[brain prodding] recovery-shaped things

[kaberett]

it is okay to have feelings.
Feelings are the language of your body
the self that runs ahead of thought
like an eager dog
the reservoir of your vital rhythms
it is not that your body wants
to command you, control you, confuse you, overwhelm you, no-!
it just wants you to listen
because feelings are information
and your body, your most personal of assistants,
in its own awkwardly earnest way
really wants to make sure
you get all your messages.

-- from Sensuum, jjhunter

So I've talked a bit already about how I was constructing "recovery" as making trauma unhappen or erasing it. In the context of JJ's poem, something else has shaken loose: part of what I'm scared of, part of why I'm scared that the only way to "recover" is to unlearn warning signs, is that I'm very used to my brainbody giving me the something is wrong message by making me really screamingly crazy until I pay attention to the source of the problem. My body, my most personal of assistants, in its own awkwardly earnest way, just really wants to make sure that I get all my messages.

I assume it tries to leave me messages below the threshold of screamingly crazy, given how steadily it escalates once it's passed that threshold until I Fix The Thing. So I'm... going to need to learn what those look like, and I've got no idea where to start.

Comments

[davidgillon]

So I'm... going to need to learn what those look like

Yeah, this. As to where to find them, somewhere under the screamingly crazy, which might not seem much help (as well as being bloody obvious), but you're better at deciphering screamingly crazy than anyone I've come across.

part of why I'm scared that the only way to "recover" is to unlearn warning signs

My instinct is that needs restructuring so that your warning signs are just as useful, but less disabling, rather than discarding them like things never happened, which would be building progress on a lie, and therefore, to my mind, fundamentally flawed. (And obviously you need to take that up a level of meta so that you're perceiving the change itself as less stressful and more constructively useful).

and that's a gorgeous piece by JJ, which for some bizarre reason reminds me of the Bene Gesserit Litany Against Fear, which it's almost the antithesis of.

[jjhunter]

I remember what a revelation it was for me to realize that information being encoded by emotion didn't guarantee it was right, just important in some way (emotion-as-highlighting). This is very much the motor that moved me to 'Sensuum'; it feels like a very great gift to know something of that motion has moved you in turn.

<3, as always,
J.J.

p.s. perhaps it is worth checking your mental spam folder? *saw the pun possible, felt sacred call to facilitate*

[flippac]

A lot of mess I've got in the last three years has been due to situations overriding the usefulness of sub-crazy warning signs. So yeah, aside from finding the mental bandwidth to be more mindful/self-aware from time to time I don't know there's much I can advise, but I can say it has value if you can manage it. Also, uh, yuck at western commercialisation of "mindful"?

[vass]

I assume it tries to leave me messages below the threshold of screamingly crazy, given how steadily it escalates once it's passed that threshold until I Fix The Thing.

That... sounds like a really good hypothesis. *looks askance at own mental message bank*

So I'm... going to need to learn what those look like, and I've got no idea where to start.

If it were my brain, I'd be looking under "things I gaslight myself into disregarding." So, not screamingly, but still "that's crazy, ignore."

[azurelunatic]

One of the things that I did was write a private list of things that are bothering me. The more irritable the day, the better. From "I want my hair to be blue" to "I have too much homework" to "I hate my roommate's boyfriend" to "it is a very sexist world out there and I hate that" to "I am desperately in love and he doesn't love me back." Large, small, important, petty -- document them with the appropriate amount of privacy.

When less likely to chew someone's face off who talked to me the wrong way (on the downswing of the flux, as I used PMS as a tool in the best Emoryite fashion) I would attempt to go about resolving that particular problem, if it could be resolved. Like, "Hey, I know we are trying to rotate chores equitably; it just so happens that I really hate putting away dishes. Could I swap you for something?" or "It sort of hurts when you two are constantly kissyface in front of me. Could you tone it down a little, and let me give you some space also?" Some could not be resolved (goddamn sexism).

With practice, I got better at pointing out things that bothered me. It has been a technical asset for me, in that I can better report bugs.

[azurelunatic]

Today I nearly burst out crying in the parking lot because Shawn was really bad at giving me orgasms. Related: I was basically not allowed to have opinions around Shawn.

I found that when I am allowed to have opinions, sometimes disagreements which could develop into a giant festering well of screaming crazy can get resolved. And sometimes the resolution is "... maybe I will have less of this specific person in my life." And that is okay.

[silveradept]

I'd guess completely unscientifically, that many of the messages at the high level probably originated at the low level in much the same form. You may have to build out your early-warning detection systems to notice the lower-level rumblings.