Friday check in
Dunno how long or short this will turn out…. will try something short and concise but who knows?
Instead of walking or jogging this morning, I tried out bike riding. It’s been a super long time, maybe decades? When inflating the tires I discovered the Ryobi electric pump had a leak in the hose, I patched it up with some tape to get it working to 40psi; and have a replacement one on order $40… is it really worth fixing stuff nowadays?
Anyway…. biking works different muscles and has benefit of coasting and going downhill, though it can get quite tough on some uphill sections… I think my bigger muscles are more tired, and I don’t have as much soreness around foot and stabilizing joints/muscles… I suspect that’s my issue with jogging, I have to use too much energy on the landing..
Last night I spent a ton of time trying to break down clips from Vaknin’s latest talk with RG…. It’s playing in the area of object relations, which I’m also a fan of… the narcissist’s introject constancy is an interesting framing, and is a nice add on to his earlier snap shot pointer, along with technique of destroy the snapshot…. on a recent Lee Hammock live, I asked him if narcissists were paranoid, and he admitted to being super paranoid…. and I’d argue that’s a super big weak point of their lack of empathy…. it leads to them being quite oblivious to their environment…
I also tried editing a summary of RG’s toxic comfort video and boy that was frustrating…. as he defined the problem with lots of word salad and the solution was to just decide and believe in oneself, and just take on more risk.. It seems his recent videos are more about him covering up his own shame with lots of intellectualization and fluff….
Of which that might also be the Unplug from the Matrix course, lots of self blame and a narrow formula to try to brute force disconnect one from Narcissistic love bombing… but I sense it’s kinda silly… I do need to revisit the course and do better review and analysis…..
I released the Will Smith case study publicly and it got decent views for 1 day, high amount of likes but very limited comments. Which seems a bit disappointing. In contrast Ross Rosenberg also released a video on the Will Smith slap, but his analysis and evidence was just on that narrow Oscars situation, and he didn’t dig into other material…
Trying to get into mental prep for Saturday meetups… in person might be lower show due to labor day weekend, but it does have a good amount of new people rsvp, which tends to be 25% show… though other meetups I’ve attended post-covid, in person show has been higher then pre-covid.. more like 50-75%… for the zoom group…. I was thinking about exploring comfort, conformity and certainty and had some angles to address those 3 issues….. and I also could dive into toxicity in general, or toxic work places…. but it’s not an over-arching theme, and it’s not really linked well to the new Vaknin clips….
And the other thing might be to try to get more group participation and interactive discussion going? that was a bit lacking in the last zoom… Though the examples of insults done properly and Bill Burr modeling healthy aggression or honesty was a good teaching point… I have some more Bill Burr analysis and clips, and I sense he might be a prime example of someone really good at holding their ground and using aggression openly and productively….
Oh….. Chantal’s journal talked about some constellation work recently… and I saw a free constellation event posted on meetup, which I’ll check out on Sunday….. I’m curious to see how she does it virtually, along with how the whole field and what not works… this is link to the event in PST time, but with recent change that it’s only from 9am to 2:30pm, the 3rd session is no longer being done..
https://richerliving.org/free-day-of-constellations/
Deef The child assumed that he/she was the cause of the parent’s hostile behavior toward them. Fairbairn called this the “Moral Defense Against Bad Objects”. Once again the child is desperate to support his/her illusion that he/she is living within a loving family, and that he/she is the cause of the strife.
I’m still digesting Ronald Fairbairn’s theories… and it’s essentially linked to morality as an over-arching commonality with codependents, narcissists, manipulation, etc… Judgment, righteousness, moral outrage, social sanctions, exile, disgust, moral philosophy, slave mentality, etc; are all the territory of religion and God… even spiritual bankruptcy or soul murder that’s in the toxic shame world, is land of morality…..
And the super-ego is supposed to be the morality principle, to help navigate the moral norms and ethical rules of interaction in society… that’s what gets hijacked and messed around with…..
But with religions, spirituality, magicians, witchcraft, astrology, etc. They might’ve had better metaphors and rituals to address issues of morality??? Sure there’s abuse in that territory, but now without a religious overlay, scientism and academic post modern utopia becomes the moral religion, that’s actively practiced but not explicitly defined…
oh.. back to Fairbairn…. this moral defense is a great way to simplify a chaotic world… and guilt, repression and the omnipotent (It’s all my fault) posture, creates a feedback loop of power and hope for fantasy/utopia/holy-land alive…
The masses are bought into this moral defense.. that’s partially Fairbairn’s critique of Freud’s ego structure and defenses layout….I think he asserted there was no Id and also no death drive… it was all just libido… life force that got repressed or redirected or distorted….
I still gotta digest and work on simplifying down his theories….. but it matches my prior critiques of mental health & self-help’s tendency for band aid type fixes, and constant external injunctions and demands…. which has always bothered me, or that type of approach never worked for me….
…… ohhh….
Vaknin goes a little more into Schizoid core in that video…. and also how Narcissists might reasonably be described as a psychotic disorder…. of which I wonder if schizoid is leaning more towards psychosis instead of neurosis?
I recall theorizing before that modern psychology assumes everyone’s issues is around neuroticism…. and pays little attention to the opposite.. which might be more schizoid or psychotic?? (a good side of psychotic might be positive fantasy, confidence, optimism without evidence)…
Neuroticism is the trait disposition to experience negative affects, including anger, anxiety, self‐consciousness, irritability, emotional instability, and depression. Persons with elevated levels of neuroticism respond poorly to environmental stress, interpret ordinary situations as threatening, and can experience minor frustrations as hopelessly overwhelming.
So neurotics might take in too much information from the outer world…. and react too much to environment… on the flip side schizoid and psychotics might block reality naturally and have lots of defenses… so they’d seem much more stable than neurotics…. that is until reality crushes their psychotic delusions…
zooming out then… both neurotics and schizoids have issues with navigating shared reality… of which that might’ve been the social benefit purpose of old religious communities in the past??? they offered a way of living that was somewhat explicit, and also embodied by church members… Now without that structure for living and morality… it’s up to the individual to map out personal values, but also figure out a morality that works and offers some sort of belonging or way of finding status in society….. isn’t that much harder now than before when people were more homogenous and religions more immersed in people’s lives…
ergo… psychology has gotten lost in mind games of feeding people’s ego or super-ego delusions of playing god…. instead of the study of the soul… which is the etymological origins of psychology… pscyhe=soul
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ok.. went a bit long and a bit scattered…
gotta figure out what else to do this afternoon… cocoaching zoom later… and maybe more meetup & zoom prep for Sat?
ok.. I found earlier post on anti-neurotic – back then I labeled it counter-dependent instead of schizoid
Deef I think a blindspot of psychology is the founders were neurotic and assumed everyone else was the same… The idea of people who have the opposite problem… anti-neurotic??
Neuroticism … is sometimes defined as a tendency for quick arousal when stimulated and slow relaxation from arousal, especially with regard to negative emotional arousal.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neuroticism
So… possible counter-dependents have fast relaxation from arousal… Countering is way faster than co-addict strategies… and listening, validating, comforting, soothing, etc… all of that would be effective for people who have slow relaxation from negative arousal (emotional flashbacks)…
The upside of that slow decline is the neurotic can be obsessive with self-reflection .. and that can lead to anxiety…
But it’s vice versa with fast decline… a counter-dependent is defense is so fast, there’s no time for self-reflection… so no issues with anxiety, but then there’s surprise that other’s get pissed off at them, and they’re oblivious on how to make sense of it…
…
This is another upside for counterdependent… or opposite-neurotic response…. it’s somewhat fun… or is really pleasurable to inflict leverage upon others…. offers a sadistic high?? power trip?
Why would someone give up a lifelong pattern of power trip dominance highs…. and willingly open up to being a plain human being… a mere mortal… vulnerable, exposed.. open… seen as limited…. exposing one’s weakness… sharing one’s shame and embarrassment….
That might seem utterly disgusting to a counter-dependent…
Using SV’s introject constancy pointer, if someone is counter dependent, schizoid or anti-neurotic… they’re interacting primarily with internal object snapshots of external… so that’s a whole lot faster, and simpler in that their goal is to force others to fit into boxes of their introject, and go back to behaviors and words fitting of their snapshot…
Non narcissists are forced to see others as separate beings or even objects… of which takes a bunch more mental bandwidth to consider their perspective and individuality..
ohh…. maybe the dominance high… is more about having one’s introject survive and getting other people to conform and fit into that introject…. that offers supply, comfort and predictability to schizoid types…
