Cannot help but feel like mental illness can be closely linked to intelligence. A mind with high processing power can conjure imagined scenarios that the emotional self cannot differentiate from external reality.
The emotional self reacts to what is thought, and what is experienced through sensory input from the outside, nearly identically.
Therefore, a mind that cannot stop thinking may conjure scenarios that cause the emotional self to react fearfully. Then, the mind is beckoned forth in self-defense, for the mind is also an evolutionary tool of survival. The imaginative mind conjures scenario after scenario of what could go wrong, each causing a tick and bump in the emotional self’s anxiety. The anxiety spurs the thinking self to create a solution to protect the whole. That often inevitably leads to imagining evermore potentially frightening scenarios.
The loop continues until this type of human can find a way to simply stop or slow their thinking, stop needing things to make sense or be linear, and until this type can get out of their head and into their body.
This type of person with such an excess of mental energy benefits from extremely strenuous physical exercise. The surplus of energy condenses in the skull when it should be released through the body.
The mind should additionally be thrown the bone of positive input to keep it busy, such as through reading and learning. If the engine is going to keep going regardless, it should be on a course for the heavens, rather than a highway to hell!
Immense amounts of writing should also help depressurize the bouncing thought energy in the skull.
The real danger in this type is when the energy remains trapped in the head and does not find escape elsewhere.
and I have learned
that I am a being of fire
and if I do not channel the flame
with intensity
into pursuits
of beauty and goodness
and challenge myself
each and every day
I will unwittingly burn
the ones I love most.
so here’s to setting myself ablaze
in pursuit of what is good and true.
and I’m doing it not just for me,
but for you, too.
…
yes,
I am a phoenix,
I am a forest,
and a wildfire.
I burn myself to the ground
each and every day,
and bloom again through the night
to do it all again,
thereafter.
…
a warrior without battles to be won
will create them where they are not needed.
how can I put it?
it is an impersonal process,
it is genetic,
instinctive,
coded.
a cat without a scratching post,
for example,
will ruin your couches.
if you don’t provide the post,
does it make the cat evil?
no,
it makes you a bad owner.
I have recognized that I have the instinct to fight
embedded in my DNA
and I choose to channel the flame
lovingly.
for there is a time and a place
for all things
I have an egalitarian outlook
to all feelings.
to condemn,
for example,
anger —
it is discriminatory.
all features of our consciousness
have their rightful place.
and tonight,
I drank in stardust —
Tiniest sliver of a reborn Luna,
holding hands,
conjoined sweetly
with our Lady Venus —
and how connected did I feel
to generations and generations before!
for as the micro shifts,
ever-transitory,
the celestials remain —
those planets.
to them,
I am a bubble blown
by accident
from the shampoo bottle
of a baby given a bath
my lifespan shorter.
but ah,
what a gift it is
to even bear witness to them!
for those microseconds
just before I pop
and they inhale me back
into their lungs.
and oh,
I wished upon that Eveningstar,
and I know she heard me!
we smiled at each other
my mother loves me
I will dance
with that five-petaled lotus
for the rest of my days ❤️
i cannot handle how amazing this book is i want to scream and die. you ever get a feeling of terror while reading a book knowing that it will eventually be over?
the dynamic we experienced between us and our parents is a blueprint, a script, imprinted on the psyche, prone to be re-enacted in significant relationships — particularly if the dynamic was unhealthy and there are still yet unmet needs to be addressed — if we do not face, alchemize, and heal the inner child-inner parent relationship.
people are always, always talking about the inner child. My opinion, however, is that we have an entire cast list in the great drama of our psyche. Not only do we have an inner child, but we have an inner parent, too. Perhaps an inner father and an inner mother. Perhaps we are the intermediary between all of those forces, and our role is to work intelligently enough with all of them to create harmony. Perhaps this is the role of Mercury/Mind as the psychopomp. Perhaps this is alchemy.
I think true inner child healing is about inner parent healing, for how can we heal the inner child without giving it a healthy parent, the one it so desperately needed?
I think, in inner child healing, it is far more critical to focus on the ideal parent and all that they would have provided for us — then, we embody that for ourselves.
I have literally talked to myself like I would a small child if ever in need of consoling. I have literally spoken to myself like my own mother, like my own father.
We are both our own parent and the child. We must simultaneously feel, in its entirety, the vulnerability of the youth that never quite leaves our gut, who exists with us forever on some deep, instinctual level, AND be the voice of the parent we need.
Energy cannot be created or destroyed, only change form; so, if we deny the need of the inner child, ignore it, or repress it, it will merely acquire what it needs in some other covert behavior. This is the roots of addiction. Overeaters, sex addicts, substance abusers — inside of all of these people is a child who wasn’t adequately loved. The chosen vice will be gripped as intensely as the need remains unmet.
In a relationship where you have projected your father or mother image onto your partner, all of the associated feelings of helplessness a child feels at the hand of the parent, the provider, the authority, and all of its vulnerable need, will come up as well.
basically, if you’ve projected the image of a parent onto another, that necessarily requires someone to be the child — you.
where’s the practical work in this dilemma?
recognizing that one cannot be without need.
our emergence into adulthood is usually characterized by self-sufficiency. for those of us who never had our inner child needs adequately met, this often involves a white-knuckling, a tight barricade around the feeling self. when it comes to areas of life that demand the feeling self to come forth, however, particularly in our relations with other people, our behavior will tell no lies, regardless of our words. maybe we will be unavailable. or, maybe all that we held in for so long will come out in a flurry of unmet need and emotional chaos. we will either keep them at arms length, for we learned to not trust the primary caretaker, and to never let ourselves be dependent and vulnerable because we were let down by those whose responsibility was to take care of us in childhood; OR, we will latch on, like a starved baby to the bottle, and cry when it is being taken away.
often, in relationship, opposites attract, and people on either end of this spectrum will come into relationship with the other, each holding something for the other to integrate. the anxiously attached person must integrate the self-sufficiency of the avoidant; the avoidant must integrate the necessary vulnerability of the anxiously attached.
the ultimate truth, however, is this:
we will never be without dependence, we will never be without need. never. never ever can you ever be completely and entirely self-sufficient. it does not matter how strong, independent, or solitary by nature you are — we need true, honest, authentic, vulnerable human connection like we need air. you will run into significant issues if you are without these things, like being deficient in a critical nutrient.
so, then — what is adulthood?
adulthood is about learning how to properly, adequately, and FULLY assess our actual needs for what they truly are, free of illusions, free of convincing ourselves about what it is we THINK we need, but rather honestly facing what it is that we ACTUALLY need, and learning about ways to provide those needs for ourselves.
We are independent about our dependence in this sense. This means if you recognize that an actual core need of yours is cuddles, you recognize it, face it — and any fears of vulnerability that could be associated — communicate it to a partner, a friend, get a pet, etc.
There is still an aspect of dependence in the sense that we need another to make the equation work; however, it is independent in the sense that we recognize a need, do not ignore it, and communicate it and/or actualize it like an adult.
An important note is that sometimes we will mask deeper needs with more surface-level substitutes. One of the most primary examples that I will likely come to again and again is sex. Meaningless sex and hook-ups, to me, almost always mask a deeper longing for actual connection, closeness, warmth, and *gasp* love.
Instead of going deeper into the more raw feelings of our yearning for those things, and creating actual emotional intimacy and vulnerability, we may take the easy way out and temporarily numb the longing with a hook up.
In my eyes, this is why I have made a commitment to give up meaningless sex. I am not perfect, but this is merely a matter of recognizing my truer, deeper need for genuine connection that purely bodily sex cannot meet. I feel more full and truly happy after cuddling with a friend than I would and have after a hook up.
One feeds the heart; one temporarily pacifies the body.
Screaming feed me here Fill me up again Temporarily pacifying
Feed me here Fill me up again Temporarily pacifying
this isn’t a poem or an original or anything i’m just screaming right now at this book i’m reading it’s killing me. what the fuck. i can’t. i cannot. there is no ability to can at this very moment.
the book is Red, White, & Royal Blue by Casey McQuiston. there’s correspondence over email between the two lovers of the story, Alex and Henry. they live in different countries. not gonna get into the finer details but what they’ll do, at the end of every one of their emails, is add a historical excerpt of some letter between gay lovers through history.
this one absolutely killed me (but not before the actual email from Henry to Alex killed me more, wow what is love this redemptive mystifying purifying beautiful force oh my heavens):
from Michelangelo to Tommaso Cavalieri, 1533:
“I know well that, at this hour, I could as easily forget your name as the food by which I live; nay, it were easier to forget the food, which only nourishes my body miserably, than your name, which nourishes both body and soul, filling the one and the other with such sweetness that neither weariness nor fear of death is felt by me while memory preserves you to my mind. Think, if the eyes could also enjoy their portion, in what condition I should find myself.“
…
…
…
ok i needed to come back to this and add. i NEED to share the email that Henry wrote to Alex. basically, Henry is the prince of England, Alex is the First Son of the United States. Henry is explaining how, with the death of his father, most of the memories of his childhood are tainted with grief due to his father’s absence. there is a void in all of them.
so he goes on to explain how he compartmentalized… well, basically his entire adolescence. he stuffs them into rooms — the actual rooms he uses are ones in his royal palace. but then he describes how he couldn’t fit Alex and his love and adoration for him into any of them.
i think i need to use photos instead of typing it in, there’s a decent amount:
THE CLOSET MYSTIC 