Experiment succeeded, mission aborted.
I’ve received the signals I needed to hear, to stop here, go back to base and regroup.
Edit: I was in doubt over the reactions of a group of friends who keep me safe when my disease (Bipolar I / schizoaffective disorder) escalates. I couldn’t get through to them when I tried to explain myself in messages. But then I met one of my best friends from that group and he concluded that I make perfect sense while laying it out to him in conversation. So I continue my journey into wherever the approach will lead me.
This whole process was inspired by the results C.G. Jung was able to obtain throughout Liber Novus (the Red Book, highly recommend), by opening a space of inquiry into a possibility of meaning of the apparitions he faced, which initially lead him to conclude he was schizophrenic, about to hospitalize himself. By evading the blanket statement of sickness and psychosis, he found ways of internal interaction that allowed him to heal himself and remain to this day one of the most influential psychologists of the 20th century.
I’d never done that personally. To consider there was any meaning in what I experience in the ‘other’ state. Giving into the classic left-brain-hemisphere bias of western society, I subscribed to reductionist materialism and considered my issue like a Windows XP bluescreen. You reboot and hope for the best. But you don’t look for meaning under fatal error at address 0x426699k.
A seed got planted by Richard Schwartz’ Internal Family Systems, in its exploration of various parts (or in my case: entire ‘selves’) in us. To consider them real enough for an interaction that could result in integration and healing. And it looks like it does. Well-established approaches like schema therapy already touch on this, IFS just goes another step in terms of considering these selves a modality. Point is, wether any of these apparitions are ‘real’ or not, the approach appears to be rather effective. The one thing my Ex kept expressing gratitude for was the fact that I introduced her to IFS. There’s a variety of recorded sessions online, some of them very striking[0]. I’ve personally never seen anything near as effective in terms of therapy. But that’s just me, I’m no pro.
–
This year’s phase happened and it was the best I ever had. Not even the least-worst. The first one with more beneficial outcomes than bad ones. The first one I felt better after than before.
I did lose my job, but the phase was in part motivated by a number of persistent structural issues in the company I was unable to solve, so it wasn’t hard to convince myself that losing it might be for the best.
I had some psychotic spikes, especially against my CEO, but it wasn’t like earlier phases where I drowned in paranoid ideas that someone (CIA[3]), might be out to kill me. Which meant being emotionally, cognitively, practically- prepared to kill them instead, for months. That mode made for some fucked up close calls.
It scared my Ex so much in 2022, that the way she called the cops resulted in me being raided by the ‘local equivalent of GSG-9’, with a door explosion charge, a flash-bang grenade and finally three or four automatic rifles in my back, under screaming and shouting, in what felt like a sub-second time span. Probably the closest I’ve come to fear of death.
But not by a wide margin. My paranoid ideas of being hunted for my life came quite close to that.
It made for a character with a very cold place inside of me. Desensitized to fear of death after months of it. And now he can be problematic to have around. I need a strategy.
It will be an interesting process to integrate the fucker, as much as I’m thankful for protecting me of an invisible threat, he’s too creepy[4] My current assumption would be that I have to “integrate” him as much as possible, to away take his power over me. Control him. Like someone well practiced with a weapon vs someone who just has one in a corner somewhere.
Anyway, this phase- it was a lot lighter, not as black, more like pink or purple.
As many in many phases, given the dis-inhibition that goes along with it, I felt like contacting a lot of people from my past, that I loved, but hadn’t spoken to in years. Only this time the interactions weren’t traumatizing/awkward/depressing as usual, but, for the most part, really nice (maybe a hint of question mark given the unfamiliar outfit/purse but no rejection or fear).
Where I’d usually be abhorred and traumatized I was genuinely intrigued in my other self for the first time. Looking up to him even. The ease with which he was doing things that I would consider emotionally impossible to normal me, it gave me a nut to crack. Why not incorporate that? Can I learn it?
My beloved purse ties in here, the moment my other self found it, it was immediately second nature to him. After the phase I was inclined to throw it out, in my conditioned response to not wanting to have anything to do with what the other self did. But enough memory transcribed from the phase to remember all the glorious weird stares from people or how much easier it was to talk to girls like that, so I decide to train myself to wear this fucking purse in normal mode as well. Core lesson: Nobody really gives a fuck. And I’m having some cute and funny interactions here and there because of it. And there’s a fresh breeze of self-respect that goes along with it, one that I hadn’t felt in a longer while.
I was intruiged. Could I do more?
So I map out all the aspects of my other self that I appreciate and look up to:
– honesty
– openness
– decisiveness
– directness
– silliness
– an absence of fucks given over things that one shouldn’t give fucks about
– happily walking around looking like a camptramp from kitkathain
– non political-correctness
etc.
and started trying to incorporate those into my normal mode.
Which may end here. At least for now, maybe.
This sentence was written in doubt, see the very first sentence of this article at the top.
I thought needed a break. But now it’s evening and I’m rewriting this article after having met one of my most supportive dudes, and where he had difficulties to feel me in my writing, he did understand talking through it face to face rather quickly. He said that he arrived somewhat worried but now it all made perfect sense to him. I guess where my approach got too close to some of my old psychotic patterns, the emotional memory burden complicates hearing me. Reason having to drive uphill a bit. Or something like that, I can only assume. What matters: Phew. Relief! I got through and it seems I even make sense. Fucking sense I make. Whoop. (How awesome and terrible is communication?! Very, I agree.)
What now? We’ll see. But my sense is that I’m on to something. After so many years of trying to listen to the pros, and their narrative of (roughly) “it is what it is, you’ll have to arrange yourself and make sure to take your meds”.
It still takes a lot of convincing on my part that I could have any point in these matters. But I can smell it, feel it in my bones somehow. Which could still be entirely misguided, yet CG fucking Jung seems to align here, one of the über pros. Let’s see how all of this plays out. Wish me luck. Thank you.
Hey, kshh. Come here. Let me tell you a little secret I haven’t told any of my close friends yet:
Two days ago, after meeting a beautiful person, then making music for a while, it gets late, maybe a little THC is at play. I sit there, letting the olde mind drift a little, think about this and that, when suddenly an inner, deeper, colder, hyperfamiliar voice replies to one of the thoughts I’m thinking, as if from an inner angle (it’s hard to describe) with an audible, impressive “Yup”.
Was that him? I asked him. He replied with what I can only describe as an internal, slightly blasé kinda nod, or wink. Hard to describe. Was it real? I don’t know. It felt like him. I can’t say. How could I? The mind in its subtly meandering ways of being. But I’m inclined to think that there may be value in creating a space, a forum; to attend there every now and again and maybe something useful comes out (or in).
Let’s hope I just dreamt it or misremember or hallucinated or am just lying to you. Don’t quote me on anything. And don’t tell my friends I told you about this. Shut up about it. Promise? Promise. Now then. Off to wherever you meant to go before you got derailed by this derailitarious derailment. Out. Off. Shush. Good night. Thank you. Love you. One love.
[0]
https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=ifs+demo
[1] The reason behind the dampening of psychoses will likely stay opaque, since I didn’t take many initial measurements, but there’s data that bipolar can in part be characterized by deficits in inter-hemispheric communication and certain types of right brain malprocessing[2]. I looked into a way to attenuate, I knew that doing unfamiliar movements with the body is conducive to neural growth stimulation, so I searched in that direction. And indeed, there’s data that the size of the corpus callosum (that thicc slug that connects our brain hemispheres with each other) is considerably larger in left-handed and ambidextrous people:
Paper: hopper1994.pdf
So for the last two years I’ve been training myself for ambidexterity. I can now brush my teeth with my left hand, use my phone (left pocket ever since), use sharp kitchen knives, eat with sticks, shave myself, play with my kendama, jerk off, stuff like that. All on the left. It’s hard work but fun to progress. And I notice that there are slight emotional shifts depending on which hand I use. It’s interesting. Plus if my right hand is ever injured I can still jerk off. And maybe do other things. But that’s the focus.
[2]https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=bipolar+hemisphere+review
[3]
They trigger me.
Any dark (mis-) use of psychology does.
And CIA/Mossad happen to be The Masters of the Dark Arts™.
For real: Psy-op, Info-op, “Hearts and minds” (microwave-grilled), performed at the lowest levels of possible manipulation. At a scale and bandwidth, you’d have to look into it, but I think it’s fucking disgusting. Infowar. Alex Jones may have been right for once. Who would have thought.
The Twitter Files revealed that around half of Twitter’s pre-Musk board was either ex-FBI or ex-CIA. Go figure. I personally think CIA/Mossad is the biggest terror organisation on the planet. But that’s just me again.
Some food for thought if you hungry:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Paperclip
(just to set the stage, as a result of this operation, Wernher von Braun, inventor of the V2 rocket, who reportedly had the slowest 5 jewish workers hanged publicly each week as a motivational tool- became the director of the U.S. Moon landing mission under NASA. Check it out.)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CIA_involvement_in_Contra_cocaine_trafficking
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MKUltra
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Midnight_Climax
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CHAOS:_Charles_Manson,_the_CIA,_and_the_Secret_History_of_the_Sixties
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stargate_Project (this one’s kinda cool)
(A good friend expressed the German-American angle pretty well in this video)
[4]
Closest I ever got in terms of characters that resonate here.
