Tag: Trauma

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Biohacking Emotional Work

Day 885 and Grieving Your Many Deaths

The most soothing statistic I’ve ever hoped was true is that your body turns over all of its cells every seven years. It seems to be functionally close to true. Every cell, except those in our brain, our heart and our eyes, does indeed participate in some form of cellular renewal.

Our bodies replace many of their nearly 30 trillion human cells regularly. About 330 billion of those cells are replaced every day — that’s about 1 percent of all our body’s cells. Other cells, like the tiny ones in our gut, renew within a week.

How Stuff Works

I’m not much for dreams of eternal life. Chronic disease tends to give you a bit of appreciation for Sisyphus and the torture of daily physical embodied indignities. But give me the hope for constant change and you’ve got my attention. And yes I moved a lot as a kid who do you ask?

Doesn’t 1% renewal day seem both manageable and swift at the same time? It’s one of the recommendations I give to folks who are interested in biohacking. Change one variable by a small percentage every single day. Big changes come from compounding over time.

It does make me wonder if I’ve taken adequate time to grieve the many versions of myself that have died. The ghosts of old versions of Julie haunt me. Every time Scotty beamed you up, imagine the last version of you that was killed on the transporter pad. Ghost stories right?

I’m not the same person I was yesterday. I’m not the same person I was a month ago. If I look at how much change I’ve undergone in just the last year it feels dizzying. If I consider how different June of 2023 Julie is from June 2022, I’m barely the same person.

I take solace in the 1% renewal. That even if this version of myself is suffering, I am building a future version of myself that compounds into better versions. Seems like we should be grieving a little every day doesn’t it?

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Biohacking Emotional Work

Day 873 and Commitments

I have two conflicting commitments at the moment. Both are with people who I’d consider intimate relationships with as much access to my inner life as my closest confidants.

I made the decision to show up for both parties last week and this week. And while I don’t regret my decision at all, the choice has had consequences. I am accepting them right now. I’m in bed and in a fun spiral of inflammation. I’m in pain, and even more annoying, I’m fucking itchy as hell. My biometrics are screaming red across every dashboard from Whoop to Welltory.

The irony, of course, is that in being so committed to showing up for others I failed to show up for myself. I didn’t know what I wanted so I did everything I’d obligated myself to do.

I can’t blame it on anyone even though it’s so easy to consider the ways I can rationalize my choices. I’m committed to good and useful things that improve my emotional fluidity and contribute to my personal growth.

Being committed to others means being committed to yourself first. The better I maintain my boundaries, the more I can show up for someone else. Knowing what we want, asking for it clearly, and being accountable for the actions you took is the whole ball game. Everything else is details. And I bet you can manage that.

I am committed to myself as I’ve got to rest and get myself under control or else I’m not being accountable. And I’m not a victim to my circumstances. I chose this.

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Emotional Work

Day 862 and Separation

They say absence makes the heart grow fonder. But I don’t feel absence in my heart. And it certainly isn’t positive. If only absence were so tightly concentrated and concretely clear. I feel it in my entire body. And it’s painful.

Perhaps it’s the new emotional attunement gained from my five week nervous system bootcamp but I feel separation from my loved-ones keenly. It’s an amorphous horror that traps me in sympathetic paralysis.

My throat closes up, my chest tightens, my jaw clenches and I gasp for air as I try to stave off the grief. I cry but not freely. It’s a poorly controlled gulping sensation as close to drowning as I can imagine.

I don’t know if it is a sense memory from childhood. But I register the subtle smells of abandonment, loss, and separation with the sensitivity of a hound. I imagine the pain to be a sort of umami. Another taste beyond the two poles of sweet and salty. My pain is savory.

That kind of depth usually means something is coming up from the very beginnings of life before conscious rationality. And I long to struggle against it. I want to fight it off with intellect. I hate the sadness that washes over me, bringing me despair I didn’t know was inside me.

And yet it is there. And all I can do is remember to let it out. I remember to stop the gasping grasping attempts at control and feel my way into the emotions of separation. And maybe then it will find ways to dissipate. The only way out is through.

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Biohacking Emotional Work

Day 855 and Tissue Issues

I committed to a five week Nervous System Mastery Bootcamp about a month ago. My goal was to learn more about how I react physically and emotionally by better understanding my own nervous system.

I spent the first two weeks feeling overwhelmed by all the bits and pieces. I came in with more resistance and fear than I even realized, despite writing about how I was excited by what I might learn.

I’m still behind on the materials, but thankfully I’ve let go of some of my rationalizations for why. Being behind was resistance on my part.

Finding and loosing resistance ironically one is one of the reasons reason I even committed in the first place. So I can confidently say the course is working for me.

I’ve learned a lot about the interconnected glorious mess of my nervous system, my mind and my wider reactions to pain both physical and emotional.

Lisa Feldman Barret said: ‘Your body does not keep the score. Your brain keeps the score—your body is the scorecard…’ or put it another way — our issues are actually in our tissues.

The slow journey of accepting where I am in the moment will continue. I’ll be in the next cohort as well if you are interested use code JULIE.

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Travel

Day 843 and Panic Procrastination

I have to pack for a trip to Texas and I’ve spent my entire day panicking about it and not doing it. Mind you I’ve done nothing else of particular value while panicking. Except I suppose my daily health routines. The rest of the day has been me feeling ashamed and massively over texting in group chats to avoid packing. I just don’t want to do it.

I hate packing. I hate travel. None of it appeals to me. If you’d like to know why I’ve written about my most common recurring nightmare.

I never leave on the trip. The dream never lets me finish packing. I guess my unconscious hasn’t figured out how to proceed that it wasn’t the packing that scared me, it was leaving behind the life that I thought was safe. Maybe I’ll get there eventually. I don’t want to be stuck in a nightmare, packing up my life, being afraid of being dragged someplace I don’t want to go.

I’ve moved thirty eight times in my life and traveled constantly as a child (and still do as an adult) and I’ve never quite shaken how traumatic it still feels to my inner child who just wanted to stay in one place for more than a year or two. If I never had to travel again in my entire life I would honestly be happy.

With that thought I am going to go take some drugs, remind myself I am able to pause between my reaction and my action, and stop procrastinating on this packing. Maybe I’ll cry a little first.

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Community

Day 835 and Weird

I was very inspired by a Twitter thread from Anna Gat last week on how the weirdos who had dealt with their identities were having an easier time as millennials hit forty. I thought it was so incisive I’ll include it in full here.

I’ve spent much of 2023 meditating on conformism. As old friends are turning 40, I notice a lot of nameless unhappiness brewing. Millennial unhappiness is a taboo. I always thought people chose norminess because there’s more individual contentment involved. I’ve changed my mind. I see: a fear of change, resentment, a feeling of being stuck, no way out. The Great Resignation / nomadism / self-employment trends / monogamy revolutions that we discuss here haven’t touch large swaths of the bourgeoisie. I see 40 year olds, with money, relations, just give up.
This upsets me surprisingly much because? Because I didn’t pay attention to this group, maybe, so I didn’t see it coming. I always thought normies had had it figured it out (while I hadn’t). Plus I know these people’s parents, I can see them morph into them too soon, unnoticed. Please, please, people: rebel.
It is not too late. You do matter. You don’t have to continue doing something that looked like a good idea 12 years ago if you found out you hate it. Change things. Get up. Move. Live.
Life goals: more experience, but not more bitterness. Hard!

If you haven’t figured out who you at some point that lack of work on yourself will catch up to you. I’ve always been a bit of a weirdo. I’m off. My version of reality matches other weirdo’s realities much better than consensus reality. I am alas not fully normie. I can be a normie in some areas but I’ve got too much “off” to fully be mainstream.

And I have to admit I’m happier for it. I’m happy to have a weird life. All my decisions that didn’t quite make sense at the time have yielded a life that is so much bigger than I ever imagined for myself that I’m think the power of being weird must be immense.

We are entering an era where everything is getting much weirder much faster than any one human can keep up with. And isn’t that just so exciting? And it may be a good thing because as the various tech and AI prognosticators will tell you an era of weirdening is upon us. We will all be hurtling into a weird new future and best we can hope for is that maybe some of it rhymes with history. Hang tight and stay flexible.

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Biohacking Emotional Work

Day 830 and Nervous System

I’ve found myself angry for being so fucking stupid. I don’t remember what it was over. Maybe I got confused about some new piece of software on the course I’m taking. Maybe it was because I didn’t give myself more space today to take care of myself.

But I wanted to wag my finger at myself for all kinds of things. I was just afraid because I had to do a lot of things in a short space of time and I dislike logistical pressure. But aside from a few bumps and embarrassing moments I managed it all.

I took a little break and some extra medication to manage a pain flare. I just took everything one step at a time as it was in front of me. I wasn’t a victim to any of my challenges but fully capable and even happy to be doing so right by myself.

I am taking a course on nervous system mastery and today was the first session for orientation. I have a lot of experience in many modalities of coaching, physical biohacking, and family systems work. But the chance to specifically work on regulating my nervous system seemed like a challenge I wanted to rise to meet. Because we all have choices in how we face things. If it looks cool use code JULIE. I’ll be reporting on how it goes for me.

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Aesthetics Media

Day 829 and Parasocial

As you may have seen in past posts, I am a fan of reality television. I believe it shows us a lot about popular culture and the human dramas that resonate this us.

There is something about being let into someone else’s life that is perhaps too titillating to resist. If you watch you will begin to empathize. And as we are social animals we will want to engage. We project some of our own things onto other lives that we see only dimly through the filters of editing and Instagram accounts.

I’ve been watching Love is Blind with a group chat. To say that the messages are spicy is an understatement. We are all engaged in the high human drama of dealing with your bullshit, finding a life with someone, and seeing your boundaries with a partner. Basically it’s trauma porn. You are seeing people’s open emotional wounds. But it’s also edited to make you feel that way. And we want to look because we might learn something about ourselves.

So the last weeks I’ve spent a bunch of time having opinions about Kwame and Chelsea and Micah and Paul. I care about what happens. And not just because someone’s mom is a stripper. It’s no wonder I’ve developed a parasocial relationship with television characters.

I’ve started to care about them because I see myself in them. But it’s messier and weirder so it’s safer. Surely we are better. And yet we see ourselves in them. It’s empathizing with humanity. And quite honestly I think more of you should watch these shows. It’s good to recognize the breadth of human love as revealed in all trashy glory that is reality dating shows. Honestly it’s fucking art.

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Media

Day 813 and You

I took some of today off to watch television as I’ve been in a bit of an overwork tumult. I finished the 4th season of the psycho-sexual thriller You starring Penn Badgley.

I recommend the streaming series on Netflix (I’ve not read the books on which it is based) unabashedly to all women who have ever dated men seeking to save them and to men with mommy issues seeking salvation in broken women.

I may get a bit spoiler-y in this post so now might be the time to peel off if you don’t like knowing anything about a show though I promise to avoid big plot twists.

I was struck recently by an excellent Twitter thread from journalist and my favorite therapy poaster Heidi about how men are socialized to “never be the bad guy.” I felt it was particularly salient as I finished the newest season of You which hinges on the tricks ego plays on you to help you ignore your shadow.

Realizing that what you do and who you are are not the same thing but that we have responsibility for the consequences of our actions is kind of the whole enchilada of therapy. If you’ve ever worried you are a bad person or struggled with shame you recognize this.

You makes some clever stabs (pun intended) at dealing with the darkest manifestations of this by pairing women who need saving with a serial killer. Empire of skulls becomes a bit more than metaphor as it closes in on how wealth intersects with mommy and daddy issues and inter-generational trauma. I really do recommend it watching it.

In true “it’s hip to be square” American Pyscho style, it’s unclear how much we are meant to consider whether it’s possible to have “a good kill” as an intellectual exercise. What we do end up considering is that shadow integration work is invariably a dangerous Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde affair. And what kind of lies we are willing to tell is a function of our relative power as it intersects with a traumatic childhood.

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Chronic Disease Internet Culture Media Politics

Day 803 and Killing Strangers

I’ve been one of those types that absolutely has no problem taking a shot at the Christo-fascists dorks at CPAC mincing words about eradicating trans people from public life. Fuck you, you fucking fucks, you absolutely would be fine if state sanctioned violence eliminated trans people. It’s not you being metaphorical or cute or whatever justification you used. It’s killing strangers.

I wasn’t any more amused when folks decided it was alright to discuss a cost benefit analysis of keeping the disabled alive within the context of state benefits. No thanks I am not interested in a mercy killing because I’m expensive. Oh it’s a mercy killing for children? Yeah no still good thanks. Fuck you Canada. Medicare for all sounds good up until you decide to put me on palliative care via the metaphorical ice flow of opioid addiction.

So you might imagine I am equally sensitive about someone making jokes about euthanizing people who pays their bills by investing in early stage startups. Oh it was just a joke about how Keynes didn’t like the rentier class? Hilarious.

I am just rolling on the ground laughing at your erudition. Yes, benefits of a classical education. Har har. It’s so much smarter than the CPAC guy who wants to kill trans women. Definitely smarter than those segueing to mercy kill sick Canadian children. Oh wait, no it’s fucking not you sick fucks. Stop killing strangers in your rhetoric for shock value and clicks.

Perhaps I could interest the Jacobin audience members in a trip back to the Opium Wars, funded by Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s grandfather, just so we understand the gruesome reality that the New Dealers saw first hand in their own family trauma. Or if we are pluming the depths of the historical animosity towards finance and it’s intense hypocrisy, I’ll send you back with a copy of my favorite conspiracy text Creature from Jekyll Island. Then we can have a nice big chuckle about blood libel if you make it back.

I cannot believe that I am writing about any of this social media blood lust but perhaps we could all listen to Marilyn Manson’s Killing Strangers together and decide that there is no clever or enjoyable way to advocate for the killing of strangers. That it’s not cute to joke about killing people you don’t know just to further your political or economic aims. I’ll try to stop joking about how it’s ok to punch Nazis.

I am baffled that I keep ending up in groups that become the target of the genocide curious. I know being a hysterical disabled white bitch is a pretty commonplace “kill them all fetish” and smarter minds than me can untangle how all roads lead to disability. Witches and bitches.

But I’m getting unsettled seeing how it piles up and I keep getting lined up in other people’s sights. I’m married to a Jewish man. I’ve got queer family members. And yes I make a living investing capital (that I raised from weirdos) into other weirdos. Don’t worry my AUM is small enough I can’t live off management fees. Ironically because I’ve got medical bills because I’m disabled.

If you don’t know what that means and you still want to kill m perhaps it’s you that is the psychopath. Just a thought. Not that psychopaths are bad it’s just that I’m worried you will act on it. It’s not always clear if we are the baddies but advocating for blanket euthanasia is probably a helpful marker. Just like as a baseline for civilizational norms.

Either way, I’m not letting any of you kill my queer disabled Jewish rentier bourgeois family members. I don’t care if you a Jacobin or a CPAC member or a pissed off narco-trafficker running Fentyl out of Toronto. If you want to kill me because I’m a stranger and you don’t want to hurt the ones that you love. Ok. But I’ve got no intentions of making it easy for you.