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The Weeknd
Jul. 8th, 2024 11:02 am I had some mushroom chocolate over the weekend! It was a nice time; nothing too intense or earth-shattering, but I still learned a thing or two. At least, it felt like some lessons were reinforced.
There's a recurring thought for me in drug-space, about time and the way it's always moving. It's like we're living life on a moving walkway that never stops. Even when we're standing still, we're never in the same place. Time moves forward from the moment we're born until the moment we die.
So much of our lives are spent worrying about the time we tripped on the walkway when we were first getting the hang of it, or what happens when the walkway ends. There are other people on the walkway with us, moving at different paces or standing still to watch the scenery. We worry about the space we take up on the walkway and how it affects other people. Some people can just bob and weave through the walkway without making a ripple, and it seems like a superpower.
It's not the cleanest analogy. But often I think about how everything -- people, moments, rooms, situations -- has this underlying "beat" to it, and life becomes much easier when you can adapt your beat to match whatever you're interacting with. If I feel like a moment is going poorly, I can try to find the 'beat' and shift myself toward it so everything feels more in sync. But all too often, I'm so worried about my own 'beat' and how it's *not* matching anything else that I don't realize how adaptable it can be.
I've mentioned this before, but as an anxious person it feels like my "beat" is like, acid jazz. Just a lot of drums where maybe there's a beat but it takes some work to find it; when you do, chances are the beat's already shifted so you're back at square one. I'm never sure what beat I'm going to follow at any given time, but chances are it's going to clash with at least one other thing. So it feels like I'm always trying to adapt my beat, but when it's as...constantly shifting and weird as mine is, that's a lot of work.
When I adapt to the beat, my beat changes and suddenly I have to work harder to get back in sync. Or, if the mood or situation shifts suddenly, it can be hard for me to 'catch up' to the general vibe. And sometimes, I just want the drums to stop so I can disappear into a nice pan flute solo.
In drug-space though, the beat feels so much simpler. I can observe myself both experiencing and noticing the beat as it changes within me, and it's a lot easier to just...match the rhythm. I'm not sure what's different between those times and, well, sober-me -- except for the drugs. But it would be nice to take some of that drug-space syncopating and use it to flow a bit more easily through the situations I find myself in.
Other than that, I think I'm ready to actually rebuild my life a little bit. I'd like to be more professional, conscientious, reliable -- but in a way that doesn't cause some giant anxiety blow-out. I think the key to this is starting small, just doing one thing mindfully to get myself closer to that. I know I have a tendency to freeze when I get started on writing or reading, so I'll have to think about how to push past that barrier reasonably quickly. Setting aside 30 minutes for writing does me no good when I'm trying to corral my blank page panic for 25 of them.
I've been watching a few videos on Complex Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (CPTSD) and I've found the advice rings true for me even as it's very hard to implement. One video that caught my eye was about how people with CPTSD don't have a strong sense of self because they learned early that no one wants to interact with you as you really are. Survival meant being whatever you needed to be in that moment to get (or avoid) attention, so the art of becoming a 'social chameleon' is second nature to you. Your instinct becomes obfuscating your true motives and actions, or lying to make sure your "true" self is safe. The way out of that, naturally, is to learn how to be authentic, but...how do you do that?
I've often felt like I don't know who I am, or that if you take off the "smiling mask" I wear you'll find, I don't know, a bunch of cassette tape gone off the spool, just a mess of ribbon and wires that loop and tangle around one another. I *feel* like a messy person because I haven't taken the space to organize my thoughts and feelings in a long time. And now that I am, at least up front I'm finding out about a lot of the ways I've put myself here -- either by trying to be as "small" a personality as possible or just...swallowing all of the things that feel like boundary violations and whatnot.
Boundary violations sounds a lot more serious than it is. Here it means "eating all of the chips I bought" or "continuing to engage in behavior I've already said I didn't like". The problem with that is even the little things become indicative of this larger pattern, so internally 'eating all of the chips' isn't just about that -- it's about the whole pattern of boundary violations that have lead to it. So I blow up about something minor, without the emotional language to express that this is just one straw that broke the camel's back.
And this runs *right* into Sneppers' fear of conflict; looking back on previous arguments, I can see how bringing up resentments I've been trying to dismiss but really holding on to can...blindside him. So I'm trying to be more upfront about the things I need or what I prefer, but at the same time...this is a new process for me so I'm bound to get it wrong. Say one thing when another word might be better, or even talk about something while my thoughts are still evolving so later I give contradictory requests. There's this serious urge to make sure I know what I'm talking about before externalizing things, but...is that a reasonable expectation? It's definitely better to know what you're about than not, but...can't we be allowed to change our minds?
I think the answer is yes, but with the caveat that I have a history of being unreliable. That complicates things, and puts me on a shorter leash than most, I believe. For now, I think it's most important to reacquaint myself with my own internal landscape before being more firm about the boundaries and space I need.
There's a recurring thought for me in drug-space, about time and the way it's always moving. It's like we're living life on a moving walkway that never stops. Even when we're standing still, we're never in the same place. Time moves forward from the moment we're born until the moment we die.
So much of our lives are spent worrying about the time we tripped on the walkway when we were first getting the hang of it, or what happens when the walkway ends. There are other people on the walkway with us, moving at different paces or standing still to watch the scenery. We worry about the space we take up on the walkway and how it affects other people. Some people can just bob and weave through the walkway without making a ripple, and it seems like a superpower.
It's not the cleanest analogy. But often I think about how everything -- people, moments, rooms, situations -- has this underlying "beat" to it, and life becomes much easier when you can adapt your beat to match whatever you're interacting with. If I feel like a moment is going poorly, I can try to find the 'beat' and shift myself toward it so everything feels more in sync. But all too often, I'm so worried about my own 'beat' and how it's *not* matching anything else that I don't realize how adaptable it can be.
I've mentioned this before, but as an anxious person it feels like my "beat" is like, acid jazz. Just a lot of drums where maybe there's a beat but it takes some work to find it; when you do, chances are the beat's already shifted so you're back at square one. I'm never sure what beat I'm going to follow at any given time, but chances are it's going to clash with at least one other thing. So it feels like I'm always trying to adapt my beat, but when it's as...constantly shifting and weird as mine is, that's a lot of work.
When I adapt to the beat, my beat changes and suddenly I have to work harder to get back in sync. Or, if the mood or situation shifts suddenly, it can be hard for me to 'catch up' to the general vibe. And sometimes, I just want the drums to stop so I can disappear into a nice pan flute solo.
In drug-space though, the beat feels so much simpler. I can observe myself both experiencing and noticing the beat as it changes within me, and it's a lot easier to just...match the rhythm. I'm not sure what's different between those times and, well, sober-me -- except for the drugs. But it would be nice to take some of that drug-space syncopating and use it to flow a bit more easily through the situations I find myself in.
Other than that, I think I'm ready to actually rebuild my life a little bit. I'd like to be more professional, conscientious, reliable -- but in a way that doesn't cause some giant anxiety blow-out. I think the key to this is starting small, just doing one thing mindfully to get myself closer to that. I know I have a tendency to freeze when I get started on writing or reading, so I'll have to think about how to push past that barrier reasonably quickly. Setting aside 30 minutes for writing does me no good when I'm trying to corral my blank page panic for 25 of them.
I've been watching a few videos on Complex Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (CPTSD) and I've found the advice rings true for me even as it's very hard to implement. One video that caught my eye was about how people with CPTSD don't have a strong sense of self because they learned early that no one wants to interact with you as you really are. Survival meant being whatever you needed to be in that moment to get (or avoid) attention, so the art of becoming a 'social chameleon' is second nature to you. Your instinct becomes obfuscating your true motives and actions, or lying to make sure your "true" self is safe. The way out of that, naturally, is to learn how to be authentic, but...how do you do that?
I've often felt like I don't know who I am, or that if you take off the "smiling mask" I wear you'll find, I don't know, a bunch of cassette tape gone off the spool, just a mess of ribbon and wires that loop and tangle around one another. I *feel* like a messy person because I haven't taken the space to organize my thoughts and feelings in a long time. And now that I am, at least up front I'm finding out about a lot of the ways I've put myself here -- either by trying to be as "small" a personality as possible or just...swallowing all of the things that feel like boundary violations and whatnot.
Boundary violations sounds a lot more serious than it is. Here it means "eating all of the chips I bought" or "continuing to engage in behavior I've already said I didn't like". The problem with that is even the little things become indicative of this larger pattern, so internally 'eating all of the chips' isn't just about that -- it's about the whole pattern of boundary violations that have lead to it. So I blow up about something minor, without the emotional language to express that this is just one straw that broke the camel's back.
And this runs *right* into Sneppers' fear of conflict; looking back on previous arguments, I can see how bringing up resentments I've been trying to dismiss but really holding on to can...blindside him. So I'm trying to be more upfront about the things I need or what I prefer, but at the same time...this is a new process for me so I'm bound to get it wrong. Say one thing when another word might be better, or even talk about something while my thoughts are still evolving so later I give contradictory requests. There's this serious urge to make sure I know what I'm talking about before externalizing things, but...is that a reasonable expectation? It's definitely better to know what you're about than not, but...can't we be allowed to change our minds?
I think the answer is yes, but with the caveat that I have a history of being unreliable. That complicates things, and puts me on a shorter leash than most, I believe. For now, I think it's most important to reacquaint myself with my own internal landscape before being more firm about the boundaries and space I need.
