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Look Back in Horror
Sep. 8th, 2023 08:59 amWhat a mercifully quiet day yesterday was. The day job was very chill, which allowed me to just take my time with the reports I'm checking. After work, I went right into folding laundry and watching an episode of TNG. In this one, Picard is kidnapped in his quarters and replaced by a doppleganger on the Enterprise. He's been spirited away to a locked room with three others: a Federation cadet, an intellectual from an alien race known to surrender to anyone who goes to war with them, and eventually a large anarchic barbarian alien who can't eat the food pods that have been given to them.
The episode ends with the reveal that they were all part of an experiment orchestrated by aliens who, as clones of one central specimen, have no sense of hierarchy or even morality and found the idea of command fascinating. It feels like a really tropey ending, but the episode does introduce some history between Picard and Dr. Beverly Crusher that's most welcome. Gates McFadden was not given enough to do on that show.
I've been mindful of my propensity to...dissociation feels like the wrong word, but it's the closest one I can think of right now. I've caught myself getting swept along in default behavior that doesn't serve me, like wasting time with Solitaire or just...doing stuff that turns off my brain and lets me coast for a little while. It's surprising how often I do this!
I've also been watching pop-psychology videos on YouTube about attachment theory, complex post-traumatic stress disorder, and shadow work. I understand that there's a danger these specific issues often get stretched to the point of inaccuracy and I could walk away with a gross misunderstanding about all of these concepts, so I've been trying to follow up with other sources through Wikipedia, government resources, and expert perspectives.
It feels to me that I'm still dealing with C-PTSD symptoms where I'm more likely to engage in behavior that comes from this foundational situation of trauma. I had a pretty unstable childhood, to say the least. I was adopted when I was 3 or 4, and my adoptive parents got into physical fights over my dad's alcoholism until they divorced when I was 9. There was a period of maybe a year or so after that where Mom was just...absent, so my sister and I were left to fend for ourselves. When Mom was there, she was severe and didn't spare the rod.
All of this happened while we were living in a poor inner-city neighborhood with bullies, drug dealers, the whole bit. I didn't have many friends and the only safe space for me was the public library. Most memories of my childhood are of the various traumas I've gone through: the intense, months-long grieving period for my sister when she ran away that one time; pushing my mom after she hit me one too many times and running to my aunt's house a mile or two away; my adopted father's disappearance in a blizzard back in 1996 (he was never found); that time I had a public nervous breakdown at lunch in high school and felt so emotionally devastated it felt like I couldn't walk; being outed by my therapist in college; being disowned by my adopted mom that summer when I came home; dropping out of college after another breakdown; being molested twice by a known sex offender in Arkansas; the WHOLE business with 2. It feels like my personal history up until the age of like, 25, was some Dostoevsky novel.
On top of that, I deal with chronic depression, anxiety disorder, and ADHD -- none of which were diagnosed when I was a child. It's a lot, and deep down inside me there's this overwhelmingly-frightened little kid who believes he deserves to be ignored until he speaks up -- where he gets punished for wanting things.
It's very hard for me to ask for what I want, or to accept the way I feel as legitimate. A lot of the adaptive behavior I learned as a kid growing up no longer serves me because I'm in such a better situation now, but it's so hard to even spot that behavior because it's so fundamental to how I interact with the world. It's a lot to go through.
Doing that requires a more grounded perspective, so right now the work is to stop flying outside of my body whenever there's a hint of anxiety. It feels like 2016 unlocked a lot of this "hidden programming" that has made fear a *much* more motivating force in my life, and I need to put in the work to loosen its grip.
The episode ends with the reveal that they were all part of an experiment orchestrated by aliens who, as clones of one central specimen, have no sense of hierarchy or even morality and found the idea of command fascinating. It feels like a really tropey ending, but the episode does introduce some history between Picard and Dr. Beverly Crusher that's most welcome. Gates McFadden was not given enough to do on that show.
I've been mindful of my propensity to...dissociation feels like the wrong word, but it's the closest one I can think of right now. I've caught myself getting swept along in default behavior that doesn't serve me, like wasting time with Solitaire or just...doing stuff that turns off my brain and lets me coast for a little while. It's surprising how often I do this!
I've also been watching pop-psychology videos on YouTube about attachment theory, complex post-traumatic stress disorder, and shadow work. I understand that there's a danger these specific issues often get stretched to the point of inaccuracy and I could walk away with a gross misunderstanding about all of these concepts, so I've been trying to follow up with other sources through Wikipedia, government resources, and expert perspectives.
It feels to me that I'm still dealing with C-PTSD symptoms where I'm more likely to engage in behavior that comes from this foundational situation of trauma. I had a pretty unstable childhood, to say the least. I was adopted when I was 3 or 4, and my adoptive parents got into physical fights over my dad's alcoholism until they divorced when I was 9. There was a period of maybe a year or so after that where Mom was just...absent, so my sister and I were left to fend for ourselves. When Mom was there, she was severe and didn't spare the rod.
All of this happened while we were living in a poor inner-city neighborhood with bullies, drug dealers, the whole bit. I didn't have many friends and the only safe space for me was the public library. Most memories of my childhood are of the various traumas I've gone through: the intense, months-long grieving period for my sister when she ran away that one time; pushing my mom after she hit me one too many times and running to my aunt's house a mile or two away; my adopted father's disappearance in a blizzard back in 1996 (he was never found); that time I had a public nervous breakdown at lunch in high school and felt so emotionally devastated it felt like I couldn't walk; being outed by my therapist in college; being disowned by my adopted mom that summer when I came home; dropping out of college after another breakdown; being molested twice by a known sex offender in Arkansas; the WHOLE business with 2. It feels like my personal history up until the age of like, 25, was some Dostoevsky novel.
On top of that, I deal with chronic depression, anxiety disorder, and ADHD -- none of which were diagnosed when I was a child. It's a lot, and deep down inside me there's this overwhelmingly-frightened little kid who believes he deserves to be ignored until he speaks up -- where he gets punished for wanting things.
It's very hard for me to ask for what I want, or to accept the way I feel as legitimate. A lot of the adaptive behavior I learned as a kid growing up no longer serves me because I'm in such a better situation now, but it's so hard to even spot that behavior because it's so fundamental to how I interact with the world. It's a lot to go through.
Doing that requires a more grounded perspective, so right now the work is to stop flying outside of my body whenever there's a hint of anxiety. It feels like 2016 unlocked a lot of this "hidden programming" that has made fear a *much* more motivating force in my life, and I need to put in the work to loosen its grip.
