I dreamed about my high school class today. The school psychologist came to our lesson. At some point, two priests showed up, and the teacher, along with the psychologist, ran to the psychologist’s office. The priests chased after them because they had come to play with them (rap. yooo yooo- you know, banned word). One mischievous classmate also ran after them, and then policemen ran after them in the hallway to catch them.
Everything happened very quickly. Some of the classmates went into that room, but there was another door slightly ajar, and everyone was afraid to go in. Everyone was shouting one by one: ‘Cut them off!’
There was a bathtub in the corner, and suddenly one of the classmates started breaking eggs into it, and then everyone followed suit, and soon everything was spilling all over the floor. The end. The ending is funny. :D
Well, I’m happy that you asked 🤭
I’m privileged with my brain, but it does require a lot of special attention.
As I mentioned in another comment here already, I think in experiences. This has many pros and cons.
One of the pros is that math comes easy to me because I can simply look at it and resolve it visually. While writing this I am seeing thin red lines tangling and detangling, because that is one representation of math to me.
When I close my eyes I immediately see a stream of morphing images, much like those diffuse ai videos. But it is fully immersive with sound and is also emotional. The past few years it has also turned haptic, which is a bit unsettling because I am worried about hurting myself with my physical pose. I’ve had a few times that I return and my legs are sleeping. When I say hapric I don’t just mean the ability to touch stuff, I also mean the deep feeling of being physically there.
I can go on, but I don’t want to make this too long. Here are some contras.
My brain simply refuses to do certain things, no matter how hard I want or need to do them. It’s not due to a lack of discipline. Basically I have a symbiotic relationship with my subconsciousness, and I better not forget it.
It always needs new information and to experiment with new things. This has consequences. For instance I can’t really hold a routine longer than that it is interesting. I can get up at 5 every day, go for a run, then get to work and earn money. But this will only last a maximum of a few months until my brain decides it is done with exploring it. After that all I can do is accept the verdict and come up with something new, even if I was rather enjoying the results, or needed it.
I can’t really play games for very long. If I really really like a game I can play it for maybe two weeks. But for the life of me I can’t understand how someone can play a game for thousands of hours. The flood of novelty changes into a trickle and it’s just not enough to keep old Bessie happy. And it kind of sucks because I can imagine it must be so chill to just have this one goto game for unwinding, and it must be nice to be able to be part of a clan and to know all the little ins and outs of a game world.
I was absolutely atrocious in school. My brain is just incapable of learning that a queen has to be written to this way and a bishop has to be written to that way in a letter. I can see that it’s easy. I can see that I need to learn it for my own good. But it’s just not in the cards, so I flunked over and over again. I cried so much, and I didn’t realize that I wasn’t entirely stupid until I was 26!
A few years ago I had art therapy. The therapist told us to do a test. It was a piece of paper with a grid of points on it, some of them connected with lines. We had to look at it for a short while. Then we had to turn it over. On the other side you had the same grid but without any of the lines, and she told us to fill it in with the same pattern, from memory.
Most people there would have failed the test if it would have been in an academic setting. A few were pretty decent. But I aced it and didn’t miss a single thing. I cried so hard, because of all the trauma it brought up. It taught me that I’m not a failure and I have my own abilities.
One last contra is that all words appear experientially to me. So for example trickle down economy looks/feels like someone peeing. And there’s a user on here called maggot, and it’s disgusting to me because I keep seeing a maggot in trash, and I can sort of feel its soft scales and so on.
Love this! I’m glad you were able to come to learn what worked best for you. There are levels of academia and standardized is not for everyone, so it’s great that you eventually did find your strengths!
Thanks. Coming to this realization has allowed me to leverage my strengths on the market and also in terms of output for what I care about myself.
I feel this applies to so many other people too, that they feel bad about themselves because of what they were taught, and just don’t see how strong they really are in some areas.
For example a friend of mine has adhd and flunked everything. But when you are talking with her she can totally hyperfocus on you and absolutely be there. She’s a listener and a healer. She has thank you notes from people all over her apartment.
She’s also freakin poor and always struggling. I told her yesterday hey why don’t you go into coaching? There is such a high demand for people like you, you don’t have to be licensed, and I know you’d ace it.
I do a lot of things that people are afraid to do and it feels so easy for me… and yet simple social interaction can be so incredibly stressful.
Honestly, nothing crazy. Things that have elecited reactions include traveling all over the place solo, scuba diving, sky diving, hopping into a four seater plane when it’s raining and foggy, getting up in front of people singing… Nothing really big, but the number of times people have said, “I could never do that!” that have coincided with me thinking, “This conversation is way more stressful than that!” is kind of funny.
Rozwud, I challenge you to pet a cat in public while baby talking loudly, until the cat decides to leave.
instead of learning to stop over thinking and being less anxious, i’ve decided to lean into it and try to prepare / predict every situation, along with the most common / reasonable ones, and prepare accordingly. and once i have, i let it go
for example, i’m at the airport to take a flight soon… so i packed earlier today to the best of my ability. both for necessities and entertainment. is it possible that i forgot something? you betcha. but according to all of the possibilities i’ve simulated in my head, i’ve got everything i need within the possibility sphere i’m likely to occupy
of course, there are some situations which could happen that i would be screwed if they did… the most concerning of which is, embarrassingly, whether or not my nose hair gets long enough to make my nose itch while i’m gone. but hopefully that was a one off itching that won’t come back later!
the possibility space of a trip away from home is pretty small and tame, but the possibility space for interactions with other people is much bigger, as well as unique to every individual. plus, the ever present threat of a traumatic reaction adds a lot of randomness to the scenario
still, i’m hoping that i can build a broad, general enough map to cover most situations. it’s quite a herculean task, but i feel like humans are mostly the same at heart. guess i’ll find out if that’s true or not 😅
please note that relaxing and accepting the possibility of things going “wrong” (in unforeseen or undesirable ways) is still a very important part of the process. for the best results, you’ll still want to be able to take in, process, and respond to any given situation, which you’ll need to be able to accept and calm down to process in the moment
the key difference here is recognizing that the main way a social interaction falls apart is when a traumatic reaction occurs, and researching and recognizing what that looks like, and understanding the mechanisms at play behind it, and the best ways to act and respond when it happens; while also taking into account that you, yourself, may have a traumatic reaction in response, with the associated skillsets learned and developed to counteract it
so yeah, writing all of that out is why my brain is a little funny. i don’t really think i should, because it feels like i’m talking a little bit too much, either about how i work, or how people work, i’m not sure. buuut i’m at the airport and a little tipsy and have nothing better to do… and you asked! so i hope it was kind of a fun or interesting read
Your story reminded me of this person posting about their next seat neighbor who was raw dogging reality by staring in front of themselves for like 12 hours straight. That must be one of the eventualities on your mental spreadsheet, amirite?
Mine has Borderline Personality Disorder.
Wait… That’s not funny… 🤔
