Poly Pagan Goth Clown: My Life as a Cult Leader

I had a therapy session on Wednesday that I tentatively would label as going well. I felt like reactions to me generally indicated a correct understanding of my state, like my goals were directly influencing the process, and like my own understanding was aligned with the discussion instead of counter to it.

We talked about handshakes, a thing I’ve trained myself to tolerate because they’re demanded in my life, but which are right up there on the unwelcome contact scale. I’d honestly rather have a hug if I’m going to have touch at all – and to demand that the other participant make themselves vulnerable to me if we’re going to have controlling contact with each other. The closed grasp of a handshake feels very threatening to me – I’m sure in no small part because I was dragged around by the wrist in the past – and is often coupled with stupid masculine quasi-violent bullshit. Combine that with my fear of being noticed, particularly in a physical context, and my belief that my body is disgusting to other people and I’d rather just stay away. Or like I said, at least make you commit to a hug so we can be close enough to make many attacks and weapons less plausible, and so I can use my body to my advantage if violence becomes our task. Plus if you’re thinking of violence the hug will be threatening to you, which I might be able to read or might make you resist, giving me the opportunity to protect myself.

And my therapist reacted correctly to this, seeing that even the idea made me uncomfortable and at least apparently taking my analysis seriously when they asked about it. We talked about the idea of me being held as an infant too, which I have a different but similarly unpleasant reaction to. I don’t actually remember being held as an infant but I can infer that it wasn’t a comforting experience. I know for a fact that it wasn’t for my younger siblings.

There is one bit I was less sure about, in line with my fears from the first meeting. The bit where she wants to talk about particulars of my present physical reaction. I’m pretty sure it’s supposed to help me be aware of my emotional state, but to me it feels like being asked to “show my work” when I actually used a different process to arrive at the answer and didn’t do the supposed intermediate work. So it feels like being required to phrase my answer in the form or a question, where the format is more important than the meaning. But I could be wrong; maybe there’s a part I’m missing. It’s a thing I’ll ask about next week, because I’d sure like to skip it if it’s not doing something more useful than what I currently imagine – it’s stressful to try to guess the right answer to a question I feel like doesn’t have one.

Then we talked about how we’re actually going to reduce my startle response and improve my reaction to touch. In some depth, with obvious process and supporting documentation, all of which plays well with me. The part that most makes me willing to say the session “went well” though is the particular methodology they suggested – Lifetime Integration* – which is a thing I’ve been doing independently and have liked the results of. I preach “integration” all the time on a ton of topics and self is no exception – over the past few years I’ve been able to start reintegrating myself and it’s been the basis of many other improvements. It’s definitely how I’m able to see caring for myself and caring for M in the same context, and that’s been more influential than most other experiences in my life.

So it’s nice to hear my therapist suggest a thing I have experience with and know works – something I discovered and accomplished outside of therapy so I have some frame of reference. It’s the sort of touchstone that makes me feel like I might be able to manage my own therapy, and tell if it’s working. And that helps me feel like I do mostly know what I’m doing instead of questioning everything I think I know about myself and my healing. I’m less sure I’ll be able to do this thing they assigned where I come up with a memory from each year of my life — my childhood recall is real bad — but I’m going to give it a shot.

They also suggested, as we were parting, that they would be available for small amounts of real-time support via phone. This is a thing I know therapists do but it’s a little hard for me to accept as applying to me. Everything in my life has taught me that I need to be prepared to handle my own shit independently first, and that if I get any support it will be after the fact. Not just my history but still today — every time my need triggers Shanda’s fear of emotion and I have to help her before I can have help, or when I spend so much time sharing and still am invisible while those around feel pressure about their perceived failings. I don’t trust this therapist enough to take their offer even if I could get past my instinct to delay my own assistance, but it is useful to imagine that the thing I think I’m building with a social support network could in theory include help for me and not just for others.

We talked for a minute about the way I’m dangerous to other people. I know my perception of dangerous is based on my own flawed understanding of my influence in the world, but it’s only like 40% a lie. I am dangerous; I try to be careful but I’m limited by own own capabilities and by my own independent sense of justice. And I pretty regularly get negative feedback about the way I influence people. I do okay telling myself that my choices are intentional and that I like the outcomes even if other people object, but that gets me frightfully close to detached narcissism, which is perhaps my greatest fear.

For example, I sometimes worry that I’m using The Screed to build a cult. That I am identifying and grooming the isolated and vulnerable people in my life and feeding you a of very specific form of support to help you feel like you belong while secretly promoting behaviors that leave you more isolated. Then using your limited but intense sense of belonging to make them support me in some perverse way – that I am extracting some benefit in a way that must hurt you. That I want this isolated cult because the thing I want or need isn’t acceptable in broader society. That if my social group weren’t willing to tolerate abuse I couldn’t possibly be part of it. That if what I was doing wasn’t wrong there wouldn’t be so many people telling it was***. Or that if I weren’t abusive I wouldn’t ever make you feel pressured or overwhelmed or all of the other things you tell me I fucked up. The right level of narc for me is more, forever**, so just knowing that there’s potential benefit to me means that the whole thing must be harmful; nothing could be good for me and other people at the same time. I know this is a place where my philosophy needs to change to accommodate the way I tell others to live and stop being a hypocrite. But it’s tricky, changing the way your brain works and getting it to respond to the right feedback.

The other day I was talking to M about how OKCupid has a lot more poly in Seattle than it did in Cleveland. It still doesn’t have filters that make any sense for that but at least the numbers are better. You noted that there’s a large proportion of openly LGBTQ+ people in Seattle (which is a sad statistic but not inaccurate) which seems irrelevant to me because I’m not part of any such community. /I/ am not part of any community because I am a broken husk that serves as a warning to others and maybe a non-ambulatory NPC that helps you find a better place to go without me. But probably I’m allowed to participate in communities. Even ones I don’t build myself. And probably being non-binary and poly lumps me into some version of queer. It’s the sort of label I’m uncomfortable accepting though, on the basis that my bullshit isn’t “enough” to justify support, or that no one should want me to identify with them.

I haven’t been back to reading this week, or anything other than work and errands. I’m not even sure I’m going to get out of it today, though hopefully there will be a period between late evening tonight and Monday morning that isn’t busy. I’ve got a couple of SR bugs nagging at me that I sort of want to get done before then, but I also really need to take like a continuous 24 hour period without having 11 things to do. We’ll see how the day goes. Maybe I can make some space after robots and before Shanda gets back to clear out my worry list and consolidate some downtime.

Didn’t see V at robots. Not super unexpected for a Friday but I’m hoping you show up today. Or at least make a noise so I know you’re still here. S wasn’t at robots either, which I think was expected but we’ve hardly talked for 12 weeks so I’m actually not sure. Watched the team struggle with making the robots do “simple” programming tasks; I can see them being a bit frustrated but I tried to help when they got actual stuck. I feel like it’s really useful for them to see what is and isn’t easy to make work in an autonomous way. And to understand how precision is strictly necessary on the programming end of things — that flipped wires or mislabeled pieces or slightly offset mounting can make a big difference in terms of what happens when you run a program. It’s a little tough when D gets worked up about accomplishment — when he thinks there are goals other than learning, and in particular when he feels like he doesn’t know how to ensure direct progress toward them — but that was only intense for a few minutes tonight.

Mostly I stood around an yelled at E and Stochastic about the various methods I’ve used to not do my day job over the years and how I’m going to improve those methods to better suit my current goals and the demands of my current job. It’s useful for me to see how other people think of what I do, to help me feel like it’s a thing I’m in control of instead of just a thing that happens. And it’s useful for me to talk about it because my default cynical perspective on work is sometimes a barrier to understanding how I could make it better without losing anything — how my goal can still be to work less without my action always being to engage less. And it helped clarify how work really is like priority #4 — something I knew but haven’t felt very confident about because of the pressure to provide money for all the people I support. Having a bit of perspective on the way I have made all my jobs tolerable over the past couple of decades is useful though, because it helps me feel like I could do that at most jobs, and therefore like I have more options for how to produce the necessary cashflow for my life.

Talked with Shanda for a minute about updating our wills and power of attorney documents and whatnot. You’re for the plan in theory but talking about dying makes you super nervous, which makes talking about any related topic almost impossible. And even beyond that it’s a little hard for you to get disentangled from patriarchy expectations — like that you want to hoard money until literally after you’re dead, and even then you should try to give it to other old people within defined relationships so none of it escapes into the world. Which is not to say I’m immune to such pressures (spending money from retirement accounts is hard for me, for example), just that I’ve gotten past this particular one. I want to meet you someplace where you feel like your capitalism chits were properly dispositioned while you were alive so the leftover ones don’t feel important (because you’ll be too dead to care when it happens) and so that “continue what was happening already” feels like the obvious and best plan.

ZiB

*The name is related to a specific branded version — because capitalism — but the general concept is that ongoing trauma reduces the interrelatedness of memory and makes it difficult to relate ego states across time. That improving those relationships allows for current knowledge and skills to recontextualize past experiences. https://lifespanintegration.com/what-is-lifespan-integration For me it’s one of the ways to bridge the gap between what I know my issue is and actually feeling better about it using that knowledge.

**https://youtu.be/G9B9A-WKT0g

***I try not to worry about this because my actions are intentional and I’m pretty happy with the outcomes, but there is sometimes a lot of messaging from broader society that tells me I’m wrong for all sorts of reasons. I mostly lump it off as violating expectations of the patriarchy but it’s hard to have people tell me that the things I think are the best parts of my life are harmful. It’s not exactly that I believe them, but it sure pushes at the button that tells me my existence is wrong and the world would be better without me or my influence on others.