Had a really good conversation with my therapist yesterday that has left me feeling better about life & the future than I have in... months, honestly (which also has me feeling really good about her ability to help me continue sorting through things).

I was talking about my distress about the future and in particular what I'm going to do when I graduate, since grad school isn't the most stable option, and she pointed out that since I was spiraling over hypotheticals, maybe it made sense to simply make up my mind about the first step, since applying to grad school is hardly the same as committing to grad school. And she was so right. I am so good at feeling like I need to make the right, perfect decision -- especially after making mistakes with school in the past -- that I have been worrying myself into depressive spirals over what the "right" decision is here. But making up my mind to at least apply and find out what my options are is a decision, that will give me a lot more information in the long run than paralysis over if it's "okay" to apply at all.

It'll still take a lot of work, obviously, and l don't know if I'll even get in anywhere, much less actually commit to doing a PhD if I do. But it has taken such an incredible weight off my shoulders just to say "Okay, I am going to apply, what next?" Because it means I can put all that nervous energy to actual use! Instead of spiraling the next time I start thinking about my options in the future, I can go do research on different PhD programs (without feeling guilty the whole time, like I have been until now)! I can ask my favorite professors for advice! I can reach out to current grad students to ask what they think of their advisors! All of which is actually productive and will help me make the most informed choice I can if and when the time comes, instead of ruminating endlessly on what the "best" one is!

TL;DR -- my therapist is very smart and understands me and the things my brain gets stuck on in a big way, and her advice has dislodged literal months of extremely disordered thinking just like that. Because now I feel like I've made a choice and have something to work towards. And also like I can breathe.

I was talking to a client today about "how to identify masking" as part of the process of learning how to shift masking from a reflexive coping strategy to a voluntary and conscious one and I feel like it led to a really important shift in framework FOR ME about masking and social distress.

Paraphrasing, the ideas we came to are as follows:

One of the reasons masking can be so difficult to recognize is because, essentially, masking is the act of performing "yourself" as a mirror for the other person you are interacting with. It's this idea of "I will micro-manage my own mood, affect, behavior, mannerisms, and environment in order to reflect back to you whatever version of "self" you need from me because if I don't there will be consequences". So because masking is essentially performing "mirroring" as selfhood by amplifying or minimizing aspects of yourself based on what you think the other person wants to see in you, it varies significantly from one context to another. The major commonality is that it takes up an INCREDIBLE amount of energy, mental and emotional resources, cognitive processing power, etc. So you don't identify masking by specific behaviors so much as by the feeling of "having a significant amount of your mental/emotional resources be occupied by the act of social interaction" to the point that it doesn't leave enough left-over for other cognitive tasks, or leaves you feeling exhausted and worn out, or basically by the impact that masking has on you during and after.

In this framework, part of why we get so anxious about new or unfamiliar people or situations is because we don't know how to mask in that context yet, and so until we get there and figure it out, we're basically just terrified of what could go wrong since we don't know what we're walking into.*

*This is the underlying framework of anticipatory and obsessive anxiety as well. Anticipatory and obsessive anxiety functions as the mechanism by which we conduct both predictive reasoning-basd advance planning and review/self-correctionof our mental predictive model.

Autistic aversion to uncertainty has a lot to do with our need to be able to use predictive reasoning-based advance planning to cope with "social deficits" aka how much harder it is for us to interpret subtextual/nonverbal cues, learn/meet social expectations, and work through/around disordered sensory processing. That predictive reasoning requires us to be familiar, in advance, with the stable constant factors that influence decision making in social contexts. If we aren't familiar with the constant variables than we can't plan, if we can't plan than we are more likely to make noticeable social mis-steps, and if we take notable social mis-steps there are consequences. It becomes necessary for us to be hypervigilent to observable patterns in other people's behavior in order to try to reverse engineer the social interaction playbook on the fly. That ends up making us more likely to assume personal responsibility for predicting and managing the emotional regulatory needs of people around us at all costs, replicating the behavioral/cognitive impacts of chronic traumatic stress due to the activation of our sympathetic nervous system from chronic hypervigilence.

Essentially, masking is a cognitive defense mechanism to severe and/or persistant traumatic interpersonal stressors. As the neurological impacts of chronic traumatic stress heal, we mask less frequently. But in order to heal from chronic traumatic stress, the human brain requires a safe environment that does not trigger a retraumatization episode or replicate feelings of helplessness/fear for safety. In other words, reducing/terminating masking safely requires us as autistic people to have consistent access to social environments in which we are able to utilize autistic interpersonal boundaries without fear of consequence or chonically unmet need. This requires the people around us to be able to respect not only autistic interpersonal boundaries, but also autistic self-expression/advocacy modalities and mediums.

I feel like a lot of the pieces of this framework have been rattling around in my head for a while but the flavor of words hit just right today and all the connections snapped into place.

Anyway, I'm still sort of sorting through the clinical implications of this framework but I think it's a direction I want to keep exploring for sure.

the post grad why did i get an art degree what am i even doing what do i want in life where am i going crisis has finally hit i want to. lie down in the dirt. or something

2023 reads

The Deep Sky

scifi mystery thriller

on a deep space mission traveling from an environmentally devastated earth with hope to restart humanity elsewhere

when they’re halfway, an explosion kills 3 crew and pushes them off course

the only witness is the Alternate who has no specific role, and she has to figure out who caused it & if they might continue to sabotage, while they're figuring out a way to get back on course with limited resources

flips between present and the past: of her childhood and training for the mission, her identity struggles, and relationship with her mother

questions the ethics of ‘restarting’ humanity elsewhere vs putting resources into fixing earth

You know what? Maybe it's a controversial opinion but it makes sense why, no matter what Jason does or how he changes or how long ago it was, Bruce will always hold how he has killed people in the past over his head.

We're talking about a man who puts on a cape and cowl every night because of the memory of helplessness he has from being a kid who watched his parents be mugged then murdered in front of him. A man who has control issues. A deeply troubled man who has contingency plans for even his children.

There is nothing Jason can do if Bruce isn't willing to work with him. Not as Batman and Red Hood, but as Bruce and Jason.

The ball is in Bruce's court.

He needs to start putting in the work to forgive Jason, forgive himself for the perception that he failed Jason by 'letting' him become a killer, and change how he sees Jason. Because while he sees his son, Jason? I'm betting he also sees a Joe Chill-esque 'monster' he had a hand in releasing on the world. Doesn't matter that Jason has a no-kill policy now. This is Bruce's problem he needs to fix.

And how does he do that?

Therapy.

No other game studio has made me hate a character so viscerally than how Guerrilla wrote Ted Faro.

Every single time I think about that stupid fictional trillionaire I get so mad because he’s literally just a horrifying amalgamation of Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos. Down to the tech bro, horrible ego, complete disregard for other’s well being/the environment, literally doing anything for profit (especially at the expense of other’s), and taking all the credit for what others invent.

The most unforgivable character I have ever had the displeasure of knowing they exist. And the fact he’s mainly based on one real person and his actions…. Can’t escape.

He needs so much attention, all the time (Patreon)

Sometimes I find myself thinking about Din Djarin a little too much that I get concerned and think that I really should go to therapy...

Well, I'm finally doing that (again) tomorrow... :)

Feeling pretty nervous about it but hoping that because I now know I'm autistic it will help me understand/explain things a little better! Hopefully this is the start of a journey to finally become a healthier, happier version of myself :)

tomgreg is about the fantasy of being able to find someone who genuinely likes that you're mean and in fact thrives very well being needed in the particular kind of fucked up way that you need someone which makes it so you don't actually have to work that much to strip away your superiority complex in order to be loved for who you are

guys i am trying Really hard not to have public opinions about of this morning... pray for me

been thinking about luo binhe getting therapy in the modern world. living a good life, happy, only to be haunted by dreams of horrendous abuse. inflicted on him and by him. thinking he's going insane, becoming depressed and suicidal. it takes years of his life to piece together that these dreams are in fact, memories.

he comes to accept it and move on with the help of cbt. but just as he's pulled himself out of a depressive pit and ready to move on, fate throws another anvil at his head. one day, he run's into a man who look's just like his hated teacher. in shock, binghe almost doesn't manage to dodge when the man immediately attempts to kill him.

turn's out, shen jiu remembers too.

I had a good meeting today, I want that on record. I want it on record that I had a good meeting. I had a meeting that did NOT make me want to take to the sea in a little rowboat.

.

i love you “do you think i care for you so little that betraying me would make a difference?” i love you “thank you for making me feel special” i love you “i have a duty of care” i love you “every time we do something like this, i keep thinking, ‘what if something happens to you?’” i love you “she might meet someone she can't bear to lose. that happens, i believe.” i love you “i’m changing history to save clara” i love you “i will not let clara die” i love you “i’d know you anywhere” i love you “when do i not see you?” i love you “there was a crowd too?” i love you “if you love me in any way, you’ll come back” i love you “i never said it was your mistake” i love you “because if clara oswald is really dead, then you'd better be very, very careful how you tell me” i love you “everything you’re about to say, i already know. don’t say it now. we’ve already had enough bad timing” i love you “if you think because she's dead, i am weak, then you understand very little. if you were any part of killing her and you're not afraid, then you understand nothing at all.” i love you “and you'll still be gone. whatever i do, you still won't be there.” i love you “four and a half billion years” i love you “i was dead! i was dead and gone. why? why would you even do that to yourself?” i love you “i had a duty of care” i love you “look how far i went for fear of losing you” i love you “i don’t think i could ever forget you” i love you “smile for me. go on, clara oswald. one last time” i love you “it’s okay. don’t you worry. i’ll remember it” i love you “if i met her again, i would absolutely know” i love you “you said memories become stories when we forget them. maybe some of them become songs” i love you “

i keep dropping little tidbits of marks backstory... one day i will spit it all out on some google doc or somethin

little mark + moose mom, mom who is moose

I was describing DFF to a friend from CQL fandom and she said New with Non sounded kind of like Huaisang with Mingjue, and it def clarified a lot for me about how I feel about both avenging brothers.

The ends don't justify the means, the cats and children and working class servants murdered along the way aren't erasable casualties in the name of a true justice, and these avengers are fundamentally unhinged, twisted, broken people, not righteous seekers of fairness in the world. But I love that both of them are driven by real desperation and are frantic and messy in how much they need to make their revenge happen at any cost; someone trying to burn the world down in their grief, and actually taking the good parts of the world and themselves down along with their target(s), adds so much texture and dimension to the narrative for me.

I love a justice story and an ethical revenge, but for example w/ The Glory, even though that's for me the best it's ever been done, we still have things like a woman being victim-blamed for her rape and drug addiction as narratively acceptable modes of vengeance. I find something freeing in a story that isn't about punishment and who deserves what, but just about the emotional depths people are driven to by loss and rage and the unfairness of a world with no accountability.