🧵 View Thread
🧵 Thread (47 tweets)
as a kid i was really freaked the fuck out by pain. small persistent pains that didn't have a clear sense of when it'd leave was always the worst. i was also generally v sensitive i recall wandering the playground with a hangnail, wondering "is this life? pain, forever?"
one of the most useful exercises i have for both physical and emotional pain is to "hunt for the part that *actually* hurts" find which part of the sensation the actual *bad* is coming from. the punchline is that i can never seem to find it when i focus
the above technique is nice to practice in cold showers, and also while stretching. it both reduces the suffering, and also the related "flinch" (to turn the cold water off, exit the stretch). modified instructions: hunt in the flinch for the part that *compels* you
probably when i had testicular torsion as a kid. i recall just writhing in bed. the pain sorta wormed it's way thru me and i couldn't really twist away from it, even though in any moment it was less intense than say slamming my thumb in a car door https://t.co/6PqhOyJOyk
i'm still learning how to *directly* give a shit about my body, instead of treating it as something i'll get in trouble for if I fuck it up i remember when I twisted my leg ankle freshman year doing parkour, first thoughts were SHAME
oh, shame/guilt around incurring medical bills is also a big deal. not "i know my budget (or *our* budget when i lived with fam) is X, and medical bills could be Y to Z, and that adds [] much financial strain" just "uhuhuhuhuhuhuhuhu FUCK"
as a kid i cracked my neck a lot. I also TOSSED my neck. this wasn't good for me. sometimes my neck would spaz out, and i'd be in pain for the rest of the evening until i tried like 10 different weird yoga things getting stuck in that muscle spaz always scared the shit out of me
huh, i basically don't crack my neck anymore. i don't remember exactly the story arc of how that happened. i think by highschool i'd naturally transitioned to not throwing it, but still cracked it. and I think in uni i set an intentional mission to stop cracking/
/oh wow, i remember one day when i noticed "oh shit, i've stopped cracking but now i'm just slowly weirdly moving my neck around in search of some crack" i think that really helped me home in on the specific urge i was trying to satiate and target it more directly
lol, for everything i mentioned about being sensitive (shirt tags TORMENTED me), i also like, cut my finger open with a hand saw and it didn't particularly hurt. i was 11, sis and i were home alone. "hey sis, don't freak out, but I'm bleeding", sis proceeded to freak the fuck out
reminds me of breakthroughs i've had with judgement in 2019 i was outlining my brightest dreams of the future and was struck by "why the FUCK does this feel so OMINOUS? why is there a sense of threat permeating my depiction of an ideal life? why are my goals GLARING at me?"
that's what underlies my relationship to non-coercion i simply do not believe that what is good fundamentally feels bad. fuck you. might hurt. might be hard. but it's simply bullshit that what is good and right is NECESSARILY this uncompelling goop you need to beat yourself into
this is probably the thing i believe most strongly that i can barely explain it's also very much experienced as "that wouldn't make any fucking SENSE", not "that would be UNFAIR" or "that would be MEAN". there's something fundamentally nonsensical about "necessity of suffering"
this relates to why i can't deal with cool cynical arguments for suicide. if i sense even a wiff of irony or "i'm so edgy, life is endless suffering *laughs and puffs cigarette*" my raging gut reaction is "then fuck off and die you twat!" would not do that with someone in crisis
so my dad always told me as a kid "most suffering in life comes from unmet expectations" his moral was "so always prepare as much as possible and stack the deck in your favor" the moral i took was "never build fantasies about how good things could be" and now i see a 3rd angle
there's some mental motion to "having a *problem*", which involves being in some world state and holding that you SHOULDN'T be in that world state you SHOULDN'T be having this PROBLEM and the fact that you are having this PROBLEM is a PROBLEM https://t.co/O0WehrjJcH
/leg brushing on gear entering awareness, i register that I now have a "problem" that is "annoying" and has to be "dealt with", there's some ughing at the problem, there's some resentment at having the "problem", there's weighing suck of problem against "annoyance" of fixing
and this "shouldn't" seems to involve something like "collapsed awareness around future hypotheticals" i suss out the structure via cases like "i leave home, get a block, realize i left my wallet. I'm in no rush and the 5min doesn't actually change shit. but its ANNOYING!"
(btw, i realize i'm writing in Oration Mode, asserting things, and when i do that people reply less. if you've got any thoughts on the micro-physics of "expectation based suffering" please share! i'm deeply confused and trying to hurt less, all help is welcome!)
another thing i've noticed. if I got to mcdonalds expecting to get a sunday, and the ice cream machine is broken, i'm often a bit upset/grumpy. if, on the bike ride to mcdonalds, i remember "oh, the ice cream machine might be broken", then there's 0 suffering in the event it is
right, the classic "just don't have expectations" is obvs wrong if expectation means anticipation/prediction or goal. but there is some mental motion that might be called "expecting" that seems to be isolated from other facets of "expecting" and is strictly harmful
last July/August i had some of the most intense emotional pain I've had in my life. broke up with someone i'd been dating for the last 1.5 years, was v in love with leading up to the breakup was long period of them not wanting to talk about the ongoing conflict
being semi-ghosted felt like having a big gaping hole in my chest it felt like the hole would close if only i'd let myself hate them. i refuse. crawled around for a month retching and bleeding (metaphorically) had to get creative with finding ways to absorb pain
when i was 18 and taking a gap year tween school i had what i've been calling an "existential breakdown" that fucked me up for a while i think if it hadn't been cut short via getting dengue fever it might have escalated to a full psychotic break https://t.co/P8PRoD8hdV
i'd been on the road for 5 months at this point. i'd grown to hate my traveling companion (for very stupid reasons). we had made friends at the hostel in bangkok we'd been staying at for a month, but i was feeling increasingly lonely, aimless, and CONTEMPTFULL of others
i was feeling a lot of contempt towards myself and others for "just following scripts" and "pretending to be real humans". this pushed me to interact less and less with people. this made me lonelier. i was angry for feeling lonely, given how contemptible i felt people were
the bit that resonated the most was his descriptions of patients descriptions of trying to "kill their Selfs", not as in suicide, but as in mentally attacking and assailing their own sense of Self, tearing it apart and firing judgement cannons everywhere
it felt like i'd created a persistent mental loop that would ruthlessly attack me with intense derision anytime i experienced anything as meaningful, fun, interesting, or worthwhile, until i just stopped having seeing anything as meaningful/fun/interesing/etc (almost anything)
i remember being very convinced that i'd never feel good ever again. was a very hopeless place. for whatever reason, it never felt like a real option to kms, so i was stuck with answering "given i can't feel good anymore... what do I do next?" https://t.co/hCi74q4WP5
@reconfigurthing Yes, would say it is in fact easier when someone has given up on everything, has no hope, feels utterly alone, and does not consider suicide an option. (pondering suicide gives an Out- this kind of thing happens more easily when there is no perceived way of escaping)
this lead to interesting places. like a 15 page google doc about how to make plans and execute plans without the aid of any internal senses of "yes!" or "no!" this was the state of disembodiment that my feelings/wanting/meaning discovery arc https://t.co/URD0vKIoQq
one reason i had to even DO this was because of an accuse incident where I feel into a nihilism pit, couldn't intellectually find value in anything, and that allowed harsh angry self-judgement to ATTACK me every time i felt care/meaning/value https://t.co/yHNJTQtDgB
I remember in uni when i'd first gotten a job as a magician in a restaurant. for the first 5 weeks i remember spending the bus rides back up making up reasons i planned to tell them why i was quiting wtf? quitting? a dope ass job that gave me a chance to practice what I loved???
it was so fucking weird. i was TERRIFIED of my boss (dude who middlemanned magicians and restaurants) telling me i was shit weird because... i had no fear that the actual people i was performing for would think i was bad. i'd performed enough and had great track record. so what?
there was something weird and kinda fucked about how i related to money/jobs/employment (it's defs not entirely exorcised) something like... if I accept your money that makes me your bitch? and you have the right to be flip at me whenever you feel? dunno, money's fucking weird
@natural_hazard You've probably read these but Aella has some good pieces on this. E.g. https://t.co/GKL1A4zQCK
@natural_hazard Not as related, but I'm also a fan of this post: https://t.co/svtEAwSRxN