“I dont deserve to be gone cause Im Black”
“I dont deserve to be gone cause Im poor”
“I dont derserve to be gone cause Im skinmy and kind of weak” (also I can just bulk and work out to remedy this partially)
“I dont deserve to be gone in general cause Im peaceful and kind for the most part”
“There is nothing wrong wjth being a human”
Working early career as a chef at a very high level, this was key. I can still listen to subjective criticism and value individual perspectives, but the food always went to the dining room done to one of the highest possible standards, my own. In that way I was not waiting for your approval or disapproval as validation or closure, but I was genuinely interested in how you experienced it.
Key to this specifically is the understanding that the majority of assholes who can afford the nicest fine dining don’t know shit about dick. And they don’t deserve reverence and praise just because their great great grandfather owned slaves and subsequent generations hoarded the compounded wealth from that blood money.
Enjoy your sous vide lamb, it’s wonderful.
Early on, I had to learn that the traditional idea of masculinity was not only not the only one, but that we’re all free to pick and choose who we are, and then pick our own labels too.
For real, weeding out the toxic crap from the good parts of traditional masculinity that work for me has been the work of a lifetime, even though I had the realization that masculinity and femininity weren’t polar opposites, just notches on a radial spectrum beginning in my tweens (such revelations can be slow in blooming).
For me? The first step was owning my own body via hair. First by ridding myself of it, going with a crew cut because I liked how it looked. Then growing it out because I liked the way it looked more. Two extremes, and they served as parentheses for the essence of my journey into adulthood and manhood.
Hell, in my damn forties, after not only years of fighting over my hair, but accepting that I had to keep my beard a certain way, then becoming disabled in my thirties, I realized I could do whatever the fuck I want with my hair, my body, and my self. So I went full Grizzly Adams, then full Alan Moore lol.
And it’s all back to that essence of rooting out the idea that my masculinity isn’t my own to define. That my body is mine, and not subject to the arbitrary ideals of others.
Unless your strong opinion of yourself is unhealthy and/or factually incorrect. I wouldn’t give this advice to someone with depression without knowing the specifics, and I’d certainly never give it to a narcissist.
I used to believe in individualist capitalism in my young teen years. I believed it inherently made the most sense that individuals had complete control over their own destinies, because why wouldn’t it? You have literal control over your own body, after all.
As I learned more about politics, human nature, and human history, I began to realize that it is impossible to separate individual destiny from politics since everything is inherently political. I also realised that individualism is an idea that was created to divide us so we do not organise against the elite, and it has damaged us as a species.
The old adage “it takes a village to raise a child” is not bullshit, but comes from tens to hundreds of thousands of years of human history, ever since we learned how to cultivate food, and by consequence, settle down and form our first societies.
There was a study about this, and I wish I could find the paper.
It was something like the sample group was told they were smart and doing great. And the other group weren’t told anything. The ones who were told they were doing great got better results.
I can see the opposite happening too. Others telling you that you suck. And you allowing them to control that narrative will only make it a self-fulfilling prophecy.
They’ve done studies on this, and it works on plants too.
I even saw one where a guy talks to jars of cooked rice and the one he berates daily turns moldy faster than the one he’s kind to. But I’m not sure of the authenticity of that one, or the quality of the study design.
TIL mold is kinky for insults
That anyone is out there sex trafficking random middle class children and young adults when it’s so much easier to just buy a toddler from a tweaker.
I’ve found that being “annoying” is a matter of the perspective of the listener. People who don’t care to learn find info-dumps “annoying,” but there are tons of people who find them fascinating and love learning about the things I share. As a kid I didn’t have that understanding, I was just exciting to spread facts I discovered with whoever was around me - thus hearing “you’re annoying” over and again. But learning to read people, and finding like minds, taught me that my info-dumps are welcomed by people who share my wavelength.
I was taught to believe that the United States was the best country in the world, that it had never lost a war, and that it would always do what’s right, that capitalism was ethical, that socialism was bad, that the wealthy were good people, that the homeless were bad, that drug use was a sign that a person was a bad person instead of that they were struggling, and that marijuana was a gateway drug. Ohh boy, was I in for a rude awakening!
In my experience that „deprogramming“ is a long term tasks that never really ends. It’s getting better, but you’ll have fallbacks in difficult situations. like with a strong addiction. Idk. Until now I never came to the point where I’d say that the problem is solved in some way.
Yeah, deprogramming is hard. People who grew up in progressive homes don’t realize how privileged they are in that regard. Imagine if the worldviews you’ve learned and internalized since childhood were all healthy, balanced, and humanistic.
It’s really hard as someone who has to make a deliberate effort to deprogram from a conservative childhood environment to enter progressive spaces without any degree of familiarity with the social scripts and faux pas that come so intuitively to seemingly everyone else. Everyone thinks that your language and mannerisms are all conservative-coded, they assume you’re dogwhistling and being disingenuous because the vocabulary and even the inflection you’ve internalized just sounds “right-wing” to them, even when you’re trying to learn how to be more progressive. It’s like learning a whole new dialect, except you’re under constant pressure to never default to your original one, and if you don’t immediately grasp everything you’re supposed to and all the layers of subtext and nuance, then everyone treats you like you outed yourself as a closet conservative, and you become a social pariah.
There’s honestly kind of an essentialist outlook hiding in that. This supposed belief that anyone born and raised conservative is a conservative for life and can never be redeemed, has to be rejected and ostracized even if they make a genuine effort to learn better. It’s really self-destructive to be honest.
One time I did a decent job of convincing people I was a progressive, until I mentioned that I had a conservative upbringing and have some ideas about how to reach people in similar situations who might defect to the left. And then I got skewered for “defending conservatives” and my reputation never recovered…
Like this is what I mean when I say echo chambers aren’t a good strategy, but people react as if I mean we should tolerate conservative worldviews, ignorance, and hate. When that’s not what I mean at all, just that some “conservatives” are trapped in that mentality, mostly held in by fear of the unfamiliar (which rejecting them outright only reinforces), and might be salvageable if we reach out a hand and show them a way out of that dark place, give them the community and acceptance that they crave so they don’t default to toxic spaces where so many of them end up being radicalized.
People tend to think I’m saying we should forgive and befriend the far-right, but what I’m actually saying is that we should reduce their recruitment pool and stop doing their jobs for them by sending so many social rejects and malcontents their way.
It’s hard to get rid of that audience of people in your head that you collect along the way. Family, old friends, an ex, a bully etc. People that stay with you and judge you for your actions, even when they’re not around and long gone.
I think something that helps for me is visualising it like this. They’re audience members in my mind that I don’t necessarily want there but they got in somehow. But in my mind is also where I can freely and unashamedly be real with a smile on my face and middle finger in the air. So hopefully the hecklers will get bored and leave, or learn to accept it.
Side note: I think I do way to much maladaptive daydreaming.
I’m constantly having arguments with and defending myself to those people who live in my head. It takes up a significant portion of each day.
Sometimes it’s peaceful and cordial and I’m just explaining what I’m doing and why I’m doing it the way that I am. Most of the time though, they’re badgering me about why it’s wrong and how I’m stupid and a bad person for doing it that way.
Keep fighting. In my experience, they eventually retreat. Or maybe they just get buried under new experiences and fade into the background.
I suggest, instead of arguing, to just tell them to fuck all the way off.
They do, but they also always resurface.
I am learning to simply tell them to fuck off, to remind myself these are just voices in my head. But sometimes I’m arguing with them for hours before I even realize I’m doing it…
Doesn’t this also lead to boomer-esque levels of infallibility? Narcissists have strongly held beliefs of the quality of the self to others determent.
There’s a balance that most struggle to achieve.
You can’t let every person’s opinion sway you.
Equally you can’t shut yourself off from all feedback from others.
i remember that one quote from aritstotle or whoever it was that went along the lines of
“Confidence in yourself is good ONLY in balance. Disregarding all ofnyour own opinions means youll live life without a backbome an according to what others tell you all the time. BUT overconfidence will lead you yo being destroyed early in life in a fist fight with a bigger person.”
Humans are social creatures ya so regarding the opinions, works, and feelings of others sometimes isnt a bad thing …but you dont have to regard the opinions of all other people at all times cause some people are closeted nazis and others are Dunning-Kruegered stupid and others are BOTH. And yet others are a healthy balance of confidence-and-humbleness, mixed in with intelligence-and-inquistivity
I would say that you’re conflating two very different things. “I’m a rational person that questions biases and consults diverse expert opinions before making a decision” can be a strong opinion. Being a narcissist is different from having a strong personality. Actually, I’ve seen narcissists being very mercurial and changing themselves in order to manipulate others.
This goes both ways. Adulation is a common form of manipulation. This is how people fall for sycophancy all the time. Their ego gets easily massaged into compliance because of how vulnerable they are to other’s opinions. But any ways, this is an oversimplification, personalities are far more complex than a screenshot of a microblog entry can communicate.
Christianity.
I was raised in the Methodist and Baptist churches and had a series of experiences in my teenage years that made me question it, then once I went to college, getting to experience the wider world convinced me that what I’d been taught was bullshit. I actually named my YouTube channel ‘Sacrilegious Heathen’ because I once asked a televangelist about how god could allow certain things to happen to kids and he told me “That’s sacrilege. You’re talking like a heathen.”
That said, they’re very, very good at programming young people and I had an ingrained fear of spiritual warfare that took me two years to get over. I even de-baptized myself because ritualizing my deconversion helped me put that period of my life behind me.
I still begrudge my parents for it, TBH. There was a wealth of experience I missed out on as a child and a young man because I was afraid of angering god, and I’ll never get to the opportunity to have that again.
Pisses me off.
How do you “de-baptize” thyself? Did you leap out of a pool? Did you procure unholy water?
It was a ritual I made up myself. Basically, baptism is done by water, so I de-baptized myself by fire.
I pricked my finger and made an X on my Bible with it, told God he could intervene if he wanted, and when (of course) nothing happened, I burned it.
I figured it was just like going to a new second church and telling them that you wanted to be baptized and then in front of everyone when you’re up there in the baptismal pool with the preacher when they ask you if you accept Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior and reject Satan and yadda yadda yadda, just be like “You know what, now that you mention it, no,” and then getting out of the baptismal pool and walking out in the middle of a service.
Nah, there’s no need for spectacle.
But that would be the literal exact opposite of a baptism.
I always enjoy when people quibble with me for no good reason. Have a nice day.
I was taught that autism was a disorder and that we were defective neurotypical people.
But I can’t seem to find a single aspect of the interactions between autistic people and neurotypical people that couldn’t be explained at a root level by neurotypical people having hyposensitivitity in their senses and autistic people having hypersensitivity in their senses, with autistic people receiving massive amounts more information every moment than neurotypical people and neither group being aware that the other group isn’t like them.
Still struggling on the deprogramming.
Unfortunately a lot of the sadly beliefs I’ve accumulated seem to be self conclusions, not so much people being dicks (and telling me I’m worthless, etc - that was my own innovation).
I’m starting to unpick these (at 46!!) but it’s bloody slow progress
Even if nobody told you that you’re worthless, that belief came from somewhere. You didn’t invent it for yourself.
Maybe someone told you with their actions, or with subtext. Maybe it happened when you were so young that you hadn’t even started forming permanent memories yet. Maybe society told you with the default set of assumptions it handed you and called “normal”.
Whatever it is, blaming yourself for it is just another sneaky way that idea is influencing your opinion of yourself. It’s society telling you “all your problems are your own fault; society had nothing to do with your internalized beliefs about yourself.” Which, in case it needs to be stated, is a lie.
