#idea fitting

[mentalisttraceur]

What are you up to these days?

Racing to implement various improvements before money runs out.

Looking for a job.

Trying to figure out some health issues.

What kinds of improvements?

Personal software - automating/streamlining things I do very often (or should/want to do, but don't precisely because it's not sufficiently at-speed-of-thought or too out-of-the-way).

Workflows - figuring out systems/processes to best use/mitigate/channel my strengths and weaknesses.

Mental - finishing the big strokes of emotional trauma healing, strengthening cognition that became accessible due to my healing, and epiphanying improvements based on that cognition. (Examples: building the skills of egoless idea-fitting/imagination and feeling comfortable in embarrassment, which in turn unlocks big improvements in emotional intelligence and interpersonal skills; practicing cognition where things in the future are as emotionally real as things which exist now out of sight - a good tomorrow having motivational presence much like a good now around the corner does; practicing greater presence in the now, unfurling my attention more often out of my mind and into the world around me.)

[mentalisttraceur-long]

A key thing about abused kids....

Kids are often so far away from knowing what's abusive and what isn't, and from even having a correct interpretative lens about it, that if you naively ask them to describe their home life, odds are extremely high they won't even think to mention a lot of the abusive stuff.

Because it doesn't even stand out to them. And the worst stuff that does stand out? Well that was obviously because they "deserved it" or "brought it upon themselves" or whatever. They might feel shame bringing up any of the stuff they did that the abuse was punishing.

They don't know that their dad doing a thing that physically hurts and leaves them unable to breathe for a while is abusive - they think surely other dads do that too when you make them mad, or worse, and honestly their dad is better because that's not hitting, it never bruises or bloodies or breaks anything and it doesn't even hurt that much.

They don't know that that one time their dad seriously hit them when they were like five is fucked up enough to mention - they think it totally makes sense because they did something that exceptionally raised negative feelings, surely any parent would.

They don't know that the one time they half-performatively ran out of the room because mom hurt herself doing something and expressed angry frustration, and then mom chased after them yelling and hit them, because she interpreted the kid's played up fear whimper sounds as laughter rather than as a meta comment on fearing literally exactly this behavior that mom is now doing... yeah they don't know that's particularly worth commenting on because that event is the only one they still remember but it's memorable precisely because it was an exceptional situation that's the most understandable.

They don't know being made to retrieve and eat food out of the trash that one time is abusive - they think "well I did waste some of that food, and I deprived someone else in the family from eating it who might've enjoyed it" and then don't even think anything of it until they're in their fucking thirties and two years deep into a self-chosen unemployment after they've realized they need something that drastic to work through everything.

And when that's the highlights, they're not even going to think about how every argument happens in the intimidation shadow of getting physically hurt if you make a parent too mad or stand up for yourself too angrily. They're not going to bring up all the yelling and chronic drip of self-esteem-damaging insults about their intelligence and moral character that come out whenever they do something bad or not-actually-bad-but-apparently-adults-think-its-bad or bring home bad grades.

They sure as fuck aren't going to think to mention the kinds of data points that a psychology-versed person will immediately recognize as textbook cause of CPTSD, but which to the kid just seems too subtle of a detail within their normal to even mention, like "oh, and I can never know if the yelling is done - it could randomly resume at any time if one of the parents thinks of another Great Point to make about how I'm bad or am doing bad things to my life or [...] - so sometimes I only fall asleep long after the yelling has stopped because I noticed that the sounds outside my bedroom have distinctly indisputably shifted to my parents talking pleasantly about something amongst themselves, or the lights have gone out".

Point being: if you just naively ask an abused kid to describe their experiences, they're probably not even going to think of a lot of the right stuff to bring up. You gotta really try to creatively apply your more experienced perspective to feel around, think of possibilities, ask questions that would trip over some detail, and most of all you gotta notice relevant mental movements in them and ask yourself what kind of abuse pattern might cause them.

[mentalisttraceur]

@goth--moths Oh I would bet my life that by now at least one kid actually is

literally speaking to an imaginary chat

I would've been!

When I was a kid, I basically ran simulations of entities/audience in my head like all the time, at a minimum basically compulsively/habitually whenever I was alone or left alone enough to focus on my thoughts.

I distinctly remember one time

I was somewhere in the 5-7 years old range,

my mom was yelling at me from the kitchen about something or other,

I was in the living/bed room (old Soviet-era block housing, basically a "studio apartment" layout),

I was quietly slightly crying, but trying to suppress it (because my dad had already given me plenty of that ol'-fashioned "why are you crying? are you a man or not?" reinforcement any time I cried, and I think I had already learned first-hand by then that if you cry when kids are ganging up on you they just treat you worse) and so

put all that together: my mind spontaneously imagined a small audience of entities (I think mainly inspired by the dwarves in Disney's Snow White), and I had some thoughts which I imagined speaking at them.

And I certainly had plenty of situations being alone where I felt that common feeling of being watched, and I still remember how as a small child that felt very real, as if there was some invisible immaterial being in the room with me. And I had times when I thought, or spoke, at/to those.

So if I had the live-streamer-addressing-chat framing available to me, I would've absolutely, zero doubt in my mind, in some moments like that considered phrasing my thoughts in situations like that with "chat".

But more importantly, if I spent all my formative years growing up with that angle mentally available, I might very realistically, today, be

addressing some or all of my subconscious as "chat", or some chat that I was choosing to create and sustain in my imagination as a thought device, or if I went the religious route I'd be using "chat" to address any outside-this-world/spiritual audience,

invoking more than one of grammatical first-person, second-person, and third-person in one word, like in sentences where you could replace all instances of "chat" with more than one choice of "we", "you", or "they" and it still works,

addressing no one in particular but everyone who wants to listen as "chat".

Now, is any of that a different "grammatical person"? I suspect that 2nd case counts, but honestly I don't care. What I do care about is that you think no kid is actually addressing an imaginary chat in their head, yet you're confident you've rightly ruled out all possibilities of kids organically doing something with "chat" that is qualitatively different than the first/second/third grammatical person.

I keep seeing the "chat is a fourth person pronoun" post and it's getting increasingly hard to avoid starting discourse in the notes of it. chat I don't think they know what these linguistics terms they're using mean

[zillychu]

everyone sh. shutd up im cooking smthn

[chloesimaginationthings]

What if Michael Afton was in FNAF into the pit,,

[roppiepop]

Typical role dustribution

[cracklewink]

My Mane 6 Redesigns all together! I was going to post them separately but ended up finishing them all before I got around to it lol

[moonasketch]

silly little space clowns <3

[valtsv]

are we still doing this because i have a late submission

[martyfive]

SHHH… ma’s looking for you!

[shrimpisdrawing]

Little doodles I made that I might make into charms!

[mentalisttraceur]

Hi! As per my last email, Friendly reminder:

When someone is "projecting" that you have some judgement of them, or is "defensive" about a judgement you expressed, that does not mean they themselves believe that judgement!

They might, yes. That's one of the possible reasons.

Or they might just fear that you believe it, or that anyone might believe it. Judgements are dangerous unless you have relevant power, safety, luck, unattachment, freedom, and toolkit of coping skills.

Healthy adults in good life situations are not under any real threat from most judgements you could harbor about them. But that is profound privilege. Abused people don't have that. Kids in schools don't have that. People dependent on their job to survive, or to just stay free of toxic situations and people, don't have that.

[randomfandomss]

Pope Innocent XIV

If there was only certainty, and if there was no doubt, there would be no mystery, and therefore no need for faith. Let us pray that God will grant us a Pope who doubts. Let Him grant us a Pope who sins and asks for forgiveness. And carries on.

I am what God made me. And perhaps it is my difference that will make me useful. I think again of your sermon. I know what it is to exist between the world’s certainties.

[vanilla-extracter]

some ahnk moporkian bullshit (mostly moist and the truth)

[zongzhii]

♀️- only

[callmeizukunotdeku]

"You're lying," Damian said. 

And honestly, Tim had to laugh, "I don't know why you think I am. I asked to keep a cat, Alfred said no, and that was that."

"But that..." Damian furrowed his brow. Tim's voice was taking on a different tenor than usual. Something a bit more strained. "He let me have a cat."

"Yeah," Tim said, cringing when his voice cracked on the word, before trying to play it off with a casual shrug, "you're his son."

And Damian was fooled for a moment. He had his mouth half open to reply that he was the blood son. He was different. Superior. 

But he paused upon the fact that Tim hadn't just made that point for him, he'd given him an example. 

The cat. 

Tim had wanted one and been refused. Damian had wanted one and had been obliged. 

He had wanted a dragon and been obliged. 

But Tim couldn't have a cat, and Damian, whenever he asserted his superiority, had thought he was lying. 

He was lying in a way. They were the same. Tim was a well-respected associate of his father, but... 

You're his son. 

But that didn't mean as much as Damian assumed it did. 

Damian assessed his options before doing something he usually avoided. He swallowed his pride, looked at Tim, and said, "I...don't fully understand what your place is here."

Tim gave him a smile filled with enough sympathy to make something ugly roll in Damian's gut. "Me neither, kid. Me neither."