Posted by Stephan on March 24, 2010 under Me Thinking, My Personal Therapy | 
Some stuff I’ve written is bugging me. It wasn’t written clear enough making it too easy to misinterpret my meaning. And people can misinterpret about everything. So stuff should be worded as clear as possible to minimize that chance. If wanted, that is.
I was talking about taking sides, in the example of my family and generally. But it was not about making a decision on the conscious level. Taking sides itself was formulated wrong, more like standing up for.
Diffucult to find a good point to start. One big cause why I write this is because the part of the family I mentioned was always nice to me and I don’t want to put a wrong complexion on them. Since I am dissociated, for me this is only human behavior, just another variable among others, making it difficult sometimes to phrase things for those who don’t quite see things like I do. Like I’ve written as if it was about a conscious choice making some stuff sound sarcastic altough it was just laying down plain facts for me. Or theories.
People usually act different when a situation is explained to them and they make a decision based on that information. But choices are made nevertheless. Take children starving in the third world, how animals are treated to produce all the food made from them, children being trashed or raped and other stuff like that. All things that are just “too far away” to really concern you. They get blended away most of the time. That’s one of the causes why people than overreact that much when something like that gets big in the news for a while. It has nothing to do with them so it is ok to act indignent. Because it is save to do so. But I have to end now because my parts are getting uncomfortable with the subject.
Posted by Stephan on March 22, 2010 under Me Thinking, My Personal Therapy |
Although I was just recently thinking about deleting everything I’ve writen again, there just came something up I have to get off my chest.
The thought process startet when I realised that there is a way of feeling that I haven’t felt for a very long time now. To be precise a negative kind of feeling. There are some positive ones I haven’t felt for a long time neither but I don’t wanna think about that right now. But back to the negative one. I only felt this feeling when I had contact with my family … the bad part of it. And the last time I felt it was when I last seen them. It is the feeling of my parts freaking out. Well they do so without any contact too but not that intense. Like the difference between remembering a lion and standing right in front of one. And to my parts that’s exactly what the bad part of my family were to them - pretators. Beings you should be afraid of, pumping stress hormons into the body and being alert like hell, because you can never tell what they will do next.
But it only started there. The next thing I remembered was my time at the psychosomatic compartment at the hospital. I finally connected it to another problem. It was the same shit when I was send to therapists when I was a teenager. The message was that I was the psychopath. Not them. The stupid head doctor of the compartment even dared to judge me as a possible risk to others. That is just another nice sign of how sick our society really is. This doctor didn’t had a clue about me. Not. One. Single. Clue. Yes there has been a lot of aggression and hate inside me, which of course showed up. But I had spent years exercising to control them. Even then I already knew how to fight them, how to channel them into something else like destroying unimportant stuff or self injury. And I knew that out on the streets there where really really lot of people counting as normal with not even half the self control I had even then. And since then 8 years have past and the only things I did were some messages I left. Maybe devastating messages but no physical force. Unlike them.
And right there is the problem. The message was again. Something is wrong with you. Not with them. You can’t be trusted. Those people who snapped all the fucking time are alright. They don’t need to be here, you do. All they did was trashing little children and teenagers. Who cares about that? Socially viewed it is not very important. It is only a small peccadillo. That’s just how it is. If you can go to work and pay your taxes and play the role of a respected member of society, it is not important that you trash your children at home. Problems only occur if those children, as a result of the trashing, are to messed up to be able to play the role of a respected member of society. And if that happens they are the problem, not the people who trashed them. Our society as a whole just thinks shortsighted like that. Not only concerning this matter but about a lot of other very important stuff too.
There are a lot of important factors playing a role here, so you can dig deeper if you like. People doing the trashing (or whatever) of little kids usually have a higher status and more influence than the now grown up messed up psychological disturbed person. The have more money, they can afford the better laywers and so on. For example my family. And for this example I will take a branch that is not that close to me. The one of my aunt. Her husband, her children. What would they get if they would side with me? Nothing but trouble. After all I am mentally disturbed, I can’t leave my flat, I’m terminally ill (that’s what the doctors told me at least), can only eat certain foods and I have certain views about my parents and some of my siblings they neither want to share or even hear anything about. If they side with my parents it looks rather different. My parents are seen as respected members of society. My father was something high at the police, my mother was a secretary and is now doing a lot of work around my grand-someting-aunt Helene Maria Restituta Kafka who was beatified and helping out the nuns around this thingy. Of course my aunt doesn’t want to have a picture of my mother in her head as a raging and screaming monster trashing children. She has her own problems and in my mother someone to talk to. On bigger family gatherings my parents and the children coming along with them are an important part of the social group that is coming together on those occasions. And some of my cousins have children too. When my mother is holding them they don’t want to think of her as a children hitting monster. Whereas I was usually always only an attachment to my parents, not playing an important role at those occasions and couldn’t even attend because of my illness. I can’t blame them for taking side with my parents. Well I can. And I do. But that’s because of the general view. Let me explain. In the general view this kind of behavior adds taint to our sick and tainted society and makes it what it is. If I see it like that generally I can’t make an exception only because I consider them as nice. And it’s not an emotional kind of blaming but more of an intellectual blaming. A pointer to where part of the problem lies. After all there where only an example for the general behavior. In the very very very most cases people act exactly like that. Again. Our whole society works that way. It is understandable, but that doesn’t make it good. It is one of those disturbing aspects of society, were the picture society has of itself and how it is acting in reality are very different things. Even nice people and the doctors who are there to help you add to it. Maybe not all but definitly most of them. At least some people are adding more good stuff than negative stuff to it or so I’d like to think.
To add something positive at the end. I haven’t had a major breakdown for some time now. Long enough to be remarkable. I can’t remember a time where I felt that good that long. Well I still have smaller breakdowns and pain and still can’t leave my flat that easily but it’s a start at least. It could be much worse … and it was. So there is that. And that is 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.
