Posted by Stephan on March 13, 2010 under My Personal Therapy | 
You wake up at Seatac, SFO, LAX. You wake up at O’Hare, Dallas-Fort Worth, BWI. Pacific, mountain, central. Lose an hour, gain an hour. This is your life, and it’s ending one minute at a time. You wake up at Air Harbor International. If you wake up at a different time, in a different place, could you wake up as a different person?
(Fight Club)
But I don’t really need to wake up as a different person. I only need to be able to lie to myself about myself, good enough for myself to believe it. You are a healthy person without problems, living in a nice and friendly world, where everything makes sense.
Theoretically, it can’t be that difficult. People are doing it all the time. Of course you are hitting your children because you love them and they earned it and it wasn’t your fault at all! Yes you are a good and nice person. The best boss there is. Of course you are right and everyone else is wrong! Your IQ might be a two digital number but yes if you repeat your stupid thoughts often enough everyone will see how intelligent you are!
Well it’s not that I never lied to myself or that I’m not still doing it. But I know that I am cracy. And everyone you does it must be crazy too. Being human means being crazy … and dumb. Especially living in our society leaves only two options - being totally crazy and lying to yourself or being enlightened.
Lying is an essential part of our society. Really really essential. This has been scientific proved. Children without the ability to like are considered rude outsiders - they couldn’t fit in. Though shallt not lie! - one of the ten commandments. Uh there are a lot of so called christians going to hell … at least in their believe system. But they usually don’t realise that because they are lying to themselfs. One of the requirements of being a christian in the first place. Ha! My parts just brought me a memory. I managed to make my mother cry once. Only. By. Talking. I logically explained her that by looking at her actions and her words, that she either is a very bad christian or no christian at all. Oh that was sooo much fun! A fond and treasured memory of my parts. I wish I could grap into her psyche and pull every bad thing she has done up to the surface where she just has to look at it. She would either break down or try to kill herself on the spot, so like a win win situation. The beauty of it would be that it is legal, not following any punishment from the law and I would get a big bonus from my parts. They would love that. Well they are the ones with the memories of being hit and .. stuff. I only know very little about that. Most of my actual memories about that stuff is locked away, but I know my parts remember that stuff. My poor parts. But I probably wouldn’t do it even if I could. Bad Karma and stuff. Ha it’s probably even bad karma only thinking about that stuff. But the thought has entertained my parts so it was worth it.
It is very difficult to say if my mother was a bad person. Well chances are very big that she doesn’t think of herself as being a bad person. And I know that she was and is a very stupid and crazy person. She probably meant well. But the outcome of her deeds are the ones of a bad person. And I know that there is only one person she really really cares about, and that is she herself. She would sacrifice everyone else if that meant that she might save herself.
But that’s a good example of how difficult it is to be positive and how impossible it is to keep the negative stuff out, since I intentionally wanted to write about something else. It’s also very difficult to be an ethical person. I did some bad stuff like the one I mentioned above. Well I was younger and a grown up that can’t react against the logical reasoning of a teenager is just a dumb shit. And she did some very bad things to … my parts. But to say she earned it, is a judgment that just can’t be done. Well it can but it wouldn’t be right to do so. I know it that wasn’t nice and that it wasn’t good. And I know that because I judged it that way. Oh and it might have been good. All things considered I don’t know if it was bad or good. But it wasn’t nice that’s for shure. Good and bad are after all only a human invention. So is “nice” but that’s easier to grade. Telling someone the truth might not be nice but it can be good in the long run. Again I reached the possibilities of words to express stuff I am thinking. And. I’m bored out writing.
Posted by Stephan on under My Personal Therapy |
This comparison came to my mind when I was thinking about my situation with my parts. I don’t know why Troja, but it is like a siege. Neither of us can really make a move. If there is something one of us doesn’t want the other to do there is no way that it will be done. Like if I want to go somewhere outside. They can just shut down entire parts of my body. Usually they fill my knees, my arms and my back with panic and depression. I often wonder how a dissociative identity disorder feels like. I wish I could control my dissociation more. If I could I would just create an entire new self to deal with everything. From the view of chinese medicin there is one part missing. The most important part that should govern the system. Well not missing, it’s just not doing its job. I have to do it. But since it is not my real job in the system I fail. Not entirely. But like the situation in Troja. I think the parts would listen to the missing part. He would be able to bring peace into the system. But he isn’t doing anything. I wish I could do the same. Then all there would be left of me would be the parts. And I have no idea how that would work out. I’m tired.
Posted by Stephan on March 7, 2010 under My Personal Therapy |
There are some nice and helpful aspects about writing a blog. It can help to get things out of the system and writing can also be supportive for thinking processes. Another thing is that I don’t actually have to write. I often think about stuff I want to write down, but then in the process of writing in my own head it clears itself and I don’t actually have to write it down anymore.
Of course I wouldn’t need a blog to do that, but it helps a lot. Like when you talk to another person in your mind. Theoretically you don’t need the other person to do so, but without the actual expirience of talking to another person, it would be rather hollow. So writing in my real blog gives the writing in my head its substance.
An interesting aspect for me is that some of the stuff I end up not writing down, might be interesting or even helpful for other people, but I do not feel eloquent or maybe confident enough to write the stuff down only on that account. But I know that stuff that came out of me has been helpful for others on not so few occasions in the past. But there are some other aspects too.
A very important one for me is that it is so much more beautiful when it is in my head. All my thinking is much more beautiful in my head. Having to use only words to express my thoughts is like putting them in chains. After all words are just variables who stand for certain pieces of information. Very small amounts of information. Well there are words that theoretically express a big amount of information like quantenphysics. But used in a conversation usually only certain aspects are relevant which have to be explained, while in the mind the information exists in a much purer form and can be more easily accessed and combined. At least when there isn’t too much pain to think properly.
Another one I have been thinking about lately is that I stopped caring. Which is true and also false. In general it is more true I think. And I am not shure yet if it is a good or a bad thing. And it just came to my mind that I don’t really know what I do care about. People who are or have been close to me. Yes. And if someone asks me directly for help even if I do not know that person I do try to help if it is in my power … and it’s not too inconvinient for me. To be true there are situations where it would just be too inconvinient not to help.
It is really difficult to put my finger on it. I do know there was something that isn’t there anymore. I am really not very bright on the emotional level. Well mainly because “I am” not emotion. My parts are emotion and “they” are dissociated from me. Although a “whole I” would involve them too. But that is not the “I” that I am expiriencing.
Writing that post has just lost it’s flavour. That’s it.
Posted by Stephan on February 28, 2010 under Marketing And Stuff, Me Thinking |
I have to explore this part of me a bit more and start to be more open about it. But I have to approach it in a way that’s comfortable for me. Right now I couldn’t write a tutorial or something, although this might be fun too. But well, since marketing is, in my opinion, mostly based on just plain logical thinking, it means that it’s possible to play around a bit.
So to be able to speculate about the future of something it’s a good way to start with its past. And what first came to my mind was mating behavior. Animals showing off to attract partners to spread their genes. But also the fight for ressources. There are a lot of similarities.
A business has to “show off” to attract customers. But in this case the customers are not the mating partner - they are the ressources.
Then we have other businesses. So in the “fight” for ressources there can be friends and foes. Businesses who help your business getting customers or who work together with your business would fall into the category of friends. The rest parts into those who also want your customers, the “foes”, and those who just haven’t got anything to do with you.
The ones you work with could be classified as belonging to your pack or clan.
So in this scenario marketing would be the process of finding ways to attract new customers and holding on to the old ones.
In a very simplified way, these are the basic principles. As you can see the concepts behind them are nothing really new.
So lets take a step forward. Google, Youtube, Blogs, Xing, Facebook and Twitter.
Google
When you have a lot of information, it is only logical to find a way to sort this information to make it accessible in an useful and easy way.
Youtube
We have videos, tons of storage and fast enough connections to move a lot of data around … and a site is born that lets you upload your videos.
Blogs
We have the concept of writing a diary, which met yet another medium to do so. And hey - you can write other stuff there too.
Xing
The creation of a platform which helps people to form new business “packs”.
Facebook & Twitter
People have always been social.
I don’t want to talk bad about these sites. There was a lot of work and effort behind them all (I guess). But I wanted to show that the cause they all emerged was rather logical. And if it wasn’t them arising to the top it would have been another site that offered the same or a very similiar service. (On that subject a little sidemark. I think that in the long run, facebook will probably drive Xing out of the market.)
I also wanted to show that the concepts behind them are also very old ones. But this is about marketing or more precicely the future of marketing, which might be evaluated by taking a closer look about what it is like today.
The sites I mentioned play a huge part in it. People find you in their Google search - you get customers. People know you from Twitter or facebook (in a good way) - you get customers. And so on.
But lets take blogs, facebook and Twitter.
In a blog you can write a lot of stuff, at facebook you can write some stuff and at Twitter you can only write very little stuff. So the next step probably wont be writing even less stuff or even no stuff at all. That would be absurd. The next step has to be something different.
But I got off the point. They are all about communication and networking. So it’s like old stuff on a much bigger level than it used to be.
Pity. My brain is getting an overflow. Too much information I just wont be able to write down in an useful and ordered manner. Just been staring at the screen for more than twenty minutes. Not what I intended but at least I made a start and it was kinda fun :o).
That’s it.
Posted by Stephan on under Me Thinking, My Personal Therapy |
That one’s a bummer. I have read some stuff related to that topic but there were a lot of different opinions. The topic is also handled in rather a lot of movies and tv show, but mostly in the way of the spoiled child blaming its poor innocent parents. In Two and a half men it’s maybe the most neutral one if have seen so far since there it goes both ways. You can see that Charly and his brother Alan do have a point when they are blaming their mother but also that they are often exaggerating a bit too much.
Because of my complex posttraumatic stress disorder I am very related to this topic and therefore have been thinking a lot about it. But without reaching a satisfying conclusion by now.
One of the problems is that whether or not you are right, blaming someone else doesn’t help and usually has even a negative effect on yourself. First, the thing happend and can’t be undone. Next part is that you are giving up your responsibility.
But. On the other hand if your parents did terrible stuff to you and you think of them as nice and loving people, you are just denying reality. And that wont help you neither.
Lets take a step backwards and approach this by an easier example. Someone hits you in the face out of nowhere. It was not your fault that you where hit and now you are injured. Blaming the person who hits you wont make the wound disappear. Any negative emotion towards this person will only damage yourself, like lowering your immun system and stuff. But emotions have a cause. Being angry at someone who hit you is only natural. It is an internal reaction of your body, that was developed before we had a civilization, even before we were humans. If you were attacked by an other animal you had to choose as fast as possible whether to fight, run away or do something else.
So in the moment of being hit your emotional or instinctual reaction can be very useful. And it is also useful to save this information for future reference, to know this animal or person is dangerous, pay attention. But this saved information can also be hindering in your everyday life, because it also depends on how you saved it. If it was the product of a logical conclusion it will probably be positive. But if it was saved subconsciously and linked with the emotional reaction there is a fat chance that the negative effect will outweigh the positive one.
Now back to the parents situation. It follows the same rules but is much more complex. They nurtured and protected you and stuff and are therefore saved as nice and trustworthy people. But if they did some terrible stuff to you this information gets all tangled up. As a child, chances are very small, that you will be able to create a logical and sophisticated conclusion from everything that happened to you. But if something that’s not nice happens to you, you certainly don’t want it to happen again. Since your parents are saved as trustworthy there must be a good cause for them to do something terrible to you, so in may cases the child will blame the fault on itself.
But the important part is that the saved information will be linked to the emotional reaction. Like judging youself for being such a bad person, fear that it will happen again, suppressed anger, and stuff like that.
Now we fast forward. The child is now a messed up grownup. Lets compare that to the example of being hit and look at the differences and the similarities.
- both create an emotional reaction
-
- in both cases it wasn’t your fault
- in both cases you now have an injury in some kind of way
- in both cases you have to deal with that injury
- in both cases the injury wont go away by blaming anyone
So why the blaming? No. Better question. Is there anything positive about blaming your parents?
Hmm. I think there might be. As mentioned it probably happens very often that the child blames itself. So in that context blaming your parents could be seen as a reassurance for yourself that you are not crazy. A step into the direction of getting a grip back on reality. And that can be very important. Because not only ones parents are the measurement of what’s normal and what’s not for a little child, but also the whole social circle. Like other relatives and friends and acquaintances of the parents. If they don’t intervene when the parents are doing some terrible stuff to the child it only adds to the picture that what the parents are doing is alright.
So blaming might be a way of getting the blame from yourself back to where it belongs. But this can only be one of the steps of letting go, else this too will get unhealthy.
Since I now have too think about this and possible following steps and stuff … that’s it.
Posted by Stephan on February 27, 2010 under Me Thinking, My Personal Therapy |
I must pay attention. I start to write again and all this stuff keeps popping up. I could write about this and that and hey that would be fun too. And then I’m overhelmed again and end up doing nothing at all. Specially when I get stressed out. But no. When I’m stressed out I am doing something, it’s just nothing productive or helpful or positive. And it is not “just” being stressed out either. It’s called an anxiety attack. That’s some levels above being “just” stressed out. And I know about anxiety attacks. I had them in many many many variations. Not nice. But I manage to cope with them rather well by now. It takes less distraction time before I manage to do something productive again. But since I have at least smaller ones about every day there is still not that much time for positive stuff to happen.
But back to topic. Overdoing stuff. Babysteps. That’s the key. One small, very very small step at a time. Less chance of tripping over and having to waste a lot of energy to troublesome getting up again for the next step. Always hoping that I am actually walking forwards.
On the other hand if I am not excited about doing cool new stuff I wont get anywhere neither. Well there is a cause that the happy medium is a very important part of buddhism. In my case it is a balancing act above a pit filled with spikes with a blindfold no safety net and someone sitting on my shoulders. Not easy but doable.
One of my theories about my whole situation is that I want or need all that stuff or it would just be too easy. What would be the challenge if I could just eat what I want without any big consequences? Or thinking without pain and without anxiety attacks all the time? In a way it is a rather nice training for the mind. Since I am a “crazy person” (I loved the question Evey asked V in V for Vendetta after his introduction “Are you like a crazy person?”) everything I think might be afflicted by unresolved issues, so I have to question my thoughts all the time. It is not as overdramatized as it might sound. I don’t do it all the time, it is more like having some kind of watchman inside of me that that stays alert and when in doubt, then I start reflecting about what I was thinking.
But often the things you take for granted are the things that should be questioned. What helps to spot these things is when there are strong emotions involved. They wont be there all the time, and only show up when they are triggered by something, but that is the moment for me to say stop and start questioning. Of course that’s not always possible, because emotions reduce the thinking capabilities, but in those cases I try to do it when the emotions have ebbed down again. There are several technics I use to do so, like using different explanatory models for the same thing or getting (more) dissociated (than usual). But I don’t want to go into detail about them right now.
That’s it.
Posted by Stephan on under My Personal Therapy |
So. I have set up the whole about thing again. I wonder how long it will last this time. At the moment the title of this post is “Just writing without purpose I” which is me just starting to write and see where it leads me. I like the idea of that. The “I” in this case stands for a number btw indicating that this might lead to a series. If it happens that there actually is stuff with a content the title will change so even this one might not stay the first .. although I personally doubt it.
So that is me writing without purpose. Not so easy but easier for me sometimes than writing about something I actually want to write. Like my head is filled with ideas about something but I can’t find a way of letting them out. Like I start writing a sentence. Then delete it. And again. No can’t write it that way, that sounds stupid. Delete. And the same again and again until I just give writing about the thing at all. But when I write without a purpose there is no sense in judging what I’m writing. Judging requires a purpose. Like it should be funny, interesting, educational or whatever. Here the purpose lies in the writing itself, so it could only be judged as bad if I haven’t writen anything at all. Even gibberish would fulfill the purpose here. And I can use as many word repetitions as I like. Or start sentences the same way. Or start sentences in an identical way.
Not judging myself. I like that. Have to do that more often. The not judging thing. Not that I do it all the time usually but more often than I would like and when I do it’s often very devastating. But that’s because of the way I was brought up. Parents and stuff. Not yet. That’s getting my parts worked up. My parts. Hmm. No. Not yet either. They wouldn’t feel comfortable at the moment with that. But they will be introduced. Another time.
Haven’t done much today yet. Not entirely true. I managed to write a new about page that should count for something. I usually don’t give myself enough credit for the stuff I’m doing. But well enough for now.
Purpose fulfilled.
Posted by Stephan on February 20, 2010 under My Personal Therapy |
I’ve just read a blog post containing a koan/story about budhha … which I already knew, exepct that in the version I had read the main charactar wasn’t buddha. Not important. The important thing is that it made me realise that my life is lacking exitement and the urge to discover something new. It actually feels like that there isn’t anything new and interesting left for me to learn.
It’s not that I know everything or that there isn’t anything “new” left for me to expirience. But everything “new” I learn lacks the big AHA! effect - I am not surprised anymore.
Like quantenphysics. So a cat may be dead and alive at the same time, and a stuff can move through other stuff in an interesting way and you can only measure where something is or how fast it is going and everything that exists might be created from scratch every damn moment. Fascinating yes, but I’ve read it and thought about it and now … it stoped being something that suprises me. It’s not new anymore.
Or neurobiology. The brain creates the self and controls the perceived information and does 11000000 bit information while the self does 40 bit and the self is an illusion anyway and so on and so forth.
Philosophy. So many many many theories. And I haven’t read them all. Or psychology, or buddhism, or hinduism, or sociology, or esoteric, or shamanism, or human behavior. Well no. Especially human behavior is boring and dull.
Or other stuff like marketing. Or the internet. Take facebook. The concept wasn’t new. You have a profile and can add stuff that others can read. And twitter just a smaller compressed version of it. Yeah it changed human interaction and stuff. But it’s nothing new or suprising about it.
Or learning new mechanical stuff like riding a bike. Just as an example I do know how to ride a bike. The concept of learning such stuff is always the same. You start doing it, you repeat doing it and then you know how to do it. Yeah …
Not that stuff can’t be interesting. Or fun. It is just … well … nothing new. Not suprising. After a while of accumulating concepts they all bore down to different variations of each other.
Well maybe this is just some kind of mood swing but when I think back it’s a long way back that I had a moment where I was thinking “what a suprising and exiting new concept! cool!”. Not that I ever thought it exactly that way, but you get my meaning. Same old same old.
Interesting that even learning something new and exiting is probably the same concept every time too. Hmm. Yeah probably just a mood swing.
That … would have probably been the perfect ending but I am not at ease just yet. I just remembred thinking about a philosophical problem in the tramway, one of those that just can’t be solved. That was some years ago and I realised that I was thinking about it some years before. Like I was traped in a circle.
I really really really need to find something that excites and motivates me. Now writing this post and everything I’ve written starts to bore me. If anyone ever reads this … well if you have read this far it is your own fault if you got bored. Period. And now I am going to dig out this concept about everything being recreated every moment - my brain feels so underused.
