grant

love letters from the void; psychotherapy & meditation

[grant @grantbels]

I began reading novels in a kind of heated preparation for all that life in store for me.

Somewhere along the way, that impulse deepened, like patina or a bloodstain, into a means of understanding all that has happened. Very much has happened (and crucially) not only to me.

[grant @grantbels]

nature loves to hide. what if everything you've ever lost isn't forever gone, but merely temporarily returned to its natural state of concealment? nature hides like a bear in winter, or like love during a brutal argument. absence and loss are two different things

[grant @grantbels]

maple syrup is crazy…. i’m sweetening my breakfast with the blood of trees

[grant @grantbels]

one of the cruelest parts of attachment conflict is that it doesn’t just estrange you from other people. in repeated stress, your self-concept reorganizes around others’ most uncharitable interpretations of you in their most wounded and wounding moments. attachment disturbance estranges you from yourself.

an anxious partner might experience an avoidant’s need for distance as rejecting, cold, and abandoning. “you don’t even care about me!” the anxious person complains. and perhaps the avoidant buys it. over time, they internalize the anxious person’s interpretation: maybe i really don’t care about this relationship. or, worse: maybe deep down i’m not a caring or loving person at all.

the avoidant comes to inhabit the anxious person’s worst characterization of them: unloving, selfish, harmful. maybe i’m not cut out for deep relationships after all, they conclude, and begin to avoid and isolate even further.

likewise for the anxious person. what begins as a simple need for closeness or reassurance becomes: i’m too much. i drive people away. my needs are problems.

in repeated attachment dysregulation, what begins as a basic need (for either closeness or distance) spirals until each person comes to believe they are a bad, impossible person. each becomes colonized by the other’s worst interpretations of them. the result is that each becomes alien not only to the other, but to themselves

[grant @grantbels]

something ancient is splitting us into twoness and you’re beginning to look like diverse ecstasies pulsing into life again

[wutty @wuthuh]

Something ancient is compressing us into oneness and you’re beginning to look familiar again

[grant @grantbels]

i’m a big fan of the “talking cure” and “communication skills” but real conversation is essentially about mutual illumination, transformation, and expansion

[grant @grantbels]

having a conversation with someone about past events is crazy because it’s like let’s mutually retrieve and revise our core memories into something new and hopefully more beautiful and fulfilling

having a conversation with someone about future events is crazy because it’s like what if we compared and revised our assumptions and models for how the world works and unfolds into something new and hopefully more beautiful and accurate

having a conversation with someone about the present moment is crazy because it’s like what if we felt into the space where each of our selves inhabit and meet until those selves morph, meet, expand, transform, and maybe even dissolve and resolve

[grant @grantbels]

@vividvoid your love and your hate are a package deal ❤️🖕

[grant @grantbels]

@feral_eyes missed ya 🐳

[grant @grantbels]

many psychological issues begin when we learn neuronal activations corresponding to something like “i made a mistake” can’t fire at the same time as those corresponding to “i am safe.” we learn that mistakes are life-threatening, for example

many meditation or therapeutic techniques work by activating both of the previously opposed networks at the same time.

we bring up the felt sense of “i’ve made a mistake” at the same time as the felt sense of “i am safe.” this creates the new pattern that mistakes don’t always mean danger; the mistake-sensing networks and the safety-sensing networks become less opposed

for example, try holding both felt senses at the same time (your core wounds may vary):

- “someone else is upset at me” and “our relationship is stable”

- “someone views me negatively” and “i am essentially a good person”

- “something went worse than expected” and “my future is livable”

you need to get clear on the felt sense of each individual activation, and then toggle between them, until both can be felt as true simultaneously

over time, life feels less black-and-white, more fluid, more responsive, and more alive

[grant @grantbels]

@silent_sabbath i’ve only been reborn about .5 million times so i have some catching up to do clearly!! oh and the deer ate all my ivy so now im a wild grasses guy

[grant @grantbels]

@silent_sabbath 😭🙏💜 what have i missed?? what’s been changing in your world?

[grant @grantbels]

@silent_sabbath i am testing a return from hibernation…. how have things changed around here…. how have i changed ….

[grant @grantbels]

@jkeatn this is so sweet jake 🥹🥹🥹 the vibes on here have been off and it just doesn’t compare to back in the day. but i might return sometime… miss ya

[grant @grantbels]

the most rewarding thing i know is feeling a new feeling (or an old feeling in a new circumstance) and suddenly a whole slice of previously incomprehensible human behavior and art becomes comprehensible. like, new empathy unlocked. my humanity widens

it suddenly makes sense that person (yes, that person) did what they did; why that song slices the way it does; why that social phenomenon erupted the way it did; why in that one fogged-over memory, you erupted the way you did. your sense of yourself expands. your sense of others deepens. the surface area they have to meaningfully interact multiplies. there are more edges where you brush up against the world and other people. there are more surfaces for them to abrade, heal, and mutually transform

[grant @grantbels]

starting to feel like "independence" doesn't actually exist. there's just natural, unavoidable dependence and embeddedness and how you relate to it:

"Psychotherapy does not take dependent people and make them independent; rather, it makes them capable of handling their natural dependency in their best interests. It confronts counterdependent people with their legitimate needs for others. The main differences between attachment in infancy and attachment in adulthood are that, unlike adults, children cannot choose those on whom they depend, cannot ordinarily leave inadequate caretakers, and have insufficient power to influence their objects to change their behavior. Many adults come to therapy feeling like children trapped in destructive relationships and concluding that there is something dangerous about their need for others. Ideally, they figure out during treatment that it is not their basic needs that have been problematic but their handling of them." (Nancy McWilliams, 1999, Psychoanalytic Case Formulation)

[grant @grantbels]

@cantoni yeah, it’s definitely not exclusively used maliciously

[grant @grantbels]

the concept of “agency” entails a separate subject exerting control over a world of non-agentic, dehumanized, lifeless “objects.” but once you realize you’re not the only piece of the universe with “agency,” it opens up into the woo-sounding experience of relationality, mutuality, intersubjectivity, co-creation, etc

[grant @grantbels]

abuser: “if you have agency, then what i do to you is your choice to endure. if you don’t like it, then you should exercise your agency. if you don’t exercise your agency, then you’re non-agentic (read: non-human), and have no claims to being treated like a human”

[grant @grantbels]

there’s a very strong correlation between people who talk about “agency” and people who have a startling lack of ability to conceptualize you as a human with will, feelings, reactions, hopes, and desires. which is, of course, highly correlated with a willingness to abuse, exploit, and manipulate you