Well, that felt good.
Well, it didn’t feel “good”.
It felt scary and sad and a kind of mad they didn’t teach me about in school, but that’s good in a sense because I’m getting to feel those things and those are healthy, appropriate things for me to feel in this situation. I expect to feel more of them and I expect it to hurt a great deal.
Yet, this goes well beyond my own growth and my own ability to practice expression again after being very heavily silenced. It would feel negligent to my point, my principles, my values to stop with exploring this as a women’s issue. Being gender-non-conforming-until-I-find-a-cuter-term-that’s-not-the-binary-irony-of-non-binary doesn’t absolve me of being treated like a woman or hired like a woman or looked at like a woman or hurt or heard like a woman. The lens of violence targeted at women fits and is an important scope, but it’s just one angle of one part of the whole. It would be a great misrepresentation to stop there. I do not think for a second that women have been more silenced than men or more abused than men. I think there’s a power imbalance and there’s a pay gap, I think there’s a bunch of gaps. I saw they’ve been heavily abused. I think I’ve seen the greatest deal of suffering from the men who have harmed me the most. That was always on of the reasons why it was so confusing. It’s hard to identify or leave because you can feel the humanity amidst the monstrous. You can feel that they believed themselves. You can feel that that embodiment of emotion or whatever is going on for them, between all the lies and intention to do harm, there’s a creature consumed with reasons to do it.
Learning about countertransference has been a really important thing to me. I think it’s a really important thing to all of us. I was always wondering why people were getting so mean to me for being sad even just for, like – not even crying, just sitting in the corner not saying nothing, not interrupting, and I hear, “Don’t come to the party if you’re planning on having tummy ache, because you’re dragging down the vibe.” And it’s always been like that – I’ve often suffered very, very intensely and nobody wanted it around, ever, and it made everybody mad and very few people were very nice, and you start to feel guiltier and guiltier, which then made me seem guilty and guiltier to other people which made them treat me guilty and guiltier, which, they have, on this loop. I’m constantly being expected just for the sake of social norms to apologize for things that I didn’t do, things I’m not, things that I didn’t say, because that’s how they experienced it. That’s how it felt to them and that’s more important. The flip side of countertransferrence for me is that when I’m experiencing joy, it also has a radiating profound effect – people feel that too. That’s why they want it around when it’s good, why they don’t want it around anymore when it is in agony and despair, because my pain radiated and that hurt them.
In the therapy relationship, when countertransferrance takes place, the therapist is known to start resenting the patient, stop believing them, start interpreting them in a more diminutive manner, and then they start to mistreat the patients and recreate the cycles of trauma that the patient already experienced for their whole life. Through not identifying this transmission of trauma and emotion that’s taking place during this understanding, you do all the wrong shit with it. It clouds your judgement.
…I’m out here telling a story only ever been heard before by people who have already grieved and packed away and dismissed in their own versions. Never heard a story like mine before, but lots of stories like mine at the same time…
When I would start crying it was like the big baby in Spirited Away. I wasn’t trying to hurt anybody, it was just terrifying to me, and that terrified everyone around me. That was just how much pain I’ve been in on a regular basis for my whole life, especially these past few years of, Oh my God, the most fucked up things that I’ve ever heard of. It doesn’t mean it wasn’t happening just ‘cuz I’d never heard of it before. There’s a lot of information that’s suppressed. There’s a lot of events and crimes that take place that people don’t know about it turns out.
I think that this transference also takes place through technology. I think you can also feel it through watching videos of each other and oneself and, so, when I was emotionally reacting appropriately to the situation and crying and angry, and they talk of how victims often get the most angry at the bystanders because of this weird thing that the abuser does to their brain to like get themselves into your brain, anyway… The anger that I was feeling and the desperation that I was feeling and the heartache and the open confession like, “please, see how hard this is, how much trouble I’m in here, and care.”, and everybody got mad at me because of this combination of effects – this is one. I think, on the larger scale, important to consider that if this is to be taking place through technology then it is also taking place through the media we consume via technology and could be considered to be a form of subliminal.
So, when it comes to the porn industry, for people who don’t necessarily know that they’re consuming video transference of somebody who’s being exploited and abused, they could come to form an association with not taking it very seriously, seeing it as a casual game for good times and eroticize that sense of transference, which would make a lot of sense to a lot of the men that I’ve been around in my life, who have seen me weep and in agony and probably didn’t find it much more than annoying. If they did, they probably found it enraging because of that transferrance of emotions that they’ve been denied. It’s why it’s important to pull back on the whole gender spectrum thing – we’ve been divided and conquered by every intersection that we meant to provide inclusivity and representation for. It’s a really sad state of affairs. Seeing that almost all of these men have all been in reactive abuse, there’s been the couple of calculated friggers, but they were mostly all in reactive abuse and delusion and that’s when it starts making sense. That’s when it all stops being confusing. That’s another kid with CPTSD, in oppositional languages, like he was designed to be scary to me.
If you ever hear me using language that you think is not accurate, please let me know. I’m pretty sure all the words I’m using are accurate, and if I’m incorrect about that I’d really like to know. One thing I’ve been deprived of while being in isolation for so many years is reflection. I’ve received a lot of judgment, hatred, don’t know how much of it’s real or not, gatekept from connection, justice or support or the ability to talk to anybody to compare experiences. I just wish any of the onlookers would have considered the consequences of being wrong. There’s just no friggin’ way, based on the reactions I’ve been subjected to, that any of you would take these words as accurate… unless I’ve been given a trick dictionary, which is also a theory… I definitely was given some false definitions over the course of years to inundate me with false language and information and cause me to discredit myself without knowing I’m doing that.
For a societal example of the concept, Me Too didn’t go far enough. If they’d gone far enough, we would have gotten to the men’s stories, and who did what to them to possess them to do these things. Everybody’s got a reason. This crucial information, character motivation born of tragic origin story, slipped through our fingers in a nightmare of an unseen semantics debate. Unfortunately what happened in my case is I took to those conversation earnestly in ignorance. I took every one of those issues seriously at face value from my own limited perspective – I really tried to do my best every single dang step of the way. I had no idea how silenced men had been. I mean, I didn’t know, these guys are triggered by the word trigger. I mean, I am too, now, just in a different way, as ever. We create these relationships together, but don’t have any truly shared language that’s deeply discussing these differing perspectives. It seems to be inaccessible to many, to the point of provoking reactions that are beyond the level of emotion that we would have to actual danger, which might suggest, through the lense of CPTST, there’s been some abuse that’s taken place there. There we are experiencing each other’s trauma in that moment without the genuinely shared language to discuss it, just the impression of it, which is considerably worse than base cluelessness. When we don’t have the language to discuss it, we don’t heal and when when we don’t heal, and go on rampant, just keep believing all of our experiences are literally straightforward as we experience them, often without even knowing what an emotional filter is and how it changes one’s reality, we’re liable to do a lot of undeserved damage without really feeling it in adequate relation to any reality but one’s own – the beginning of a case of mass abuse induced psychosis of sorts.
I didn’t know until recently. I’m just trying to really grasp the differences between my experiences and other peoples. It’s really wild. No wonder I was so dang lonely, isolated.
Anyways, so, I do want to include everybody in the conversation. Being gender non conforming, but still being a woman because, not my time to jump ship right now with the kind of gender violence that’s taking place between base reality and the realities of self-fulfilling and affirming constructs. The gender spectrum got fractured into a pie chart. It should have meant broader, more inclusive, more resources, more people being protected and represented – that was the hope. That was the goal. That’s what it should be. However, how it’s become manifest is such that accessing resources for what I’m going through, well, I can’t find them, if they exist. Don’t know where they are or how to find them, they’re probably not actually safe places to go. Could well be that they don’t exist but as traps laid by the very kinds of people who set me on the run in the first place. Denied a designation under the guise of many. It’s a women’s story, yes. It’s also an Indigenous story. It’s also a showbiz story. It’s a true crime story. It’s a psychological mind bender. It’s like a lot of stories but, also, unlike any of them, which is really confusing. Not to mention the many unknowns, the galaxy of stories that could be. There’s no road map there. The nice thing about that is in having to start learning to listen to myself and stop taking advice from other people because it is constant with the advice from people who do not take time to try to understand my situation. I just had to realize how irresponsible it was to keep going along like that. I realized that my life of deferring to other people and taking their advice, well, it’s actually part of what has made me very smart and I built a lot of skills that way, but returns diminished in the stupidity of taking advice that I knew was wrong because I wanted to “be good”. No wonder things weren’t working out, I was taking advice from people who didn’t know me or my life or sometimes anything about the topic, thinking everybody was smarter than me thinking, is better than me, and I just was, like, this little kid who just needed somebody to tell me what to do. I still experience that, all the time.
It’s good to know that I don’t have a road map because all these other instances of us thinking we have road maps, like a movie, or an anecdote, or some other friends story as we understood it. Often maybe not the best thing to follow the advice of piece of entertainment, content, media, whatever…
I’m just going to carry right on to reading a bit of this (Homecoming by Dr. Thema Bryant), I meant to read more but I chatted about other things instead. That was nice.
“Intelligence is not only about recognizing what you feel, but also learning to express and regulate those feelings so that you can be at home with your emotions without drowning in them. Expressing and regulating your feelings is not about silencing and censoring them for the sake of being controlling but about preventing those moments that most of us have experienced when we acted in a way that was harmful to ourselves and others. Instead of judging or distracting yourself imagine sharing with others what you’re feeling. A common phrase used to intervene with children who are having a tantrum is “use your words”. Like the child who’s lying on the floor kicking and sobbing, we have moments in our lives when words escape us. In these moments we can feel the thickness of pain, despair or hurt, but we may be out of practice or too embarrassed to say what we feel.
Learning to speak the truth of our feelings is a skill that can be developed over time. Consider how you usually act when you have a particular emotion, especially when those actions are not accompanied by direct communication. When you’re afraid of being abandoned, do you abandon relationships prematurely? When you’re angry, do you give somebody the silent treatment and never discuss the issue? When you feel rejected, do you offer gifts hoping someone will value you? When you feel insecure about your position at work, do you become irritable and controlling of your coworkers?
Communication can make us feel vulnerable and many of us did not see healthy forms of communication models. You may have seen silence, aggression, substance abuse or religious engagement take the place of an actual honest dialogue, but you have the capacity to make a different choice. You can begin to reclaim your voice and your emotional life by initiating and staying present in discussions about your feelings.
When you begin to express your emotions you may feel panic. You may wonder if others will judge, reject and manipulate you. Fear can cause you to retreat, shut down or deny your feelings. This fear and discomfort are among the growing pains of coming home to yourself. Instead of going back to old patterns suppressing your feelings and remaining silent, try this list of strategies to stay engagd and present”
Which is a rude way to end but, I’m gonna do it anyways because time’s up. That’s Homecoming by Dr Thema Bryant, a really good addition to any algorithm, she really glimmers it up.”
X scanned the video transcription, able to visually track just how hard she must have been to follow. She maintained that the non-linear dialectic of conceptualizing trauma was essential to some part of the equation. She decided it best not to simplify prior to understanding it better, as though refusing to update an operating system without trust that it will operate as required on unique hardware.
P3:
“It would interrupt my sleep quality to end a video by introducing a very useful list, and then to not share the list, so we’re going to run that.
A little list of useful tips on how to talk about your feelings.
I’m gonna add one in at the start here, which is to just try to either embody or imagine being in the presence of Mr. Rogers, it helps me. Tom Hanks playing Mr. Rogers will also do just fine.
Now, as for Dr. Bryant’s list of strategies:
“Before you share prepare yourself for the diverse responses the person may have. Sometimes we assume that people will react a certain way and then are devastated when they go off script…”
This is a little backwards for me because I have chronically suffered for overpreparing for too diverse of an array of responses, and I would be (and am) thrilled for people to go off script. Unfortunately sometimes what you prepare for, you manifest. It is very interesting once you start to see this stuff math out.
Every medicine can be a poison, every poison can be a cure.
Anyway, so,
“Prepare yourself for the diverse responses,”
Be open to not hear what you wanna hear.
“Honor yourself with the reminder that your feelings are yours and *not dependent on others response or agreement*.”
That has been taking me my whole life. I never thought I’d really even get there between the transferrence thing, too, because, I don’t just make everybody feel what I’m feeling, I also feel what everybody else is feeling. When you do that compulsively through your life and never really identify that or your own needs, and then your own needs become correlated to, and prioritize the needs of others and you begin prioritizing the needs of others because you learn that none of your needs matter if they’re not OK and they’re not regulated. So, yeah, I’m learning to learn which feelings and thoughts are mine and where they come from and what to do with them and it is a revelation.
“Consider what you want to share even if it gets hard or you become anxious. You may want to write down a few notes or journal before sharing your feelings.”
I also like think it’s cool for some folks to journal during. Then you can draw or write your thought down without needing to interject and it can allow you listen a little better.
“Some of you may want to role play or practice with the therapist or friend first. The more you share your feelings, the easier it becomes. Emotional expression may take practice, especially if you are used to remaining silent. Prepare by being thoughtful about the time and place where you initiate this dialogue.”
Very important.
“Some conversations are better had in private well other times you may feel that you’ve need to have one other neutral or trustworthy person present.”
I think more friends should do this for each other. Things could have been a lot different if I could have gotten a witness for some things. A lot of conversations and relationships could have gone a lot differently. People behave differently when there’s other people around. Honest, like it is not necessarily dishonest that they behave differently, just, they’re more accountable to a shared reality. If somebody in that interaction is being badly victimized in unseen ways, then maybe you can validate that and that can save a life. So, more friends, I think, making space for friends to work their stuff, would be such a cool thing and I think it is our job. Whose job is it supposed to be to make our communities and relationships work? Anyway…
“…to maintain a certain level of safety.
Timing is important as well because if you choose to share your deepest emotions when the other person is about to go to sleep or leave for work, you are likely not going to be heard. Remind yourself to breath while you are sharing. Rest your hand on your belly or your chest as a physical reminder to keep you in the present without becoming overwhelmed. If you’re responding to something that occurs in the moment, you may want to give yourself a second to reflect on what was said or done by the other person and how you want to respond. Sometimes we falsely believe that we have to say something this second or we will never get to speak on the issue again. If the person is not a stranger walking across you on the street, you usually have a moment. Give yourself the gift of a sacred pause to gather your thoughts and check in with your feelings. Take a breath and then begin to share.
Commit to self awareness, which is, honestly and without judgment, tuning into what you’re feeling in the moment. Before you begin sharing, gain clarity about what you feel and then, as you share, notice if that shifts or becomes layered. For example, you may feel anger when you start a dialogue and then, as you share more, you may become aware of your sadness or fears, as well. Allow yourself the freedom to feel and express the full range of your emotions. Self compassion is also important. Meeting yourself with gentleness and understanding and respect will give you the freedom to express yourself fully. You have been through many challenges and your emotions are important. Communicating your feelings can be difficult, but I invite you to show up your for yourself with tenderness and comfort as you feel what you feel.”
I think this is gonna be hard right now ’cause, I don’t know how much is just the world as I experience it, which is pretty limited in terms of outside of my own reach in life, but it seems like there’s been pretty intensive effort to make people feel very uncomfortable with sharing their stories and uncomfortable hearing other people share their stories. We are effectively silencing each other through how we embody the pain of having been silenced and the confusion of not identifying that. So, yeah, I think if we all told our stories more and were safe to be wrong and were safe to be found out to have done something bad and to have steps that we can take to understand that situation better and how try to fix it, if it’s something to be fixed, or, whatever, we could all live a lot better.
Referring to the Me Too conversation, because I think that war is ongoing really and also it’s just reference that people understand and it fits, beyond the breakthrough of understanding that could have, and i think would have, come from finding a way to make it accessible for men to share their side of the story. Honestly, Everybody honestly, and, you know, understand what happened to them, how they got there, all of that. Further than that there’s a breakthrough if you try to consider all of these accounts in the mind of, just believing the patient. Just try it and see, you know, to empathize. When I have done that, I kind of started to see a much different, larger picture on the ways in which our stories are different and how two very different accounts with the same events may be honest at the same time, while not necessarily entirely objetively truthful. It can be completely honest without being completely truthful. Come to find out that it looks like we’re all a little delusional, by which I mean we been a little deluded by these constructs that were designed, not for our better interest and understanding of ourselves and each other, quite the opposite .
We’re kept just well enough to keep breeding and working but not so well that we pipe up when things get out of hand. Right now if we wanted to mobilized an effort for anything…we don’t even know how to talk to each other. We don’t know how to disagree. We’re not using it we’re losing it. I know it was really scary when people were like, calling each other out, and whatever, but if we could have carried those conversations through to a transformative remedial process that seeks restore and heal – I think we could find out that actually like, these traumas that are causing so much harm could be addressed and healed quite readily. It’s a lie that they can’t be that is told by people who profit off of it. Anyway.
I’d like to see more people starting to feel safer being open and honest about their experiences, but, like also mindful of transference and not trauma dumping on each other. In my doing that… well, I can’t really ethically blame myself. I was really, really scared for a really long time. I really thought somebody would care. Well, in different ways, anyway. What I realized is that I and the technologies placed between me and others, had conditioned people to ignore me through the overplaying of my outcry. It did affect people with the trauma that I was experiencing and they did misinterpret it and resorted misaligned responses, as with trafficker porn. It did influence their memories and their following interpretations of things related to me or that situation, just not correctly. It has a really scary compounding effect.
If we just start to recognize it and try and learn how to do the thing where we can say boundaries out loud and have them with each other and, like, learn how to rebuild our ability to have a dialogue and not feel too bad that it got kind of smashed. Like, really, for me to tell my story, I would have to use so many words that have been so heavily over trended and misused that they would often work better if they didn’t mean anything. They mean too many things to too many people. See how our ability to share the story and understand each other is getting overplayed to the point of silenced and mistranslated, propaganda style. We need to reclaim our language, claim some shared meaning. I’m working on getting my sarcasm sorted out here because I see now the function it’s been serving. We need to learn how to talk and like disagree and fuck up, ’cause it’s supposed to be a human right to be wrong and it is truly the only way to get right. You cannot be right if you cannot be wrong. Right now, we are not feeling safe to be wrong and some of us are definitely not.
Those are my thoughts on that and that’s that list and I hope everyone can have any shred of what I’ve been having in terms of the profound relief, is not quite adequate, but, progress, growth, healing that can come from simply learning to recognize what there is to heal from. When you don’t you’re trying to heal from, but you know that you need to heal, it’s, well, (/gestures vaguely at the world today), it’s a mess, but I believe in this mess. Bless it. Love you”
Solve for x 
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