Category Archives: personal

Collective Trauma, anyone?

Most people are so concerned with being normal [1], working and playing in the recognized world of reward and achievement that everybody exists in, that when people start breaking down from the stress, even when they become fragile as glass and barking mad, they will insist that they understand everything perfectly and that it’s other people who are fucking insane. You can trust me on this, or you can take a breath and look around.

[1] normal- for the thoughtful details of what this means in practice, see The Myth of Normal by Gabor Mate.

The need for validation vs. the need for good feedback

People with an insecure sense of self are outer-directed, they live their lives for the validation of the people around them. Since they felt belittled and neglected when they were too young to do anything but suffer, they take pains to look physically perfect, according to the fashion of the day, they seek praise, status, social position, awards from their peers. All these are part of a lifelong attempt to make themselves feel better, more valuable and worthier of love, than others. They live in a hierarchical world where some people are simply much more important than others, by virtue of working to earn their self-worth in an objectively quantifiable way.

They live in a win/lose competitive world where winners win and are admired by those around them for having the will and talent not to be losers. As far as I can see, that world is the destructive illusion of superficial idiots, but I have always been super-opinionated about things like the justness of rigid social hierarchies and those who conform to social systems without any real questions about their validity. I keep thinking of the billions of people this worldview consigns to inferior, permanent, inter-generational loser status simply as the way things are.

I have always felt a need for the useful feedback I almost never got as a child. What is different about my need for a response and the need for outer validation I’ve sketched above? In both cases we are looking for assurances about the good effect our words and actions have on others. Everyone likes a sincere compliment, it’s always gratifying to be spoken well of by others. In the case of validation-seeking, the thing sought is praise and admiration. That is different, to my mind, than seeking an intelligent critique of your work, sometimes your deeds.

A person writes to convey thoughts, ideas and feelings to others. Writing is an extension of the desire to have a good, mutual conversation, one of the great pleasures of being human, as far as I can see. There is really no better way to gauge how well a piece of writing achieves the goals you intend than by getting good notes from a reader. This feedback allows us to understand what is still unclear to others in our work, or objectionable, or feeble, or unconvincing, and to address ambiguity, sloppiness, or assuming the comprehensibility of complex things we have not sufficiently laid out the context for understanding. With those comments in mind we can fix those things and come closer to our aim. Comments we can mull over keep the conversation moving forward, which is integral to why we communicate in the first place. Silence by way of response is a real conversation stopper, to state the obvious.

Validation-seeking people tend to stay very busy, they are socially active, work hard, program their leisure time down to the minute, consult the clock for when it’s time to end the party and get eight hours of sleep to be up and at ’em full force the next morning. Their every waking effort goes toward earning the self-acceptance and self-admiration they can’t feel except as reflected back to them by others. Sitting quietly by themselves, unless they are exercising their abdominal muscles, burning calories or something useful like that, is unthinkably difficult for them. It is as if they literally can’t see themselves unless they are engaged with others who appreciate them.

Of course, I probably only feel this way because I’ve always spent most of my hours alone. One could make a decent argument that I like nothing better than the company of my own constantly rippling thoughts and ideas. I learned early to soothe myself this way when I felt ignored – learning to play music, drawing, writing, cooking. I am always happy to spend time with other people, or talk to them at length – and I need these contacts as much as anyone does, maybe more – but I also accept myself the way I am and have as much compassion for myself as I do toward anyone else I care about.

Am I a great guitar player or any kind of virtuoso? No, but I am the greatest guitar player I can be at the moment. It means a great deal to me to play every note as cleanly, purposefully and soulfully as I can, to learn new ways to play the same melody, new positions on the neck for chords and little tricks, to become a more fluent improviser. Most people don’t think of any of these things, like the many different ways to play the same note, which I think is a shame.

To those who focus almost entirely on what the outer world says about us, you are either a professional musician getting paid and recognized for your work or an amateur with a slightly obsessive hobby which is nice, but a bit vain, because what does it really say about a person if they waste hours a day playing Beatles tunes?

It would be marginally better to the validation-focused, perhaps, to play sophisticated, challenging jazz tunes, or the best of classical guitar, if they would even notice that difference in material. They’re often not even able to hear any of it very clearly because it is just – they don’t even know what the hell compels someone to do it. Beatles, jazz standards or classical — best, to me, is playing what you love best and can make sound the most beautiful, but, fuck, enough about me.

Catastrophizing

I wake up with my skin crawling. Can’t sleep anymore because, in addition to all my other troubles at the moment, I have these fucking microscopic devils running around under my skin. Oh, my god… the horror, the fucking horror! I am soon ripping at my own skin.

This hellish looking baby is called a scabie (Sarcoptes scabiei), a parasitic mite that lives, in the millions, under the skin and causes a contagious itch with… exudative crust…

I scratch my skin hopelessly because it itches everywhere, worst in the places I can’t hope to reach. 

Note: there is no evidence that I have scabies. In fact, I don’t have scabies.  A friend in France recently described this nightmare to me, and the wonderful news he had from a doctor — his case is called “clean scabies” which, like “friendly fire”, or “collateral damage”, really doesn’t change the awful outcome, but is supposed to make you feel better since, in your case, the plague that is tormenting you did not result from your own poor hygienic practices.  

I looked up scabies and found this nightmarish image of the tiny fucker who runs in hoards making the skin horripilate and forming crusts over the itchy places where exudation occurs. Naturally the image of this tiny, demonic monster popped into my head when I woke up today itching. Once it was there, I couldn’t get it out. 

Because my new knee is still often immobilizingly painful ten months after replacement surgery, because I can’t exercise, because, after an objectively hellish experience with old friends I am wrestling with a playful anaconda of a manuscript that, while smiling, challenging and fun much of the time, is still a twenty foot long deadly constrictor, because all my eggs are in one basket and that basket is shredding, because I am flesh and must go the way of all such things… because the city cut off the water this morning and I have buckets of water all over for cooking, washing and toilet flushing… because, because, because….

It doesn’t occur to me, or it does but I dismiss the thought, that I am itching because of dry skin, a common malady of winter in temperate zones that gets more demanding with age. Next to the bed I have a pump bottle of moisturizer, placed there for soothing dry, itching skin. Applying it is a much better option than clawing at my own skin and twitching at the thought of parasitic mites doing gleeful gymnastics under my skin, but it seems as hopeless as everything else at the moment, too much skin to moisturize, can’t reach the places it itches most, wah, wah! Catastrophe!

Catastrophizing happens when you are overwhelmed by the challenges you face and are at the end of your ability to objectively weigh your circumstances. You can no longer see them one by one as discrete things to deal with, they have united to destroy you once and for all.  All the afflictions described two paragraphs above are true. Taken one at a time they are all things that can be taken care of, though some take a long time and require a long term perspective. Taken as a whole, as the relentless, million-faced army of the same implacable enemy, they appear in the form of the undefeatable microscopic tormentor pictured above.

The thought of this whole subject makes my goddamned skin crawl.

Chapter 72 Authenticity

We are living in an age when weak, needy, ruthless, vengeful, endlessly covetous men (and a few women) are seen as geniuses, visionaries and strongmen. Acquiring everything possible for themselves while promising horrific retribution for offenses real and imagined is seen as strength and cheered by admiring crowds. We are living, boys and girls, in an Age of Idiocy, more specifically, the Age of Narcissism. It appears to be dawning on us all slowly.

The most searched for word in 2022 was “gaslighting”. This form of psychological manipulation gets its name from a creepy old film, Gaslight, where the wealthy female protagonist is wooed and married by a man who convinces her she is insane, to cover his own criminal activities. He pretends to go out every evening and secretly searches for stolen treasure hidden in the attic of the mansion, under gas light. Because he’s using lights in the attic, the lights in the rest of the house dim. The husband convinces the wife she is going insane when she tells him about the lights, and for a time she believes him. Hence, gaslighting – lying to make you doubt the reality of your own perceptions, feeding you a diet of deliberate falsehoods to make you fear you’re going mad. Any wonder it was Word of the Year in 2022?

In 2023 the Word of the Year was “authenticity”. It means 1: not false or imitation; real, actual 2: true to one’s own personality, spirit or character 3: worthy of acceptance or belief as conforming to or based on fact, conforming to an original so as to reproduce essential features, made or done the same way as an original.

This is the essential quality a gaslighting narcissist forces his victims to abandon. They will tell you what is true, what is false, what you should believe, why you are wrong to believe otherwise, how you should act, look, feel. Your feelings and ideas are wrong, they will tell you authoritatively. They demand that others to be as inauthentic as they are.

It is impossible for a “perfect” person to be authentic, to act according to their true character. They never were allowed as children to develop a true character and be loved for it. Their only choices after that damaging deprivation are a grandiose veneer of perfection or utter, humiliating worthlessness. In order to foster a created, performative persona of strength and perfection, very fragile when held up against reality, it is necessary to keep all those around them in a state of inauthenticity. Everybody in their orbit must be true not to their own spirit and character, to what they need in order to feel comfortable, but to the narcissist’s need for unconditional admiration and obedience.

These kinds of sick fucks have always ruled others, it is easily observed turning the pages of any history book. The rule of the select few is always explained and justified by the mores of the time, slavery was for centuries the norm, for example, but over time the same privileges of a tiny, all-powerful minority are maintained the same way, using the leverage of great wealth, intimidation, fear and violence to hoard the wealth of the majoritarian masses.

Parents who can never be wrong teach their children that they’re wrong even when the kid is right. Narcissism is a zero sum game, meaning there is only winning and losing, controlling and being controlled, the image of perfection or terrifying annihilation. This black and white worldview afflicts people who have been crushed in their soul at a very tender age. The abuse and emotional neglect they suffered renders them unable to compromise or even to listen to anything that contradicts their brittle sense of their special wonderfulness. They are the furthest thing from authentic, since they rigidly cling to an unrealistic view of themselves as perfect, the only alternative to feeling hideously, unlovably flawed, none of it having anything to do with authenticity.

It is a terrible constant in human affairs, the outsized influence these inhuman bastards tend to play on the world stage. Scroll from window to window, you will see these very important pricks pontificating on every platform. They simply cannot shut up. The appetite for their brilliant opinions is seemingly endless. We are fascinated by men who acquire 100,000 times more than any wealthy person needs. Accumulating billions in wealth appears to be proof of their indomitable will to have everything, which many reckon the mark of someone to be admired, even idolized.

As for me, I’ll take someone who can look at herself and the world honestly, in all its color, nuance, light and shade, and speak authentically, with humility and openness, about the hellish odds we are all up against, just trying to be authentic, empathetic and offer each other shared things we all value here in this threatened miracle of a world.

Telltale sign of what you’re up against (from a work in progress)

Chapter 69  Telltale sign: simple questions lead to anger

When you are confronted by an indignant person who has shown over time that they can never be wrong, no matter what, even the simplest request for clarification or empathy will fuel their anger.  People who can’t be wrong, on pain of utter humiliation, have only one aim when they feel challenged — destruction of the enemy.

When you encounter someone who gets mad every time you need to talk about something hurtful that happened, you will find that kindness, patience, friendship, extending the benefit of doubt, love, humor, generosity are useless against this kind of anger. The reason for this anger is that being imperfect in the eyes of others is unbearably painful and humiliating to them. If you insist on being understanding, while needing to finish a badly needed conversation, you will incur only their rage and desire to silence you forever. Trust me on this one, I’ve lived it more than once. 

F__ doesn’t deny that he told me, after weeks of icy silence, “I’ve walked away from friendships for less than what you did to me.” G___ regarded me coolly as her husband drew his line in the sand. I reassured him of my friendship and he seemed momentarily soothed, although this mild, anticlimactic outcome, instead of the desired outrage on my part, meant that the planned hit was not carried out, much to determined G__’s momentary disappointment.

Here’s the thing I know now that I was blind to then. It is essential to understand that when you are in an incoherent conversation with people desperate never to be wrong, all problem-solving tools become useless.  I should have calmly asked F___ what it was that I did to him. This would not have led to any kind of good outcome, but F____’s resulting temper tantrum, with tactical provocation from righteously enraged G____, could have opened my eyes, saved me months of anguish trying to solve a puzzle that had only one solution, a solution I resisted with my entire soul: mutual death. There is no way to avoid it in a conflict with this type. A year and a few months later they were as irreversibly dead to me as they’ve made sure I am to them and anyone who knows them.

What reason to kill when it is a blessing to be merciful, particularly to a loved one? Only one – you are in the hands of someone so damaged that death for you is the only outcome where they feel they are saving face, somehow not being humiliated by having to acknowledge imperfection.  Better, they reason, to righteously kill you than to be seen as a cowardly murderer, or a liar, or someone consumed with unslakable, inchoate rage that is so easily provoked.

We encounter situations where there is a perplexing question that must remain unanswered. The reason for not even asking these questions is having experienced a ferocious reaction to a reasonable question over and over. It makes one hesitant to set off the same kind of savagery in a moment that appears to be emotionally fraught. Experience teaches us that a meaningful answer to a painful question is beyond the capability of someone damaged on a primal level.

Here’s a koan that has become quite familiar to me, I’ve heard it now in five or six restatements but the sentiment is always identical. F___’s version was: You have to understand that I am too upset to hear why you are upset. In other words: my actual pain is much more important than your claimed pain.

There is no question that can clarify this or make it appear to be the reasonable statement of a friend and partner in understanding. Months later I asked F____ about this and he conceded it was not something a friend says to his close friend when they are both shaken up. Notably, he did not express regret or apologize for it. The obvious follow up questions all become useless after you learn that any of them leads to fresh indignation and anger.

This is the wall we face when confronted by a conclusory statement meant to stop us in our tracks, put us on our back foot, silence us, disable us in a fight to the death. The fight to the death starts long before someone who is not destructively damaged is aware of it.  It is unthinkable, except to those compelled to kill, that this kindred soul I thought I knew and loved intimately is determined to beat me at any cost, spread lies to destroy my good name, kill other friendships and forbid their adult children to get back to me.

It is mind-fucking, even after you have seen it a few times in your life. I suppose it takes the trauma of experiencing it as an adult to force you awake, to make you aware that the signs of this intractable sickness are always identical, that motherfuckers who act this way are all interchangeable, they must be seen as perfect or they will make sure you’re good and fucking dead.

Not being allowed to speak bites (plus upside)

When I say that somebody is not letting me speak, it’s not that they’re really able to make me stop speaking, but they make it clear, over and over, that they’re not willing (or able) to hear what I have to say.  That’s what I mean by “not being allowed to speak”. More precisely, it is a refusal to hear anything they don’t want to hear.

A person intent on not letting me speak constantly reframes the conversation, accuses, becomes indignant if I persist, insists on things that are often ridiculous and refuses to discuss the absurdity of their untenable claims. So I can, of course, speak as much as I want, even after the other person physically walks out of the room, hangs up the phone or cuts off communication, but “not letting me speak” is a way of saying someone is making it plain that they will never tune in to what I need them to hear.

Finding yourself in this situation, and feeling the human need to express what you are feeling, you may take up a musical instrument, begin to paint,  become an interpretive dancer, master any one of a number of things including the art of writing clearly. This clear expression of the things you need to say that others in your life refuse to hear over time becomes a necessity, an important muscle that you exercise every single day.  

In exercising this muscle you feel a certain mastery of things that are otherwise impossible to hold steady before you, the crucial things others refuse to let you say by refusing to hear you.  I’d have to call this strong impulse to do something creative and soul-soothing to express what you need to put out there a major upside of being told to shut up by people who claim to love you.

What perversely determined parents teach their offspring

On Passover, when Jewish families gather to retell the story of the long journey from slavery to freedom, we are instructed to remember that we were once slaves — and to identify with those who are oppressed. We’re supposed to take humility and compassion from our history, but you can be taught,  at any age, by a willful parent, hurt and eternally angry, that personal history can be erased in a single broad stroke, along with humility and compassion. 

On Yom Kippur, the holiday of repentance and forgiveness, these same pious teachers will instruct you that certain people who love you and have never harmed you don’t deserve to be forgiven for what it is said they did to a willful, eternally angry hanging judge with the right to never be questioned.  

HaShem looks down and shakes His head, thinking “It’s on me, I gave these motherfuckers free will, after all…”

Positions for the mediator

Party one:

I got my back up after he was very threatening and aggressive to me. He claimed that I hurt him very badly, traumatized him, in fact, the way his father used to, so we were suddenly talking about his traumatic childhood, and not anything that actually happened but after I got my back up, I apologized to him. I told him I was sorry that he made me feel threatened, and that I had acted incorrectly by getting my back up when his defiance reminded me of terrible battles with my daughter, which was very upsetting to me. 

Even after I apologized, and months later, even a year later, he couldn’t let it go, he kept obsessively insisting on talking about what he claimed I did to him. He wouldn’t let it go. He kept trying to make it my problem that he had a bad childhood and he tortured my husband for supporting me. He wouldn’t forgive us, no matter how many times we apologized, even though he kept saying he did forgive us, that he would “always” forgive me. He can’t forgive anybody.

Party Two:

After she flew into a rage during a minor disagreement, she glared at me steadily and did not respond to anything that I said. She literally just stared at me, tight-lipped and beaming hostility, as if I was a defiant child and she was my overwhelmed mother, trying her best to hold it together in the face of such disobedience.  I later accepted her apology, pathetic and blame shifting as it was.  I told her I had more to say about this but that I didn’t want to speak while I was still upset (after having not slept a minute the previous night) because I didn’t want to say anything that might damage our long friendship. 

Although she told me she’d be happy to hear what I had to say, she never let me say what I needed to say, the two times I tried she had temper tantrums.  My calls, texts and letters were ignored.   They began accusing me of being mean to them. Her silence, and her husband’s, went on for weeks and months at a time, complete with angry threats and false accusations against me, libels they’d later spread to our mutual friends and their children, their indignant claim that I was an enraged child irrationally trying to blame them for my obvious problems.

Mediation was the only possibility for fixing things, they finally said, after refusing to talk to me without a mediator present, but would not agree about anything — the conflict that sparked the end of our 50 year friendship, the tensions that mounted during that troubling holiday, the extreme coldness by the end, the angry fallout afterwards — claiming that the mediator would know what to do, without any input from the parties.  When they insisted that no agreement was needed, or possible, I understood that mediation was a ruse, a facially generous offer I would have to turn down, once they heaped impossible conditions on it. The beauty was that I could then be plausibly blamed for blowing up their desperate, endearing peace talks.  The one thing my friends can never forgive is someone who can never forgive.