The new strategy with grief, sadness and depression

Inspired by almost a year of working through Karla McLaren's Dynamic Emotional Integration model, and more recently specifically by Jessica Moore's articulate video on situational depression (the one that comes closest to my felt truth on the matter so far), I have recently on a long train ride taken up the resolution to try out …

Advertisements

The queer book of body and emotions

I have been trying now for some time to formulate the overarching theme of the personal research I've been doing over the last years, seemingly jumping across areas, taking up new topics and dropping them, migrating across topics. It would be nice to write a book – actually that's what I'd already set my mind …

Guitar messing about making up chords (sound journal)

So it seems like I can mostly only write when I'm down; or very solitary. Seems like that's when I have the drive to. https://soundcloud.com/sasha_tramp/morning-guitar-improv-april-10 It seems though that there is still the possibility of talking through music, typically the more direct form of expression. This morning I decided to play around with modifying chord …

One year of hyper-empathy

This blog is about a year old now. Since my life has shifted quite a bit since I've started writing it, I keep thinking about re-branding or re-conceptualising what this is about. Actually the subject I might have the most things to say on recently is "survival in Berlin". Perhaps it's also relationships. Yes, I …

Getting half a handle on some basic trauma-digestion processes

I usually don't write about the good times on here because writing is mostly my tool for getting through the tougher times. When I'm well, I stay off screens; I stay outdoors, or around people without distracting myself with electronic devices. Some thoughts have been circulating lately around the topic of trauma healing (in this …

More ropes for traversing despair and depression; perhaps on perinatal trauma

In a "better", by most measures, life situation, still waves of this "post-war" type of apocalyptic depression return at critical moments. I guess I call it post-war because the inner image my eye sees is perhaps akin to how Warsaw after the uprising gets pictured (below an artist's rendering, I believe). The inner image is …

How Berlin converted me to Marxism-Leninism

Well, not precisely. But in one of the cuddling sessions, N. said, matter shapes consciousness – rather than the reverse (or perhaps, much more than the reverse). I have not invested the time into researching whether this line of pop-marxism from the lips of my punk-dyed psychedelic-ingesting Berlin queer friend represents the theoretical plot accurately …

Washing machine blues # dilemmas of empathy

Waiting for the washing machine to finish washing, contemplating events of the day. My friend who got denied his application for benefits that I was hoping would pull him out of where he's been for decades. Disappointment, pain, and some practice in empathy balancing: me getting worried makes it worse for him. Thinking about empathy, …

Half an update on the upper triangle of Maslow’s pyramid

Difficult to find a path back into writing after periods of action. Real-life action. Difficult to carry on with a narrative when the storyline is prone to sudden jerky jumps. Nevertheless trying to carry on with the commitment to writing, remembering over and over again how helpful it's been to me in the last months. …