myself and identify any of it. Always struck me how the line can seem so thin that we can be unsure as to whether we are never or always lonely.  And yet I can relate to this too. Can you? Up to the point where I try to imagine ”never.” Funny, I rarely think of myself as being lonely nowadays.  I suspect the never part of the answer was along the lines of not needing people.

Well, sometimes I have been just plain unfair to people–in the sense of needing certain things from them, or needing whatever whenever–without accepting the whole package, so to speak. Without taking on the overhead. It’s relatively easy to have an ONLY s*xual relationship; it’s all the other things that seem to be human needs that I flunk at. S*x is easy, dinner is hard 8(. Although for me it would never have truly been accurate to say I don’t need people so much as to say that my life was more peaceful in the absence of people, and peace was a cherished commodity.

Yeah. I know what that means. I have hinted at what used to dilute the loneliness for me: s*x, in many complicated and subtle forms. But that can only carry one so far. Yup, reminds me of a song with the line "looking for love in all the wrong places."  Been there myself years ago, but clearly not to the same extent.

I have found a great deal of love. Usually more than I can contrive to return, if such things can be measured. Maybe I got blinded by success–I’ve been in all the RIGHT places, but something’s missing… – Hide quoted text — Show quoted text – Uh huh. So why are you here? Information. If I know what’s up with me and ALSO what’s up with YOU, I’m that much ahead in the big figuring-it-out challenge. That’s MY support. If it doesn’t jibe with yours, well–I’m very used to that 8). You don’t have to answer this (obviously), but what I mean is if you aren’t comfortable with it, I can understand that.  Just wondering if you see healing from emotional trauma as occurring on an intellectual level? Mostly. I can’t see how you could clearly divide the intellectual part from the emotional part. But I have some experience in th intellectual part, and not much in the emotional part–heck, I wouldn’t even know when I was getting ”healed.” Sometimes I don’t know until something happens that brings back a vivid recollection of what I felt etc a year, two years ago.

Ah. That is a good kind of benchmark. I don’t know.  I think there is an intellectual "knowing" that is very different from a gut level or emotional kind of "knowing". I can know so many things intellectually, but not feel them.  Like all the ab*se heaped on me wasn’t my fault.  I could tell you the logic of it, I could write an essay on it, but there are still times when in my gut, in my heart I do believe I did deserve it and still deserve to d*e as a result.

Sure. There can be indoctrinated ”knowing,” unfortunately. I work with my T for years before he pointed out to me that sometimes, when I would talk about my own shortcomings, I sounded like an angry parent bemoaning a rotten child. Ten thousand ”You’re no good’’s probably is more than enough to make one start in with ”I’m no good.” I suppose the intensity and frequency has been diminishing. Oh, and guess what?  I see inconsistencies in your responses – probably between what you state as your purpose/motive and how you react to things.  Now of course you are certainly the only person on this newsgroup who ever displays any inconsistencies.  Possibly the only person on Earth I am consistent in that too. Congratulations!

Do I get a prize? Of COURSE you see what you saw. I’m just as confused and self-deluded and bewildered as anybody else. Don’t know what it is about you or your virtual presence, but something makes me want to keep kinda poking at you about the feeling stuff. I don’t know what to say about that. Well you could say "Cut it out!" But since you haven’t I’ll probably continue to poke at you from time to time.

This poking seems trustable. [...] Are you saying that seeing someone’s frailties, "faults", "errors" precludes you from feeling or giving compassion? No not at all. It’s not ABOUT them, it’s about me. I just don’t have it to give, deserved or otherwise. I see glimmerings of evidence to the contrary

Yah, you and a few other wise guys 8P. – Hide quoted text — Show quoted text – Oh and by the way, I think you might be painting yourself into a corner :0 (now where are those other 8 people, oh and the one with the other approach…?) Some of the things you seem to say you cannot do or become or achieve appear to me to be things you are beginning to do, to become, to achieve. Really? Yup.  I love to see people change in positive ways.  I find ASD to be the most interesting ng I’ve posted to, the most challenging in many ways.  And I see people struggling and learning, including you.  And me. I think I’ve learned an awful lot by being involved and observing the dynamics here.

Second that. Including some of the dynamics that feature screaming and pointing 8). – Hide quoted text — Show quoted text – If you mean, anybody is capable of these things, maybe. I doubt it, but my doubt about other people’s workins is not as well-informed as my doubts about me. You are undoubtedly very aware of your doubts about you, but if you are anything like the rest of us dissoids, you are not the best judge of whether those doubts are realistic or not.  And your doubts and assessments of yourself are likely to be stronger/harsher than other people’s, altho I realize that for you here at asd that is not entirely true in some cases (re: your "prickly pear status"). No, these are good points. Seeing yourself in a mirror that was previously cracked–and adding more cracks on your own. Yup or focusing on the existing ones rather than the overall image.

Wow. I don’t … read more »

Response:

[...]   I’ve tried to clean this up to make it easier for people to read, should anyone else be reading this Anyone, of course, is welcome to jump in to the sea of possibilities? or is that dip in. Whaddya mean, ”Is that dip in?” Of course I’m in 8). <groan If it has even the slightest resemblance to a pun, you’re on it, aren’t you? Seize the possibilities .

Same to you 8). It’s called ‘’synthesis” among other things. Very handy for driving people cr*zy, including myself. [...] a Control is a basic human drive, I believe, and not a bad thing automatically. Why do you live in a house? Partly to avoid getting rained on, and partly to ”control” your situation. Between people, it often looks like each one is singing a diferent song, and once in a while, at random, two notes form a harmony. In many relationships I have had, not only did we take some effort to both be singing the same song, a lot of the time there was a conductor 8). Usually but not always me. I look on this as a fairly benign and respectful form of control; others may disagree. I don’t know if I disagree or not; I still don’t even know what you’re talking about.

Ha! Well, the one goes with the other. You said, I think, that you are for the most part able to be touched in non-physical ways by other people, and that some aspect of that is a control thing. I don’t understand that. I agree generally with points you make, such as control not automatically being a bad thing; in fact, I’m inclined to think just the opposite. But I don’t get the link you’re making for yourself between control and being touched.

Um, sphere of personal space? I can either block touch, or leave, or in some fashion control myself AND the other person. There’s a handy dynamic in BDSM (no vowels, no splat?) that allows people to be very specific about what they would like to do next, and mentally prepare the mindset. So that your assenting to a blow to a specific area produces enjoyment, whereas if I just hauled off and smacked you in the same area, it might produce the opposite of enjoyment. In that example, BOTH people are exercising control over the situation. – Hide quoted text — Show quoted text – Lionheart: I’m trying to think of why you might think that. Can’t remember saying anything about it. What does bother me is the control you exert over how much you let people have access to you. I’ve seen you wiggle around all over the place and put up all manner of shields (apparently) trying to prevent people from being able to know you. I’d be interested to hear more about this too. I generally define the exertion of control over how much I let people have access to me as boundary-setting. I’m afraid I have a lousy sense of boundary–possibly due to early training, possibly due to difficulty in believing what I’m told regardless of who’s telling me 8). Seems like the ethical thing to do is to control MY sphere in such a way that the issue of boundaries never comes up, rather than to be setting up requirements for how I want other people to treat me. Maybe I’m splitting hairs, but whether you call it boundary-setting or controlling your sphere, the two seem awfully similar to me.

To me too. WRT other people, though, I see more boundary-setting as playing out as ”Don’t come in at ALL!” Whereas control might be saying ”Come in, but don’t make no sudden moves.” If you never want the issue of boundaries to come up, seems you’d have to make your sphere small enough so that it can be controlled without bumping up against other people’s stuff. Which may be what Lionheart was saying.

Makes sense. Or just reject the notion of boundaries altogether– which I have NOT done even though a few people claim I have. Larger issue is that I am not at all sure that there is a ”me” to know. Maybe I AM just a set of shifting reactions. Could be. But I sort of doubt it.

Thank you 8). If I fall over in the forest and there’s nobody there to hear me…

Response:

- Hide quoted text — Show quoted text – ……. averti: I look on this as a fairly benign and respectful form of control; others may disagree. TV: I don’t know if I disagree or not; I still don’t even know what you’re talking about. You said, I think, that you are for the most part able to be touched in non-physical ways by other people, and that some aspect of that is a control thing. I don’t understand that. I think he’s saying that he allows people to, for example, pantomime touching him maybe only using words, and he can allow people to say things that touch him inside, but that being physically touched or held is very difficult for him to sort out and very stressful.  So, he keeps others at bay a lot to reduce some of that stress and to keep himself safe. Have I got it, averti? Pretty much. It extends to not being ”touched” emotionally by a lot of the standard things–somebody elses’ troubles, for example. Which can tend to make me appear callous when at most I am only detached.

This hasn’t been the case between us, thankfully.  I seem to recall seeing you do this in response to others, though. – Hide quoted text — Show quoted text – I agree generally with points you make, such as control not automatically being a bad thing; in fact, I’m inclined to think just the opposite. But I don’t get the link you’re making for yourself between control and being touched. I think I do.  Touch, a simple hand on someone’s arm or even a finger, can be an invasion of sorts and can be overwhelming.  If he has trouble sorting out what the touch means and is caught between strong impulses, he’s going to find touch uncomfortable emotionally.   Or the instance of touch triggering excessive reaction. One of the last physical acts of v*olence I ever did was in unplanned reaction to being grasped from behind by a derelict (at the corner of Haight and Ashbury in San Fran, of all places.) Noses being softer than elbows, I put the poor jerk in the hospital. It was clear he _wasn’t_ trying to kill me–ten seconds later.

Yipe.  I’ve done similar things, although doing much less damage. This can happen in an emotional sense as well, though it plays out more like ”You’re trying to emotionally jerk me around” rather than ”you’re trying to kill me.”

Agg.  I often think as we talk, and sometimes you’ve heard me ask this, "What did they DO to you??".  I know some of the answers to that. If he has trouble relaxing and letting people close enough to touch him, when he does get touched it’s also likely to be stressful and unpleasant.  If he has trouble letting himself be gentled and taken care of, then allowing someone to touch him is going to be stressful.  So the easiest and safest thing to do is to not let people close enough to touch him, because it’s so uncomfortable.  This would not necessarily preclude him touching someone else, though.  That would be a more obvious control thing, where he can touch someone else and take care of them, but they’re not allowed to handle him in a similar way because he’s too uncomfortable being taken care of.  If he’s in control, he’s not very vulnerable. You got it.

Mostly by cheating.  We’ve discussed this before on our own and I didn’t forget.   And there are, of course, many phases of s*xual touching where one of the partners is clearly in control.

Exactly.  So there is a situation of great vulnerability where control is exchanged in negotiated, planned out ways (in the ideal).  As a result, it tends to be very safe. Indeed, it feels very safe to me to associate with people who come right out and ASK to be controlled. How’s that, averti? You a smart one, babs 8).

Heh.  I listened closely.  Do you ever let anyone else do this with you? How far can you let them have control before you start to feel scared? – Hide quoted text — Show quoted text – Lionheart: you exert over how much you let people have access to you. I’ve seen you wiggle around all over the place and put up all manner of shields (apparently) trying to prevent people from being able to know you. I’d be interested to hear more about this too. I generally define the exertion of control over how much I let people have access to me as boundary-setting. I’m afraid I have a lousy sense of boundary–possibly due to early training, possibly due to difficulty in believing what I’m told regardless of who’s telling me 8). Seems like the ethical thing to do is to control MY sphere in such a way that the issue of boundaries never comes up, rather than to be setting up requirements for how I want other people to treat me. Maybe I’m splitting hairs, but whether you call it boundary-setting or controlling your sphere, the two seem awfully similar to me. If you never want the issue of boundaries to come up, seems you’d have to make your sphere small enough so that it can be controlled without bumping up against other people’s stuff. Which may be what Lionheart was saying. BINGO!  I think this is how averti manages to appear invisible even to people who know he’s right there.  He shrinks his sense of self down to a speck too small to be in anyone’s way or cross their boundary, so they walk right through him.  There’s also safety in being unseen sometimes. Well, my sphere is naturally small. I think.

I don’t think so.  You’re not a tiny little boy anymore, either.  You can reach the top shelf on your own now.  Without climbing (like I have to). It’s not only just dangerous to be out there interacting with all kinds of people on all kinds of levels, it’s exhausting.

Very.  That’s one reason I live out here in the back of beyond.  I’ve had far too much of crowds.   This unseen business is backfiring one me, though, more and more.

How so?  Can you say more about this? (Not just the physical discomfort and indignity of being walked through.)

Aie!  :(  Oh, honey. Larger issue is that I am not at all sure that there is a ”me” to know. Maybe I AM just a set of shifting reactions. Could be. But I sort of doubt it. Oh, there is, averti.  (And you’re stark naked under that armour.) You peeked 8).

You BET.  You were hiding, and I HAD to find you.  Remember?                                   -babs — "Excuse me while I dance a little jig of despair."

Response:

- Hide quoted text — Show quoted text – Lionheart: I’m trying to think of why you might think that. Can’t remember saying anything about it. What does bother me is the control you exert over how much you let people have access to you. Don’t you? Doesn’t everybody? (Not a defensive question–I just see the desire for and the exertion of control as a basic human trait.) Yup, it’s a question of how *much* control. Boundaries separate people from other people, but if they’re sort of flexible and permeable they will also allow people to be affected and non-physically touched by each other. Yes, I guess so. At least in principle. If they’re rock  solid, they lead to isolation. I think people who over-control their accessibility to others are compensatingn for having had no control earlier on. Fits me. But we can’t rule out additional life experience. I think if I had been treated like a Golden Child, I still would have a sizable measure of suspicion and distancing. Just from paying attention to the world around me. People ARE dangerous. I didn’t make that up; it’s a fundamental principle.

Hmm, here’s something to mull over. Allegedly, per my psych classes, this sort of thinking/belief is learned very near birth (like in the first few weeks/months of life) and is _not_ a ‘fundamental principle’. Supposedly, people who grow up in stable, healthy, functional families (and yes, there are some out there) don’t believe that people are dangerous. They have no evidence of this at a very basic level, so all that they see that indicates that people are dangerous comes at a much later stage in life and is not taken as seriously. I personally find it hard to believe, but that is what the books say! Read developmental psych and/or abnormal psych books to see what I mean. – Hide quoted text — Show quoted text -You don’t build a wall like a smart filter; a wall keeps everybody out, by default. I’ve seen you wiggle around all over the place and put up all manner of shields (apparently) trying to prevent people from being able to know you. Maybe I only want you to get what I am willing to give. No doubt. And respecting people’s boundaries means not pressuring people to give more than they can.  But shields work both ways. They keep other people out, but they keep you in. For the most part, I have no problem with that. I don’t see sheilds as being that bilateral; I can, and often have, kept ”you” at the required distance but still ventured out when I need to and want to. Or able to give. You’re not the first person to get the impression that I am posing and, er, role-ing. I thought you had already admitted to this. ”Admitted?” Sounds creepily close to ”confessed.” I really AM this unusual, and to many people, hard to believe, therefore potentially sneaky or something. So, once burned, maybe I’m being selectively revelatory HERE in order to avoid getting bogged down in THAT sort of thing. Somehow I doubt that your experience a few years ago on another ng is *the* reason you’re so cagey (imo) No, of course not. There isn’t a THE reason. However, net-experiences with the unusual dynamics involved may be more easily seen as fitting a pattern, I believe. Whether the pattern proves out in the next situation is a related but different matter. ”Once burned, once shy” or maybe ”Once burned, forever suspicious.” . I think I’m testing ME as much or more than I am anybody else; is there an actual personality in here that other people might relate to? This I can appreciate. It has been said that people outside ourselves are among the most useful mirrors we have, with which we can examine and learn about ourselves. So far I see that all of you  is moving towards a more temperate approach here. Other than that, I see you as "a shifting set of perceptions". iow, I see a whole in one respect, but otherwise I don’t. Well, it’s in my interests to be more temperate if I want to get anywhere 8). Shifting, I imagine I will always be. There are many here who appear to not be a ”whole” of any identifiable sort. I’d say you can generalize, up to a point and with appropriate evidence. A bunch of realy big guys wearing all black leather and carrying weapons are more likely to cause you pain than a bunch of earnest middle aged women survivors of abuse (just to pick a random couple of examples).imo Hehehehe. No, that’s not true, in this context. Being rejected by a bunch of middle aged women hurts me far more than being jumped on by bikers; I can always fight back there, but I can’t fight back against the disapproval of people who legitimately don’t like or trust me. Is it just me, or is this really contradictory? If people *legitimately* don’t like or trust you, that must mean you’re unlikeable and untrustworthy.

Wouldn’t that depend on the situation? I’m thinking, if _everyone_ you interact with says you are unlikeable and untrustworthy then there must be something there that people are picking up on. If, however, only two of all the people you know say this (or some smaller subset of ‘everyone’) then maybe you aren’t fundamentally unlikeable and untrustworthy, but their perceptions are skewed or you are like that only in certain situations. Using the example above, having middle aged women reject someone might just mean that in the values and expectations of middle aged women this person comes across as unlikeable and untrustworthy, but in a different situation (with a different group of people) this might not be true. Not if you distinguish between facts and feelings. There have been a number of people in this ng who have had ”legitimate” negative reactions to me (what’s an illegitimate reaction, anway? 8)). But the things that they have complained that I have ”done” are not necessarily true. By objective standards. Hence the now-tiresome ping-pong game of ”You triggered me!” serve returned with ”You triggered yourself.”

Or, your behavior was the catalyst for my reaction. If you hadn’t used x behavior I wouldn’t have had y reaction, _but_ my reaction is still _my_ responsibility. Sort of like, _you_ can’t make me feel a feeling (ie as in ‘what you said made me feel sad’), feelings are internal processes, however your behavior can contribute to me ending up in that feeling state. Yes, technically a person triggers themself (is that really a word?) however, they are reacting within the limits and parameters of their environment. Change the environment and the reaction can/will change. – Hide quoted text — Show quoted text -It seems also *legitimate* for people to disapprove of you if you’re unlikeable andn untrustsworthy. That’s correct. Except that ”unlikeable” is highly subjective, whereas ”untrustworthy” is often projective. ”You remind me of my abusive father” or whatever is a statement of how somebody feels–not a statement that I am her father or that I am abusive. So  no, you couldn’t beat them up for it. otoh, you could develop qualities that people in general regard as positive, admirable and trustworthy. I’m thinking here. I don’t have the sense that that’s an ”other hand.” I have a gradient of possibilities between total hostility and s*cking up, no? Or to put it less harshly, how authentic is admirability and trustworthiness if it’s put on like a disguise? So iow, the responsibility would be up to you to behave in certain positive ways. But wrt bikers, you wouldn’t feel any such responsibility, you could just sink to their level. Strange phrase. How is trying preserve my life sinking to somebody else’s level? I imagine, if I may so presume, that you have not had much experience with peer-to-peer violence. Most people haven’t. It is a very measurable victory to b*at somebody nearly to d*eath before they can do the same to you. And I have had to fight against indulging in that kind of pleasure for years. Talk about s*ductive! But that’s a side issue and a potentially freaky one… Is it the responsibility that bothers you? Or do you feel the disapproval of such women is *always* legitimate, regardless of how you behave? I hadn’t given the legitimate part of it that much thought. Mostly, I tend to want to be approved of for myself. Or segments of myself. Criticism from women gets in through the wall. Plus, it’s my quirk, and it doesn’t really have much to do with s*x, but even the thought of women disapproving of me pains me. Rejecting me outright or hollering at me or verbally fighting with me, not so bad. So its the silent disapproval that’s the worst? You can’t do anything with it, can you? There is a dynamic in our culture that says when a woman tells a man ‘’stop bothering me” the bothering becomes the issue. And the man is left with little ground upon which to stand. (Works the same way with the s*xes reversed, but not as often.) Dismissal is a powerful weapon, and IMO too often used. I’m wondering if you were ever manipulated this way. Certainly. Everybody who was raised in a family (‘cept maybe a family of wolves) has been manipulated this way. Lionheart: Well, I think what you’re saying is that you’re afriad of people. So you try to act really scary so that you can flush the dangerous ones out into the open. Correct me if I’m wrong Oh, I know there are next to no dangerous ones. I’m afraid of people on a higher level 8). I’m sorry, I have many

… read more »

Response:

Lionheart: If you are the trigger, your actions may be a little bit abusive (just enough to be a reminder) or even benign. If someone says they don’t trust you, that’s a statement about their feelings, and not about you. Funny how often people equate "I don’t trust you" with "you’re calling me untrustworthy".  Equqally as often, I suppose, people say "you’re untrustworthy" when they reallly mean "I don’t trust you."

averti: I think you’re right there. Now, does this imply that when somebody tells me either one–”I don’t…” or ”You’re calling me…”– that I’m supposed to refrain from being hurt by that notification?

I wouldn’t dream of suggesting you refrain from feeling any feeling But if someone *owns* their feelings by saying "I don’t trust you" without implying that you’re necessarily untrustworthy, your wisest course of action would be to own your feelings of hurt and not blame the other person for those feelings. [...] averti: Certainly. Everybody who was raised in a family (‘cept maybe a family of wolves) has been manipulated this way. That’s irrelevant to your recovery and healing. I would prefer you don’t take that tone with me.

Sorry for the tone. Funny how often hitting  someone over the head with something seems like such an attractive shortcut. Lionheart — For more information about this service, send e-mail to:

Response:

– Hide quoted text — Show quoted text – Lionheart: If you are the trigger, your actions may be a little bit abusive (just enough to be a reminder) or even benign. If someone says they don’t trust you, that’s a statement about their feelings, and not about you. Funny how often people equate "I don’t trust you" with "you’re calling me untrustworthy".  Equqally as often, I suppose, people say "you’re untrustworthy" when they reallly mean "I don’t trust you." averti: I think you’re right there. Now, does this imply that when somebody tells me either one–”I don’t…” or ”You’re calling me…”– that I’m supposed to refrain from being hurt by that notification? I wouldn’t dream of suggesting you refrain from feeling any feeling

That’s good 8). But if someone *owns* their feelings by saying "I don’t trust you" without implying that you’re necessarily untrustworthy,

I don’t quite follow the difference. ”I don’t trust you” presumably reflects some feeling–or evidence–that I am untrustworthy. To that person. your wisest course of action would be to own your feelings of hurt and not blame the other person for those feelings.

I can’t agree. False accusation is not merely a mistake in interpretation; it’s a kind of attack. I DO own my own hurt but don’t care to also carry some sort of blame assigned by somebody else. [...] averti: Certainly. Everybody who was raised in a family (‘cept maybe a family of wolves) has been manipulated this way. That’s irrelevant to your recovery and healing. I would prefer you don’t take that tone with me. Sorry for the tone. Funny how often hitting  someone over the head with something seems like such an attractive shortcut.

Got that right. Something of a temptation 8). Thanks

Response:

- Hide quoted text — Show quoted text – ……. averti: I look on this as a fairly benign and respectful form of control; others may disagree. TV: I don’t know if I disagree or not; I still don’t even know what you’re talking about. You said, I think, that you are for the most part able to be touched in non-physical ways by other people, and that some aspect of that is a control thing. I don’t understand that. I think he’s saying that he allows people to, for example, pantomime touching him maybe only using words, and he can allow people to say things that touch him inside, but that being physically touched or held is very difficult for him to sort out and very stressful.  So, he keeps others at bay a lot to reduce some of that stress and to keep himself safe. Have I got it, averti? Pretty much. It extends to not being ”touched” emotionally by a lot of the standard things–somebody elses’ troubles, for example. Which can tend to make me appear callous when at most I am only detached. This hasn’t been the case between us, thankfully.  

No, it hasn’t. But we’re special 8). I seem to recall seeing you do this in response to others, though.

I’m afraid so. – Hide quoted text — Show quoted text – I agree generally with points you make, such as control not automatically being a bad thing; in fact, I’m inclined to think just the opposite. But I don’t get the link you’re making for yourself between control and being touched. I think I do.  Touch, a simple hand on someone’s arm or even a finger, can be an invasion of sorts and can be overwhelming.  If he has trouble sorting out what the touch means and is caught between strong impulses, he’s going to find touch uncomfortable emotionally. Or the instance of touch triggering excessive reaction. One of the last physical acts of v*olence I ever did was in unplanned reaction to being grasped from behind by a derelict (at the corner of Haight and Ashbury in San Fran, of all places.) Noses being softer than elbows, I put the poor jerk in the hospital. It was clear he _wasn’t_ trying to kill me–ten seconds later. Yipe.  I’ve done similar things, although doing much less damage.

I think many people have more of a fight-or-flight circuit than they think they do–being as it is so seldom triggered. (If it’s OFTEN triggered, one tends to become a guest of the state after a while.) This can happen in an emotional sense as well, though it plays out more like ”You’re trying to emotionally jerk me around” rather than ”you’re trying to kill me.” Agg.  I often think as we talk, and sometimes you’ve heard me ask this, "What did they DO to you??".  I know some of the answers to that.

Did I ever tell you about the hand and face game? When I was 5, my dad bet me that if I held my hands up in front of me, palms out, that he could hit my hands before I could move them. Educationally, I played along, moved my hands aside, and got a fist the size of a canned ham right in the face… THAT is the stuff they don’t teach in pre-school 8(. – Hide quoted text — Show quoted text – If he has trouble relaxing and letting people close enough to touch him, when he does get touched it’s also likely to be stressful and unpleasant.  If he has trouble letting himself be gentled and taken care of, then allowing someone to touch him is going to be stressful.  So the easiest and safest thing to do is to not let people close enough to touch him, because it’s so uncomfortable.  This would not necessarily preclude him touching someone else, though.  That would be a more obvious control thing, where he can touch someone else and take care of them, but they’re not allowed to handle him in a similar way because he’s too uncomfortable being taken care of.  If he’s in control, he’s not very vulnerable. You got it. Mostly by cheating.  We’ve discussed this before on our own and I didn’t forget.

You have FAR too good a memory 8). PTSD apparently has caused you to accumulate memort cells instead of losing them like any normal dissoid. And there are, of course, many phases of s*xual touching where one of the partners is clearly in control. Exactly.  So there is a situation of great vulnerability where control is exchanged in negotiated, planned out ways (in the ideal).  As a result, it tends to be very safe.

Safer than Real Life. S*ductively so. ”This is so perfectly exactly the way I like it, why should I unergo the risks of any less structured situation?” Indeed, it feels very safe to me to associate with people who come right out and ASK to be controlled. How’s that, averti? You a smart one, babs 8). Heh.  I listened closely.  Do you ever let anyone else do this with you?

I have. Two different ways; in the old le*ther days, with that totally stylized m*ster/sl*ve dynamic. And more recently, in the context of general trust and loveship. How far can you let them have control before you start to feel scared?

It varies. There are a few people whom I trust so throughly (for me, anyway) that I really do sincerely let go. OTOH, there are/have been people that I didn’t trust MYSELF with, and the relationship got disconnected. – Hide quoted text — Show quoted text – Lionheart: you exert over how much you let people have access to you. I’ve seen you wiggle around all over the place and put up all manner of shields (apparently) trying to prevent people from being able to know you. I’d be interested to hear more about this too. I generally define the exertion of control over how much I let people have access to me as boundary-setting. I’m afraid I have a lousy sense of boundary–possibly due to early training, possibly due to difficulty in believing what I’m told regardless of who’s telling me 8). Seems like the ethical thing to do is to control MY sphere in such a way that the issue of boundaries never comes up, rather than to be setting up requirements for how I want other people to treat me. Maybe I’m splitting hairs, but whether you call it boundary-setting or controlling your sphere, the two seem awfully similar to me. If you never want the issue of boundaries to come up, seems you’d have to make your sphere small enough so that it can be controlled without bumping up against other people’s stuff. Which may be what Lionheart was saying. BINGO!  I think this is how averti manages to appear invisible even to people who know he’s right there.  He shrinks his sense of self down to a speck too small to be in anyone’s way or cross their boundary, so they walk right through him.  There’s also safety in being unseen sometimes. Well, my sphere is naturally small. I think. I don’t think so.  You’re not a tiny little boy anymore, either.  You can reach the top shelf on your own now.  Without climbing (like I have to).

Hee hee. A little short before payday, are we? It’s not only just dangerous to be out there interacting with all kinds of people on all kinds of levels, it’s exhausting. Very.  That’s one reason I live out here in the back of beyond.  I’ve had far too much of crowds. This unseen business is backfiring one me, though, more and more. How so?  Can you say more about this?

I now believe that one prime cause of becoming the meat in a truck sandwich a few years ago, was my un-noticeabiliy. I think I give it off like some out-of-control Shadow effect. (Not just the physical discomfort and indignity of being walked through.) Aie!  :(  Oh, honey.

Or trucked through 8). Hey, if a few good people can ‘’see” me–here and in other virtual and real places–then all is not lost. Larger issue is that I am not at all sure that there is a ”me” to know. Maybe I AM just a set of shifting reactions. Could be. But I sort of doubt it. Oh, there is, averti.  (And you’re stark naked under that armour.) You peeked 8). You BET.  You were hiding, and I HAD to find you.  Remember?

Yup.                                 -babs — "Excuse me while I dance a little jig of despair."

– In Japan, the hand may be used as a knife. Unfortunately, it may not thereafter be used as a hand.

Response:

[...] If they’re rock  solid, they lead to isolation. I think people who over-control their accessibility to others are compensatingn for having had no control earlier on. Fits me. But we can’t rule out additional life experience. I think if I had been treated like a Golden Child, I still would have a sizable measure of suspicion and distancing. Just from paying attention to the world around me. People ARE dangerous. I didn’t make that up; it’s a fundamental principle. Hmm, here’s something to mull over. Allegedly, per my psych classes, this sort of thinking/belief is learned very near birth (like in the first few weeks/months of life) and is _not_ a ‘fundamental principle’.

Is that right? I hadn’t heard that theory. Well, it may not be a fundamental principle in the sense that it’s hard-wired into a newborn, no. But it’s one to me as a post-newborn, however I might have either derived it or learned it. Supposedly, people who grow up in stable, healthy, functional families (and yes, there are some out there) don’t believe that people are dangerous.

Wow. I would LIKE to believe that, if only for the sheer positiveness of the concept. They have no evidence of this at a very basic level, so all that they see that indicates that people are dangerous comes at a much later stage in life and is not taken as seriously.

Hmmm. Don’t know if I can go so far as to believe that a happy childhood materially affects interpretation of incoming evidence. [...] Is it just me, or is this really contradictory? If people *legitimately* don’t like or trust you, that must mean you’re unlikeable and untrustworthy. Wouldn’t that depend on the situation? I’m thinking, if _everyone_ you interact with says you are unlikeable and untrustworthy then there must be something there that people are picking up on.

Yes, that would be my view. Unless you have suddenly found yourself in Bosnia or Sicily or some other place where the default is hostility and distrust. If, however, only two of all the people you know say this (or some smaller subset of ‘everyone’) then maybe you aren’t fundamentally unlikeable and untrustworthy, but their perceptions are skewed or you are like that only in certain situations.

It’s certainly more sensible to continue to believe that I am fundamentally _trustworthy_; rejection of that one stings. I can sort of reaffirm being likeable because there are people that like me 8). Using the example above, having middle aged women reject someone might just mean that in the values and expectations of middle aged women this person comes across as unlikeable and untrustworthy, but in a different situation (with a different group of people) this might not be true.

Well, it’s THESE particular middle-aged women that seem to matter more; in RL most middle-aged or any aged women think I am a walking lollipop. But people in this group are my _peers_ in various special ways. On the other other hand, people in this group have more personal reason to distrust–if not dislike– strangers, strange men, or strange men who disagree with them. Or, g+d help me, strange men who try to charm them 8(. – Hide quoted text — Show quoted text – Not if you distinguish between facts and feelings. There have been a number of people in this ng who have had ”legitimate” negative reactions to me (what’s an illegitimate reaction, anway? 8)). But the things that they have complained that I have ”done” are not necessarily true. By objective standards. Hence the now-tiresome ping-pong game of ”You triggered me!” serve returned with ”You triggered yourself.” Or, your behavior was the catalyst for my reaction. If you hadn’t used x behavior I wouldn’t have had y reaction, _but_ my reaction is still _my_ responsibility. Sort of like, _you_ can’t make me feel a feeling (ie as in ‘what you said made me feel sad’), feelings are internal processes, however your behavior can contribute to me ending up in that feeling state.

You got it. This leaves the behaver a bit of freedom to assess his behavior from his end. Rather than the default ”So and so is mad at me; I must have done something terible.” Yes, technically a person triggers themself (is that really a word?)

It is now. I got so muddled with gender-free terminology I started talking like Uncle Remus out of sheer desperation 8). however, they are reacting within the limits and parameters of their environment. Change the environment and the reaction can/will change.

[...] NOw, see, I find that (personally) super-duper manipulative. And very common in groups of this sort. ”Act like/talk like I want you to or I will shun you.” It’s everybody’s right, to be sure, to decline to ”interact.” But the framing or the subtext to this routine says to me ”I know what’s best, you are bad.” Hmm, curious then, how do _you_ handle it when someone uses unacceptable behavior towards you?

I seldom handle it at all. I ignore, I disengage. ”Unacceptable” and ”inappropriate” are kind of foreign terms in my phrasebook. Note that this is not the same as arguing back. Or back and forth. The idea of saying ‘I cannot live with this behavior for these reasons’ is considered to be very mature and healthy.

Yeah, but look how you phrased it. ”I cannot live…” is a very powerful statement. I’m not k*lling anybody; I’m just thinking differently. If that’s really enough to cause somebody to just give up and walk away cursing, I think that says more about them than it does about me. It is a matter of setting personal limits on what behaviors you will tolerate and then sticking to these limits. If the person wants to engage in these behaviors they are free to do so, but not in your presence. I’d say that a person intentionally using a behavior that they know is offensive around someone is _just_ as manipulative.

Probably. Also, I don’t agree that ‘you are bad’ enters into it.

I don’t either but it does quite frequently around newsgroups. A person is not their behaviors! At most it would be ‘I know what’s best, you are _acting_ bad’.

Hehehe. That would steam my dim sum too, but not as much 8). [...] This sounds kind of defensive. If you didn’t think I was attacking you,  how might you have responded? Oh, maybe to back up and explore what made you feel that way, so we could see if we could improve things. But basically I think that is somebody suggests they might be wasting their time in trying to communicate with me, I might be wasting MINE trying to reposition myself so as to make myself more communication-worthy. Unless there is some reason why you think it is worth your effort to pursue the relationship.

Well, yeah. If I think your style of communication is too whatever and there is some reason why you value the relationship with me, won’t you figure out how to change/modify/negotiate the problem to maintain the relationship?

Certainly. I have done so, right here and lately. When it works, it’s well worth the effort. When it doesn’t, it IS a waste of time. Or at the very least, blown investment. I am at another disadvantage in this regard, as you may imagine, because of all the years that I structured and controlled the situation. I have no desire to control THIS situation (fat chance anyway 8)) but habit dies hard. And old skills are tempting. Rainbow Colors (Jill)

Thank you, Ms colors. a.

Response:

- Hide quoted text — Show quoted text – ……. averti: I look on this as a fairly benign and respectful form of control; others may disagree. TV: I don’t know if I disagree or not; I still don’t even know what you’re talking about. You said, I think, that you are for the most part able to be touched in non-physical ways by other people, and that some aspect of that is a control thing. I don’t understand that. I think he’s saying that he allows people to, for example, pantomime touching him maybe only using words, and he can allow people to say things that touch him inside, but that being physically touched or held is very difficult for him to sort out and very stressful.  So, he keeps others at bay a lot to reduce some of that stress and to keep himself safe. Have I got it, averti? Pretty much. It extends to not being ”touched” emotionally by a lot of the standard things–somebody elses’ troubles, for example. Which can tend to make me appear callous when at most I am only detached. This hasn’t been the case between us, thankfully.   No, it hasn’t. But we’re special 8).

Same here. Yet even in our discussions of troubles I have had, you still use the thought and reason I refer to below, quite often. I know you care. You care enough to take initiative sometimes and take me into uncomfortable territory. And the territory feels safer with someone who helps make *sense* out of it. I seem to recall seeing you do this in response to others, though. I’m afraid so.

I recall you pointing _out_ to people that you are less detatched than you _seem_. That your ways of being supportive are more geared toward thought and reason than they are around emotional feelings. But you can’t deny that the thought and reason aren’t guided by emotional feelings, to a point, can you? You don’t try to help someone in a sound manner just because it’s a logical task to undertake — you do it because you care. – Hide quoted text — Show quoted text – I agree generally with points you make, such as control not automatically being a bad thing; in fact, I’m inclined to think just the opposite. But I don’t get the link you’re making for yourself between control and being touched. I think I do.  Touch, a simple hand on someone’s arm or even a finger, can be an invasion of sorts and can be overwhelming.  If he has trouble sorting out what the touch means and is caught between strong impulses, he’s going to find touch uncomfortable emotionally. Or the instance of touch triggering excessive reaction. One of the last physical acts of v*olence I ever did was in unplanned reaction to being grasped from behind by a derelict (at the corner of Haight and Ashbury in San Fran, of all places.) Noses being softer than elbows, I put the poor jerk in the hospital. It was clear he _wasn’t_ trying to kill me–ten seconds later.

That must have felt chilling. Yipe.  I’ve done similar things, although doing much less damage. I think many people have more of a fight-or-flight circuit than they think they do–being as it is so seldom triggered. (If it’s OFTEN triggered, one tends to become a guest of the state after a while.)

I don’t know that I have that. I think I have a freeze reflex. I’ve never been grabbed the way you describe, but in situations where it’s *felt* like I might be, I haven’t known quite what to do. Here’s an example that I don’t know if I’ve ever mentioned. A couple of months after I was r*ped in 1978, I was way drunk at F*ckface’s Christmas party, in the wee hours of the morning. It was at the Holiday Inn (I was a desk clerk there and had to work the next morning, but I got a DWI in the H.Inn van after driving a guest to the airport, and, um, was quite fired ), and F*ckface was already in the motel room we’d rented, asleep, and I was still partying. Some guy told me there was a party in one of the rooms, and I went with him, and when we got inside, there was no one in there except some guy asleep in the dark room in one of the two beds. The guy shut the door and started trying to make out with me, and I froze. I just wished he would stop, while I stood there sort of shrinking away and not knowing what to do. Eventually I shrank away enough to get out of the room. – Hide quoted text — Show quoted text – This can happen in an emotional sense as well, though it plays out more like ”You’re trying to emotionally jerk me around” rather than ”you’re trying to kill me.” Agg.  I often think as we talk, and sometimes you’ve heard me ask this, "What did they DO to you??".  I know some of the answers to that. Did I ever tell you about the hand and face game? When I was 5, my dad bet me that if I held my hands up in front of me, palms out, that he could hit my hands before I could move them. Educationally, I played along, moved my hands aside, and got a fist the size of a canned ham right in the face… THAT is the stuff they don’t teach in pre-school 8(.

This really chills and disgusts me. I wish you never had to learn such terrible "lessons". And that no one else had to learn them either. – Hide quoted text — Show quoted text – If he has trouble relaxing and letting people close enough to touch him, when he does get touched it’s also likely to be stressful and unpleasant.  If he has trouble letting himself be gentled and taken care of, then allowing someone to touch him is going to be stressful.  So the easiest and safest thing to do is to not let people close enough to touch him, because it’s so uncomfortable.  This would not necessarily preclude him touching someone else, though.  That would be a more obvious control thing, where he can touch someone else and take care of them, but they’re not allowed to handle him in a similar way because he’s too uncomfortable being taken care of.  If he’s in control, he’s not very vulnerable. You got it. Mostly by cheating.  We’ve discussed this before on our own and I didn’t forget. You have FAR too good a memory 8). PTSD apparently has caused you to accumulate memort cells instead of losing them like any normal dissoid.

Or you’re just that memorable of a person, maybe, to those who care about you? You’ve commented on my memory at times, too. Are you surprised when your friends are able to describe you as well as babs did above? You often _seem_ surprised. And there are, of course, many phases of s*xual touching where one of the partners is clearly in control. Exactly.  So there is a situation of great vulnerability where control is exchanged in negotiated, planned out ways (in the ideal).  As a result, it tends to be very safe. Safer than Real Life. S*ductively so. ”This is so perfectly exactly the way I like it, why should I unergo the risks of any less structured situation?”

But it wasn’t _perfectly_ _exactly_ the way you liked it, was it? Indeed, it feels very safe to me to associate with people who come right out and ASK to be controlled. How’s that, averti? You a smart one, babs 8). Heh.  I listened closely.  Do you ever let anyone else do this with you? I have. Two different ways; in the old le*ther days, with that totally stylized m*ster/sl*ve dynamic. And more recently, in the context of general trust and loveship.

The latter’s a lot less structured, isn’t it? How far can you let them have control before you start to feel scared? It varies. There are a few people whom I trust so throughly (for me, anyway) that I really do sincerely let go.

Yep. It’s good to see. OTOH, there are/have been people that I didn’t trust MYSELF with, and the relationship got disconnected.

Didn’t trust yourself how? – Hide quoted text — Show quoted text – Lionheart: you exert over how much you let people have access to you. I’ve seen you wiggle around all over the place and put up all manner of shields (apparently) trying to prevent people from being able to know you. I’d be interested to hear more about this too. I generally define the exertion of control over how much I let people have access to me as boundary-setting. I’m afraid I have a lousy sense of boundary–possibly due to early training, possibly due to difficulty in believing what I’m told regardless of who’s telling me 8). Seems like the ethical thing to do is to control MY sphere in such a way that the issue of boundaries never comes up, rather than to be setting up requirements for how I want other people to treat me. Maybe I’m splitting hairs, but whether you call it boundary-setting or controlling your sphere, the two seem awfully similar to me. If you never want the issue of boundaries to come up, seems you’d have to make your sphere small enough so that it can be controlled without bumping up against other people’s stuff. Which may be what Lionheart was saying. BINGO!  I think this is how averti manages to appear invisible even to people who know he’s right there.

… read more »

Response:

- Hide quoted text — Show quoted text – <snipping to the part I wish to address Have you ever considered that the REAL basic difference between you and me–or anybody and anybody else–is that I KNOW I’m alone and I accept it? You may tell me I’m way off base here, but the above statement strikes me as one that could only be made by a very lonely person.  It even strikes a chord in me. Good reading 8). Of COURSE I’m a very lonely person. I was born that way (it seems). It’s not even quantifiable as loneliness most of the time–more like some kind of pre-existing human condition. Ah, the existential human dilemma.  Or one of them. I was existential before existential was cool 8).

My therapist told me last week that he sometimes beats himself up for ways he feels (he’s not very open emotionally himself, he says, and was raised in as nondemonstrative of a family as I was), and thinks to himself, "I’m supposed to be a _therapist_!" And then he said sometimes he changes his title. "Existential artist" was one of his favorites. Another was "psycho poet." Were you born that way or born into an environment that made you feel that way? I assume that no newborn infant comes equipped with a complex attitude like that–so I was being hyperbolic in saying that I was ”born” that way. It was nurture–or lack thereof.

Well, is it too late for nurture? Can your complex attitude be smoothed/simplified somewhat? I think in some ways, it already has been, here and there, a few wrinkles ironed out, a few things feeling possible that once seemed inconsiderable. Of course, most people come equipped with the cure; if you’re lonely, go out and find some people to be with… It has to be the right people, although I guess just being around people with no connection is sometimes better than being alone. Well, no, not for me. My major configurations seems to be (1) alone, and (2) with one or two others.

Same here. Anything more than half a dozen people who I know well enough to talk and laugh with, and I feel sort of lost. I’m not so sure that ”connection” has a one-to-one, er, connection with not feeling alone, anyway.

Do you mean that even though you feel a connection with someone, you still can feel alone with that person? Chatting with the pharmacist is a form of connecting. Especially mine: she’s a knockout 8).

hehehe. You know, while I was scrolling, I half-expected that. the only two pharmacists I go to are my dad in my hometown and a guy in town here who’s kind of a lech, from what I hear from the bar waitresses 40 years or so his junior. But what is really great for me is people who I connect with on a number of levels – emotional, intellectual and have a lot of interests in common with and who understand me pretty well.  Kindred spirits, you know? In theory, yeah. I’m happy for you that that part works.

Me too. It’s not always an easy thing to find or to embrace. It’s somewhat of a risk to put more of you on the table. – Hide quoted text — Show quoted text – In fact it is something I’ve talked about more than a few times.  It is a recurring theme in some science fiction, in which aliens who communicate telpathically somehow get inside the head of a human being and comment on how incredibly alone human beings are. Part of the price we pay for all this critical facility, I imagine. I don’t think people are wired to derive full satisfaction from other people; elsewise we would have more St. Francis’ and fewer war criminals. No, I suppose the environment in which we evolved didn’t give an evolutionary advantage to kindredness of spirit. It seems to be a luxury in which one can indulge after the necessary conflict and clashing has been taken care of.

Excellent point. It’s hard to find a kindredness of spirit when you’re little and your spirit is being broken. – Hide quoted text — Show quoted text – The other night in feeling the depths of my pain, I was telling my friend how I missed my alters, because for a little while I wasn’t all alone in my body. This also reminds me of a discussion some friends of mine had years ago. One asked the other "Are you lonely?" To which after a long silence he responded, "Either always or never."  To which she responded, "I knew you were going to say that." <nod. It’s an odd question–to me it would be sort of along the lines of ”are you breathing?” Well we were all about 17 or 18 at the time. Ah. See, girls ARE smarter than boys 8). At 17 I knew there was a h*ll of a lot wrong, but I couldn’t peek into myself and identify any of it.

As you know, this makes me hurt for you. For you now, and at 17. And elsewhen. <hug – Hide quoted text — Show quoted text – Always struck me how the line can seem so thin that we can be unsure as to whether we are never or always lonely.  And yet I can relate to this too. Can you? Up to the point where I try to imagine ”never.” Funny, I rarely think of myself as being lonely nowadays.  I suspect the never part of the answer was along the lines of not needing people. Well, sometimes I have been just plain unfair to people–in the sense of needing certain things from them, or needing whatever whenever–without accepting the whole package, so to speak.

You’ve worked on that, though. You’re more than your past; we all are. The reason the future is blank is because nothing has happened yet, not because nothing’s there. It’s a scary concept sometimes, but it can be inspiring, I think, to realize that we do not have to be bound by the past — that the future isn’t predetermined. And that lessons like "you’re worthless," and all the other forms of degradation that you and so many others have learned, can be unlearned. Without taking on the overhead. It’s relatively easy to have an ONLY s*xual relationship; it’s all the other things that seem to be human needs that I flunk at. S*x is easy, dinner is hard 8(.

Yes, I’ll grant you that you have problems in the other areas, but you have worked very hard on them. It’s not too late to examine yourself and let more in, and let more of yourself out, and I think you’re discovering this more and more all the time. You get a passing grade with _me_. With extra marks for effort. Although for me it would never have truly been accurate to say I don’t need people so much as to say that my life was more peaceful in the absence of people, and peace was a cherished commodity. Yeah. I know what that means.

Same here. One of the reasons I’ve always stayed up late at night is that I cherished the peace and quiet when everyone else was asleep. I have hinted at what used to dilute the loneliness for me: s*x, in many complicated and subtle forms. But that can only carry one so far. Yup, reminds me of a song with the line "looking for love in all the wrong places."  Been there myself years ago, but clearly not to the same extent. I have found a great deal of love. Usually more than I can contrive to return, if such things can be measured. Maybe I got blinded by success–I’ve been in all the RIGHT places, but something’s missing…

Connection? Even though you’ve been given a great deal of love, how much of it have you been able to _accept_? I mean deep down? For you? It has always seemed to me that you enjoyed being loved, but that you haven’t fully accepted that you deserved it or were worthy of it, even though you _wanted_ to be. Is that a fair assessment, on some level? – Hide quoted text — Show quoted text – Uh huh. So why are you here? Information. If I know what’s up with me and ALSO what’s up with YOU, I’m that much ahead in the big figuring-it-out challenge. That’s MY support. If it doesn’t jibe with yours, well–I’m very used to that 8). You don’t have to answer this (obviously), but what I mean is if you aren’t comfortable with it, I can understand that.  Just wondering if you see healing from emotional trauma as occurring on an intellectual level? Mostly. I can’t see how you could clearly divide the intellectual part from the emotional part. But I have some experience in th intellectual part, and not much in the emotional part–heck, I wouldn’t even know when I was getting ”healed.”

I think the intellectual part is pretty vital. It helps to make sense of things that sometimes *make* no sense. Sometimes I don’t know until something happens that brings back a vivid recollection of what I felt etc a year, two years ago. Ah. That is a good kind of benchmark.

Oh, yeah. I’ve felt that, big time. And have been reminded by other people at times, too — you, of course, but also others I don’t know as well as you. There are people I know fairly well on talk.r*pe but don’t correspond with regularly, and a few of them have commented to me privately how much they’ve seen me grow from when I first started posting. It’s something they see more clearly than I do sometimes, since I’m not really *observing* me the way they are. And I’ve known YOU for a year and a half, and have seen a lot of growth in you. Lots of steps forward, and steps back, too, but still, it’s *movement*. And you have learned from some of your backward steps, … read more »

Response:

- Hide quoted text — Show quoted text – Newsgroups:   alt.support.dissociation I think I was about as ”healed” as I get to be a few years ago, when I shaped my entire life around…the idea that you take such exception to below. Irony that my greatest achievements and highest validation were around things that a good number of the asdissians would run from on winged feet. Now, if THAT’s not funny…8). Would you care to say what your greatest achievement is and what your highest validation comes from? It would be helpful to me and probably to anyone else who might be wanting to understand you. I don’t have any anymore. You don’t have any what anymore? Yeah, that WAS sloppy 8). I don’t have any more great (thus by extension, greatest) achievments.

I think you do, in a sense. Or at least that you have sought to explore the possibility. And I’m kinda indifferent to validation.

Really? I think I’ve seen otherwise. any achievements? What was it you were referring to above? (You don’t have to answer if you’d rather not, but the answer you’ve just given doesn’t help me much) Didn’t help ME much, upon re-reading 8).

I figured it out. Do I get a prize?  I suppose my validation comes in/from my few friends, that think positively of me and seem to benefit by associating with me. These now are people who have been touched by me in ways other than physical–I have no idea whether this is ”better” or the friendship more honorably ”earned” than a relationship based entirely around s*x. What do you think? (Bearing in mind that I am talking about equality, not s*duction.) Are you able to be touched by other people? Physically? Not really. I mean, I don’t cringe or anything, but it’s hard–sometimes exhausting–to decode touching as anything other than either an attack or s*xual in nature.

If someone puts their hand on your back while, for example, showing you something on a desk or table at work, are you unusually conscious of that hand’s presence? My first thought is that if you were, you would know whether this other-than-s*xual touching was better than the s*xual. I don’t think it falls into a question of better. S*exual is more rewarding in almost every way. I have yet to figure out why I don’t do it as much and as avidly as I used to.

Well, you’ve explored it, and come up with a lot of evidence, some of which you’ve posted here. Would you like to talk again about it? I’m inclined to ask you how does it feel to you? In a previous post you referred to your previous friends as just "f*ckbuddies". I wondered if that term reflected a lack of satisfaction on your part, a sense that there was something missing. There’s always something missing. We were born with something missing, and then life proceeded to either take more away or remind us of the universal missing-ness.

Well, life did *give* us some things, too, though. Like, for you, books. It’s something I’ve seen you practically *glow* about, and you don’t glow about a whole lot of different things. I’m glad that you were able to find that one area of thrill in your ab*sive years. Don’t get me wrong: I have experienced GREAT love. But my partners all tend to have actual lives–families, interests, kids, husbands, houses (well, I got one of those)–so that we intersect on the f*ckbuddy level but are not in each others’ lives.

Well, that was safer for you in that you wouldn’t be needed on a whole-person basis, and that you knew the other people were less likely to be hurt by your inabilities to give more of yourself than you knew how to do. Not to mention that I made it easier for you not to need *them*. As for me, when I meet someone who has the same values and beliefs as I do, I’m thrilled. When I meet those rare people who’s eyes give out warmth when they look at me, I’m touched. The greatest and most satisfying connection I can feel with another comes through a spiritual connection (and that word has broad meanings to me). Next in satisfaction would  come an intellectual and emotional connection. I’m glad for you.

You have this, to an extent. It may not be as great as an extent as it could be, but it’s something you should feel proud of. And you don’t know what the future can bring, sweetie. You’re still kinda new at this trusting thing, and I’ve seen you take steps and make connections with people more and more. – Hide quoted text — Show quoted text – I’m confused because the idea I took exception to below was that you warned me that you are most dangerous when you appear to be most safe. I can see no useful purpose for warning people  about how dangerous you are (especially, or maybe only here on the net), and this *particular* warning that you are most dangerous when you appear most safe could only serve to send people in the opposite direction. That’s part of the risk I take, then. I’m confused. Why do you feel you need to take the risk? It’s beginning tot occur to me that you may actually feel that the kindest thing you can do for people is warn them away from you. ? A number of people have said that, over the years. I think I am trying to be fair to the other person and yet retain some measure of my self-ness. It’s also a kind of gating device, almost an entrance exam (for both). YOU are not afraid of me; therefore it’s possible we can continue to dialog. A number of people in asdis ARE or have been afraid of me–though I think it’s not ME but what I remind them of–and perhaps it’s only responsible to warn those people off.

I think part of it, coming from inside you, is your own perception, too, though. Over time, you’ve tried to warn *me* about you, but I never saw the you that you talked about … I see the you that I know. The more you open up, the more that comes out. I’m far from the only one who sees it.  It’s been my observation that MANY people are most dangerous when they appear most safe. It’s not something I came up with on my own. Yes. This goes with seeing all of life as a war zone, filled with hidden enemies. This *was* life for me, in the past. Those people (perps) *want* to harm, and they use the appearance of safety as a deception, as a cover. Yep.

Well, for most people here, they have been harmed by the very people who in ideal situations would be the ones to love them and protect them from harm. With that in mind, it could potentially be easier to trust a neighborhood grocer than to trust someone you love. I don’t think that *you* want to harm, so I’m still left wondering why you described yourself that way. I don’t want to harm, but I also don’t want to be cried wolf at, which has been happening around the ng for about 3 years… tell me, who do you know who enjoys being greeted with hysteria? I don’t.

I seriously think that it must trigger that feeling you have inside you that deep down, you’re *vil. You know it’s not true, but you *don’t* know, deep down. *I* know it’s not true, and *I* know it, deep down (and others do, too). I know that’s not enough for *you* to know it deep down, but I think it helps you gain some sense that maybe, just maybe, you really *are* good all the way through? Unless, of course, they choose instead to warn *you* of how dangerous *they* are. That’s fine. Only fair. Yea, but I think we’d all look pretty foolish, warning each other of how dangerous we are, when we’re all miles away from each other and our only physical weapons are computer keys. And if I try to throw any of those at you, they’ll just bounce off my screen and hit *me* in the nose.

<I laughed SO hard when I envisioned this!!! That’s right 8). But I think you know about psychic harm, and self-induced emotional trauma, and denigrating and invalidating other people, etc. All of which is accomplished with words.

Yes. Words can hurt, even when they’re typed. And  when our connection is primarily through those typed words, those words become a risk. Not that it’s a bad risk, but it *is* a risk. The more we trust, the more we risk. We can be hurt by it, or harmed, or a combination. – Hide quoted text — Show quoted text – Have you ever considered that the REAL basic difference between you and me–or anybody and anybody else–is that I KNOW I’m alone and I accept it? Uh huh. So why are you here? Information. If I know what’s up with me and ALSO what’s up with YOU, I’m that much ahead in the big figuring-it-out challenge. That’s MY support. If it doesn’t jibe with yours, well–I’m very used to that 8). You can come here for info if you like I think that’s one reason many come here. I agree. In different ways, and with varying success, looks like. Now for another response. imo, if someone is able to accept anything, that involves coming to a state of equanimity with it, a state of psychological and emotional well-being. You say you are unhappy. To me that means you haven’t accepted your aloneness. I don’t understand the acceptance part. Might as well ”accept” being 6 feet tall or having a bad back–this is me, I’m stuck with my life, like everybody else is. I dare say I have accepted my unhappiness, though.

Totally? I don’t see that. I … read more »

Response:

[...pruned here and there...] [...] Would you care to say what your greatest achievement is and what your highest validation comes from? It would be helpful to me and probably to anyone else who might be wanting to understand you. I don’t have any anymore. You don’t have any what anymore? Yeah, that WAS sloppy 8). I don’t have any more great (thus by extension, greatest) achievments. I think you do, in a sense. Or at least that you have sought to explore the possibility.

Well, I took ”Do you care to say…” as calling for my opinion on my achievements. I’ve saved several people from an untimely death (I presume it would have been untimely, it certainly was unwanted 8)). I suppose by most conventional measures those would be great achievements. And I’m kinda indifferent to validation. Really? I think I’ve seen otherwise.

You’re looking from a better angle 8). I don’t know…it’s confusing, where I once thought it was all worked out and I could just go on being the Johnny Appleseed of org*sms until I got too old to make it from one bed to the next. any achievements? What was it you were referring to above? (You don’t have to answer if you’d rather not, but the answer you’ve just given doesn’t help me much) Didn’t help ME much, upon re-reading 8). I figured it out. Do I get a prize?

You are a prize 8). – Hide quoted text — Show quoted text –  I suppose my validation comes in/from my few friends, that think positively of me and seem to benefit by associating with me. These now are people who have been touched by me in ways other than physical–I have no idea whether this is ”better” or the friendship more honorably ”earned” than a relationship based entirely around s*x. What do you think? (Bearing in mind that I am talking about equality, not s*duction.) Are you able to be touched by other people? Physically? Not really. I mean, I don’t cringe or anything, but it’s hard–sometimes exhausting–to decode touching as anything other than either an attack or s*xual in nature. If someone puts their hand on your back while, for example, showing you something on a desk or table at work, are you unusually conscious of that hand’s presence?

Severely conscious. It seldom happens. I wouldn’t be surprised if my body language and stuff gave off very clear anti-touch warnings. Which is not the same as hostility, I don’t think. My first thought is that if you were, you would know whether this other-than-s*xual touching was better than the s*xual. I don’t think it falls into a question of better. S*exual is more rewarding in almost every way. I have yet to figure out why I don’t do it as much and as avidly as I used to. Well, you’ve explored it, and come up with a lot of evidence, some of which you’ve posted here. Would you like to talk again about it?

I dunno. How’s that for an honest and characteristic asdis reply? Lately I find it difficult to think about things that used to be among my favorite things to think about… I’m inclined to ask you how does it feel to you? In a previous post you referred to your previous friends as just "f*ckbuddies". I wondered if that term reflected a lack of satisfaction on your part, a sense that there was something missing. There’s always something missing. We were born with something missing, and then life proceeded to either take more away or remind us of the universal missing-ness. Well, life did *give* us some things, too, though. Like, for you, books. It’s something I’ve seen you practically *glow* about, and you don’t glow about a whole lot of different things. I’m glad that you were able to find that one area of thrill in your ab*sive years.

Yes. I feel sorry for the lonely, abused, alienated youngsters of today; books just aren’t much of a feature of US life anymore. Libraries don’t seem to be the magic places I remember. Don’t get me wrong: I have experienced GREAT love. But my partners all tend to have actual lives–families, interests, kids, husbands, houses (well, I got one of those)–so that we intersect on the f*ckbuddy level but are not in each others’ lives. Well, that was safer for you in that you wouldn’t be needed on a whole-person basis, and that you knew the other people were less likely to be hurt by your inabilities to give more of yourself than you knew how to do. Not to mention that I made it easier for you not to need *them*.

Guess so. The whole BDSM dynamic tends to foster that kind of compartmentalization–though usually, the more I got to know somebody, the less kinky stuff there ended up being. It’s as though, on one level, everything in life is a game. So if you get tired of playing Nintendo, you go and play Tomb Raiders. Or if you get tired of playing married-with-children, you go and play s*x magician for a while. As for me, when I meet someone who has the same values and beliefs as I do, I’m thrilled. When I meet those rare people who’s eyes give out warmth when they look at me, I’m touched. The greatest and most satisfying connection I can feel with another comes through a spiritual connection (and that word has broad meanings to me). Next in satisfaction would  come an intellectual and emotional connection. I’m glad for you. You have this, to an extent. It may not be as great as an extent as it could be, but it’s something you should feel proud of.

I can identify that spiritual connection, yes. I’m not prone to feeling proud of things like that. I suppose I would be happier if I were. – Hide quoted text — Show quoted text – And you don’t know what the future can bring, sweetie. You’re still kinda new at this trusting thing, and I’ve seen you take steps and make connections with people more and more. I’m confused because the idea I took exception to below was that you warned me that you are most dangerous when you appear to be most safe. I can see no useful purpose for warning people  about how dangerous you are (especially, or maybe only here on the net), and this *particular* warning that you are most dangerous when you appear most safe could only serve to send people in the opposite direction. That’s part of the risk I take, then. I’m confused. Why do you feel you need to take the risk? It’s beginning tot occur to me that you may actually feel that the kindest thing you can do for people is warn them away from you. ? A number of people have said that, over the years. I think I am trying to be fair to the other person and yet retain some measure of my self-ness. It’s also a kind of gating device, almost an entrance exam (for both). YOU are not afraid of me; therefore it’s possible we can continue to dialog. A number of people in asdis ARE or have been afraid of me–though I think it’s not ME but what I remind them of–and perhaps it’s only responsible to warn those people off. I think part of it, coming from inside you, is your own perception, too, though. Over time, you’ve tried to warn *me* about you, but I never saw the you that you talked about …

Musta been a useful warning, then 8). Look, you and I are friends. Close, deep, intricate friends. You’re going to see me through that filter. NOJ and CS and I are NOT friends. They don’t like me, maybe they despise me, they don’t trust me, etc. So they are going to see me through THAT filter. Add to that the apparent truth that most dissociative people have EXTRA filters–based upon past experiences–and you can see where my uncertainty comes from. Suppose I am neither as good as you think I am nor as bad as somebody else thinks I am? There’s the invisible man again 8). I think. I see the you that I know. The more you open up, the more that comes out. I’m far from the only one who sees it.

I know that. – Hide quoted text — Show quoted text –  It’s been my observation that MANY people are most dangerous when they appear most safe. It’s not something I came up with on my own. Yes. This goes with seeing all of life as a war zone, filled with hidden enemies. This *was* life for me, in the past. Those people (perps) *want* to harm, and they use the appearance of safety as a deception, as a cover. Yep. Well, for most people here, they have been harmed by the very people who in ideal situations would be the ones to love them and protect them from harm. With that in mind, it could potentially be easier to trust a neighborhood grocer than to trust someone you love.

Good point. High investment carries the possibility of high loss. I don’t think that *you* want to harm, so I’m still left wondering why you described yourself that way. I don’t want to harm, but I also don’t want to be cried wolf at, which has been happening around the ng for about 3 years… tell me, who do you know who enjoys being greeted with hysteria? I don’t. I seriously think that it must trigger that feeling you have inside you that deep down, you’re *vil. You know it’s not true, but you *don’t* know, deep down.

As suggested above. Again, a matter of validation. On even-numbered days I can laugh off an accusation of being *vil; on odd-numbered days I figure they are 100% right and I should go back and live in a cave. *I* know it’s not true, and *I* know it, deep down (and others do, too). I know that’s not enough for *you* to know it deep down, but I think it helps you gain some sense that maybe, just maybe, you really *are* good all the way through?

Sometimes. – Hide quoted text — Show quoted text – Unless, of course, they choose instead to warn *you* of how dangerous

… read more »

Response:

[...once again, trimulation...] a Pretty much. It extends to not being ”touched” emotionally by a lot of the standard things–somebody elses’ troubles, for example. Which can tend to make me appear callous when at most I am only detached. babs This hasn’t been the case between us, thankfully. No, it hasn’t. But we’re special 8). laurie Same here. Yet even in our discussions of troubles I have had, you still use the thought and reason I refer to below, quite often. I know you care. You care enough to take initiative sometimes and take me into uncomfortable territory. And the territory feels safer with someone who helps make *sense* out of it.

Do you get the feeling that it’s easier–and maybe safer–to try and make sense out of somebody else’ stuff? I seem to recall seeing you do this in response to others, though. I’m afraid so. I recall you pointing _out_ to people that you are less detatched than you _seem_. That your ways of being supportive are more geared toward thought and reason than they are around emotional feelings.

Yes, that was part of my feeble defense here some time back 8). The reasonable comeback to that, it has occurred to me, is ”How the h*ll am I supposed to know that?” But you can’t deny that the thought and reason aren’t guided by emotional feelings, to a point, can you? You don’t try to help someone in a sound manner just because it’s a logical task to undertake — you do it because you care.

I really don’t know. I imagine nobody likes to be thought of as being under somebody elses’ microscope 8P. Yet if logic and discipline are what I have to work with, why fault me for lack of displayed emotion? There are people in the world and around this group whom I dislike–or I dislike what they say–but about whom I nevertheless seem to care. THAT confuses me even more. [...] I think many people have more of a fight-or-flight circuit than they think they do–being as it is so seldom triggered. (If it’s OFTEN triggered, one tends to become a guest of the state after a while.) I don’t know that I have that. I think I have a freeze reflex. I’ve never been grabbed the way you describe, but in situations where it’s *felt* like I might be, I haven’t known quite what to do.

Well, among other considerations, most people, men and women alike, haven’t been violently attacked. (I say ”most people”, not most people in this group 8(). The burnt child fears the stove; the previously beaten-up child fears being beaten up over again. Here’s an example that I don’t know if I’ve ever mentioned. A couple of months after I was r*ped in 1978, I was way drunk at F*ckface’s Christmas party, in the wee hours of the morning. It was at the Holiday Inn (I was a desk clerk there and had to work the next morning, but I got a DWI in the H.Inn van after driving a guest to the airport, and, um, was quite fired )

Already this is worthy of ”America’s Most Wanted”. , and F*ckface was already in the motel room we’d rented, asleep, and I was still partying. Some guy told me there was a party in one of the rooms, and I went with him, and when we got inside, there was no one in there except some guy asleep in the dark room in one of the two beds. The guy shut the door and started trying to make out with me, and I froze. I just wished he would stop, while I stood there sort of shrinking away and not knowing what to do. Eventually I shrank away enough to get out of the room.

Ugh. Sounds like a primo makeout move for a 14 YO boy 8(. The things I am the least proud of are acts of violence that were not reflexive, but coldly planned and carried out. But that stuff is waaaay behind me now. [...] ? You’ve commented on my memory at times, too. Are you surprised when your friends are able to describe you as well as babs did above? You often _seem_ surprised.

I am. Between my swiss-cheese memory and my general feeling of being made of Saran Wrap, reliable memory just seems like voodoo 8). And there are, of course, many phases of s*xual touching where one of the partners is clearly in control. Exactly.  So there is a situation of great vulnerability where control is exchanged in negotiated, planned out ways (in the ideal).  As a result, it tends to be very safe. Safer than Real Life. S*ductively so. ”This is so perfectly exactly the way I like it, why should I unergo the risks of any less structured situation?” But it wasn’t _perfectly_ _exactly_ the way you liked it, was it?

No, course not. Selling myself, in this case. – Hide quoted text — Show quoted text – Indeed, it feels very safe to me to associate with people who come right out and ASK to be controlled. How’s that, averti? You a smart one, babs 8). Heh.  I listened closely.  Do you ever let anyone else do this with you? I have. Two different ways; in the old le*ther days, with that totally stylized m*ster/sl*ve dynamic. And more recently, in the context of general trust and loveship. The latter’s a lot less structured, isn’t it?

Yeah. Plus it’s new, because it’s two new people (well, new to each other). How far can you let them have control before you start to feel scared? It varies. There are a few people whom I trust so throughly (for me, anyway) that I really do sincerely let go. Yep. It’s good to see. OTOH, there are/have been people that I didn’t trust MYSELF with, and the relationship got disconnected. Didn’t trust yourself how?

Um, sub-spoiler for s*xual violence******* 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 A couple years ago I met a young woman who just flat out fascinated me. She was a survivor of inc*stuous r*pe, had very low self-esteem (and what looked like low self-interest, if there is such a thing), was intellectually brilliant, bewitching in appearance, and so on. She had been wanting to be more s*xual, or to get more out of s*x, and in that context we formed a relationship. And THAT part worked. She also desired to be really beaten up, like bruises all over the face and being thrown around the room beaten up, and at that I balked. My boundaries bumping into hers. My problem along with all this pleasure was that I started talking myself into thinking that she was the one to fit into this hole in the middle of me. Which was (a) wishful thinking, and (b) gross unrealism; we were destined, at best, to be distant friends and close lovers. It seemed. I made myself crazy trying to sort all this out, and finally we drifted apart. (Both being experienced apart-drifters, it was no great feat 8(). I COULD have consumed this woman whole and tried to fit her into all my needs, or as much as I could arrange. It is good that I didn’t, because the higher the flight, the more deadly the fall. But I didn’t drift off over these hi-falutin considerations, but because I was scared. I was scared that I could become what she wanted, but in the process I would arrive at the same end-point: that what SHE was was something _I_ no longer wanted. So I faded. [...] This unseen business is backfiring one me, though, more and more. How so?  Can you say more about this? I now believe that one prime cause of becoming the meat in a truck sandwich a few years ago, was my un-noticeabiliy. I think I give it off like some out-of-control Shadow effect. Hmmm. Isn’t that taking it to an extreme? Surely your _vehicle_ can’t be unnoticeable just because _you_ happen to be inside driving it?

Hey, have you never heard of an involuntary Cloaking Device? (Not just the physical discomfort and indignity of being walked through.) Aie!  :(  Oh, honey. Or trucked through 8). Hey, if a few good people can ‘’see” me–here and in other virtual and real places–then all is not lost. I seeya all over the place.

Heh. Same here. I see Babs too. I can make you into Win95 wallpaper, even.

Does that mean you have to use me or get another operating system? In Japan, the hand may be used as a knife. Unfortunately, it may not thereafter be used as a hand. Laurie, woman with no sig (but I still have a hand — two, in fact)

That seems a reasonable number 8).

Response:

I’ve tried to clean this up to make it easier for people to read, should anyone else be reading this Anyone, of course, is welcome to jump in [...] Lionheart: Are you able to be touched by other people?

averti: Physically? Not really. I mean, I don’t cringe or anything, but it’s hard–sometimes exhausting–to decode touching as anything other than either an attack or s*xual in nature.

Lionheart: I meant non-physically. You had said that you liked it when other people were non-physically touched by you.

averti: Oh, I get it now. Yes, for the most part. Some aspect of it is a control thing–which I gather is a side of me that doesn’t really impress you favorably.

Lionheart: I’m trying to think of why you might think that. Can’t remember saying anything about it. What does bother me is the control you exert over how much you let people have access to you. I’ve seen you wiggle around all over the place and put up all manner of shields (apparently) trying to prevent people from being able to know you. averti:  Not controlling the person, but making a difference in the situation. [...] Lionheart: I’m inclined to ask you how does it feel to you? In a previous post you referred to your previous friends as just "f*ckbuddies". I wondered if that term reflected a lack of satisfaction on your part, a sense that there was something missing.

averti: There’s always something missing. We were born with something missing, and then life proceeded to either take more away or remind us of the universal missing-ness.

Lionheart: What was missing when you were born?

averti: Hedonia? Faith? Trust? Are people born with those things and then their surrounding influences beat them out of them?

Lionheart: I choose to believe people are born with the potential for goodness, for perfection even. I think surrounding influences beat a lot of that out of people, yes. But I think the potential remains and can be nurtured. I suppose people must also be born with trust. And that can be destroyed. But it also can be nurtured back to  a pretty good state of health, I think. [...]

Lionheart: I’m confused because the idea I took exception to below was that you warned me that you are most dangerous when you appear to be most safe. I can see no useful purpose for warning people  about how dangerous you are (especially, or maybe only here on the net), and this *particular* warning that you are most dangerous when you appear most safe could only serve to send people in the opposite direction.

averti: That’s part of the risk I take, then.

Lionheart: I’m confused. Why do you feel you need to take the risk? It’s beginning tot occur to me that you may actually feel that the kindest thing you can do for people is warn them away from you. ?

averti: A number of people have said that, over the years. I think I am trying to be fair to the other person and yet retain some measure of my self-ness. It’s also a kind of gating device, almost an entrance exam (for both). YOU are not afraid of me; therefore it’s possible we can continue to dialog.

Lionheart: While I can understand this, I’ll tell you how it makes me feel. I feel like I’ve secretly been given a test that I hadn’t agreed to take. I don’t like that.

averti: I can see how you wouldn’t. But you are testing me as well– it’s maybe a difference in terminology.

Lionheart: I’m not sure that I am, although yea, usually I guess there is mutual testing, but generally through honesty, rather than through adopting a pose or role. You take a little risk, expose a little of yourself, and see how the other person responds. That would be the typical test. In fact, I read in a book that it’s okay to do this  Would you take it personally when a sn*ke extends his tongue to test your scent?

Lionheart: I’m not sure who you’re comparing to that long skinny reptile. You? or the other? averti: People who are automatically or reflexively afraid of me–or what they think of me–cause me pain. One avoids pain, realistically, BEFORE it is introduced.

Lionheart: Yea, but you’d be generalizing if you regarded a group of people who don’t yet know you as likely to cause you pain. I’d say you can generalize, up to a point and with appropriate evidence. A bunch of realy big guys wearing all black leather and carrying weapons are more likely to cause you pain than a bunch of earnest middle aged women survivors of abuse (just to pick a random couple of examples).imo averti: A number of people in asdis ARE or have been afraid of me–though I think it’s not ME but what I remind them of–and perhaps it’s only responsible to warn those people off.

Lionheart: Well, I think what you’re saying is that you’re afriad of people. So you try to act really scary so that you can flush the dangerous ones out into the open. Correct me if I’m wrong [...] averti: I don’t want to harm, but I also don’t want to be cried wolf at, which has been happening around the ng for about 3 years… tell me, who do you know who enjoys being greeted with hysteria? I don’t.

Lionheart: Um. There seems to be a simple solution. Stop giving people secret tests to see if they’re scared of you or not?

averti: How can I stop it? I didn’t start it. Why not suggest that I stop flinching when a loud noise goes off behind me? asdis is FULL of hypervigilant people who are forever checking other people for potential harm. MY potential harm is that somebody will metaphorically drop dead of heart failure before I can establish that I am not out to get them.

Lionheart: you seem to be 180 degrees off from the position you took earlier. Which I’ve seen you do quite a few times. Are you aware of adopting a position, and then a conversational turn later either disowning that position or behaving as though completely unawarae that you ever held the position? I’ve seen that several times. It’s my perception. I don’t know what to make of it. I’m giving you my perception here as feedback, fyi. There’s no hostile intent. [...] averti: Well, I read up on the m*sons over the weekend; I have as much historical data as anybody else in the world, since there’s no living survivor of the crusades or the Original Knights of Malta etc 8).

Lionheart: Yup, written by whom, for what purpose, with what agenda, based on facts from where?

averti: Bunch of agenda nuts on one side, bunch of m*sons on the other, far as I can tell. I’m tired of that, though. I have apologized to Songbird for the upset, if not the actual issue. But I refer to the generalization from a particular. I think it’s unhealthy and counterproductive.

Lionheart: It certainly can be. It is however also a necessary cognitive skill, without which we could not transform chaos into order. And how many particulars does it take before one can comfortably generalize? What seems to happenn all too often is that if people don’t like the generalization suggested by a particular, they refuse to acknowledge the particular(oh it’s just anecdotal evidence) and don’t look for more to see if there’s a pattern.

averti: You’re right. But i don’t generally look for patterns; I swim just as well–or as poorly–in chaos as I do in order.

Lionheart: Uh huh. I bet you’d start generalizaing and categorizing pretty darn quickly after the first other swimmy thing tried to take a b*te out of you. If even one person says they’ve been ra’d in a M*sonic l*dge, that info must be accounted for. Sure, it’s too soon to make a generalization, but it can’t be ignored or denied either (or shouldn’t be, imo)

averti: I agree. After we ”account for it” what do we do with it? [...] Lionheart: Here’s some info on me. I take communication very seriously. I also take it’s related words, like commune (esp. the verb) , and community very seriously. I prefer to engage withpeople who also take it too seriously to undermine it with stuff that *looks* like communication but isn’t really. If you toss out canned jocularities, and stock phrases you will lose me as a communications partner. That’s just fwimbwty. I make no assumption that you care one way or the other.  

averti: Well, I do care, though what you have just said above decodes to me as a manipulative threat. ”If you don’t talk the way I want you to talk, I won’t love you any more” just to put it in dysfunctional family terms. I have been getting this, in various forms and various levels of organization, from somebody or other in the group since day zero.

Lionheart: I can understand it sounding like a manipulative threat. There was a time when I could only have read such a thing as a threat too. Even now I find it  a pretty outrageous thing to say and find it hard to believe that I’m allowed to say such things.

averti: Heh. Self-permission is the hardest.

Lionheart: I’m pretty sure that I am allowed to state my preferences, which is what I was doing. I prefer to be treated in certain ways. Does it seem reasonable to you for someone to sstate this kind of preference?

averti: For the most part. Depends on how it’s framed. I wouldn’t be very honest if I granted myself the permission to state MY preferences, but turned around and said that YOU couldn’t.

Lionheart: The rest of it was  a simple prediction, fyi. I tried to make it not sound like a threat. Maybe I should have left it out, and just stuck with staating my preferences? Or I could have added talk about how I feel when someone/anyone tosses out stock phrases instead of being sincere.

averti: There’s no real reason for you to edit yourself just becuase I see a threat that’s not there.

Lionheart: I … read more »

Response:

Related Posts