My history with labels & autism = sensitivity + coping strategies?

This is a mixed essay starting out with my personal struggles with the "autistic" label to complaints about rigid identity politics towards bookish theories about a missing distinction between the sensitivity vs. coping strategies dimensions of the "autism" concept.

Relationships without the saviour complex

It's been a while since I've been writing here, largely because I've been cutting down screen time to allow my eyes to get better. And travels. Being stuck alone at home with exceptionally lousy weather outside (storm warnings) is perhaps the moment to catch up. Via a friend's mention and then a good review on …

Capitalism and honesty

Since I've spent perhaps ten years or move surveying inner landscapes of both self and occasionally others in depth, and found ways to resolve a couple of issues that could have turned out worse through research and ingenuity largely (and maybe perseverance and mistake tolerance), on and off it crosses my mind, or somebody else …

A defense of self-pity

A colleague on one of my (perpetual, futile) PhD programs had a huge poster hanging in the office showing a majestic Eagle and saying something to the effect that animals never pity themselves [so – implied – you shouldn't as a human PhD student]. I've often seen this sentiment beaten up, but never quite understood …

What do you call a trip guide journeying in implicit memory?

I've written about adventures in implicit memory a while ago. Apparently, there's a type of memory in which everything is simultaneous – or, at least, whenever something is recalled, it feels just as if it were present. In neuroscience and psychology, the standard terms are explicit vs. implicit memory, where the former is verbal-based and …

Chewing on and trying to digest Martha Beck.

I'm struggling a bit with Martha Beck these days. I've gone back to continue reading her book "Finding your way in a wild new world", which is the oddest mix of things, yet turns out relatively coherent. Despite the non-informative title, the content of the book seems to be hear 4 or so years of …

Burnout and diving under the wave.

I've taken "days off" from some of my daily routine activities in the name of attempting to do an intelligent emotional aikido move that I'd call "diving under the wave". Some sensation of lowness, slowness and heaviness hit me like a massive wave hits a beach, resulting in some disintegration as well, and I decided …

What’s the difference between depression and grief, and what to do with either?

So again, I missed yesterday because of a "wave" and have some catching up to do. I strongly suspect that today's practice will be the practice of accepting to produce some low-quality writing 😀 It's hard to get started, so perhaps I can again start with some self-centred topic. Maybe shame is a good one. …

Fragile animals and derailed trains, dreams and the vengefulness of the soul realm.

Today I'm actually even more "fatigued" than yesterday; not necessarily by writing, but by a "wave". Dreams about water. I have recently, with some help from the first useful therapist I've ever met, figured out another one of the repetitive dream symbols that have appeared to me over decades. Ok, the helps was fairly indirect …