Since I was young, I have always struggled with sitting still. From early on, I attributed it to ADHD (then called ADD), although my father didn’t, and still doesn’t, believe that ADHD is a thing. He stated that if it did not exist when he was a child, it’s not a thing today. That’s easy to refute as a fallacy of overgeneralization and faulty logic. An easy example would be AIDS / HIV. One manifestation of my struggle with sitting still tends to be twisting back and forth ever-so-slightly maybe 10 degrees be with chairs that allow for it, or bouncing my knees, or both. I have never really spent any time thinking about why I do it and only actively resisting it is successful, so that’s been my typical reaction. At my last long-term job, the guys who sat closest to me bought a used ottoman so that I could put my feet up when I was at my desk, and it was a small enough space I wouldn’t have a choice. With my feet up, I couldn’t bend my knees and therefore couldn’t bounce. Because I typically keep my keys on my belt, they bounce and make enough noise that it would irritate my colleagues. Wearing headphones most of the time, I wouldn’t be able to hear it. At my current job, I have a milk crate, and at home, the subwoofer for my speakers serves as an ottoman. I now wonder whether I bounce my legs because I’m anxious, I’m anxious because I’m bouncing my legs, or I’m anxious and I bounce my legs they just tended to coincide chronologically but aren’t causally related. Of the three, the last one seems the least likely, and the first two are a causal relationship, they’re inverse of each other.
I don’t remember where so I can’t properly cite my source, I’ve heard the reason humans bounce our legs as an anxiety response, is as a pre-flight or fight behavior. The idea is it keeps the leg muscles warmed up prepared for intense activity at a moment’s notice. In the event you need to fight, or flee, you’re able to quickly without risking cramps or muscular strain. You could treat it effectively like warming up before a sporting event or other vigorous activity; the difference between a sporting event and my anxiety, is preparing for a sporting event is intentional whereas I’m not in the process of being anxious intentionally, or I’m only experiencing it physically. I don’t have a way to properly analyze the causal relationship between anxiety and the behavior either caused by or contributed to it. Whenever I notice it, I either suppress it which requires active focus and intent, or I’ll work around the problem like putting my feet up.
The focus I’m trying to get to be the difference between self-discovery, and self-repair [read healing]. I feel like the terms are used interchangeably, or that people say self-discovery when they’re trying to fix themselves. Self-discovery is a process of learning about and accepting the parts of the self as they are, which in my limited experience must happen before healing can even begin. Things like working around problems, like putting my feet up and actively suppressing the behavior, isn’t repairing the problem, it’s eliminating its short-term consequences. This discovery, ironically about self-discovery, is itself an interesting bit of paradox. I imagine part of the struggle with introspective discovery is we’re operating ourselves through the world like vehicles, and our expectations the roads on which those vehicles travel. Unfortunately, I imagine our expectations are typically based on either what other people have told us or first-hand experience, both of which are unreliable. Necessary, but unreliable. Just because something has happened before, does not mean it can happen again; just because something has never happened before, does not mean it cannot happen. With those two mind-blowing soundbites of information, nothing can ever happen, and everything can always happen. That’s not terribly useful information, and as much as I like to be an existentialist, there must be a little bit of pragmatism built into everyone’s philosophy.
That leaves us with expectations and third-party accounts. Expectations come from a posteriori evidence, which is often colored by our subjective experience and emotions, rather than as rational as we’d like to think it is. As much as I appreciate how well I question my awareness and ability to perceive the world, it’s also exceptionally discouraging to lose the ability to properly trust myself and my memories. [I just noticed that “discouraged” feels etymologically like ‘the removal of courage,’ which tracks]. Unfortunately, third-party accounts are just others’ beliefs as they manifest into the world. That’s not going to be any more dependable than our own, other than that we can get third-party accounts from multiple people and amalgamate them into a single conglomerate of experience. That’s as useful as it isn’t, depending upon how well curated your third-party accounts and social circle are. Should you surround yourself with people who think the same way you do, about the same things you do, you’ll create an echo chamber. Everyone in the in-group will agree with everyone within, and you’ll never learn anything or expand and grow on anything you think about. Growth requires challenge. That sounds equally pleasant and unsettling, I enjoy being challenged intellectually and philosophically, because it means I’m less wrong than I used to be, or someone thought I was wrong, and I stood up for what I believe in or cited my sources properly. All those outcomes are net-positive, and while being proven wrong doesn’t feel good at that time, it’s always for the best in the long term. The opposite of the echo chamber would be an environment so oppressive that it’s difficult to form thoughts or belief systems that contradict the status quo.
This was all dictated though speech-to-text and adjusted a little (spell check mostly) but this is a place for rambling so it’s going to stay the way it is. My point is: I’ve spent the last few years gaining a new and uncomfortable self-awareness. I’ve spent much of that time both afraid it would go away, and afraid it would never go away. The theme of “do the healing” and “feel your feelings” have been present but I’ve never really understood. I don’t know that I could have until now, and I’m pretty confident I don’t understand now, but I’m discovering (see what I did there?) I can’t heal the parts of me that are broken until I accept that they are part of me. I can’t say to what extent, but a not insignificant volume of missing understanding in “how to be a person” is language. Not for communicating to others, but for labeling and organizing it internally.
Dr. K of HealthyGamerGG on Youtube said something in his video yesterday, I’m paraphrasing here, “Articulating your feelings as you experience them can be a functional alternative to therapy”, which I conditionally agree with. Blogging like this is a decent method, and I do think that between this and journaling I’ve made some small progress in integrating my shadow and accepting myself. I’ve made far more progress being honest with my friend when I feel like their guilt tripping or gaslighting me. Often, they don’t realize their doing it, or I’m projecting and can’t tell. I’ve spent so many years neglecting my needs because I’m either too proud to ask for what I want/need, or have gotten so used to not being a priority even to myself, that I stopped asking. Being honest with the people closest to me and asking for help when I need it might sound simple, but the gap between where I was and where I am is vast and fraught with pitfalls. It was worth it.