Embracing Limitations: Or, What I Learned at Polycon

You don’t get to choose your parents, your metamours, or your triggers. Triggers? Those are the people, the situations, the news, the events that cause you to become irrationally angry, jealous, scared. Triggers cause minor or major panic attacks, and often inspire me to lunge for the Xanax.

Some triggers you are aware of. You know when to expect their arrival. When he spends the night at her house; when everyone goes out together on the night I work; getting cut off on the highway; or, mentally calculating the best price on vitamin brands at the grocery while two over-tired children scream at each other, attracting the attention of everyone within a 10 ft. radius. (Not that I’ve ever experienced that before …)

Then there are the times when triggers sneak up on you. Surprise! It’s not okay for you to wear the dress I bought you on a date with him. Surprise! Roses? My stupid crazy ex-boyfriend used to buy me roses! How could you? Surprise! I’m okay with you dating girls but not guys!

Some might call these weaknesses, but instead, I’ve upgraded their status to “limitations”. Limitations are the boundaries (permanent or temporary) within which we can work effectively. Trying to work outside our limitations only brings negative consequences. For example, a food allergy can be a personal limitation. Sure that cake, ice cream, garbage pail full of everything you want to engorge on looks great. But indulging in your personal limitation will only bring undesired consequences. It is the same with relationship limitations.

Working With Limitations

Does this mean it is impossible to move beyond your limitations? Sometimes. There are some limitations you can work on, become better at, adapt strategies for. You can be gentler, more approachable, more intelligible, more knowledgeable. But then there are some limitations you just have to respect.

All my life I have struggled with meeting new people and going to unfamiliar places. When I was younger, my strategy was to avoid them.  As you can imagine, I was lonely and eventually my desire to change was stronger than my fear of the unknown. Recently, I was reading about a condition known as Avoidant Personality Disorder. While I do not claim to have said disorder, I do identify with some of its components.

For Avoidants, being in certain social situations, or even just around strangers, or in public at all, causes stress which produces a chemical reaction in the body. Some become paralyzed with fear, anxiety, or even panic to the point where they cannot bring themselves to go to work or the grocery store. There are different degrees of the disorder. And the goal is to work on strategies which allow the individual to perform the necessary tasks despite the chemical imbalance.

I feel this stress even just thinking about new venues and people. Sometimes the chemical reaction begins before I even get there. In many ways, I have been able to overcome some of these obstacles in no small part with the help of TheLordofDarkness.

But even now, in social situations with people I don’t know, I can feel the panic rising in my chest. Cognitively, I know there is no reason to panic, but I still feel it. And I know I’ve reached my limit when strangers (or people I’ve only just met) infiltrate my personal space bubble. It’s more than I am able to handle. This is my limitation and this is the time for me to walk away.

I’m furious with myself of course.

This past weekend, TheLordofDarkness and I attended BeyondThe Love polycon. I observed how easily he navigates through what seems to me an obstacle course of

anxiety. Him and others make friends, new partners, hookups look easy. Fun, even.  Damn, them.

Someday, with practice and lots of support from partners and friends, I may be able to work past this limitation. But for now, I know this is my stop and I get off the bus.

Embracing Limits

It’s easy to beat myself up over what I can’t do. Instead, I consciously choose to see my limitations as the other side of my strengths, the things I love about myself. I am very sensitive and take things way too personally some of the time. It is also my sensitivity that gives me a deep level of empathy for others, especially those I’m close to. 

It is my sensitivity which causes my relationships with partners and close friends to be deep, meaningful, and life-long partnerships regardless of how the structure of the relationship changes. I love this about myself. I desire and cherish these relationships. And I would never change it.

Punishing myself for not being what others are or what others expect me to be, accomplishes nothing. Forcing myself beyond what I am reasonably comfortable with only makes me miserable.

It is by embracing my limitations, and affirming them as strengths that I create space to grow. Loving and compassionate people inspire us to learn and grow. Negativity and condemnation only cause us to clam up, hide, and give up. Why shouldn’t we treat ourselves, our limitations, with kindness?

Thoughts on The Game that Detects a Cheating Spouse

I realize I have been ignoring the religion part of this blog lately. And I was all set to give you another installment of My Favorite Bible Stories. Until this story caught my eye.

It’s a fictional story about a man who successfully maintains a “respectable” job and family life, while sneaking off with a girlfriend a couple times a year. This cliché continues until the development of an app which detects the brain’s instinctual recognition response, something to do with P300. Read more about the P300. In the story, the app is called The Game that Detects a Cheating Spouse.

The point Bruce Kasanoff is making involves easily accessible technology which is able to instantly and accurately tell when you're lying. While there is an obvious connection with relationships and cheating, Kasanoff remarks that such technology concepts could also be applied to situations such as lying at work, or anywhere else you find it easy to be economical with the truth.  Kasanoff says, “What will life be like when the truth becomes inescapable?”

Well said.

But I want to take this beyond obvious lies; cheating, stealing, willful deception. Not a human on earth would deny having told at least a few “white lies” in their lifetime. In fact, I would venture to guess, most of us tell white lies several times a day. We lie to keep from hurting someone’s feelings, such as That is the world’s most god-awful lipstick. A world where you can’t successfully lie about your boss's new plaid blazer would be different indeed.

Then there are the lies we tell, the carefully plotted deceptions we construct, to keep others from seeing our

weaknesses, our insecurities. Like when we laugh at a joke because everyone else is laughing, even though we don’t really get it. Or, we nod along, even when we have no idea what someone is talking about. 

The scarier deceptions come when we’re hurt by someone or something, but we can’t bring ourselves to talk about it. So we pretend it doesn't exist. This may preserve our feelings for a little while, but it’s still lying. And like any lie, you have to keep lying in order to keep it hidden. And keeping anything hidden, never feels good for long.

Even though the story is about cheating, what I’m talking about is self-actualization, fulfilling your mental needs and reaching your full potential. What this story brought to my attention was … how much I don’t lie anymore. To anyone, about anything.

It’s not just about having open and honest poly relationships. Though that’s part of it. I also see how I have finally come to a place where I am comfortable with my weaknesses and my insecurities. I have on occasion taken them out and laid them on the table where anyone who cared could see them. Not for pity, but merely because I had nothing to hide. Here they are! I know they’re stupid, childish, petty, maybe even unnecessary. I acknowledge them. I embrace them. And I don’t expect anyone but myself to deal with them. Though I’m not above assistance every now and then.

Recently, while in the process of making a fool out of myself, someone told me: “I’m not laughing with you, I’m laughing at you.” But here’s the problem with that. As long as I own my foolishness, as long as I think it’s just as foolish as you think it is, as long as I’m laughing too, I cannot be laughed at. When my weaknesses are revealed, intentionally or accidentally, the way I see it, you have only two choices. You can laugh along with me, because I find my stupidity to be endlessly amusing. Or, you can choose not laugh. And neither choice will bother me.

I literally have nothing to lose because I have nothing to hide. Even if I were to lose the people and the things that are important to me, I still have the knowledge that I have nothing to hide. I don’t feel the need to lie about my insecurities or blunders to win someone’s affections. Such people aren't worth my time anyway. And though my opinions about how others dress, or speak, or conduct themselves might hurt someone's feelings, I am not ashamed of them. I do my best to conceal these truths for their sake. But I have no fear of them being revealed.

Are you Liar, Liar, pants on fire! ?

All of this freedom, to not have to lie about my opinions, my feelings, my truly most embarrassing moments … all of this I attribute to the secure sensation of absolute happiness I've had of late. I have nothing to fear, and so the world is my playground.

What insecurities are you hiding? What would happen if you revealed them?

Who Am I?: Major Depressive Disorder and Identity

Major Depressive Disorder is the result of brain functioning which produces (or fails to produce) sufficient chemicals. It is a disorder I have struggled with all my life. At some point I should probably post an entry detailing my particular journey through personal madness. But for now, it suffices to say that I cannot remember a time when I did not view the world through an angry grey lens. As a child, I assumed everyone experienced the world the way I did. And at 17, I was (voluntarily) admitted to the nut house and began the long road to recovery.

Of course you never really "recover" from your brain's faulty chemistry. But neither does choking down a lottery of medical cocktails solve all your problems. I had to do some of the work too. And that's what I want to address today. Who is this "I"? 

Thanks to (being dragged kicking and screaming* to) read Richard Carrier's Sense and Goodness Without God, I have been better able to clarify just what it is that I believe makes up the "self". The "self", or the individual, is composed of a unique set of desires, thoughts, decisions, values, abilities, and all of those are (directly or indirectly) the result of the brain's functioning. 

What this means is that, when it comes to depression or moodiness, my brain fails to function like most other brains. So I say to myself, "Self, how can this be you? How can you be a person who loathes yourself? Are you really this person who unfairly compares yourself to others? Finding faults in others to feel better about yourself? Being angry with anyone who is 'prettier', 'smarter', or 'more successful'?" I mean, is this who I am?

Truth is, I like to think of "myself" as the person I am when my cocktail has supplied me with the necessary chemicals. I'm thoughtful, confident, and gracious. I help others to the best of my ability. And I find I have unlimited stores of patience with myself and others.

When I'm feeling poorly, I'm self conscious around people whom I don't trust not to judge me, who might think, 'Well, that's just who she is, negative, argumentative, and lazy." But I don't really see myself as "that" person. I prefer to assign those attributes to the disorder. I aspire to keep my dark side from interfering with my behavior and relationships. The depressed person is not really me. I am this other person who is happy, and compassionate, and patient and generous.

But this, of course, isn't true. I am that depressed person. That person is me. As much as I don't like it. 

One funny thing about medication (which they don't tell you about initially) is that it doesn't last forever. By that I mean, your body builds up a tolerance to it. This is true of all medications (as far as I know) not just antidepressants or psychiatric medications. So, it came to pass, on the eighth year of my second brand of happiness-in-a-pill, that my mood, energy, empathy, and ability to feel pleasure plummeted. It was time for a new med.

Changing medications which alter one's mood is a bit like playing Russian Roulette. The effects could be minimal, the switch could be easy. And the first time I changed meds, this was my experience. However, back to reality, this time around it has been a bit more difficult. Among other unpleasant side effects, I have noticed a sudden inability to tolerate criticism in any form. (A quality whose reverse--the ability to accept and effectively utilize criticism--I take great pride in, when I'm feeling "myself".)

A stranger passes me on the street, I smile as I normally would, he looks away, a neutral expression, no smile. And my thoughts run rampant. It's like opening the Pamplona bull gate! I start jumping to all kinds of conclusions that I know aren't true, and running for my life before one of those bulls gores me. He hates me. I'm ugly. I'm worthless. Everyone hates me. There's no point to living. I am pitifully out numbered.

Thankfully, years of meditation and Cognitive Behavioral Therapy have enabled me to nab these thoughts right out of the gate, wrestle them to the ground and strangle them outright. (That's right, bull fighting, baby!) But that can't stop the emotions and tears that inevitably follow.

TheLordofDarkness and I have been fighting more often than usual during this Great Transition, and, I suspect, in large part because of it. Every problem he tries to express to me I hear as criticism, and it's all I can do to keep those pesky, terrifying thoughts at bay. I have no energy or mental aptitude left to address the actual problem. Is this who I really am?

The answer is "yes" (as discussed above), but that is not all. I am also the person who decides I don't want to be this way. I am the person who tackles the terrible thoughts, and refuses to let them control my behavior. I am the person who calls the doctor and I am the person who has the courage to say, "No, I am not okay. I need a change. I need some help." This is me too. 

Don't get me wrong, the most terrifying experience a person can have is when her own brain is trying to kill itself. When the self is trying to kill the self. Suicide is a alluring and deceptive mistress. Yep, this is still me. But not all of me. Because, while I have one voice that says suicide is easier than dealing with pain, there is another voice telling me that it doesn't have to be painful, and I can make it through, and I should ask for help. And I can always make the choice. Ultimately, this defines who I am: my choices.

*Have we not yet created a tongue-in-cheek font? I'd use it here if there was one. Can someone please get on that?!

As a personal side note, you may be sick of reading mental health stories like mine and roll your eyes at things like what I'm about to say. And if that is the case, feel free to stop reading. I give you a free pass. For everyone else, if you suspect you or someone you care about is suffering from a mental illness, PLEASE ASK FOR HELP! Do not let anyone tell you how you are feeling or what you need, except a mental health professional. The worst that can happen is that you suffer a small amount of embarrassment being told there is nothing really wrong with you. If you do have a mental disorder and you choose not to seek help, the best you can ever hope for is a miserable, unhappy life. The worst, is no life at all.