The truth about truth.

Purposeful destruction of my psyche, through transgression

Jude Miller 53 minutes ago

+Jennifer Armstrong Thank you for sharing - my experiences weren’t as stark as yours, and it’s encouraging to know healing is possible. The last part of your comment reminds me of the shamanic doubling concept you’ve described before. I think I’ve felt something like it…to me it feels like carrying home around inside of you. Or rather, what home should have been. It’s a strength and autonomy that’s still intimate and connected.

What of those loved ones who were themselves victimized, but can’t find the strength to redeem themselves? To give a personal example, my grandmother, who raised me, lives alone, and has a great deal of tension, shame, anxiety, guilt, fear…she’s so afraid of “messing up” and “doing the wrong thing.” Her mother gave her that. Her religion is her relief in this, and I am not inclined to take that away from her. However I feel guilty for being “better” than her in this regard, like I am duty-bound to see her saved as well. But I also feel the call to move on and do greater things. In a sense, I feel like if she HAD been abusive, it’d be easier for me to justify leaving her behind…but she wasn’t. She’s a kind old woman with no idea what she did to feel the way she does, and no way of knowing how to get out. I’ve spoken with her, but I cannot do the work for her, as much as I wish I could.

Show less

 · 1 

▼

Jennifer Armstrong 29 minutes ago

+Jude Miller Yes, I am very familiar with those feelings you describe in your second paragraph. Believe me, it probably would not have been easier to walk away had she been abusive. What is vital is to nurture a healthy selfishness. I have been reading much of this from Nietzsche lately. Actually, what the world needs is healthy people, so we kind of need to do a triage, and if we decide that we are the ones most likely to gain health, we need to direct all our energy and attention to ourselves -- which is not at all as easy as it sounds. It's very difficult to put oneself first when others are in pain or worse off. But that is what emergency health workers have to do at an accident scene, and it takes a lot of discipline of the mind to give oneself one's loving care.

 · 2 

Purposeful destruction of my psyche, through transgression

Jude Miller3 hours ago (edited)LINKED COMMENT

I went through a similar thing in my early 20s. I grew up in an exceptionally Catholic household, and even thought I'd become a priest throughout high school. Over the past 5 years many of my beliefs have completely flipped. I still believe in goodness, virtue, and the need for mysticism, ritual, and sacrament (or something like it), but I reclaimed those things only after a period of disavowing nearly all of them. My emotional memory of the time before is nearly non-existent.

What's tough is seeing the people you knew before who stay the same, and realizing how little you have left in common with them. It's a challenge to keep in touch with them without falling back into old patterns, or trying to force them into new ones.

1  

 

Jennifer Armstrong1 minute ago

+Jude Miller When Rhodesia was destroyed I was 12, and that is when people began going their separate ways. I lost touch with people around that time. When I saw them again on Facebook, as they regrouped at the age of 40, I found that they had remained very conservative. However, conservatism for me was not an option. It was already corroding me from within. I had to be absolutely disciplined and determined with myself to reclaim my emotiional capacity, as I had been beaten down so much that I had developed schizoid features. I was unable to understand what people wanted from me emotionally, and I had become terrified of articulating my real feelings about loss of home and country because I had been beaten down for expressing them. (I was also beaten up emotionally for expressing bewilderment at my current state of affairs as a barely adjusted migrant -- my father did that). I really had to take strong measures to reintegrate my emotions with the reast of my mind, as the two aspects of myself had gone their separate ways after migration. Of course this was terrifying, as I had learned to associate emotion with severe psychological beatings. I ended up writing my memoir. All of the writing I have done has been with the purpose of breaking open my mind to experience more emotion. Vindictive people attacked me along the way, implying that this self-focus was narcissistic, when instead it was life-saving. To stay in situations where I could not properly experience my emotions would have been very damaging. You end up the victim of people's social schemes and workplace politics, because wothout access to your own emotional intuition you can't really see what is going on around you either. I had already been beaten up to the point of losing my physical health. I simply had to come to my own rescue. And actually I had no friends who could help me -- none at all.

1  

Oceanic

See you at the beach!

Inborn experts on "colonialism" - YouTube

Inborn experts on "colonialism" - YouTube:  

Jennifer Armstrong2 years ago

I get twitchy at the end.  Not an easy topic for me to address as I have succumbed to so much directly related trauma.

2  

 

Jennifer Armstrong25 minutes ago (edited)

Don't underestimate for a minute how hard this topic has been for me to address and how much trauma I have had to overcome to address this important issue.  I do not do so lightly.   From a gender point of view, I have been very much a victim of my colonial society.  I was smashed down before I could walk (figuratively). A huge problem with people not understanding the difference between colonialism and modernity is that if you want to free yourself from the controls you don't like about the former you need to fight fire with fire, with a lot of aggressive energy and stealth and that kind of thing.  I have had so many moderners block me from trying to burn down the house.   They claim that they are against oppression -- but certainly they are for mine. If I even try to speak of my experiences in a genteel way, I get downvoted. The conceited moderner always stands above everything I have to do.

1  

Early morning beach /black hole sun

Life on the ocean waves

Snorkeling over rocks

The tidal wave of stupidity

Vlog 90 - YouTube

Vlog 90 - YouTube: Jennifer Armstrong1 second ago

And my tendency to dissociate and not to be able to access my emotions when I was feeling stressed made it very, very difficult for me to find and keep a job. There was this, along with the extreme fatigue I had developed after trying to cope with all of this from about the age of 12.

1  

Vlog 90

With regard to the development of "Stockholm Syndrome", I didn't have that, but there were years and years I went through where my father was reliving his childhood trauma of feeling abandoned by his mother, and for me this was the torture of having a small child crying in the background all the time, withut my being able to help. I absolutely couldn't explain this to others because we live in a narcissistic society, and my obervations were put down to distortions on my part (as if this could be something I might benefit from, if I were to have made the whole thing up). I felt very distressed (and extremely justifiably angry) at the abuse I was also getting from him, as he used to fly into a rage whenever I needed him to support me and act like a parent. At the same time I didn't have the energy to become his mother -- which is what the whole of society was pushing me toward trying to be. Consequently, I felt really, really guilty for the whole situation. In the mean time, it seems there was a story being circulated that I was actually the abusive one and problem child. I had to cope with people treating me as if I were a narcissist, and as if I couldn't tolerate any small thing, when in fact what I had been putting up with was enormous. In my case too, I had to be extemely resourceful not to go insane, especially after I was betrayed again and again by people I looked to as those who should have been able to support me.

Americans hate fish

A really enjoyable time snorkelling

Purposeful destruction of my psyche, through transgression

Intellectual rigour in writing about pathological circumstances

Sadism, misogyny and my experience of the right-wing male

The ascetic priest: an example of a highly masterful pathology?

Sunflower tour of the back yard

Hegel, Nietzsche and the phenomenology of servitude

Vlog 64

Jennifer Armstrong1 second ago

The part of this I can identify with is the emotional emaciation. My fathers rage prohibited me from feeling or expressing any emotions, especially negative ones. At the same time, back then people were demanding of me a gender role, that I should be very effusive and identify with emotionality. Even though I didn't, they still labelled my nature "emotional", which was the precise opposite of what I had the capacity to be. This was quite a horrific experience of gaslighting in its own right, especially when feminists took to doing this to me. And this made it all the more difficult for me to try to access my deeply buried emotions. Along with this, I was constantly scolded for allegedly being haughty, which was the exact opposite of my underlying sensations as well, which were cautious and respectful. There were some betrayals along the way that really did a lot of harm. I really don't have much respect for Western culture.

The revolution against "nobless oblige"

Running at North Swanbourne beach, then swimming

North Swanbourne beach: running, in the early morning

Colonial psyche: Mistaken by Moderners for their own

North Cottesloe reef in the early morning

Robotic to full emotional integration: the last ditch effort

'Labour day holiday' & the snorkelling antics

Vlog 55 - YouTube

Vlog 55 - YouTube: Sereena Nightshade3 days ago

You can almost compare this game of shattering the victim/destroying the victim's entire world and then sweeping in to play the hero good guy role to a form of munchausen by proxy. The predator perpetrates all the abuse, as much as is needed to demolish the victim, and when the victim is hopelessly destroyed the predator can then resuscitate the victim only to destroy the victim again if the victim shows too many signs of recovering. The predator can look like the good person in his false self while doing this and blame the victim for any occurrences of recovery as well as justify his abuse of the victim each time the victim looks too strong again. The cycle can be repeated endlessly so again -- do not show him recovery while maintaining the balance to keep him assisting you so that you can get your ducks in a row to flee and go no contact with him.

1  

 

Jennifer Armstrong1 second ago

+Sereena Nightshade Yes, that is what they intend to do. And quite often it is easy enough for them to do. If you harbour even the slightest ambivalence toward them, rather than straight out contempt, they will use the remaining positive aspects of your feeling, or your conciliatory nature, to make it look like your original critique of them was flawed. This enables them to publicly cast doubt on your judgement. And remember that those with poor judgement are viewed as being insane.

1  

North Cottesloe dog beach

'Labour day holiday' & the snorkelling antics

Unwitting humor from narcissists in hot pursuit of power - YouTube

Unwitting humor from narcissists in hot pursuit of power - YouTube:



'via Blog this'

 

Potty Training31 minutes ago

+Jennifer Armstrong I also like to tell them how I have been beaten by police, stabbed and shot at.   They get scared when I tell them this stuff.  

1  

 

EcceSignumRex23 minutes ago

+Jennifer Armstrong 
I have the idea, that you can formulate all of their arguments - using the idea that ALL of their arguments are meant strictly to negate existence and existing..  If you ''challenge'' one of their ''idols'' about themselves - their argument usually goes: "It's better to know how NOT to do something than have the burden of learning to do something... therefore i know more than those who know." QED!?
(ha)

2  

 

Jennifer Armstrong23 minutes ago (edited)

+Potty Training haha.  because you can survive anything.

2  

 

Potty Training20 minutes ago

+Jennifer Armstrong ya, even though I am a mere mortal, but it isn't my first rodeo.   These people want to control someone, not work with someone.  

1  

 

Potty Training17 minutes ago

+EcceSignumRex well that can work both ways, if you are being entrapped or blackmailed, then it is smart not to know something or go along with it........unless you wan't to join.   

1  

 

Jennifer Armstrong2 minutes ago

+EcceSignumRex Yes, I had a similar thought recently, that they fear spontaneous experience but value the social meshwork of conventionalism as the only legitimate salvatiion device.  They will permit you that.  Complete conformity.  But spontaneity is something they have no idea what to do with.  Therefore they attack it.  And they try to make you feel as if you have taken the wrong path to the extent that you are capable of reacting spontaneously to anything.

1