Damn it Feels Good to be a Gangsta

[daylen]

Seems like both "closed" and "narrow" could be used as antonyms of "open". They differ in the perspective (closed is used more for 3D and narrow more for 2D) yet are similar in that a closed space is a partial set of the whole space to which it is not open to, and a narrow space is a partial set of the whole space to which it is not open to.

[guitarplayer]

When I wrote about it being being a PR thing I had in mind plainly that many people could get offended.

[daylen]

Yeah, it's unfortunate because that dichotomy is at the heart of the big 5. In MBTI it may be that sensors are more open during actual experiences and intuitors are more open to the internal world of possible experiences. Hence, I like to think of sensations and thoughts as [more external] processing patterns that balance information flow in with the information flow out from [more internal] intuition and feelings. Along with alternating (i) and (e) these assumptions leading to everyone balancing their public world with their private world such that overall openness and closedness are near uniform across the population.

Intuitors be like "what if this or that possiblity?", and sensors be like "in the time took wondering about this or that possiblity I could have experienced this and that instead."

[jacob]

Good work including the linking. This is a PR thing but O stands for 'Openness to experience' - otherwise the above would imply that the other end of the axis is something like Narrowmindedness which you don't intend to say, I don't think.

In MBTI it may be that sensors are more open during actual experiences and intuitors are more open to the internal world of possible experiences.

O correlates with N. Statistically you'll find the highest O scores in the MBTI types with dominant (and high scoring) Ne or Ni, so (INTJ, INFJ, ENTP, ENFP) followed by auxiliary Ne or Ni, so (INTP, INFP, ENTJ, ENFJ). Ne or Ni relates to the preference for abstracting from the concrete and being curious about patterns and connections between different perspectives. They do not relate to being adventurous or "trying everything once". The lowest O scores are found where N is in the inferior position (ESTP, ESFP, ISTJ, ISFJ).

I don't mind going psycho-active on the (re)naming as a non-offensive/saleable term can often be misleading. For example, ESTP or ESFP types are probably the most "open" to try the "experience" of some never-seen-before jackass-type stunt that involves riding a motorcycle backwards into a lake while chugging a beer. But being willing to try anything does not mean they're open-minded or would score very high on O. Neither does the ISTJs or ISFJs willingness to try new restaurants imply that they're seeking new perspectives.

So I literally meant open-minded (as in curious about other perspectives) vs narrow-minded (as in not interested in other perspectives). Another name for the axis could be Scatterbrained or Practical. This would make the N-types feel bad for scoring high on the Scatterbrain scale or low on the Practical scale.

I'm more interesting in whether a term is correct than whether it is flattering. I mean it's not like the authors did a good job naming the N-scale.

[7Wannabe5]

@Jin+Guice:

Seeing as how we are practically the same type (lol), I would note that I greatly benefited from therapy towards getting better cognition attached to my feelings when I was around your age. My way of visualizing it was roughly akin to Ne as the Monkey or Juvenile Masculine Explorer as the bright energy/quadrant, Ti as the Snowy Owl or Adult Masculine Cool Logical Thinker energy/quadrant, Fe as the Deer/Cow or Adult Feminine Energy warm caretaker quadrant, and Si as the Bunny or vulnerable Juvenile Feminine Energy quadrant. As an eNTP what is going to get you into trouble is when your Explorer Monkey (Ne) is going crazy and pulling in too many inputs for your Logical Owl (Ti) to process AND your soft-touch Deer (Fe) is simultaneously attempting to provide basic warm mammal functions for everybody in your social circle while your own vulnerable juvenile feminine Bunny (Si) is neglected.

Since Ne (the Monkey/Explorer) is who-you-are, attempting to cage your monkey in order to get it more in alignment with Ti (the Snowy Owl/Logician) will be dysfunctional. Focusing instead on improving the functioning of your Snowy Owl is what will give you super-powers in combination with strong healthy Ne (Monkey/Explorer.) One book on the topic describes this as asking yourself "Does this make sense?", but that doesn't work well for me, because "Sense" is too well associated with dull "Common Sense" in my brain, so "Sit down and do the math." is the mantra I employ. I have also noticed that since I tend towards cold anger (my Adult Masculine "killer" energy lives way up in a tree in the Arctic), getting pissed about something often has the perverse effect of making my behavior more logical (maybe because it externalizes my Ti towards Te?)

If/when the problem is that your Fe Warm Caretaker Deer has swollen up beyond her should-only-be-tertiary level of functioning, what works best is to focus on very simple self-care Fe on Si behavior, IOW actually physically grooming yourself (1) or your environment (2.)

Anyways, an ENTP The Explorer is not The Artist (INFP), but what we have in common with that Type is that Ne is the second strongest function on INFP, so we are good at exploring/collaborating with The Artist and we both have Si in our backseat, so we share some aspects of sensitivity. Frank Zappa is a good example of an ENTP musician and Mark Twain is a good example of an ENTP writer. The INFP brain often seems to border on schizophrenia in terms of attaching too much dark salience to inputs from the environment and this is often can only be processed through in the form of creative production employing Ne. For example, "I saw a dead dog by the side of the road today. Humans and their fucking machines suck. They suck very, very, very, very hard.........What if?.....(composing punk rock opera with some sections that are the sound/feeling of how hard humans suck, some sections are the sound/feeling of all the cars being triumphantly ground up in a grinder, and some sections are the sound/feeling of all the dogs running free through the forest that grew up through the broken concrete of the abandoned highway.) Whereas, the ENTP who is an artist will more likely start with the What if? and let the feelings, which are less likely to be so very dark, more likely to be towards cheerful/manic attachment of salience, bubble up and fill themselves into the art work.

[guitarplayer]

Fair enough @jacob, if you are less interested in packaging of ideas. I could bet another five dollars* that there is a significant negative correlation between N / O scores and propensity to get offended by being called one way or another.

*the first bet I consider invalid since one of the parties had information advantage : ]

Well anyway this is little relevant to the journal, sorry @j&g!

[Jin+Guice]

Thanks @7. I did just go through a bunch of therapy to attach my emotions and it did wonders for me. After doing so I noticed that many around me were behaving as though they weren't attached to their emotions. I also noticed a lot of emotionally suppressive and dismissive language in my day to day life. I find the discouragement of emotions as prevalent as the subtle pushes away from ERE.

This personal experience is why I'm throwing down so hard for "emotions are important and you might need to do extra work to find yours" but I also feel like I've provided the context to be let someone ignore this section if they think I'm wrong.

That does describe my relationship to the arts. I'm not very good on my own. I have trouble finding that deep thing I'm trying to express and do better helping other people realize their vision or in scenarios where I have a pre-determined form and purpose (like write theme music for my hearse where I will read tarot cards).

@guitarplayer:

I think of this like a blog more than a journal. I think some of the most interesting conversations on the forum are ones that diverge from the main point. Please feel free to continue the discussion without remorse!

[Jin+Guice]

Emotional Needs Part 2: Trauma

Emotional trauma is the result of an emotionally disturbing experience. The word trauma suggests that this has to be a large catastrophic event, the emotional equivalent of blunt force trauma to the head. Traumatic experience creates “triggers,” which cause us to re-experience the past wound as if it were occurring in the present and react accordingly.

These terms recent popularization have hijacked their true meaning. The misassignment is the expectation that the outside world owes one a provenance of zero trauma, or if there is past trauma, zero triggering of that trauma. It moves the responsibility from the individual to everyone else. In doing so it suggests that trauma is not possible to work through, that is something beyond the control of the trauma experiencer.

I think of trauma as any past event which causes a misfiring of the fight, flight or freeze mechanism. The conscious mind is hijacked by subconscious mechanisms which respond to a stimulus that is not present.

To let go of trauma, the central nervous system needs a recalibration. For someone who experiences the outcome of trauma, an attempt to make the trauma reaction “go away” is often desired. This is not the solution. Rather, one must understand what the trauma communicates from the past and find a way to reassure the subconscious that it is safe from the recurrence of this event. This often requires some behavioral or cognitive change in the present. It is vital to work with the trauma as the trauma contains important information.

I think most of us are traumatized by pathological culture. How many of us struggle with feelings of uselessness once we remove our employment capacity? How many of us struggle with fear that we will not be able to support ourselves if we leave our jobs? How many of us fear that friends, family and community members will not respect us without work?

[jacob]

Any kind of discussion/conversation definitely needs to agree on how "trauma" is defined, because usage varies a lot between individuals and various groups. Indeed, the [subjective] Overton windows of trauma may not necessarily overlap.

To wit, before responding I googled around for the "professional" definition of trauma: It requires a lot [of damage]. A lot more than how I've seen the word bantered around IRL by NFs.

Perhaps a scale or different words would be useful to distinguish between trauma that is different in degree. For example, bruise, tear, crack, splinter, break, shatter, collapse are all traumas of different degrees.

Psychologically speaking, I think there must be a difference [in degree] between e.g. a "crack" in one's worldview ("Wait what, I trusted them and it turns out they lied"), having it shattered ("Everything I thought I knew is wrong"), and outright "collapse" (schizophrenia?).

So ...

In chapter 2 of the ERE book, I rant and rave about the lock-in. This can be described as somewhere between a psychological "break" and a "shatter" of my worldview(*). A felt betrayal of career-optimism and techno-optimism. Indeed, people from the "yoga bourgeoisie" have definitely felt the need to point out that I-am-traumatized. Then again, much of the YB is really into this:

It seems more like an endless pool for **F*’s to enjoy and share their feelings; I.e. to no end and without a lot of obvious development happening.

And so YB may use the "trauma"-definition in the widest sense possible to keep rehashing old experiences over and over. Their point is not to move on. Their point is to enjoy the process and reminisce about past feelings. (Compare to those who like to reminisce about past experiences.)

(*) Since 2000, the world as well as myself has become a bit more informed and cynical so it seems weird/excessive in retrospect. Keep in mind, though, that around 2010, psychologists still have a very simplistic understanding of burnout, thinking it could be fixed by taking a week off from work and relaxing.

That said ... the ERE blog and chapters 3-5 of the ERE book is essentially how I resolved this "trauma" by creating another worldview.

It provides a logical (Te) solution to the betrayal of broken promises. It's possible to use the rules of Plato's Cave to escape Plato's Cave and make a new way of life for yourself and those who come along. However, it leaves the emotional processing (Fi and Fe) to the reader.

I did not consider the emotional part of it to any large degree but instead generalized the objective solution-space so others could find their own ways and justifications. I even left my internal values (Fi) out of my writing although you can recognize them between the lines both on the blog and the book. FWIW, it took me about 6 months to process my emotional reactions at the time.

I think the subjective as well as the intersubjective Fi/Fe space remains largely unexplored in this overall movement.

PS: Some years ago, I received a review copy of this: https://www.amazon.com/Money-Meaning-Ph ... 0997963905 ... These might be the droids you're looking for.

[7Wannabe5]

"The Seven Stages of Money Maturity" by George Kinder might also be relevant. He writes about resolving the emotionally laden mythologies around money to which you may have been exposed or acculturated.

1. Innocence--The childhood state we are born in, devoid of any concept of money
2. Pain--The discovery that we have more money than some and less than others, and that work is necessary to make a living
3. Knowledge--The intellectual task of learning financial techniques such as saving, budgeting, and investing
4. Understanding--The emotional work done in coming to terms with feelings around money, such as greed, envy, and resentment (which are rooted in Pain)
5. Vigor--The energy (physical, emotional, and spiritual) that must be expended to reach financial goals
6. Vision--The direction of Vigor outward toward the health and welfare of communities, with or without profit motive
7. Aloha--The compassionate goodwill that allows one to use money to perform acts of kindness without expecting anything in return

[Jin+Guice]

Any kind of discussion/conversation definitely needs to agree on how "trauma" is defined

Yes I agree and I think our last discussion was a lot of differing definitions of what "emotional needs" were and meant.

I dislike the word "trauma" for the reasons I stated. For me, it's impossible to remove the connotation of it being an event that caused a lot of damage.

The one positive of using that word is that much smaller damage evokes a similar response. For me, when I hear "trauma" and "trigger" the first thing that comes to mind is a war veteran who hears a loud noise and dives under a table. This is a misfiring of the central nervous system/ elephant/ system 1/ subconscious/ shadow (I'm going to use "system 1" from Kahmen/Tversky as a catchall for all of these). Next think of a veteran who not only dives under a table but relives some past horror experienced during a war. This is a misfiring coupled with a mental hijacking.



Thinking about how to define trauma or what alternative language could be used, I thought about what the minimum was for the kind of "trauma" I am talking about.

What I came up with is that trauma is similar to fear. Fear is an important learned response of system 1. We fear touching a hot pan because it burns us, which we learn very quickly. But, remember the veteran who fears loud noises, fear is sometimes coupled with an outsized response of system 1. Worse than that, fear often catapults us out of the present and into the past or future.

I equate this phenomenon with anxiety. So in the case of trauma we incur the trauma when some painful event happens, but the potential trouble arises when we are "triggered" which is re-experiencing that pain, and potentially a system 1 reaction to it by some present event.

We also hold the capacity to trigger trauma by imagining an event in the future which we are anxious about.

To add more layers, this pain does not need to be physical it can be emotional or social or some insult to the ego. The subconscious will often shield us from this pain. In the case of subconscious protection, we are triggered without realizing it, responding to old trauma without consciously realizing it. The veteran becomes an alcoholic to mute the pain of a trauma response that keeps getting triggered.

Subconscious responses are especially difficult because finding the source is tricky. If the alcoholic veteran stops drinking, he will need to deal with his subconscious pain or he will find another destructive outlet.

These small triggers, fears and anxieties are happening all of the time. Much of human behavior can be seen as responding to these fears, but life continues anyway. I don't think having anxiety or fear is a problem in itself, although someone who wants to stay present focused may find them to be a problem. They become a problem when they prevent us from changing a behavior or pattern that we claim to want or when the evoke a response that we claim to not want.

Some ways to get out of this thinking is to try to stay focused on responding to present stimuli when you notice you are fearful or anxious as well as focusing on what MMM calls the "circle of control" or remembering that "there is no responsibility without control and no control without responsibility." Undoing subconscious trauma and patterns is often more difficult and may sometimes require outside help.

As I see it, conquering misplaced fear is paramount in ERE. Like all of life, decisions about ERE are made under uncertainty which naturally generates fear. It's ultimately up to the individual to determine if this fear is being unduly influenced by past pain or an overly pessimistic view of the future or a healthy respect for what they are likely to be able to achieve. Are you continuing your job out of a healthy fear and respect for your current abilities to meet your needs or is it a misplaced fear of the unknown? Are you not trying to develop some new skill or do some new activity in your WoG because of an honest assessment of your needs, time and ability or are you avoiding it out of fear?

Trauma can also lock us into heterotelic patterns. Have some habit that despite your best efforts and intentions you just can't shake? It's likely partially a system 1 response, which is partially formed by habit, but also influenced by needs and fear responses. If someone is trying to lose weight they may fail because they keep unhealthy food in their house, because that food is easy to access when they are hungry, because a particularly unhealthy food reminds them of a pleasant time in their life or because they eat as a way to soothe stress or traumatic experience.

As with everything I write, my suggestion is not that everyone must overcome trauma to achieve some status or to do ERE. It's that many people have traumatic experience that is holding them back from a goal they want to achieve, which could affect their ERE aspirations.

[Jin+Guice]

Emotional Needs Part 3: Using the Senses to Escape the Cave

I’m placing sensory experiences in the emotional section. I’m placing them in the emotional needs section bc, for me personally, if I lose touch with my emotions or am emotionally threatened I will dissociate, numbing my senses.

By my definition, sensory experiences are not needs. Why talk about sensory experiences? I believe that pathological society robs many of us of being fully in touch with our senses.

W*rk robs many of us of being fully present in the moment and fully in touch with our senses. This is because w*rk is often boring or unpleasant. Many numb themselves for a large part of their waking hours to escape from the dullness or discomfort of their jobs.

After w*rking, many of us are tired, robbed of the best hours of our days and mentally depleted. Many further numb themselves by watching television for hours and/ or taking drugs or drinking alcohol.

This keeps us in the work/ spend cycle. We engage only in the few sensual pleasures deemed worthwhile by pathological society. Eating sweet, salty or calorie dense foods. Engaging in one of the few high priced tech heavy leisure activities we are allowed or momentarily getting dopamine hits through purchasing new products or services.

Being fully in touch with your senses allows us to sensually enjoy a variety of experiences. A walk becomes an adventure. There are so many sounds, smells, textures and colors to engage with.

It’s amazing that the modern world can be so boring. In addition to the cornucopia of intrigue that the natural world holds, we’ve built a whole human world to explore. Inhabiting our senses as well as keeping a sense of intrigue can help us to stay present and engaged with the world outside of pathological society, as well as find wonder and enchantment within the world we have built.

[jacob]

I’m placing sensory experiences in the emotional section. I’m placing them in the emotional needs section bc, for me personally, if I lose touch with my emotions or am emotionally threatened I will dissociate, numbing my senses.

Do you know if that [causation/connection] is normal, common, or unusual?

I'm asking because I was shanghaied into a "grounding exercise" a few times as part of a "check-in" w/o being told why/what the purpose was and that it indeed was an exercise in the first place. (I now understand [intellectually] that deliberately focusing on sensations in the present works to "ground" people and that "grounding" (in the present) reduces anxiety (based in past trauma).) It was puzzling to me how relatively unaware people were in terms of their senses, both internally (knowing the state of their body/parts and whole---not feeling their body or seeing their mind as distinct from their body was quite common) and externally (sounds, temperature, ... the environment). It's possible that I was just in the company of a particularly anxious and therefore numb crowd? IIRC, I got 4% on the neuroticism scale for OCEAN. If you asked me, I could write a 600 page post (or talk for 5 minutes) about the sensations I'm currently experiencing, but doing that would not change my emotional state. So I clearly didn't "get it". Everybody else were experiencing something in that process that I wasn't.

I'm looking to calibrate the intersubjective experience. At the time, the failure to communicate the difference in experiencing was apparent, so the above is me trying to put together the pieces of the puzzle. If it's common to experience life in a haze/daze ... we got a problem, Houston.

[OutOfTheBlue]

Do you know if that [causation/connection] is normal, common, or unusual?

I'm asking because I was shanghaied into a "grounding exercise" a few times as part of a "check-in" w/o being told why/what the purpose was and that it indeed was an exercise in the first place. (I now understand [intellectually] that deliberately focusing on sensations in the present works to "ground" people and that "grounding" (in the present) reduces anxiety (based in past trauma).) It was puzzling to me how relatively unaware people were in terms of their senses, both internally (knowing the state of their body/parts and whole---not feeling their body or seeing their mind as distinct from their body was quite common) and externally (sounds, temperature, ... the environment). It's possible that I was just in the company of a particularly anxious and therefore numb crowd? IIRC, I got 4% on the neuroticism scale for OCEAN. If you asked me, I could write a 600 page post (or talk for 5 minutes) about the sensations I'm currently experiencing, but doing that would not change my emotional state. So I clearly didn't "get it". Everybody else were experiencing something in that process that I wasn't.

I'm looking to calibrate the intersubjective experience. At the time, the failure to communicate the difference in experiencing was apparent, so the above is me trying to put together the pieces of the puzzle. If it's common to experience life in a haze/daze ... we got a problem, Houston.

This reminds me an article ("Body? What Body?") that was later published in Ann Weiser Cornell's book "Radical Acceptance of Everything" about Inner Relationship Focusing, a particular variant of Eugene Gendlin's Focusing (What is Focusing: https://focusing.org/felt-sense/what-focusing) that refines/modifies the steps to Focusing (which, once learned, can be done in an organic way, the steps are more like training wheels so to speak, but also provide some essential features of a Focusing solo or partnership session) and also deals with "parts".

She discusses the difficulties of some people to sense inwardly (as in drop their awareness to their body and finding a felt sense, that is not merely sensation, thought, image or emotion):

The people who don’t find Focusing easily are not all alike. Beyond their individual uniqueness, I would venture to say that they fall into four broad categories.
(1) Emoters. These people can find themselves in danger of being emotionally overwhelmed, and tend to experience their feelings “all over” and “everywhere.”
(2) Thinkers. There are people who are used to relying on a rational or cognitive approach to issues. When invited to sense inwardly, they will say things like, “It must be...” or “I’m sure it’s...” or “I think....”
(3) Visual imagers. There are people who find visual imagery easily, and who go there when invited to go into inner contact. Visual imagery isn’t necessarily connected to a Focusing place.
(4) Physicalizers. Often trained in body awareness, these are people who can find elaborate detail in their bodies, tracing a tension across a deltoid and down a trapezius... but don’t get what this has to do with emotional meaning in their lives.

It would seem that what you describe falls under the fourth category.

Beyond a discussion of these four categories, in the end of the paper, the author offers various "leading ins" for the Focusing process (which is largely a body-oriented approach), with the last one not mentioning "body" at all (Leading In Without the Physical Body). See if that would be a helpful way compared to the other lead ins.

[ertyu]

Emotional Needs Part 3: Using the Senses to Escape the Cave
I believe that pathological society robs many of us of being fully in touch with our senses.

W*rk robs many of us of being fully present in the moment and fully in touch with our senses. This is because w*rk is often boring or unpleasant. Many numb themselves for a large part of their waking hours to escape from the dullness or discomfort of their jobs.

Agree. it's also interesting that you'd find "get back in touch with your senses/enjoy life on a sensory level" as a cornerstone of many "cultuvate idleness" sorts of books, where the authors start with "what is idleness?", begin where society's at: idleness is that period in which you're not "productive," and discover that whoops, that's where all of life is, actually. Opening back up to life on a sensory level keeps reappearing as a theme.

[jacob]

She discusses the difficulties of some people to sense inwardly (as in drop their awareness to their body and finding a felt sense, that is not merely sensation, thought, image or emotion):

Okay, reading the "Body, what body?" article makes it clear that I'm what she calls a "physicalizer". I like the distinction between different types because it makes it clear that not everybody comes from the same place. I suspect that an "athletic physicalizer" has a different ingress than a "medical physicalizer".

I fall on the athletic side and I would indeed start rattling off a detailed "data dump" only held back by "trying to fit in with everybody else not taking that approach ("surely you don't want me to talk for 5 minutes about all kinds of details .. so what is it you want to know??").

I'd note that the "athletic physicalizer" is not limited to just talking about the various mechanical parts of the body ("This is @jacob's spleen"). There's also awareness of the surroundings to the point where the surroundings can be included in the "felt sense". For example, a hockey stick or a sword will soon, that is, after a few hundred hours of deliberate practice, be experienced as an integral body-part. I feel the puck [through] the stick---the stick "disappears" from my awareness because it is a part of me. I'm not holding a stick to hit a puck. I do not need to look down at the puck to know where it is anymore because I feel it through the stick. Similarly, I touch my opponent [through] my sword which is but a sharp extra joint to my arm. I sense no difference between someone touching the sword compared to them touching my hand directly. Even though I know that the sword is a dead object, it is eventually part of my live body, like a prosthetic, and so becomes a part of me. Similarly, there's a sense of where people and things (obstacles, lines, balls, ...) are without being able to see or hear them. A sense of whether the surface is slippery, where I am in space,...

FWIW, I've also played around with biofeedback, so I can zoom in on various areas and [slightly] manipulate them. I agree that this makes it harder to do the "Focusing", which seems mostly about zooming out and trying to derive information from outside the rational mind using various cues from the body. E.g. "pick a body sensation and talk about how that makes you feel". (I think that kind of "feeling" is different from a "sensation". I'm still making a technical distinction.)

The problem seems that the physicalizer has access to very many sensations. They're practically "anti-numb". This may be why it's hard for me to grok how feeling bad can numb sensations.

I'll buy the "wisdom of the body" but only to a degree. For example, there are many things that are impossible to describe in words. Like how to do a cartwheel. How to hold the damn soldering iron steady. Language does not define the entire world. This is why it's hard to instruct a robot how to walk or navigate an environment. However, the body knows how to figure this out in a way that goes beyond logic and reason. You practice ... and you sleep on it ... and eventually it just clicks.

OTOH, I often read these claims of "bodily wisdom" as the body knowing everything from how to set up website to the best choice of asset allocation or how to choose a career. I somehow doubt those claims very much. Claiming that focusing/feelings is universally wise is like claiming that there's a mathematical formula for love.

Overall, the "check-in" routine I experienced was nothing as elaborate as described in that paper. Frankly, I think it was more like one of those "Fe-circles that gives an outlet for people who enjoy talking about emotions w/o actually getting anywhere with it". It was just presumed that "everybody was into that".

[Jin+Guice]

@jacob:

I don't know how common that experience is.

I know that I personally had "trauma" (I don't know what it was though, probably some combo of parents + feeling like an outcast early on?) and that I dissociate when that "trauma" is "triggered." I also know that I numb out when I w*rk or am bored/ sitting for long periods of time. I had trouble accessing my emotions so getting back in touch with my emotions and then gaining the basic language to express them "When you ABC I felt XYZ..." was a small revolution in my life.

Since gaining these skills back I've notice that a lot of people I interact with seem to lack basic emotional and communication skills. They seem to often act against their own stated interests, controlled by what looks like a trauma response to me. I've also noticed what I perceive as the ways that the post-consumer praxis utilizes these things to its advantage. It's totally possible that I am projecting.

In particular, I don't think dissociating is as common as lack of basic emotional skills and intelligence. I don't think it's uncommon either. I think also "feeling too much" or being "emotionally/ sensory overwhelmed" is a misfiring of the same circuitry (not implying this is happening to you @jacob).

I still don't consider myself a "feelings person." I don't like grounding exercises or discussing feelings for feelings sake, although the knowledge that many others do is useful. The information that there is a system that takes over for the conscious mind when stress/ trauma/ triggers occur and some "grounding" methods for getting that system back offline as well as learning to listen to what the subconscious system is saying is also helpful.

[Bicycle7]

I'd note that the "athletic physicalizer" is not limited to just talking about the various mechanical parts of the body ("This is @jacob's spleen"). There's also awareness of the surroundings to the point where the surroundings can be included in the "felt sense". For example, a hockey stick or a sword will soon, that is, after a few hundred hours of deliberate practice, be experienced as an integral body-part. I feel the puck [through] the stick---the stick "disappears" from my awareness because it is a part of me. I'm not holding a stick to hit a puck. I do not need to look down at the puck to know where it is anymore because I feel it through the stick. Similarly, I touch my opponent [through] my sword which is but a sharp extra joint to my arm. I sense no difference between someone touching the sword compared to them touching my hand directly. Even though I know that the sword is a dead object, it is eventually part of my live body, like a prosthetic, and so becomes a part of me.

I've certainly experienced this merging with riding a bicycle, this description rings true for me. The bicycle drivetrain just being a part of the whole chain of locomotion. I think just based on the short description of the 4 types that Out of the Blue outlines, I'm a physicalizer and to a lesser extent the visual imager and thinker. I kind of straddle the space of being really in touch with my bodily sensations and dissociating from them. Sometimes these can be hard to tell apart.

It’s amazing that the modern world can be so boring. In addition to the cornucopia of intrigue that the natural world holds, we’ve built a whole human world to explore. Inhabiting our senses as well as keeping a sense of intrigue can help us to stay present and engaged with the world outside of pathological society, as well as find wonder and enchantment within the world we have built.

This is well put, I can get so jaded about what we humans have built, but on another level there's this whole world (built environment and wild places) to go out and see, touch, taste and hear!

[7Wannabe5]

How is focusing related to conscious relaxing? For example, when you realize that you've set up your tent too close to alligators, but you just tell yourself "Well, if I'm meant to end my days as an alligator's dinner, so be it." and then you calm your body and go to sleep.

Trauma can also make you simultaneously numb and emotional. For instance, I went through an extremely traumatic period during which two of the people I love most dearly were simultaneously likely to die, and one day I found myself standing in line in an office supply store with tears just running down my face. I think this is why this effect is so often associated with soldiers; it's the need to keep functioning that makes you numb on the shell level. I remember reading the memoir of a 19th century pioneer whose 3 young daughters died one after the other within the course of a week from scarlet fever, but she still had to milk the cow and haul in water the next day. It's a protective mechanism that works. The pioneer woman eventually went on to have several other children.

I have to note that I don't really think this is akin to the sort of numb effect experienced in response to micro-repeated traumas such as daily commute to a cubicle, because there is more choice. For instance, you endure the micro-traumas because on some level you are choosing them as superior to an imagined trauma associated with something like becoming a bag lady and eating out of a dumpster. Scarlet fever or the guy who sexually assaults you arrives unexpectedly and your world is suddenly lurched out of focus, and your narrative is shredded, and your feet are unsteady on the ground until you weave it back together. Qualitative difference.

[Jin+Guice]

@Bicycle7: It's my opinion that we all make our own meaning, i.e. there is no universal right and wrong. And so while on one level I feel crushing sadness at the modern world's (in my view) "unnecessary" and "brutal" attack on nature, there isn't much that I'm aware that I can do about it. The modern world also has a bunch of stuff that is pretty neat. It is also my opinion that it's sort of a shame not to enjoy this stuff to the extent that one doesn't increase the perceived harm to the natural world. Also worth remembering that, on some time scale, nature will always "win."

@7w5: I agree. I think there are different types of "numbing out" though they are related in that they can all be described as similar phenomenon. I don't think being bored in a cubicle is a micro-trauma. I think it just sucks ass. Otoh, one would incur several micro-traumas driving to work, as other people almost smash into your soft human form with their horrifying and turgid machines.

I also agree that trauma has a lot to do with the unexpected.