Puer Aeternus

Nah man, you just like categories. You don't seem to be very flexible with them either. Slick edit btw, trying to cover that up lol.

BUT? Will it be BIG enough?! Stay tuned to find out ...

We do hope people recognize the intentions, the structure of the post~ And don't come in and start debating the content of the post instead.

Someone in the shadows right now

Obvious to you. Perfectionism is obvious when you're aware of it, unconscious perfection can run someone's life. Anyone can nod along to it conceptually when explained to them. Doesn't mean they're free from it. So sorry, your response is not needed (no offense😂).

Oh hey a topic about me! Currently working to unfuck this. It's a grand time. Hurling myself into grand uncomfortable situations and absolutely boring work.

Cool list, thanks for updating. But after reading the summary and some of the reviews for the book on autism, it looks completely ridiculous. It definitely struggles with only having an outsider rather than an insider view of the topic. It's true that many of us with ASD/Asperger's have lacking empathy. But this is definitely not always the case and in my experience with these others and myself it can swing very wildly in the opposite direction where one can have TOO MUCH emotion/empathy. The framing seems ridiculous at times in context of this. Folks will think what they want, it's just a warning from me if anyone here is interested in that book to take it with a hefty grain of salt.

Oh shit, actual responses! Ultimately, it's primary focus is subjective sensate experience. Therapies and theories have pointed me to the source, but none of them quite touch on what I actually experience. It's a buncha pointers mishmashed together with my own learnings from working on this level over some years. You won't find some scientific framework to explain this. But there are few ones I've found useful- Polyvagal theory basically is all about safety. You need to feel safe in order to process things in a healthy way, if your nervous system is overloaded you will dissociate automatically and the trauma will hide from you and leave an imprint. I had to learn a routine of safety, build an environment of safety, and establish/cut off people to really feel this. Internal family systems gave me a loose framework for thinking about these different parts inside me. Burdens are parts that hold a trauma and are emotionally loaded with varying amounts of anger/sadness/intense pain, etc. Protectors are a parts category whose behaviors and emotions compensate for burdens, but in less than healthy ways. Can be something like intense anger/judgementalism. Finally, firefighter parts take over when a disaster is out of control and you need to numb the pain. Think of self-destructive habits and addictions. Gives suggestions on how to work with these parts. Although, I don't really use the framework much anyway. I've got my own sloppy way that works. But it was very useful on the beginning. The most interesting I think is Peter Levine's research in Etiology. Very interesting, can't find much of it immediately online. But much of it is detailed in his book In An Unspoken Voice. Worth checking out if you've got it at your local library. It connects fight/flight/freeze response to animal behaviors. Discovered a forgotten mechanism animals use to release stored anxiety that most people don't experience anymore. Tremors. Today I saw it in action. I was out walking and saw a squirrel rush a busy intersection and nearly get run-over. After this near death experience, rather than needing to go get psychoanalyzed I watched it shake silently on the sidewalk for thirty seconds before scampering off on its own way. The book includes animal studies of when this ISN'T allowed to happen and the consequences, connecting them to humans.

So- through reading books and experimenting, I've accidentally created my own method for releasing trauma, emotions, etc. The method and my discoveries that I will be sharing here! MY STORY IN BRIEF Shalom, most of my life I've been one dysfunctional boy! I have 23 years experience of absolute dissociation and 24 of being a totally nervous bitch. Most of my time living I've spent been absolutely petrified, and not in a cute let's put you in a mueseum display case with mood lighting way. Deconstruction began when I discovered self-message to soothe my anxiety. I couldn't really feel into my body then, so I was surprised to realize literally everything was tense and in pain. I continued the massage, but realized after a few hours the tension would snap back to similar levels again. This led to me delving into many theories/books (particularly somatic experiencing, internal family systems). I used body scanning and found thoughts, memories, emotions stored latent in different parts of my body that were HIGHLY consistent. Through this awareness I could witness and work all these not just as abstract floating thoughts or general emotional feelings. But rather as concrete areas of dissociation/tension in my body, knowing exactly when I'd fully released them. I kept learning and rinse repeated this process. After only a few years, I feel completely transformed. I can maintain awareness of my whole body and relax/process what arises easily, save for a few problems areas/triggers that are tricky/still being worked on! This methods truly changed my life and I hope there's something useful here you can apply for your own use. GETTING STARTED Get somewhere you can be comfortable (and preferably alone) and sit quietly with yourself. It's important that you're as relaxed and at ease as possible, though sometimes you'll only partially be able to chill out. You can do a meditation technique or breath work, experiment with what works for you. Begin to settle into the body. Notice generally where inside of you feels good, what's uncomfortable, and what you cannot really feel. At this point, you're ready to begin using your conscious awareness as a magnifying glass to more precisely scan what's there inside you. THREE MAIN SENSATIONS Through experience, I've noticed three main categories of sensation and a general pattern for working through them. 1. Frozen parts~ Often feels like a literal block of ice, the contents held within unreachable. These are the areas you cannot feel into, they hold a certain dull/empty quality. These parts are holding repressed contents (emotions, pain, memories, thoughts, etc). 2. Tense parts~ Tense parts tend to consist of unfrozen contents run amock. You may be possessed by it as an emotion or thought loop without connecting it to the body at first. Once you narrow in on its location in the body, the contents will likely intensify. It may also feel rigid and gaunt, painful even. 3. Relaxed parts~ Relaxed parts are healthy and open. The sensations feel at ease, peaceful even.. without any of the prior sensation feelings. These parts will literally be more attuned to sensation. Touching something soft or listening music will feel more alive with vibrant texture. TARGET PARTS Often, there is one or a few parts that are causing the majority of the discomfort and pain in your body at any given time. By releasing these parts, you will relax significantly and become so much more at ease. Your goal is to find the targets parts causing the most pain and work through them to release. In time you will be triggered again by new/the same target parts. But as you work through these parts, your wellbeing will improve and triggers will fall off, eventually to extinction. WORKING THROUGH PARTS Freeze->Tension->Relaxed I take two approaches to working with frozen parts. If a frozen part has VERY intense content and my whole body is dissociated, I'll begin relaxing the auxillary parts of my body first. You'll know what to release intuitively, because the parts in auxiliary tension will release more freely and with less intensity. You can do this by 1. Using physical massage or yoga 2. Directly body scanning to different parts, tensing them up, and then releasing them to relaxation. If you cannot immediately sense where the dissociated target part is, you want to release until you can. Then, I will surround the isolated part with conscious awareness. It's important that this presence be loving and accepting of whatever is to arise. Hold it with your awareness and love, melting the ice until the contents begin to spill out. The frozen part will transition to a tense part, stay with it and witness the contents. Take a break if you need to! Continue until you become too tired to continue or the part relaxed completely. Tension->Relaxed For working with target tension parts it's important to separate enough from it, so that you can zoom in to its location and contain it within your awareness. You can use various techniques for this like journaling. But often I will just go somewhere safe and let the emotion/thought pattern run until separation arises naturally and I can find it. Use that same loving awareness once you're holding the physical sensation directly in your body. Make sure you're continuing to contain it and aren't becoming possessed/overwhelmed, this can happen if you push it too hard. Try to establish contact and don't feel like you necessarily need to push for a release. Witness this part and let it decide what to do, when it is ready it will release naturally to a relaxed state. UNDERSTANDING YOUR EMOTIONAL GEOGRAPHY As you practice this process of healing/self-exploration, you will begin to notice emotionally consistent areas in your body where groups of your parts/triggers reside. Knowledge of this will give you clues as to where to look when searching for target parts. To give a personal example: There's lots of fear in my throat/stomach, anger in my back/nape of my neck, judgement around my nose and forehead. BE PREPARED FOR THE CATHARSIS Expect the unexpected and be sure you're in a safe environment. During catharsis you may have any number of unpredictable reactions. Be ready to embrace them to your greatest ability without judgement or you may block it's release to completion. You may want to scream, cry, throw hands or break something, or experience full body tremors. I like to keep a pillow on hand for intense releases/anger. You may also experience strange flowing energetic shifts in your body, tingles, tremors, or be naturally guided to carry out movements in a trance like state. Try to just let them happen without freaking out, trust that it's something you will work through and will pass. STOP WHEN ITS TOO MUCH, REST AFTER If you've got a lot to work through this will be quite tiring. Not so much if you're already pretty healthy, then you can get away with more! But after a release it's important to take some down time to rest because things can get very exhausting. Don't push yourself, this will backfire on you and land you in a tangled mess of overwhelming sensations that will just take even more time to sort through. If you're in the middle of working with a part and it feels too overwhelming. Take a breather. Collect yourself and comfort yourself, you can try returning in a few moments. But it's very important not to force these parts to do anything. If you try to whatever you're working on WILL blow up in your face and temporarily possess/destabilize you. ENERGY SHIFTING Quick technique I've realized- sometimes when I'm trying to relax auxillary parts or soothe a target part, I'll push energy from relaxed parts into the territory of my target part. I'll rest my awareness in the relaxed part, building warm sensation. Then I begin physically guiding my awareness through the body with that warm sensation held to the target part and releasing it at it's borders. RECOMMENDED READING Below are my recommendations for reading relating directly to this topic. May not be directly somatic but can be interesting and apply directly/be useful in this working through things process. Important theories for your further research may be: Somatic experiencing, internal family systems, bioenergetics, primal therapy, the hakomi method, the feldenkrais method, polyvagal theory, TRE. In an Unspoken Voice ~ Peter Levine My number one recommend book for this work. Not super practical, but lays out a lot of theory behind the processes at play here and their origins. No Bad Parts ~ Richard Schwartz Simple, short book that lays out the core ideas of internal family systems, parts classifications, and how to work with them. The Primal Wound ~ John Foreman and Ann Gila Summarizes the core of much of our wounding, many common malaise, and gives interesting models/ideas to understand trauma. Embracing Your Inner Critic ~ Hal and Sidra Stone Focuses on understanding/working through self-critical/judging parts The Voice of the Body/The Betrayal of the Body ~ Alexander Lowen Lowen is a bit of a crackpot genius, lots of his ideas are very related to raw somatic sensation and posture of trauma. The New Primal Scream ~ Arthur Janov Useful for understanding the raw experience of pain/trauma and it's accumulation.

Sounds like some you stuff. Do you really know what peoples intentions are? You don't have to be willing to give someone a kidney to give someone well intentioned support, some ideas, or references to get them started. Haha of course he has to do the work, he knows this! But? You didn't even flat out tell him he needs to figure it out for himself. You had to coat it in your cheeky little one liner basically calling him an idiot. Seems like this is the meat and bones of your response. I'm sorry you've had those experiences, there's certainly a lot of people out there like that. It can truly make you jaded asf and expect the worst from people. Would you say that could somewhat apply to you or am I being unfair? At the end of the day, I think of it like a toolbox. Different interactions require different tools. Harsh truth can be like a swinging a battle axe. It's a useful tool but it's not always the right choice. Sometimes using a softer, respectful screwdriver is more well suited lol. That is, if your intention is to help people. Be honest with yourself, were you really trying to help him when you said that? Or was it something else.

Lol, ya. I did a one month dive into some of the more woo studies- For me, astrology was an absolute cheeks predictor of me and my personality. But human design was spooky levels of prophetic for God knows wtf reason. I tried to rationalize it away after awhile, but the true aspects just kept crawling back to me. So there can be value in this weird stuff.

@Natasha Tori Maru Where would you recommend to start learning about MBTI/cognitive functions? Gimmie the sauce!

This one was just- yeah. I couldn't resist. It's valid to point out the pros and cons of capitalism! Certainly, there are some good ones and I'm not trying to take away from the pros you listed! From studying countries, I've seen grounded implementation of capitalism can raise all boats of citizens in a country. China isn't full sending for communism for a reason. It's the most competitive system we have for now. It delivers results. Clearly it's not something that can be easily replaced and if some fuck off progressive just went in trying to change things willy nilly, it would be a disaster. The lens of your analysis basically focuses on the products capitalism has created. It's an important scope and sounds like one you have experience with and can think through easily. There's something to be said about innovation. But uhhh.. what about literally everything else? And is it even that good at innovation? Well, probably depends. Consider how many quality products have been bought out and shittified, new innovations blocked by powerful market leaders, shut out completely because they were too threatening. Look at these companies, look at their moves. The most innovative product is nice to have but isn't always the end goal. You already said what the ultimate goal is. Cause do you SERIOUSLY THINK that the only person fucked by the maximize profit motive.. is the final stakeholder? Not seeing. Anything else? Anything glaring, anything screaming. Lol the people at the top are only super corrupt but that's okay because evil aligns with the greater good most of the time.. and it can be "true". But when it's not, it's one big fat ugly beast. One big mess. So don't start glazing on the pros too much. It's what we've got for now, hopefully humanity can grow into something even better some day.

Why you making that assumption immediately and putting bad intentions on him? You don't know what he was thinking. Maybe he just wants to know what's up? There's understandably a lot of emotionally loaded discussion around Israel/Gaza situation, so I could understand someone wanting to seek clarity through the smokescreen.

Ya, that's definitely one frame you can look at it through.

Sounds like a grand adventure! I'm sure you'd learn a lot through interesting experiences, so f it why not man. If it's not for you, you're going to know pretty fast. Just make sure you don't join a cult

I'm sure many would be even less happy if they tried to kill their egos.

Straight up, honestly we are just built different somehow. But not in a we are so much better way. So many times I've looked in the mirror. Wondered why I was interested in this stuff. Even though it hurt so much to deconstruct. I couldn't stop. Those who want a normal live will live a normal life. Nothing wrong with that and could've easily been you. Humans just have different abilities, attractors in life, and a bunch of other unfathomable things my pea sized mind cannot fathom that make people do and be what they are.

Feeling chatty today Love can wait until tomorrow

Mm I think it an important thing to clarify! Cause it's really become just one of those buzzwords people throw around and parrot. There's genocide in Gaza! But is it literal genocide in Gaza? I don't like what's happening, but I don't know if it is genocide or not.

Perhaps it's unconscious but it's the more productive action. You won't become conscious if people are stepping all over you, exploiting you, playing with your emotions. Self-defense can be necessary for securing boundaries. Then you can transcend it more later.

Real men always eat meat before they sleep But I think we're pretty much agreeing, it's just some definition crap I'm getting stuck on

Is it?? Is a rabbit enlightened when it goes about life. Nibbling carrots and pooing in grass? It is simple and pure too. I feel like distinction is still relevant. To me, they are living harmoniously in life with the flow of natural rhythms. Producing a satisfying of life without modern complications. But it isn't knowing you're god. That all things are connected. That's just qualitatively different. But to be "enlightened", to be a tribe member, to be a rabbit. Distinctions can be made- But at the end of the day. All of the above will be fine as they are. They're different games of life and we don't have to pedestalize one over the others.