who only by moving can balance

(1) PAPER. SUBMITTED. for the fifth time good grief but I tidied up all of the figures and made the minor changes and spent approximately 0 time agonising over the cover letter and now hopefully I really don't have to do anything at all again until the proof stage (and honestly at this point if the proof stage requires more changes I might scream, very quietly, into a pillow).

(2) ... I. found. another packet of tomato seeds. down the backside of the sofa. I think I am convinced that I really don't need more than 2 plants of this variety. Probably. (Peche Vilmorin; they are for stuffing, where we don't actually eat stuffed tomatoes much, and I've actually acquired them at all because I'm so charmed by the way the immature fruit looks -- my seed catalogue posting a photo to FB; a Canadian supplier.)

(3) I did not wind up having therapy, today, but I did do therapy prep, and in the process worked out that Actually Reading Dreamwidth is a thing that will make me feel a lot better in terms of connection and so on and so forth, so instead of therapytoday I spent some time catching up on another few days of reading-page-by-date. Some of the issue is completionism on my part (and I absolutely don't want to imply I expect anyone else to do this ever), leading to familiar seize-up-overwhelm, but another contributing factor is that I'm currently up to, I think, the second of November, and it is quite something to be reading all of those posts as a time-traveller from the future. I am having a lot of feelings, basically.

A model of social interaction I am chewing over: the trade-off between the background assumption that "well, you're a right-thinking person and we agree on a lot so clearly you'll want what I want" and explicitly-negotiated compromise.

Humans are good at pattern-matching, and we're social animals, and we're prone to forming in-groups based on shared characteristics, and it is actually useful to be able to shorthand shared desire (from "pizza for dinner" to "political whatever", because I am very aware that social situations where "I'd rather not have pizza for dinner" cause major friction and insult are not Unheard Of).

It occurs to me, then, that a lot of the ways in which social interactions have blown up in my face might be usefully modelled as a mismatch of expectations as to how the balance gets struck.

From my perspective, I have a long-term relationship with someone wherein for some time it is the case that I am happy to compromise toward prioritising their needs, because I think that position of compromise costs me-and-therefore-us less than it would cost them; I tend toward the background assumption that when that shifts, when that compromise would cost me, when I end up needing something, they'll be similarly willing to accommodate me.

From their perspective, it seems probable that I've spent a long time being right-thinking and in-group and having wants that align with theirs, and when that's abruptly and inexplicably no longer the case I get shifted to out-group, or to unpredictable threat -- and that's not helped by my utter bafflement and own threat-response at how badly they're reacting to me wanting something that's in conflict with their desires.

Negotiation versus alignment, versus mirroring.

There's a framing in which this is "allistics are sometimes weirdly bad at recognising that not everyone they consider a good person wants what they want all the time in all circumstances"; in which recognising that fallacy and actively and explicitly negotiating instead is a skillset I've learned through negotiating with myself, my own present-versus-future wants, the way BPD affects my timescales of desire and means that it is painfully obviously in my best interests (and the best interests of those around me) for me to examine what I think I want, and why, and make sure I'm comfortable I'm making ethical choices in seeking comfort.

There's another framing -- and please admire the fact that I pay a trained professional £40/hour to access these insights, and that's very much sliding-scale rates -- in which, just maybe, how much space I make for people to want things that aren't what I want... is related to my incredible resistance to the idea, my reluctance to believe, that actually, sometimes, other people's desires do align with mine, even if I express mine first, and that doesn't mean that other-desire is coerced or insincere.

[I am using The Dialectical Behaviour Therapy Skills Workbook. Content notes as implied by the subject.]

( Read more... )

[I am using The Dialectical Behaviour Therapy Skills Workbook. DBT is a form of therapy that was developed by Marsha Linehan who would diagnose her 17-year-old self with Borderline Personality Disorder (CN for graphic discussion of self-injury, suicidality, and institutionalisation at that link).]

There are two intended audiences for The Dialectical Behavior Therapy Skills Workbook. The first is people who are in dialectical behavior therapy (either group or individual) and need a workbook to help learn the four key skills. We also wrote this book so it could be used independently by anyone who struggles with overwhelming feelings.

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First, a poem I keep coming back and back to through the years:

( Between | Michael O'Siadhail )

Second, the thing I'm playing wall with most this week (and for the past few months, to be honest) appears to be the concept of desire. I'm tangled up in finding it hard to treat wanting as anything other than binary: something one does or doesn't, in effect, completely divorced from emotion (so "I want to, but it's impractical" is something I interpret - and to some degree experience as - "I don't want to"). Which - isn't healthy, but is also a very typical set of experiences/behaviours/beliefs/systems for people I shall euphemistically class as of my background.

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It's clearly being brought to the surface by the current round with depression (about which I am feeling less immediately despairing this week, between no longer being in a high-progesterone stage of my cycle and working myself to pleasant physical exhaustion and having just spent three-four days in close proximity with one of my best friends), but this is an ongoing issue I ought to work on, sigh.