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Living in a dream mashup of present situation and old emotional meanings

5 tweets · December 2019 · 652 likes · 102 retweets · read on Twitter

Replying to QC @QiaochuYuan ·

@visakanv as usual i’ll chip in with: trauma has a lot to do with it. simple ex. is people who got bullied for being honest about what they liked growing up and now feel unsafe talking about it trauma means people living in different worlds, made of the worst parts of their childhoods

@QiaochuYuan @visakanv My latest frame for this: everyone is basically living in a dream mashup of their current external situation and their old emotional meanings. Like dreaming you're at school but it's also on a boat somehow. & as in dreams, somehow the weirdness of this mashup goes unnoticed

@QiaochuYuan @visakanv Pete Walker has a great article about this phenomenon: > Because most emotional flashbacks do not have a visual or memory component to them, the triggered individual rarely realizes that she is re-experiencing a traumatic time from childhood. pete-walker.com/flashbackManag…

@QiaochuYuan @visakanv Note that while he's talking about Complex PTSD, schools are prisons so basically everybody is actually traumatized quite a lot. In some dimensions this has gotten better; in others, worse: x.com/PeterNickeas/s…

@QiaochuYuan @visakanv We recognize a certain baseline level of trauma as being the norm, and fail to realize that there could be a completely different way of humaning that doesn't involve everyone constantly rehashing these old nightmares at each other.

Malcolm Ocean 🏴‍☠️ @Malcolm_Ocean ·

@QiaochuYuan @a_witch_in_time Yeah, I generally phrase this as "because the DSM measures deviation from norm, it is structurally incapable of recognizing a dysfunctional condition that everyone has." I tried to say this to a group of ppl at YC120 and one of them literally said "but then it would be normal!"

@QiaochuYuan @visakanv Mmm just found this old tweet and it's also very relevant to the whole school thing. Most schools (and much of parenting) is based on a lot of authority-imposed reward & punishment, rather than exploring & learning via trying things & seeing what happens.

Malcolm Ocean 🏴‍☠️ @Malcolm_Ocean ·

@cosimia_ @Conaw "reward is just the temporary relief of punishment" might surprise; it connects with my remark at the top that most humans are in chronic fear. Reward represents temporary relief of that fear: don't worry, you're okay, you did the right thing—this time. Implicit threat.