Posted by Larry Hoover on March 20, 2006, at 8:20:31
In reply to Re: Trigger warnings as POLICY, posted by Larry Hoover on March 19, 2006, at 11:55:25
Some inquiries have been made with respect to my mental health. I want to assure you, I fully grasp the significance of what you have been observing. I am not at all naive to the fact that I have episodic outbursts. The thing is, they arise through a triggering process. I've been in therapy for years, and it takes time. Time to grasp a potential conceptual framework for an overarching concept of what is happening (in this case, PTSD from childhood experiences), and more specifically, what precisely occurs when such events arise. What are those outbursts? Where do they come from? Have they relevance to the present circumstance, or are they better said to arise from what some call "old pain"? What is one to do about them, those outbursts? And so on. I've been studying it all for some time now.
For a while now, also, I've been trying to obtain an observer's perspective on *what* goes down *when* one of those outbursts goes down. Memory only takes you so far. You need new, live examples to work with. I started to recognize what a trigger was, and how it opened the doors to ..... I'm not really certain yet, but immaturity is certainly an attribute.....Indignant Lar might be a teenager, or a young man. Not sure yet. I just formally met him, for the first time, when I was speaking to JenStar, a week ago. In the framework I'm learning about, that's an ego state, Indignant Lar. Indignant Lar is working under different rules of conduct. Uses different forms of rhetoric. Unfortunately, he also has access to my full vocabulary. He doesn't know what emotional comforting is. He doesn't know respect. He didn't get any, at all, from either his mother or father. Or at least that's how he remembers it. He's not in a frozen state. He's just growing up at a different pace than the rest of me. Interacting with his environment, when he gets a chance....
But Lar, what has silence got to do with it? You're *anything but* silent.....
You're only seeing the little ones, the little triggers and sequelae. The big ones, you don't see. Little triggers, and there goes Lar again. The big ones? I don't even want to talk about it. More succinctly, I can't talk about it.
I might be slow to come to realization (I don't know how to measure the pace of such things), but once I get it, I feel some faith that I do get it. The cognitive framework is in place. The observer is on his mark. And it's then necessary to bide your time, to await an opportunity to use them. To see what had been merely hypothetical, actually taking place.
Well, I do assure you, I have been very busy with new data streams, arising before your eyes. And understanding now comes rapidly. I've always believed that 90% of the struggle is in figuring out the precise nature of the struggle itself. The job is almost done by the time you figure out what the problem is.
I did not know that I couldn't yet talk about the mere concept of triggers without risking being triggered. You live and you learn. I don't mean to trivialize it. I know it wasn't pretty. Nothing, not one word of this, is meant to deflect responsibility. I've been responsible, for years, for things I didn't comprehend. You don't know what a relief it is to now be responsible for things I do comprehend, instead.
I sent babblemail apologies to those I accosted early on in this thread, and I suspect that there are others yet to go out. If you don't have your babblemail on, I apologized on the board, in less individual fashion. I do understand how unpleasant it is to be around me during those times. I am sorry.
I was ready to just walk away from here, because triggers are embedded here. Once I came to understand that, why on Earth would I stay? Well, it's because the Babble community is very unique and special. It afforded me a chance to do what I needed to do, so that I would perhaps one day minimize, even eliminate, that Lar that has the mouth and vocabulary to take no prisoners.
I was asked about gratitude, and my answer was not understood the way I meant it to be taken. I am grateful, or I wouldn't humiliate myself before you, stubbornly attempting to do that which I have never yet before succeeded at doing. There is a lot at stake here, but you don't really get your hindsight until later, eh? I'd rather have it up front, but that's not the way it all works.
I was not taking on airs to say that I care too much. That is what underlies my mental illness. That is precisely it. I haven't been depressed in years, notwithstanding some rather stressful personal circumstances. I'm in chronic physical pain, but that's not anything beside this. I have PTSD from my childhood, and then, a series of adult experiences each inducing acute PTSD. Really, the one arises from the other, but.....most of the time, I like to see myself as a pretty good guy. Those exceptions, though.... man, they are big exceptions. I know. I'm sorry.
Getting back to the years of therapy....one of the enduring themes of those years was the significance of Internet communities, as they make up a fairly substantial component of my social world. Nothwithstanding the episodic turmoil that occurred, I kept going back, despite knowing what I was likely to find there upon my return. What could explain that? Addiction? Been there, done that, but this isn't that. Boredom? Surprisingly, that's actually closer to the truth than my first thought, addiction. My brain needs things to do. Community? It's really hard to find anybody, in real life, who has more than a passing interest in mental health issues, other than professionals. Convenience? Yes, that too. No, wait. Back up. Community. Oddly enough, in doing the alphabet, seeking the theme to study more fully, I stopped at "C". So far, anyway. D*ckhead starts with a "D".
Communities are collective human synergies. More than the sum of their parts, communities accomplish what individuals cannot. Successful communities provide individuals with a better standard of existence than they could maintain on their own. Successful communities also adapt, to accomodate the demands placed on them.
I erred, at the outset, in confounding what I was presenting to you. I simply could have kept to myself the issue I laid out as "Babble-break or Babble-broken". It's not germane to the trigger flagging issue. It's just a cute phrase that I liked a lot, for my own personal reasons. I never even considered it being seen as emotional blackmail. It's a coincidental truth, and nothing more.
In talking to itsme2003, I realized that y'all don't have the benefit (said with a twinkle in my eye) of the vision I hold inside my own head, because there is an integrated whole there. A package. I have a lot of ideas about how things around here might be better than they are now, and they do come together. Even one of most fervent critics has said something to the effect that despite the passion, it doesn't mean he's wrong. The biggest problem before me, right now, is communicating my ideas more effectively, coherently, and respectfully.
For example, when I say mandatory trigger flagging, I envision the mandatory part being "must consider the validity of trigger flagging" for a particular post before submission, rather than "must meet flagging perfection, on penalty of blocking". Moreover, in my vision, blocks would not even be possible, during a phase-in period. A month? 3 months? Time to talk about it, certainly. Time to practise. Time to refine the FAQ. We do get trolls/people with no intention of abiding by rules, though, so we have to have some kind of fall-back for that. Right now that's blocking, but even that could be reconsidered.
In my eyes, in hindsight, I realize the issue must be approached differently than I began to do. I hope you'll let me try again.
Lar
poster:Larry Hoover
thread:614568
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/admin/20060317/msgs/622435.html