More snippets of the second half of a week: trust/sanity, sleep, fish, Facebook

[azurelunatic]

3:41 AM 5/27/2010
TMI: So the inside of my nostrils gets dried out sometimes, in a kind of awful-feeling way. The usual solution to this involves the current tube of Burt's Bees lip balm, scraping a bit off the top with the cap, and applying it to the inside of my nose, so it feels less gross and more like I might be able to breathe through it properly.

11:15 AM 5/27/2010
Brain now playing "Daydream Believer". What is this I don't even? Not that I mind. Also, cherries! And rain!

11:22 AM 5/27/2010
Oh. Dear. It's. Uh. So I'm reading fic that involves a guy barely clinging to the last vestiges of sanity, with PTSD and having weird gaps of separation-from-self ... and the thing where he's out in public and there's a crowd and he's having time-lapse and robotic responses and everything around him goes completely surreal and he just can't cope? That ... actually sounds like quite a few moments from the early 2000's, for me. Except I was in less danger of snapping and getting violent, and more in danger of snapping and just falling over or screaming. That's ... disquieting. I'm very, incredibly, amazingly glad that iroshi was able to assist so much with the rewiring of my brain. And there are still sometimes moments, even with that, that I can't face People.

And that reminds me that I need to do the logic table for ill-intent, ill-effect, and trust, because my brain blipped that one up to me as I was trying to get to sleep. It turns out that I have to do two tables, because things are different when in sane mode than when in not-sane, survival mode.

Daniel feels every single motion, no matter how tiny, as a blow across his back, his shoulders. The exciting thing about certain forms of hypervigilant states, JD had said, just this morning, in the process of telling Daniel that he was going to have an escort back to Colorado Springs, is that the first thing to go is your judgment. It's not like panic. You can think through panic. This? You think that what you're doing is the most reasonable thing in the world. People get hurt. Not because you can't tell what a threat is. Because everything's a threat, and you've learned how to react to threats.

Many intents are aimed at classes of which I am part, rather than me specifically. And there are a few possible responses: you're-one-of-THEM; oh-you're-one-of-the-GOOD-ones; I-except-you-because; and oh-huh-must-revise-my-brain.

Ill-intent: means to do me harm. (Known quantity.)
Mixed intent: means to cause various things, which may include harmful, neutral, good. (Most common.)
Unknown intent: I haven't assessed their intent towards me.
(Neutral intent: means to leave me unaffected. Usually classed with good. Known quantity.)
Good intent: means to benefit me. (Known quantity.)

Ill-effect: Causes harm to me. (Known quantity.)
Mixed effect: a combination of effects, which may include harmful, neutral, no effect, and good. (Most common.)
Unknown effect: I haven't assessed their effect on me.
(Neutral effect: leaves me unaffected. Known quantity.)
Good effect: Protects me or causes beneficial change. (Known quantity.)

And the thing is, there are two tables: one for when I'm sane, and one for when I'm not. Usually I have warning before I switch tables. Sometimes I don't. If I'm not sane and I tell you I'm not sane and I tell you to get the hell away from me? If you don't? At that point, it's no longer me, it's you. It no longer matters that this is a boundary that no sane person would set, and that it's not a normal boundary for friends, it's still a boundary, and crossing it is bad news for everyone. Telling me "You can trust me", when my brain's gone glitching-alpha, I'm enormously suggestible, and I don't actually trust you? That's attempted tampering with my trust, and I'll never trust anyone who does that. ("I mean you no harm and I'd like if you trusted me" is much safer; there's no imperative in there for a glitching brain to hold on.)

Precious few people who get a safeword instead of a boundary.

The helpful table.

3:57 AM 5/28/2010
That was helpful. So first I was up way late, with too little time for a proper night's sleep, but woke up in time for the farmers' market. (Peas, cherries, strawberries, pastry.) Then I crashed out for a nap late in the afternoon, then I woke up, then I was slow enough to boot that I was dubious about leaving, then I sort of just fell on my face asleep. Now it's almost 4am, and I'm awake; clearly I needed sleep or I wouldn't have been crashed for about six hours.

4:05 AM 5/28/2010
Dear Trillian,
Like Zilch, you are a focus-stealing application. Unlike Zilch, you're doing this when you're starting up and joining all the IRC channels, rather than just as a matter of course because hi, shiny game being played.
Argh,
Miss Lunatic

12:49 AM 5/30/2010
Friday involved sleep and then a shopping run. Saturday involved not enough sleep, The Demon's Covenant, not enough sleep, emergency sleep, coming in late to chat due to sleep, crashing out early from chat to go to sleep, and waking up at a weird hour. Sunday is going to involve some frantic attempts to reset the sleep schedule.

Also, I want popcorn. (I have corn and a popper, just low motivation.)

Chat does not kill my browser as horribly badly as I thought it would, but it still lags.

1:04 AM 5/30/2010
Hey Zuckerberg, you have cause and effect backwards. Probably from where you're sitting, the number one use of dual identity is trolling, so it would make sense to draw your conclusion from that evidence if one didn't bother to search for other reasons someone might use dual identities. However. From where I'm sitting, I see a number of uses of dual identity. I would argue that the problem is people with a lack of integrity using dual identities. I don't think there's a technological or even magic cure to the problem of people with a lack of integrity.

Comments

[jumpuphigh]

What has Zuckerberg done now?

[azurelunatic]

He thinks dual/separate identity is a sign of a lack of integrity, and he appears to intend to do his damnedest to make internet compartmentalized identity impossible on his watch.

... I think we have a new permanent denizen for hEll.

[jumpuphigh]

*rolls eyes*

He is an idiot.

[azurelunatic]

(and so it's here too)

http://jld.dreamwidth.org/28219.html

[aedifica]

You're rereading Mezzanine now too? *grin* (Actually I'm re-reading all Syne's SG-1 stuff and discovering there's some I missed my first time through, and enjoying the new-to-me AND the already-familiar.)

[azurelunatic]

IT IS THE NEW ONE
WALK DO NOT RUN
NO WAIT
RUN DO NOT WALK
RUN RUN RUN
synecdochic
GO GO GO

[aedifica]

Oh yeah! I opened it in another tab at work and forgot to come back to it. Yay!!

[aedifica]

Have now read the Prologue and EEEEE! Must stop for now. But EEEEE!

[tsjafo.livejournal.com]

I like your trust tables. They articulate something I can feel but can't quite describe.

[azurelunatic]

I'm glad you find them helpful! Feel free to link/copy and modify to suit your particular brain scenario, especially if you want to use them to explain things to people.

[pauamma]

If I'm not sane and I tell you I'm not sane and I tell you to get the hell away from me? If you don't? At that point, it's no longer me, it's you. It no longer matters that this is a boundary that no sane person would set, and that it's not a normal boundary for friends, it's still a boundary, and crossing it is bad news for everyone. Telling me "You can trust me", when my brain's gone glitching-alpha, I'm enormously suggestible, and I don't actually trust you? That's attempted tampering with my trust, and I'll never trust anyone who does that.

I've been there. On both sides, I suspect.

Precious few people who get a safeword instead of a boundary.

I get the impression, reading he rest of your entry, that the boundary you're referring to is of the "you likely didn't expect this boundary to exist at all, let alone where it is; I might not have known myself until you crossed it just now; but it's there, so back off now!" kind, so it seems to me that you're in effect stating the boundary and safewording at the same time. Are you referring to people with whom you already have a safeword arranged, and that you trust to comply if you use it? Or am I missing something?

[azurelunatic]

In this particular context, it's more their ability to SSC-ly ignore my stated "no" than it is the presence of a specific safeword.

[pauamma]

*nod* Thanks.

[cadenzamuse.livejournal.com]

I am glad that you are able to articulate your trust tables, and that it seems to be a helpful mental-health thing for you to do.

I also find them interesting, and helpful to me in understanding you. I don't think I could articulate my trust in that way, though. (I think I am going to ramble about my trust settings here.) Mostly, I don't trust you until you count as "not a person," and then I do. "People" require dealing with, whether it's the southern hospitality imperatives in my brain requiring me to bring you food or make conversation if we're sitting around awkwardly or just the mental effort to put on my own "I am a person" face in your presence. "Not a person" means that my minimum energy output around you is zero. I can be in the same room with you without feeling the automatic drain that being around people means for me as an introvert (i.e. I can be in the same room with you and feel like I'm by myself. This is a very good thing).

When I am not sane, "person" vs. "not person" becomes much more situational--even my best friend may be a person when I'm in an anxiety or depression place and believe that my existence is going to break everyone and everything around me. But I am much more likely to expend the very high energy that is person drain when I'm not sane on someone who is usually not person, because the computer part of my brain says "this being is usually not person; expend effort to resolve to that default state."

P.S. Is this an acceptable use of your comment space? I am used to just sort of rambling in my friends' comments, but I want to check to make sure that's okay. (I do not ramble on obviously bad-headspace/not-sane/etc. posts, and try not to on ones that instinct tells me are in the much-milder-but-still-bad headspace range.)

[azurelunatic]

Totally acceptable use of commentspace! And due to my currently-typical entry-style, there are some entries that may still be acceptable places to ramble despite holding some bad-headspace content, because by the time I've posted it, the bad-headspace may be well past. (And anything with really not-sane/bad-headspace gets locked down to a group it's Safe with; I've been known in the past to post something public and take it locked if the comments take a turn for the "oh hell I had not figured on that", or to realize that I can post that locked instead of private, once I've got it written.)

The rambling of others tends to encourage me to ramble in turn, and I figure things out.

I've a similar People thing going on. It's ... sometimes it's honestly easier for me to face down a trainload of humans who don't care to interact with me, than it is for me to interact one-on-one with a Person. (And even the minor interaction with Humans runs the chance that they might be People.)

In a lot of cases, even if conversing with that individual doesn't require horribly much processing power, it seems as if particularly People-y People are bombarding me with their energy, and I've got to either let them affect me, or deflect them. And if I'm feeling at all sensitive, I can't allow them to affect me, and deflection is an enormous energy expenditure that I can pull off when I'm high-energy, but can't afford when I'm low-energy, and if I'm low-energy, I probably can't afford to have them affect me. Which ties directly into the trust/sanity thing.

Exceptions tend to either be near unto completely compatible with me (my virtual brothers gameboyguy13 and ralmathon, my oldest virtual sister Dawn, and my best friend) or near unto null broadcast without being actual energy-sinks (gameboyguy13's partner, a fellow introvert, amazingly enough, is this: he and I aren't close enough that I would automatically say that he's completely compatible enough with me to not set me off, but he managed to be sitting right next to me when I was in full-on computer problems freakout mode and not set me off, which made me consider null-broadcast as a factor), or Special Exceptions like my Junior and my Priestess-Confessor.