Lena_C
Dystonic pianist
(Not written by me)
I got a computer science degree because I thought I hated people. I thought I liked logic, technology, and solvable problems. Yet, the more I look at things, the more I am sure that the best predictor of both resilience and health is social connections and belonging. We are monkeys; there are no functional ways to escape that mammals need connection and touch, even for introverts.
(although trees and animals and oceans and books and music and writing and movement and food, help fill related needs)
(also, linear media is challenging for me, so feel free to either go on tangents with me or skip everything in parenthesis)
This seems like horrible news to those who either
• mostly hate people, because their values clash with most of the people they’ve met;
• mostly think people will hate them, because there is something wrong with them.
The answer in both cases seems to be to keep looking for people with similar values.
It surprises me to no end that I am both engaged and seem to have a community now. It does not surprise me at all that I still default to sharing only those things that someone asks about directly. Old habits of feeling like you don’t belong anywhere die hard, but I refuse to be one of those people who curled in on themselves and stopped trying to connect.
(blogging feels supper vulnerable and all sorts of fun, shame-related outsider stuff comes up)
There was about a ten-year period in my life after turning eighteen when I was sure that no one would ever want to deal with me. One of the reasons that I play in the gifted community is that is was the first functional-for-me environment that had people who chose to play with me, even if it was not clear to them what they could get from me. As I look back on that period in my life, I see a few overarching themes, each connected to one or more of Dabrowski’s Overexcitabilities.
(basically the more excitable and intense you are the more likely you are to develop into something very very atypically interesting and possibly socially positive)
(no guarantees, and I like the idea of positive maladjustment from this theory)
Positive Maladjustment: A conflict with and rejection of those standards and attitudes of one’s social environment which are incompatible with one’s growing awareness of a higher scale of values which is developing as an internal imperative. (Dab. 1972, p. 302) – (If you like things which sound like this, go here.) (It is completely off-topic)
(tangents are a lot like plot bunnies)
(note: that was not a definition of of Dabrowski’s Overexcitabilities, look here instead)
I was anxious and scared all the time (emotional overexcitability), coping by feeling as little as possible and telling myself that I was not afraid of anything. My strongest overexcitability is emotional, so I tend to know when people have a problem or when a social dynamic is about to implode, way before anyone else is willing to admit there is a problem. For a while I thought that my behavior and presence was the catalyst causing all the unnecessary excitement.
(which of course meant that I was evil and should stay away from non-evil people)
(black and white thinking for the not-win)
My best explanation for my internal experience was that I was not human and/or had multiple personalities or bipolar or just crazy. Since I had plenty of sensitivities to both environment and food as well as emotional meltdowns, both of those theories seemed plausible and disturbingly likely. (imaginational overexcitability)
(much of our media deserves to be shot for creating all these tropes with no functional modeling to balance them out with)
(I know that people argue about whether “multiple personalities” or “dissociative identity disorder” are real things, either in general or in specific cases. I am not wading into that debate here. My current stance for me is that I have a wide variety of asynchronous ways of presenting myself and that they don’t need a mental health related label to “explain them”).
(asynchronous development is my favorite gifted concept)
I was captivated by touch and substances. I did not much care for having a gender identity or sexual orientation or for practicing monogamy. At the same time, I could neither hold still, nor deal well with intense stimuli. (psychomotor and sensual overexcitability)
(also central auditory processing differences, sensory integration fun, and executive function specialness… all pretty mild and all super annoying when you have no idea why everything makes you spaz out… better now that I know what to do more of and what less of and when I need downtime and what food is)
(also while I’m linking to many topics, here is impostor syndrome!)
(also, FODMAPs turned out what was wrong with my food… avoiding fructose/fructans and dairy basically takes care of it)
(if you feel like crap all the time, figure out why! Pain, tiredness and digestion issues often have a findable reason for being there.)
(The reason this is important for this article is that it is harder to make friends when you can’t eat with others or don’t feel well.)
I would do anything for an interesting conversation. I would do anything to avoid being bored. I played with a lot of risky stuff, drove recklessly, and had many older acquaintances willing to trade entertainment for entertainment. I read all the time, but hated everything about classroom instruction. I overthought everything which made emotional overexcitability worse and caused serious going to sleep without having a panic attack problems. (intellectual overexcitability, stacked on top of the rest of them)
That meant that, as I saw things, the only people who would think I was not crazy were others like me. If I wanted connection, I first needed to find other genderqueer, alternate relationship lifestyle, non-humans with multiple personalities, who also did not think I sucked and where not likely to treat me badly. Of course, that meant that there were not many options for community, healthy relationships or mental health professionals or educators I was comfortable talking with.
(the criteria that most often suffered was healthy environment or relationship, since not being completely lonely trumps everything else)
more on below
Source: http://www.discoveringyourawesome.com/overexcitabilities-and-finding-tribe/
I got a computer science degree because I thought I hated people. I thought I liked logic, technology, and solvable problems. Yet, the more I look at things, the more I am sure that the best predictor of both resilience and health is social connections and belonging. We are monkeys; there are no functional ways to escape that mammals need connection and touch, even for introverts.
(although trees and animals and oceans and books and music and writing and movement and food, help fill related needs)
(also, linear media is challenging for me, so feel free to either go on tangents with me or skip everything in parenthesis)
This seems like horrible news to those who either
• mostly hate people, because their values clash with most of the people they’ve met;
• mostly think people will hate them, because there is something wrong with them.
The answer in both cases seems to be to keep looking for people with similar values.
It surprises me to no end that I am both engaged and seem to have a community now. It does not surprise me at all that I still default to sharing only those things that someone asks about directly. Old habits of feeling like you don’t belong anywhere die hard, but I refuse to be one of those people who curled in on themselves and stopped trying to connect.
(blogging feels supper vulnerable and all sorts of fun, shame-related outsider stuff comes up)
There was about a ten-year period in my life after turning eighteen when I was sure that no one would ever want to deal with me. One of the reasons that I play in the gifted community is that is was the first functional-for-me environment that had people who chose to play with me, even if it was not clear to them what they could get from me. As I look back on that period in my life, I see a few overarching themes, each connected to one or more of Dabrowski’s Overexcitabilities.
(basically the more excitable and intense you are the more likely you are to develop into something very very atypically interesting and possibly socially positive)
(no guarantees, and I like the idea of positive maladjustment from this theory)
Positive Maladjustment: A conflict with and rejection of those standards and attitudes of one’s social environment which are incompatible with one’s growing awareness of a higher scale of values which is developing as an internal imperative. (Dab. 1972, p. 302) – (If you like things which sound like this, go here.) (It is completely off-topic)
(tangents are a lot like plot bunnies)
(note: that was not a definition of of Dabrowski’s Overexcitabilities, look here instead)
I was anxious and scared all the time (emotional overexcitability), coping by feeling as little as possible and telling myself that I was not afraid of anything. My strongest overexcitability is emotional, so I tend to know when people have a problem or when a social dynamic is about to implode, way before anyone else is willing to admit there is a problem. For a while I thought that my behavior and presence was the catalyst causing all the unnecessary excitement.
(which of course meant that I was evil and should stay away from non-evil people)
(black and white thinking for the not-win)
My best explanation for my internal experience was that I was not human and/or had multiple personalities or bipolar or just crazy. Since I had plenty of sensitivities to both environment and food as well as emotional meltdowns, both of those theories seemed plausible and disturbingly likely. (imaginational overexcitability)
(much of our media deserves to be shot for creating all these tropes with no functional modeling to balance them out with)
(I know that people argue about whether “multiple personalities” or “dissociative identity disorder” are real things, either in general or in specific cases. I am not wading into that debate here. My current stance for me is that I have a wide variety of asynchronous ways of presenting myself and that they don’t need a mental health related label to “explain them”).
(asynchronous development is my favorite gifted concept)
I was captivated by touch and substances. I did not much care for having a gender identity or sexual orientation or for practicing monogamy. At the same time, I could neither hold still, nor deal well with intense stimuli. (psychomotor and sensual overexcitability)
(also central auditory processing differences, sensory integration fun, and executive function specialness… all pretty mild and all super annoying when you have no idea why everything makes you spaz out… better now that I know what to do more of and what less of and when I need downtime and what food is)
(also while I’m linking to many topics, here is impostor syndrome!)
(also, FODMAPs turned out what was wrong with my food… avoiding fructose/fructans and dairy basically takes care of it)
(if you feel like crap all the time, figure out why! Pain, tiredness and digestion issues often have a findable reason for being there.)
(The reason this is important for this article is that it is harder to make friends when you can’t eat with others or don’t feel well.)
I would do anything for an interesting conversation. I would do anything to avoid being bored. I played with a lot of risky stuff, drove recklessly, and had many older acquaintances willing to trade entertainment for entertainment. I read all the time, but hated everything about classroom instruction. I overthought everything which made emotional overexcitability worse and caused serious going to sleep without having a panic attack problems. (intellectual overexcitability, stacked on top of the rest of them)
That meant that, as I saw things, the only people who would think I was not crazy were others like me. If I wanted connection, I first needed to find other genderqueer, alternate relationship lifestyle, non-humans with multiple personalities, who also did not think I sucked and where not likely to treat me badly. Of course, that meant that there were not many options for community, healthy relationships or mental health professionals or educators I was comfortable talking with.
(the criteria that most often suffered was healthy environment or relationship, since not being completely lonely trumps everything else)
more on below
Source: http://www.discoveringyourawesome.com/overexcitabilities-and-finding-tribe/
