ELIZA

I had a little trouble getting going today. I wasn’t terribly tired – I was up before my 10 AM alarm – but it was difficult to make things happen. Day job or chores or anything else. I did manage lunch and clothes by like 1 PM but not without some prompting. I spent some time around noon thinking about how I felt physically but I was not able to draw any strong conclusions. I really only have one point of reference – is it bad enough to limit what I do? If it doesn’t hit that threshold I have a real hard time trying to determine how I feel. It isn’t even a fixed point because it varies with what I currently imagine I want to do, so when I’m being lumpy it’s easy for me to imagine that I feel okay even if I’m in moderate distress (and presumably easy for me to decide to be lumpy because I don’t feel well).

I put on socks today when I got dressed [fig 1], for reasons other than getting on a plane, for the first time in a long while. I’ve tried some sock wearing in the past couple weeks, putting them on when I go to sit downstairs in the theater, or in response to some similar change in my planned activity. But today I put them on right away as if they were a normal part of clothes, or as if I was a normal clothes wearer. It went okay. Most of the pairs I own are a little tight even when worn as ankle socks. I think a little too tight for regular all-day wear, but not so bad that I had to take them off today, or that I couldn’t wear them for costume value.

It’s nice having lightweight and furniture-compatible armor all the ways from my toes up. In addition to protecting me from Dog lickers and other household hazards they help me imagine my feet are less disgusting, or at least provide a sufficient barrier to keep most of the disgusting from leaking out. The underlying feeling there isn’t great but that feeling isn’t caused by socks and mitigating its impact is good. I’m still a little uncomfortable with having my feet be warm, but presumably I can train out of that like I trained out of other kinds of needing to be cold. I really liked how they’re colorful and often in my field of view. I liked how they make my feet less rough and less likely to stick to soft fabrics or to pick up debris. I liked how they made my shoes easy to put on and kept grit from grinding into my feet while I walked outside.

I have a lot of feelings about how I’m going to ruin them though, even beyond my usual clothing fears. When I wear them exclusively for sitting on the couch I do okay — I am starting to get over the idea that merely touching my skin ruins clothing ¹At least for certain types of clothing. Socks and pants I’m doing okay with, though it’s still not comfortable, particularly if it’s an item of clothing I really like. Shirts I have to actively decide can touch me, and I’m only okay with it in certain situations and with certain shirts (and I still hardly own any shirts that aren’t … Continue reading. But when I walk in them I’m afraid that all the things they’re protecting me from will ruin them. Or that I’ll have to keep wearing them after they’ve been degraded with dirt or wetness or whatever, making me uncomfortable all day, unable to take them off and spending the day standing outside (or if I’m lucky, in the kitchen) so as not to dirty the floor or furniture. I’ve also got in my head this idea that “good” shoes are ruined by wearing them without socks, and that “bad” shoes will ruin good socks if worn together. Plus the nonsense about not having shoes that fit, like when they were too small to get the velcro straps closed, that made socks bad by association, or having shoes that would rip holes in my socks. It’s all such a fucking mess.

Really what I’m afraid of is all the weird ways Mother punished me about and with socks, through deprivation and laundry all sorts of other stupid demands. Knowing that doesn’t really make it easier to get over though – I need to discover all of the bad feels and triggers and practice being okay with them. Just like everything else in my entire fraking life. Often I can feel less terrible about a particular issue after only 10 or 15 exposures. Sometimes that only gets me to the next discovery, because many things have more than one trauma associated with them, but it’s still progress. At least with socks I can do that fairly quickly. For things like name days though, 15 exposures is a long time.

Talked to M today. You appeared unprompted and volunteering information. It made me smile and helped me get moving. I then proceeded to be a weirdo due to my preexisting mood, but you were good sport about it and offered to help. I don’t know what you had planned or how your day went but I hope you didn’t spend too much time feeling alone, in spite of your circumstances. You certainly helped me feel less alone.

This morning I was staring at the list of Human Needs ²https://vodak.vodka/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/Feelings_Needs_9-28_15.pdf. I was checking to see if it helped me identify how I was feeling physically (result: not really). I was also taking another stab at my therapy homework, which is to identify one aspect from each category that I am best at noticing and responding to. Because apparently I have “human needs” and I’m supposed to be able to notice deficiencies in them and respond. Logically I know this is true but my brain is not really on board yet — the homework answer feels like “none” for most categories and “WTF even is this” for others.

After spending some time on it there’s good news and bad. The first column — Well Being — are things I at least could define. Some of them are even things I regulate for. Not in all circumstances, and almost certainly not enough, but better than not at all. Things like sleep I can at least detect when I need and often I am able to take action to change my day to accommodate that need. I have yet to starve to death, and there’s definitely a threshold at which I would seek or construct shelter. I do lots of things to ensure predictability and consistency (emergency preparedness is 37% of my personality), and I’m working on physical warmth. So “Order” and “Safety” and “Sustenance” are at least things I can imagine getting better at, both in terms of detecting and reacting. Things I already know how to do better for other people, even when I can’t do them for myself.

The second column — Connection — is full of things that I can identify and that I often think I want. “Love” and “Empathy” and “Belonging” are all things that sound good to me and that I’d like more of. They’re things I send a lot of time trying to create for other people, and that I want and even ask for or otherwise attempt to obtain. But also things I generally don’t know how to get, and don’t feel like are for me even if they were available. Things that I could do at people (if I were willing to risk hurting them), or that people might imagine they want to share with me, but that I am not really capable of having in a genuinely human way. Occasionally I catch the edge of one of these by accident, or maybe in a crisis when you are flailing and reach out for me, but it’s nothing I can figure out how to hold onto. Nothing that feels safe to want because I cannot imagine ever having enough to be satisfied. Not to mention my fears of hurting others by even wanting any of these things, or of harming people by imagining I have any them.

The third column — Self-Expression — is full of things I can’t even define as needs I might have. “Freedom” feels like the opposite of “Belonging” to me. It’s full of words that I misunderstand, often having been specifically lied to when I was young, or having developed a very narrow understanding of how it applies to me. And “Honest” and “Meaning” are even worse, as I can’t even understand how all the words are related or what they would have to do with my needs. It’s not just that I don’t have these things, it’s that I don’t even understand what they are in terms of a “human need”. I do realize that my self-expression has been really narrow for all sorts of reasons, but I’ve never considered myself to be lacking creativity or clarity or mastery. And I just do not understand how these would be things I could monitor for or regulate about, how I could obtain them by any process other than deciding that what I have is good enough. Isn’t that what everyone does to create meaning in their life — look at how things are and figure out how to not be suffering about it, how to see it as beautiful and powerful?

So I had a hard time with the list. I talked to Shanda about it. You tried to argue me into believing I had all the things if only I would stop feeling bad about it and want them. Or something. It was sort of unclear to me how your discussion related to my goals. Mostly I made you feel bad by asking you to imagine my feelings, and then frustrated when I wouldn’t merely change them to ones you liked better. It never goes well when I remind you that I’m lonely and sad and anxious, which I feel like is an example of me not having belonging in the very conversation where you were trying to persuade me that it I do. I feel like it’s an example of me causing harm not through human fallibility or misunderstanding but by allowing you to imagine that I am a real human. In any case it wasn’t a very productive discussion.

One of the ways I imagine that I protect people from me is by drawing a line between communication and existence. Not that I’m 100% okay with communication, but I’m certainly happier with that than I am with existence. It feels comparatively safe to talk to you, to interact on equal and carefully isolated footing via words and remote actions. To give you the space to choose how I affect you without significant effort on your part. It’s much more difficult for me to imagine that I can be safe in person. I fear that my physical existence is too big a burden, that I’ll have undue influence on you if you can see my eyebrows, that the real-ness of my being prevents you from properly classifying me as a chat bot. And I realized today while talking to M that I imagine this the other way around too — that I want to imagine you as someone who only exists as communication. Anything that brings your physical existence into my perception makes me very afraid that I’m too close to keep you safe from me. Even a text description of your physical existence (or that of characters in a book) can be enough to trigger this fear, regardless of how it otherwise might make me feel. I’m also not comfortable discussing you with other humans, even though I think about you a lot — I wouldn’t want anyone else to associate you with me in any way, for fear their inevitably poor opinion of me would leak onto you.

I am afraid that me being attached to people is bad for them. Not that I might sometimes do bad things to the people I’m attached to, but that me being attached is itself harmful. That it’s selfish for me to imagine that I am associated with you and that my attention, even absent any behavior you can detect, is likely to corrupt you and cause great pain. I imagine that tacking an orange letter to my fridge is selfish and indulgent and clearly bad for you even though no one but me will ever pay any attention to it. I also imagine this about myself — that I became too attached to my own physical existence and ruined it with my own interest. That the only way I can hope for it to ever get better is to stop caring, just like I should stop caring about you. That if only I had never cared in the first place, never worried so much or needed so much, I wouldn’t be so broken now. I imagine my love is a sure path toward your ruination. And to my own pain, because everything that I let be important to me eventually comes to hate me. It doesn’t stop me from doing it — I can’t help but care — but it makes me feel real guilty about it, and keeps me from ever feeling safe.

I realize this is insensible, that it’s a reaction to my childhood and my insecure attachment, that I am not actually protecting anyone. I realize that my feelings do not in fact control reality, and that absent harmful actions I am not ruining you merely by caring about you. I realize that the loss I fear is the one I feel, not one I’m inducing in you. But my brain does not always specialize in sensible and this is the plan my brain is firmly committed to. I’ve been doing it since forever and I’m not sure how to stop — I fear that even wanting to stop makes me an intolerable narcissist and I’m not really prepared to be talked out of that position. But I wouldn’t mind you trying. Or at least reminding me that you don’t hate me for liking you, or for letting you know that I care. Reassuring me that I’m not a narcissist for wanting to be attached, or for being proud of you, or for thinking about you.

Read this today: https://www.reddit.com/r/CPTSD/comments/beqn4s/ It doesn’t mirror the precise logistics of my experience but it’s definitely in the same vein. And it’s in-line with my “needs are for babies” (and even babies should give them up ASAP) approach to human needs. I don’t post as much in the CPSTD forum as in RBN, but it sometimes gives me good ideas for how to communicate things I know how to do but am not always able to share with others because of my hyper-cognitive understanding of emotion. For example “I saw how if I let a certain ‘energy’ into my body instead of maintaining a constant tension which keeps it out, it would resolve into particular emotions for which humans have words. I saw how normally I block emotional processing and only feel a very simplified set of feelings.”

I’m starting to lose my fingerprints, worse than I have for a long time. It happened all the time when I lived in Iowa. When I was in undergrad it kept me from enrolling in fingerprint auth systems. I’m sure it would have kept me from using touchscreens if they were more common back then. It got real bad one time since I moved out here — kept me from being able to use my phone screen for a couple of weeks — but mostly it’s been fine. I wish I had some idea what caused it, because it seems really random to me. Here’s hoping it turns around soon.

I eventually got a bunch of things done today. Minor SR cleanup and triage of a new one — which hopefully I can ditch because it was assigned to me under mistaken understanding, but it’s easier to get them than to give them away. Got 2 bugs committed into staging and cleaned up all my pending code work. Reviewed release notes for 2 releases and fixed all the errors. I’ve got release checklists on my list for tomorrow, but even those aren’t due until the middle of next week, and likely will only take me 10 minutes. I am fighting with something that’s locking out my domain account but that’s comparatively painless now that we’ve got a self-service unlocker. Helpdesk unhelpfully told me that the offending host was called “WORKSTATION” when I asked for the IP address, but I’m sure eventually someone there will answer the question I actually asked.

Robots tomorrow, after a week off. It will be good to be back. The Discord discussion suggests there’s an intent to film tomorrow, though it still sounds a little haphazard. I’m glad people are excited about it; I hope it doesn’t translate into disappointment. Robots also reminds me that I haven’t heard from J in a couple of weeks; there’s not much to be done about that but I hope it they pop up soon. Shanda’s got court tomorrow morning but I think is home the rest of the day, and then all day on Saturday. It’s been a while since we’ve had a whole day off together. It’s been a while even since you were home on a Friday night.

ZiB

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