WARNING: PLEASE DO NOT TRY TO MANIPULATE YOURSELF UNLESS YOU ARE CONFIDENT THAT YOU CAN REMAIN STABLE. WITHOUT STABILITY, THESE TECHNIQUES COULD MAKE A SINKHOLE OF YOUR SOUL. ASK ME HOW I KNOW

manipulating yourself for fun and profit

another vignette by @nikhilisvalid

if you're unclear of which trauma response you find yourself most often resorting to (fight, flight, freeze, fawn), it might be valuable to read my previous post.

unlike that post, this will be more of an actionable guide and less waxing poetic. it is also important to remember that trauma responses are meant to protect you. if you are in an unsafe situation, please don't feel guilt about fighting, flighting, freezing, or fawning. that is exactly what you are supposed to do.

i want to fight

whenever i find myself angry, i've looked inward and found that some of my takes are absolutely headass hilarious. if this doesn't resonate, please take a moment to remember the last time you were angry. have you done that? great! what was your expectation? what was your reality? and how the hell did you expect those two to meet? you absolute buffoon. if reading this made you angry, that was not my intention and i am genuinely very sorry.

in order to defeat anger, it has to be first recognized as a problem, and distrusted. very annoyingly, and unlike the other trauma responses, anger can often feel really good. the way i've taught myself to distrust it is by facing the consequences of my anger.

there has never been a situation that i've felt anger (and been in a safe environment) that i don't regret. i feel that every single one could have been much better handled without any anger. try thinking of the consequences of your anger, and then taking a look at your expectations again. with any luck, you'll feel like a total schmuck.

i want to flight

the same way walking into an unknown house can be incredibly unnerving, because you don't know what you can expect, the same can be true of day-to-day situations. i find that when i let my mind wander, soon i'll be expecting monsters to pop out of every corner; the only way forward i've found is to soothe myself, set my expectations, and then just trust them.

this sentence might cause some confusion. "just trust my expectations? how do i do that??" it's very annoying to admit, but i've found that the only way for me to trust is to just trust. i've tried thinking my way into trust, to no avail. i've tried feeling my way into trust as well. and now, i've realized that instead, i'm just making an informed decision. i search my thoughts, i search my feelings, and if i find that i can believe my decision to trust, boom, i'm trusting. easier said than done, of course, but i hope this gives some much needed clarity.

i want to fawn

as per my critically acclaimed previous article, fawning comes from a distrust of reality. you might be asking "what can be done about a distrust in reality?". some may find this idea counterintuitive, but surprisingly, the solution to distrust is, simply, learning how to trust.

as mentioned previously, learning how to trust entails making judgments and sticking to them. have no illusions about this, at first it will be scary. it will feel like taking the training wheels off, and just letting yourself ride blind. but the thing about trust is, whenever i find myself feeling distrust, i can just go back to the judgment i made earlier and believe it. of course this is easier said than done.

it's very possible that, in my quest to trust, i'll find a new source of distrust, and end up in some whack-a-mole goose chase just to find the perfect thing to trust and build off of. instead i try to find the nearest and easiest things to trust, and work my way out.

i want to freeze

strangely, during a freeze response, it's possible to feel very grounded while also feeling lost — even in my deepest moments of freeze, i had full trust in my thoughts and feelings. but since i hadn't spent time building trust with either my expectations or my reality, i had no idea what i was doing, or where i was going, just where i currently was.

since building trust while frozen is double duty (both expectations and reality), it's extra tricky. sometimes it feels like i'm herding cats, and if i don't carve my judgments in stone, they can crumble very quickly. but it's important to remember that it's very possible to divide and conquer. i can't speak for others, but i find it much easier to trust reality than my expectations, so i just start there. perhaps you find it easier the other way; this also works.

meta-responses

while triggers for trauma responses are often external, i have often reflected and discovered to my surprise that the call was coming from inside the house. for me this is real cutting edge stuff, i'm still figuring it out myself; but i've always found it valuable to remind myself to check if i'm angry at myself, as well as the other responses, and if so, deal with them appropriately. i unfortunately don't have much experience in this field, so all i ask is to please go slowly and try to be safe.

easing qualms

at their core, trauma responses arise out of feeling unsafe. the above techniques are only meant to calm the uncontrollable trauma responses. however, once the response has been quashed, it doesn't necessarily quell the underlying feelings. i've found that my best path forward, once i've settled, is convincing myself that i'm safe. i wish i could give more actionable advice, but i feel like every time i feel unsafe is its own case, and i have to solve them on a case by case basis. it bears repeating that i only ever attempt to "solve" these feelings when i know i'm safe — i truly hope you feel no qualms about reacting to danger.

quack.

a little bit of hope

self-growth can be slow and absolutely miserable work, but i hope you can now better identify what you're going through, and better trust the process. sometimes you'll feel completely lost. sometimes you will need to rest on a friend, or even a stranger. sometimes you'll want to crawl into bed and not leave for days. all of that's okay. we're all going to make it.

P.S. the title was clickbait you idiot. fuck profit. please please please do this for yourself, and yourself alone.

Edit Report
Pub: 07 Jan 2024 12:09 UTC
Edit: 07 Jan 2024 12:37 UTC
Views: 815