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Feb. 6th, 2014 07:46 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sorcyressI've made a couple posts recently about having shatter-level breakdowns. luckylefty asked in a comment what he should do should he encounter one of these. I wrote a 2100+ word comment, and then decided this would probably both not fit in LJs comment limit, and should really just be a post.
Have some blather.
I don't typically get into this state when people are around, unless I'm having massive gender dysphoria issues, or I dunno, someone is actively bullying me right then and there? Part of that is just how much I pride myself on my masks, and keeping them solid --if there are people here, I cannot let them see me cry.
(And that, to be perfectly honest, is usually less about pride and having them see me cry, and more about realism and how frustrating and boring it would be to bring perfectly nice strangers, or acquaintances, up to speed on the myriad facets of what's going on right now, many of which I can't actually explain very well, and some of which I probably literally cannot vocalize.)
The other part is just that people are so overwhelmingly changing that I can't help but be distracted by their existence. If I start to freak out, and have to walk across the busy room, there are better than even odds that another person in the room will do something worthy of investigation or further thought, and I will forget my personal woes entirely.
***
If we are at a thing, and I seem off-center and then vanish for more than, say, five or ten minutes, running a quick and quiet investigation of the outlying hiding places is not without worth. I won't at all separate someone who is having a nice time from that time, but if they come to me, I am often willing to talk. Sometimes all I need is to listen to some loud music, and sometimes I've been making eyes at my sir across the room and we've snuck off to a broom closet, but if I'm any sort of negative, not just in breakdown, having someone who commits enough to my mental health to seek me out and interact with me is a huge boost.
***
If, through any combination of things, I'm in a wreck and you happen to be a person congruent to me, here are some things that may help. My brain is insidious, and capable of building a better breakdown (what a dick), so not all of these will work all the time, and in a decade, it might be that none of them do.
*Actually seriously, the whole goal of everything is to get me to stop being [negative emotion] and start being anything else. Confuse me. Make me laugh until I trip a breaker, sob harder for a moment and then get better, make me want to stop directing anger inwards, inspire me with something awesome, teach me something wonderful, poke me in the side until I slap you for being so annoying. Some of these will make me less happy with you, but in general, when I am in a sobfest (or worse), I don't want to deal with it right now. I want to fix my brain and deal with whatever was causing the pain when I'm more on top of the basic shit. This is the Tl;Dr of the whole essay right here, but I'm a jerk and don't know how teeldears work and so that's why I'm putting this in the middle of the fifth paragraph.
*maybe-touch. If you are not confident in your ability to read [my] body signals, please do not engage in this. If we are ever touching in any way and I stop moving/vocalizing/breathing, do not cross go, do not collect 100 dollars, stop touching me immediately and work out what's up1.
That derailed. But seriously, hugs, having my back or head stroked, having my hands held (especially encompassed in one or both of your hands) are all nice things, a lot of the time, and give me some mild physical comfort, like being wrapped in a blanket. It is nice, but not at all enough, especially in the more extreme ends of the breakdown spectrum.
*Use really specific, explicit, simple questions. I sometimes go nonverbal, or very minimally verbal. My problem is usually that so many things are currently racing across my mind and so many of them I can't bring myself to say, and potentially make things worse. Additionally, I am very strongly socialized as a good girl2, and so if you ask me a direct question, or give me a direct order, it is very likely to result in a response. Because good girls follow directions, you understand, without asking questions or getting into fights.
(And heinous bitches get angry, and angry is so good at cutting away sad. I am not a heinous bitch as often as I'd like, but it's a beautiful dream.)
At any rate, it's truly rare that I go actually nonverbal. Far more often, you're just not asking questions with simple enough answers (and so I can't sift out a 'correct' answer). Narrow your field of response tremendously, or start asking me questions through textual means.
Seriously though, talking is not entirely what I'm looking for when I'm wrecked. I want people to initiate Talking when I'm stable enough to be serious about it. Bad jokes and distractions are a lot more useful.
*As an aside, seriously, why doesn't anyone tell me terrible jokes when I'm crying? I tell everyone else terrible jokes when they're crying! My sense of humour is othered, silly, and morbid as fuck, by all means take advantage of that. Silliness is precious as gold.
*Music music music music music. Ask (demand, see the point about being a good girl) me to get my ipod and ask me what I'd like to listen to, and just talk at me in a soothing monotone as I cram the headphones in my ears and fling the volume to something I can't block out. And then get the fuck out of dodge, because music is how I pray, and I can't-won't let you see me work magic, that's not what my magic is for.4
Check back in maybe 5-15 minutes, because sometimes music doesn't work, sometimes I can't even get the "sure things" to work. But usually it will be enough, if not to get me "normal" to get me stable, and then I can move on from there.
*I cannot live without the written word, and I cannot think or process or exist without the act of writing. You want to make it all better as fast and as completely as possible, you get a pen in my hand or a computer on my lap. You tell me to write, now, and you don't try to read what I've written until and unless I shove it over for you to see. If I'm so far gone I hesitate, or can't, start doing a soothing monotone and orders of what to write --untested, I would suggest repetitions of "the quick brown fox ecc" or bad knock-knock jokes, or something else to get me engaged in the verb enough that I can create the noun.
Given long enough with a piece of paper, I have never not found myself stability.
*In tandem with that ask for me to speak with Gabriel and Alis. Or if writing implement is handy, ask them (textually) to speak to you. The latter is probably more effective, I can create walls inside my head that they can't get through. Don't know who Gabriel and Alis is? That is fucking perfect, ask them to give you a history of The Lounge, or explain the significance of Truth or Dare, or what their favourite of Zaphod's drinks is. If I try to block you, or don't let them talk, or say they aren't there, look me straight in the eye and ask Alis if she'd like to front again.5 That will at least give me a new problem to deal with, one that is annoying rather than depressing, and annoyance, like anger, short-circuits negativity pretty damn effectively.
*Make sure I've eaten recently. This is such a stupid simple one, but I'm not great at eating --I forget, and my meds suppress my appetite, and I can't afford to, and I'm busy, and then I go all day on like...a bowl of cereal and six chips. Lately, the ideal-food-of-choice has been chicken ramen with an egg cooked in it, I don't know if that will change when it becomes warm out.
Also, I hide it well, but I can be a really fussy and unadventurous eater underneath it all. If you're trying to comfort me, please, for the love of god, do not shame me for my food choices or try to pressure me into eating things, and seriously, check in with me before you start cooking (Simple questions are good! "would you like [food I am making with these significant ingredients]") so I can say if something won't work. I am more than happy to try your challenging and weird cuisine when I'm not freaking out.
*The most important question to preface BASICALLY ALL OF THE ABOVE with is "sympathy or solutions?"
I feel this three word question should be the first thing out of the mouth of anyone trying to be comforting to anyone, because when Everything Is Terrible, there are two kinds of help you will receive: The sympathetic kind, where people will "you poor dear" at you, and give you hugs and make you tea and say "that sucks!" a lot, and the solutions kind, where people will try to help you solve every problem presented, the sooner the better, and give you advice, and try to lead you to realizing deeper understanding about your neuroses.
Both are really great ways of being helped. Both are really kind and useful. I like both of these, a lot.
But gods help me, if I receive one when I desire the other, it is the WORST AND SHITTIEST THING OF ALL TIME. You give me sympathy and I will think you are an insipid twit and no wonder I can't get things done if I surround myself with the twee likes of you, or you give me solutions and I think you are a self-centered ass who thinks they can just wave a magic wand and smugly solve everything gone wrong and seriously don't you think I've already tried that?
Check first. Check what I (or anyone) want(s) and then _heavily limit the amount of the other one you give_. If you are only equipped to give one, the next question should probably be some variation on "is there some way I can help you get in touch with [someone who can provide the other]?"
***
So yeah.
My user manual is remarkably mutable, this version is based on data collected from 1989-2013, and may not work farther out from that time range.
As always, it is self-aware to write a user manual, but arrogant to expect anyone to read it. More so with this than with other things I write, I will not assume anyone to have seen/read this post until and unless they comment (here, IM, email, offline, wevs) that they have done so.
Also, I apologize that a lot of this information is really useless unless you happen to be in physical proximity to me while this is going on. I scamper when I have negative emotions of most levels, so that people don't have to deal with me. Lots of this does translate to someone in a different location (I have had people online tell me to go eat before) communicating by phone or IM, but they still have to realize I need it.
I wonder if I couldn't come up with a secret passphrase that I could post here or on Twitter or something, that means "I can't reach out and don't want to waste anyone's time, if you truly don't mind and aren't busy, please IM or call me for a talkdown".
I'm thinking something like "the dark toast rides at midnight" or "three fish crumble and the toast has buttered jam" or perhaps "I can't reach out and don't want to waste anyone's time, if you truly don't mind and aren't busy, please IM or call me for a talkdown."6
~Sor
MOOP!
1: To expand on this, sometimes I do go into that kind of nonreactive panic when someone touches me initially, and after they pull away I will immediately lean up against them again. If that happens, it means I short-circuited or was startled and I would actually like whatever physical comfort is being offered. People pulling away a second time, or being all hurt and confused at me, make me add body issues and touch neuroses to whatever I was currently freaking out about, and it sucks. You can talk to me about your being hurt when I'm not the most presently damaged person in the room.
2: How old were you when you learned that good girls aren't here?3
3: It feels wrong, so wrong that the first public link to this is buried in here, a brief aside, a flip explanation of what I mean when I say "good girl", in that particular pained tongue. This essay deserves response in kind, and I just can't, I daren't profane it by saying something incomplete.
It is a thing I will whisper quietly as means of explanation. How old were you when you learned that good girls aren't here? 24, and 18, and younger still. The tab with the essay has not closed since Racheline posted it, when I got my new computer, I reopened it in here, so that I may have it, and let it read like armor across my darkened mind.
4: Despite that my name is derived from a sorceress, my magic is priestly. Ritual and religion are entirely entangled, and I'm not sure I have an actual distinction between praying and casting. And music is religious as fuck.
5: The worst thing that possibly happens here is that Alis, a being who lives within the confines of my mind, takes over my body for a short time. This is not actually all that bad as it lets Kat off the hook for being a Real Adult or being in control or responsible or _anything_, and Alis is not strong enough to keep it up perpetually (so no risk of Kat being subsumed). Gabriel would also love to front, but he is not a Guardian Bitch, and so doesn't have a chance of actually being serious enough to wrest control away from me.
6: The toast themology is the fault of my friend Master SoNSo.
luckylefty asked in a comment what he should do should he encounter one of these. I wrote a 2100+ word comment, and then decided this would probably both not fit in LJs comment limit, and should really just be a post. Have some blather.
I don't typically get into this state when people are around, unless I'm having massive gender dysphoria issues, or I dunno, someone is actively bullying me right then and there? Part of that is just how much I pride myself on my masks, and keeping them solid --if there are people here, I cannot let them see me cry.
(And that, to be perfectly honest, is usually less about pride and having them see me cry, and more about realism and how frustrating and boring it would be to bring perfectly nice strangers, or acquaintances, up to speed on the myriad facets of what's going on right now, many of which I can't actually explain very well, and some of which I probably literally cannot vocalize.)
The other part is just that people are so overwhelmingly changing that I can't help but be distracted by their existence. If I start to freak out, and have to walk across the busy room, there are better than even odds that another person in the room will do something worthy of investigation or further thought, and I will forget my personal woes entirely.
***
If we are at a thing, and I seem off-center and then vanish for more than, say, five or ten minutes, running a quick and quiet investigation of the outlying hiding places is not without worth. I won't at all separate someone who is having a nice time from that time, but if they come to me, I am often willing to talk. Sometimes all I need is to listen to some loud music, and sometimes I've been making eyes at my sir across the room and we've snuck off to a broom closet, but if I'm any sort of negative, not just in breakdown, having someone who commits enough to my mental health to seek me out and interact with me is a huge boost.
***
If, through any combination of things, I'm in a wreck and you happen to be a person congruent to me, here are some things that may help. My brain is insidious, and capable of building a better breakdown (what a dick), so not all of these will work all the time, and in a decade, it might be that none of them do.
*Actually seriously, the whole goal of everything is to get me to stop being [negative emotion] and start being anything else. Confuse me. Make me laugh until I trip a breaker, sob harder for a moment and then get better, make me want to stop directing anger inwards, inspire me with something awesome, teach me something wonderful, poke me in the side until I slap you for being so annoying. Some of these will make me less happy with you, but in general, when I am in a sobfest (or worse), I don't want to deal with it right now. I want to fix my brain and deal with whatever was causing the pain when I'm more on top of the basic shit. This is the Tl;Dr of the whole essay right here, but I'm a jerk and don't know how teeldears work and so that's why I'm putting this in the middle of the fifth paragraph.
*maybe-touch. If you are not confident in your ability to read [my] body signals, please do not engage in this. If we are ever touching in any way and I stop moving/vocalizing/breathing, do not cross go, do not collect 100 dollars, stop touching me immediately and work out what's up1.
That derailed. But seriously, hugs, having my back or head stroked, having my hands held (especially encompassed in one or both of your hands) are all nice things, a lot of the time, and give me some mild physical comfort, like being wrapped in a blanket. It is nice, but not at all enough, especially in the more extreme ends of the breakdown spectrum.
*Use really specific, explicit, simple questions. I sometimes go nonverbal, or very minimally verbal. My problem is usually that so many things are currently racing across my mind and so many of them I can't bring myself to say, and potentially make things worse. Additionally, I am very strongly socialized as a good girl2, and so if you ask me a direct question, or give me a direct order, it is very likely to result in a response. Because good girls follow directions, you understand, without asking questions or getting into fights.
(And heinous bitches get angry, and angry is so good at cutting away sad. I am not a heinous bitch as often as I'd like, but it's a beautiful dream.)
At any rate, it's truly rare that I go actually nonverbal. Far more often, you're just not asking questions with simple enough answers (and so I can't sift out a 'correct' answer). Narrow your field of response tremendously, or start asking me questions through textual means.
Seriously though, talking is not entirely what I'm looking for when I'm wrecked. I want people to initiate Talking when I'm stable enough to be serious about it. Bad jokes and distractions are a lot more useful.
*As an aside, seriously, why doesn't anyone tell me terrible jokes when I'm crying? I tell everyone else terrible jokes when they're crying! My sense of humour is othered, silly, and morbid as fuck, by all means take advantage of that. Silliness is precious as gold.
*Music music music music music. Ask (demand, see the point about being a good girl) me to get my ipod and ask me what I'd like to listen to, and just talk at me in a soothing monotone as I cram the headphones in my ears and fling the volume to something I can't block out. And then get the fuck out of dodge, because music is how I pray, and I can't-won't let you see me work magic, that's not what my magic is for.4
Check back in maybe 5-15 minutes, because sometimes music doesn't work, sometimes I can't even get the "sure things" to work. But usually it will be enough, if not to get me "normal" to get me stable, and then I can move on from there.
*I cannot live without the written word, and I cannot think or process or exist without the act of writing. You want to make it all better as fast and as completely as possible, you get a pen in my hand or a computer on my lap. You tell me to write, now, and you don't try to read what I've written until and unless I shove it over for you to see. If I'm so far gone I hesitate, or can't, start doing a soothing monotone and orders of what to write --untested, I would suggest repetitions of "the quick brown fox ecc" or bad knock-knock jokes, or something else to get me engaged in the verb enough that I can create the noun.
Given long enough with a piece of paper, I have never not found myself stability.
*In tandem with that ask for me to speak with Gabriel and Alis. Or if writing implement is handy, ask them (textually) to speak to you. The latter is probably more effective, I can create walls inside my head that they can't get through. Don't know who Gabriel and Alis is? That is fucking perfect, ask them to give you a history of The Lounge, or explain the significance of Truth or Dare, or what their favourite of Zaphod's drinks is. If I try to block you, or don't let them talk, or say they aren't there, look me straight in the eye and ask Alis if she'd like to front again.5 That will at least give me a new problem to deal with, one that is annoying rather than depressing, and annoyance, like anger, short-circuits negativity pretty damn effectively.
*Make sure I've eaten recently. This is such a stupid simple one, but I'm not great at eating --I forget, and my meds suppress my appetite, and I can't afford to, and I'm busy, and then I go all day on like...a bowl of cereal and six chips. Lately, the ideal-food-of-choice has been chicken ramen with an egg cooked in it, I don't know if that will change when it becomes warm out.
Also, I hide it well, but I can be a really fussy and unadventurous eater underneath it all. If you're trying to comfort me, please, for the love of god, do not shame me for my food choices or try to pressure me into eating things, and seriously, check in with me before you start cooking (Simple questions are good! "would you like [food I am making with these significant ingredients]") so I can say if something won't work. I am more than happy to try your challenging and weird cuisine when I'm not freaking out.
*The most important question to preface BASICALLY ALL OF THE ABOVE with is "sympathy or solutions?"
I feel this three word question should be the first thing out of the mouth of anyone trying to be comforting to anyone, because when Everything Is Terrible, there are two kinds of help you will receive: The sympathetic kind, where people will "you poor dear" at you, and give you hugs and make you tea and say "that sucks!" a lot, and the solutions kind, where people will try to help you solve every problem presented, the sooner the better, and give you advice, and try to lead you to realizing deeper understanding about your neuroses.
Both are really great ways of being helped. Both are really kind and useful. I like both of these, a lot.
But gods help me, if I receive one when I desire the other, it is the WORST AND SHITTIEST THING OF ALL TIME. You give me sympathy and I will think you are an insipid twit and no wonder I can't get things done if I surround myself with the twee likes of you, or you give me solutions and I think you are a self-centered ass who thinks they can just wave a magic wand and smugly solve everything gone wrong and seriously don't you think I've already tried that?
Check first. Check what I (or anyone) want(s) and then _heavily limit the amount of the other one you give_. If you are only equipped to give one, the next question should probably be some variation on "is there some way I can help you get in touch with [someone who can provide the other]?"
***
So yeah.
My user manual is remarkably mutable, this version is based on data collected from 1989-2013, and may not work farther out from that time range.
As always, it is self-aware to write a user manual, but arrogant to expect anyone to read it. More so with this than with other things I write, I will not assume anyone to have seen/read this post until and unless they comment (here, IM, email, offline, wevs) that they have done so.
Also, I apologize that a lot of this information is really useless unless you happen to be in physical proximity to me while this is going on. I scamper when I have negative emotions of most levels, so that people don't have to deal with me. Lots of this does translate to someone in a different location (I have had people online tell me to go eat before) communicating by phone or IM, but they still have to realize I need it.
I wonder if I couldn't come up with a secret passphrase that I could post here or on Twitter or something, that means "I can't reach out and don't want to waste anyone's time, if you truly don't mind and aren't busy, please IM or call me for a talkdown".
I'm thinking something like "the dark toast rides at midnight" or "three fish crumble and the toast has buttered jam" or perhaps "I can't reach out and don't want to waste anyone's time, if you truly don't mind and aren't busy, please IM or call me for a talkdown."6
~Sor
MOOP!
1: To expand on this, sometimes I do go into that kind of nonreactive panic when someone touches me initially, and after they pull away I will immediately lean up against them again. If that happens, it means I short-circuited or was startled and I would actually like whatever physical comfort is being offered. People pulling away a second time, or being all hurt and confused at me, make me add body issues and touch neuroses to whatever I was currently freaking out about, and it sucks. You can talk to me about your being hurt when I'm not the most presently damaged person in the room.
2: How old were you when you learned that good girls aren't here?3
3: It feels wrong, so wrong that the first public link to this is buried in here, a brief aside, a flip explanation of what I mean when I say "good girl", in that particular pained tongue. This essay deserves response in kind, and I just can't, I daren't profane it by saying something incomplete.
It is a thing I will whisper quietly as means of explanation. How old were you when you learned that good girls aren't here? 24, and 18, and younger still. The tab with the essay has not closed since Racheline posted it, when I got my new computer, I reopened it in here, so that I may have it, and let it read like armor across my darkened mind.
4: Despite that my name is derived from a sorceress, my magic is priestly. Ritual and religion are entirely entangled, and I'm not sure I have an actual distinction between praying and casting. And music is religious as fuck.
5: The worst thing that possibly happens here is that Alis, a being who lives within the confines of my mind, takes over my body for a short time. This is not actually all that bad as it lets Kat off the hook for being a Real Adult or being in control or responsible or _anything_, and Alis is not strong enough to keep it up perpetually (so no risk of Kat being subsumed). Gabriel would also love to front, but he is not a Guardian Bitch, and so doesn't have a chance of actually being serious enough to wrest control away from me.
6: The toast themology is the fault of my friend Master SoNSo.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
on 2014-02-07 02:28 am (UTC)Also, I like the idea of a passphrase too.. I tend to keep my stuff to myself too, particularly during text interactions... you'd probly be surprised by how many times I am actually feeling crappy if not in a total breakdown of my own when you get your poinghgugles. Must be the Cheerful Ferret, y'know, no matter what. Plus, you have told me you love getting them no matter what so I gotta do what would make you happy Oslt.
Anyway, there's probly more but the teeldear for me is Yes, I've read your manual, & I hope to recognize your passphrase if I see it!
no subject
on 2014-02-08 05:36 pm (UTC)I wish more people would write and share their user manuals, although it sounds like a scary thing to do, potentially.
The "sympathy or solutions" thing is a great phrasing, and I will be using that with everyone. I like fixing things, and I am good at fixing *physical* things, so that is my default mode for mental things as well -- even though that's often not welcome.
no subject
on 2014-02-07 08:15 am (UTC)no subject
on 2014-02-07 05:50 pm (UTC)no subject
on 2014-02-08 02:09 am (UTC)The most important question to preface BASICALLY ALL OF THE ABOVE with is "sympathy or solutions?"
I feel this three word question should be the first thing out of the mouth of anyone trying to be comforting to anyone
That is excellent, excellent advice, both for the world at large and for me to take to heart / steal your marvelously clear and succinct phrasing-of-question.