Social Disability
There are those days when your social disability just shines through. You could even frame one of these and present it as evidence to the judge of the world as to why you need to not exist anymore.
To an observer, it would appear as if you were trying to attract all the attention with the awkwardness that you seem to unnecessarily inject into the situation. And maybe there is some truth to this. Maybe this is your mangled inner self wanting some attention drawn to it so it could find solace and respite.
You get hurt by hurting those you are in the situation with. The same people who you were there to help celebrate their little victories. Not because you want to rain on their parade, but the only occasions that you ought to break out of your shell is for such celebrations.
Celebrations of life. Those of success. Those of longevity. Those of existence. All destroyed by me.
Long.
Sessions. In which I speak. Maybe even teach. There are at least two repetitions of the same topic. Where I start, how I go, where I stumble – no one knows. The nervous excitement levels vary.
Pretty sure I make a fool of myself. More than the fool I think I am.
After they are over, takes a while to settle down. Sometimes hours. Of quiet. No interactions. Just work and thinking.
Yesterday was one such day. This plus some extra work meant I was at work tell after 1 am. Was working on some fun stuff tho - kirigami wearables. Things that trigger, sustain, consummate and my learning instincts.
Also, Belgium won. 🇧🇪
This article, which was shared by J, sounds so true to me. Here’s an excerpt.
“With hundreds of studies showing that childhood adversity hurts our mental and physical health, putting us at greater risk for learning disorders, cardiovascular disease, autoimmune disease, depression, obesity, suicide, substance abuse, failed relationships, violence, poor parenting and early death, we just can’t afford to make such distinctions.”
If you are like me, having grown up in a relatively unconnected world, you must have felt how you don’t seem to have time to do anything anymore. This article, which was forwarded to me by my ex-boyfriend Vinokur after a four-hour Skype conversation about everything including my present phase of depression, is about a study which found that people are willing to receive shocks to avoid being left alone with their own thoughts. It also mentions mindfulness meditation, something that my shrink has been asking me to try.
The most startling thing, however, in this article is this psychological strategy to deal with your own problems and negative feelings:
To get rid of the emotional static, experts advise not using first-person pronouns when thinking about troubling events in your life. Instead, use third-person pronouns or your own name when thinking about yourself. “If a friend comes to you with a problem it’s easy to coach them through it, but if the problem is happening to us we have real difficulty, in part because we have all these egocentric biases making it hard to reason rationally,” said Dr. Kross of Michigan. “The data clearly shows that you can use language to almost trick yourself into thinking your problems are happening to someone else.”
Vinokur pointed this particular aspect to me. I agree with him that this seems like a great strategy.
Coincidentally enough, I had heard about this study on the latest episode of the Skeptic’s Guide to the Universe podcast, which is a fabulous source for critical and analytic thinking about what’s happening in the world of science and pseudoscience.