It's funny how a lot of the prosocials I've ever made an effort for have told me that I'm good at comforting others. I think that, whether they realize it or not, most people could benefit from being comforted in a more "logical" way. I'm not swayed by others' emotions, so I can remain stable and respond accordingly, which in turn makes it easier to word specific replies that I know will be comforting for that specific person considering their situation. This is also part of the way I care about people who become important to me while completely lacking empathy.
The science behind this literally agrees with you. An important part of things like co-regulation involves having at least one calmer, emotionally regulated person present. It helps the other person(s) to feel relaxed and safe. When my partner gets upset or breaks down, I'm usually calmly emotionally disconnected from however they're feeling. This gives them more space to get as emotional as they need to be in order to process whatever they're dealing with.
these are different things btw. actual adaptability means not dealing with being miserable long term. and being constantly mildly annoyed/frustrated with a situation but being “able to deal with it” counts as ambient misery. btw.
let this be your sign to make your life just a little more livable. get a dollar store trash can for your bedside so Cup City’s invasion plans fall through. block a tag or post that makes you grind your teeth every time you see it. get some grip pads so your bed stops sliding across the hardwood a little bit every time you get in it. tell that person you need a little more support. if you get annoyed at a situation more than a couple times, change it. don’t be content with being miserable.
and the more that you start doing this, the better you will get at detecting your own feelings and advocating for yourself! This is an important start to being more of a person in the world if you struggle with that
Everything I read about recovering from burnout is like “it takes months or even years to fully recover” and it’s like okay…. I have a weekend before I gotta clock in on Monday
If I was a wasp, I'd sting you. If I was a venomous snake, I'd bite you. If I was a lion, I'd maul you. If I was a swamp, I'd poison you. If I was a mountain, I'd fall and crush you. If I was the ocean, I'd drown you. If I was a cat, I'd never let you touch me. If I was a dog, I'd run away. If I was a horse, I'd never let you break me. If I was a farm, I wouldn't grow for you. If I was a fire, I'd burn out without warming you. If I was a home, I would fall apart around you.
If I was harmless and small, and easy to hold, you would love me. If I was a worm you could put me in the soft earth and I would be helpless in your care. Of course you could love me, but could you love me if I stung you, bit you, pulled against you, hid and didn't understand you but wasn't harmless or helpless at all?
Could you love something for what it is, when that means you can't touch it or show kindness, maybe even never be near it, and it might never, ever love you back? Is it okay to exist and not belong to anyone, to not be useful to anyone, to be dangerous or poisonous or a failure but a part of the world all the same?
I know this is a metaphor, but if you take it kind of literally, there is an answer to this.
We build wildlife preserves. Often explicitly for the protection of animals and ecosystems that can and have killed humans.
Whenever a whale gets stranded on a beach, CROWDS show up ad risk getting bludgeoned to death trying to get it back into the water.
Every Zoo has a reptile house full of venomous snakes and a team of humans dedicated to giving them the best quality of life possible.
There are volunteer beekeepers who will travel for miles and miles and hours and hours to relocate an entire hive.
There are people who rehabilitate dangerous dogs and horses
There are people who restore structurally unsound houses
There are people who study the way that fire burns so it can rejoin the ecosystem and not be smothered on sight.
Every day, millions of people get up and devote themselves to things that can and will kill them by their nature. Things they can't touch or show kindness to. Things they can't go near. Things that are wholly incapable of loving them back.
And they do it because they love them.
Everything dangerous, everything poisonous, everything 'useless'- absolutely everything has someone, often many thousands of people, who loves them exactly as they are, without expectation that their affection will be returned.
It is alright for anything, even you, to not belong to anyone, to not be useful, to be frightening and dangerous and not adhere to any standard of success.
It's all alright.
You are loved.
You are loved.
You are loved.
I generally am friends with a lot of people who struggle with their mental health. My first gf was BPD, and so it seemed logical to find out as much as possible about it, and most of the relationship ended up being me managing her symptoms. It felt rewarding, in a way, like I'm solving her problems and that was a way that I showed that I cared, even though other, more conventional things didn't really work as well.
It felt like I was doing well at it when I could "sense" her acting "off" and knowing exactly what it was and could provide reassurance or help her work through problem spots. This attitude extended to other relationships I had afterwards and all friends in general.
I've acquired a habit of just putting labels on people and assisting them with their issues in a sneaky way. I got better at it with age. At one point in time I had a mental health channel on Twitch where I assisted people with their problems and that's where I learned a LOT of my current prosociality. It was a daily experience where I had to act maximally attractive for multiple hours per day while also being genuinely helpful to people. It was good practice.
And I think a lot of these behaviors genuinely stuck. I can still relate to viewing people in a utilitarian way. When a person annoys me and I feel the desire to cut them off or fuck them over, I think to myself that I should try to make good decisions and that includes keeping in mind how useful a person could be to me in the future.
Most important thing I've learned recently in terms of connection is that I likely actually bond like a normal person but I don't see it. Like I can't really see my emotions in regards to the bond and that's why I don't care. Manually acting out the motions of caring might be exhausting, but I think it's the overall healthier way of going about life. Just because I don't have a social autopilot doesn't mean I'm not capable of living a meaningful life, I don't think.
To sum it up, I still perceive people as systems with inputs and outputs and manage them with that in mind, I just try to keep in mind that I'm mentally ill and neurodivergent and in my view it's a better choice to keep psychopathic behavior as an OPTION rather than a cage I live in.
i want to be inconvenienced by you. i want to wait for you, i want to hold your things while you do something else, i want to make adjustments to my plans to make space for you. someone at your side who takes up no space and has no needs of their own is not a person, but a shadow. i don't want a shadow, i want you. i want my life to be altered by your presence in it. please, inconvenience me.
do you seriously consider someone saying "my love for you is unconditional and based in the trust that we are permitted to need and want the other in small everyday ways; never feel ashamed to ask me for help or for being a part of my life"
Having needs and expressing them is good actually, and it's tragic that people are so willing to swallow themselves so as to not be a "burden" on each other. My girlfriend and I lend each other our metaphorical spoons all the time. That's not toxic, that an honest relationship, where we ask for help when we want it- not just need it. When we want it.
May the people who think taking up space is toxic or co-dependent find healing. Because y'all... it ain't good to think that way. You have needs. I hope you feel safe enough to stop hiding them one day
I once watched a girl in the produce aisle pick up a bushel of bananas that were precariously perched on the edge and move them farther back and under her breath she said “there you go sweeties - that will be more comfortable” before shuffling off and… I think about her often.
I was driving on the highway and passed a dude absolutely JAMMING alone in his car, doing those little half dance moves you do when you’re stuck sitting down in a small space, bellowing unheard lyrics at the top of his lungs, and my instant reaction was to think “I love you.” And then to pray he had a good day, or whatever, because those fleeting moments of connection are so incredible.
i've asked this question many times in my life, and it has never really worked, even when the answer was "no, of course not."
it's because it isn't really the right question. you aren't really asking them "are you mad at me." and i know because i am there and in your body - i can't handle people being upset with me. i feel useless and worthless when i mess up. i am panicky, wild, unreal. i grew up in an unsafe house - i am not just asking are you mad? i am also asking am i going to get hurt now? how can i prevent getting hurt? are you going to yell? are you going to ignore me? are you going to ignore my apologies? overly punish me? are you going to stop loving me now? have i ruined this? am i a bad person to you? do you hate me?
it is hard and it takes work and honestly the work doesn't always, like. actually work. sometimes i still ask are you mad? because i can see it in someone's face very quickly. i can sense it like rain or an earthquake: i had to as a child. i am very good at it.
it puts us in a bad spot. we are asking for reassurance and are you mad is not a reassurance question. we ask to help our feelings, but this question is framed in such a way that it is solely about their feelings, and usually... that is hard to answer. i've had someone ask me this a lot, and it can be tricky because the answer isn't always just no, and you don't want to be dishonest. maybe they aren't mad, they have resting bitch face. maybe they're just annoyed, and in about 5 minutes they'll literally forget what annoyed them. maybe they are mad and don't want to talk about it until they've cooled off. maybe they haven't really processed their feelings yet, and need some space to do so.
i have had someone ask me this when my answer was yes, that really hurt me. and while i knew she was asking for reassurance, it was really difficult to walk that line - how do i honor my own feelings without sending her into an anxiety spiral? the way this question is framed is that it is very isolating. i am responsible for my own feelings, but i am aware that honestly expressing those feelings might seriously injure you. and while i might be super hurt and angry, that doesn't mean i want you to be hurt. how do i say yes in that situation, then, even if it's true?
it sucks as as the person with anxious attachment i've had to do so much fucking work not to ask this. instead, i ask hey, i'm feeling insecure about the face you just made. was that about me? instead i say i am feeling distant from you. can we reconnect? is there something you want to talk about? instead i say i am feeling insecure, and need reassurance you're not upset with me. sometimes i drop the therapy speak and i say (to very trusted people): hey my idiot brain thinks im still in that bad house and you hate me and this friendship is ruined. can you tell me im being stupid please.
if all else fails, it's sometimes worth it to write down what you're feeling and turn it into an "i statement." i know i messed up, and i feel like you're still mad at me or i don't know why, but i feel like you've been upset with me. can we talk? and then open the floor to them for a calm, thoughtful conversation. ask for the reassurance and connection you actually need. your heart wants to be close to their heart, and something is in the way. it might not be anger, genuinely.
for the people that are good to keep, most of the time - they'll be willing to have these conversations with you, even if they are angry. maybe they didn't know how to bring something up with you. if you're calm and receptive, they feel like they can get the apology they were looking for. maybe they're mad about something personal they're going through. and if they aren't mad at you, maybe you can share why you're insecure about things like this (how you were raised, a bad ex), and get that connection and sense of love.
i have "codes" with partners and friends. they know i struggle with intrusive thoughts and this kind of anxiety. for one of them, i will just look at him and say i'm smelly and nobody likes me? and he says something ridiculous like yes i have been throwing darts at your face and we move the fuck on. another gives my hand a squeeze any time they need a little extra comfort or companionship, and i hang quietly back with them at parties. my friend has very similar social anxiety to me and we play a "catastrophe" game where one of us says a repeating thought like nobody likes me and the next says nobody likes me and they're making curses about me right now. this all makes me feel loved, trusted, cherished. this was all also worked for through communication, patience, and....
well i hate to say it lads. but the final ingredient in all of this is trust. from your end, not theirs. you can seek reassurance or closeness all day but if you do not trust their response or trust them to be honest with you... it will never stick. for people in your life that deserve it - that deserve communication and kindness - your trust is necessary. we cannot spend our lives hunting for ways they're trying to hurt us, trying to outfox the next trauma. i know our bodies want to. trust me.
we will be wrong about people. there will be a person that blindsides you in the future. i know, i'm sorry. but in the meantime, i keep coming back to a question i ask myself all the time: if i'm wrong about you, do i still want you in my life? if i can't (or shouldn't) trust this person when they say no i'm not mad, can i trust them at all? do i want them as a friend or partner? most of the time, these are people who have repeatedly proven their love, support, and empathy. shouldn't i trust that instead of, i don't know, my stupidevil brain that also thinks i'm some kind of supervillain?
i love you, i'm not mad at you. the thing you're searching for is that person's love or affection. this question won't give it to you. i know, i've tried it. try opening your heart instead.
The petty (but undeniable) delights of cultivating ungovernability as a habit
I'm coming to COLORADO! Catch me in DENVER TONIGHT (Jan 22) at The Tattered Cover, and in COLORADO SPRINGS THIS WEEKEND (Jan 23–25) where I'm the Guest of Honor at COSine. Then I'll be in OTTAWA on WEDS (Jan 28) at Perfect Books and in TORONTO with Tim Wu on Jan 30.
I am on record as being skeptical of the notion that if you shop very carefully, you can make society better. "Conscious consumption" is not a tool for structural change, and any election that requires you to "vote with your wallet" is always won by the people with the thickest wallets (statistically speaking, that's not you):
Now, that's not to say that boycotts are useless. But a boycott is a structured and organized campaign. The Montgomery bus boycott wasn't a matter of a bunch of people waking up one morning and saying, "You know what, fuck it, I'm gonna walk today":
The Montgomery bus boycott was an organized project, put together by a powerful membership organization, the NAACP, that demanded far more of its members than merely shopping very carefully. The boycott was the end stage of an organized resistance, not a substitute for it.
The problem with "conscious consumption" is that it comes out of the neoliberal tradition in which every political matter is supposedly determined by your individual actions, and not your actions as part of a union or other political institution that works as a bloc to overthrow the status quo.
"Conscious consumption" arises out of the tradition that gave us Margaret Thatcher's maxim, "There is no such thing as society. There are individual men and women and there are families and no government can do anything except through people and people look to themselves first."
Any attempt to change society by shopping very carefully is destined to fail, but it's worse than that. Because "shopping very carefully" never makes systemic change, its practitioners inevitably decide the reason they're not seeing the change they yearn for is that their allies aren't shopping carefully enough. This turns the careful shopper into a cop who polices other people's consumption, demanding that they stop eating some foodstuff or using Twitter or watching HBO Max. Squabbling over whether using a social media network makes you a Nazi generates far more heat than light – so much heat that it incinerates the solidarity you need to actually fight Nazis.
Which is not an argument against boycotts! Boycotts work. If boycotts didn't work, then genocide apologists wouldn't be apoplectic over the BDS movement:
https://bdsmovement.net/
But a "boycott" isn't the same thing as "you and your social circle deciding that buying the wrong product makes you a Bad Person and then devoting your energies to scolding your allies for choosing Coke instead of Pepsi." Boycotts are downstream of organizing; they are not a substitute for organizing. There is such a thing as society.
Now, all that said, I will confess: I sometimes do something that looks a lot like "shopping very carefully," and when I do, I derive enormous satisfaction from it (but I am always careful not to mistake my tiny victories for political action). But I get it, honestly, I do. Sometimes, "shopping very carefully" is a way to eke out a tiny, personal victory in the face of overwhelming odds against a wildly overmatched opponent. That feels very good.
One example would be patronizing my local repair shop (or fixing my stuff myself). The big structural barriers to repair are things like "parts pairing":
The repair problem isn't that your neighbors are "sheeple" who've had their minds warped by a "throwaway society." The problem is that technical and legal countermeasures have made repair so hard and unprofitable that getting your stuff fixed is more expensive and time-consuming than it needs to be.
That said: I love going to my local repair shop. I love fixing things on my own. It's great. It makes me feel great. I think you should do it because it may make you feel great, too, and it'd be nice for you to support your local fix-it place, but let's not pretend that we'll change society that way.
Here's another example: for the past couple years, I've been navigating a (thankfully very treatable) cancer diagnosis. The fact that my cancer is very treatable doesn't mean it's easily treated. America's shitty, for-profit healthcare system is terrible at the best of times, and nearly unnavigable when coping with a complex condition that crosses a lot of disciplinary lines and requires access to specialized, expensive equipment.
I'm asymptomatic, so the hardest part of having cancer – so far – is fighting the Kaiser bureaucracy to make sure my treatment goes off as planned:
The fact that the different Kaiser departments drop so many balls when handing off care between them means that I have to juggle those balls for them. I make extensive use of organizational tactics like "suspense files," which are a kind of inverted to-do list, in that they let you manage other people's to-do lists, rather than your own:
(In case you're wondering, the best part of having cancer is that Kaiser comps 100% of your parking! Free cancer parking!)
Now, I also make sure to note each of Kaiser's failures and I raise grievances and California health ombudsman complaints for each one – not because I'm angry and want an apology, but because I'm a well-organized, native English-speaking cancer patient with no symptoms, which means that I can do the advocacy that other people can't, and help them (I also track these complaints with suspense files, calendar entries, etc, to make sure that they're followed through).
Partly, I'm able to do this because I'm very organized. I'm not organized because I worship at the cult of "personal productivity"; I'm definitely Jenny Odell-pilled on that score:
I'm organized because I pursue The Way of Jim Munroe's "Time Management for Anarchists" ("once I learned how to make my own structure, I was able to kick my expensive boss habit and work on my own"):
Having invested a lot of energy into being organized, I now get massive discounts on dealing with other people's shit. Remember: giant corporations and other remorseless bureaucracies throw up roadblocks on the assumption that you will be a "rational economic actor." The airline assumes that if it costs you 15 hours to collect on the $50 voucher you're entitled to, you will just let them steal $50 from you. But once you get organized enough, you can cut that 15-hour investment down to a 15-minute one, and I will absolutely trade 15 minutes of dealing with an airline's bullshit for $50 of that airline's money.
(Why yes, Air Canada did fuck me over on Jan 3 and get me home at 5AM the next day, instead of 730PM the night before; and yes, they did deny my compensation claim; and yes, I have filed an appeal with the Canada Transport Agency; why do you ask?)
One of my favorite podcasts is "An Arm and a Leg," which divides itself between deep dive structural analyses into how corrupt and ghastly American medical billing is, and enumerations of sweet hacks that ninja bill-fighters have come up with to slice through the billing labyrinth your insurer and hospital trap you in and cut straight to the bullseye:
https://armandalegshow.com/
For example, the latest episode tells the story of Jared Walker, who figured out that hospitals were stealing billions of dollars every year from the poorest people in America, who were all entitled to have their medical bill canceled. He founded Dollarfor, a nonprofit that helps patients get their medical debt canceled:
Dollarfor now has an automated tool that guides you through a survey and then generates and files the completed, hospital-specific paperwork needed to get your medical debt canceled (they've made versions of this for every hospital in America!):
https://dollarfor.org/
(If you're a health worker, here's a printable guide with QR codes that you can clip to your lanyard and show to patients while you deliver care):
Now, the real problem here isn't that hospitals steal billions from charity cases: it's that America has a garbage for-profit healthcare system that kills and bankrupts people at scale. Dollarfor is amazing, but it's not going to fix that problem. I don't know Walker, but I bet if you asked him, he'd agree with this, and say something like, "Yes, and I'm helping people not have their lives destroyed by this garbage system, which is good unto itself; and also, it might give them the free time and wherewithal to participate in movements to overthrow the garbage system."
I really dote on the fact that Dollarfor has literally built a different version of their tool for every single hospital in the country. It's a perfect example of how turning yourself into a highly organized adversary can overcome the time-based economics our enemies rely on to keep their garbage systems intact.
Whenever I think of this stuff, I flash on two pop-culture references that made a deep impression on me. The first comes from 1985's Real Genius, Val Kilmer's best ever movie (fight me!). Real Genius is set at a fictionalized version of Caltech in which young prodigies slowly discover that their scumbag prof has tricked them into working on a weapons contract for the DoD.
This being fictional-Caltech, there are all these scenes in which very smart people do weird and amazing things. At one point, we learn that there's a former child prodigy living in the basement under the dorms, a guy named Lazlo Hollyfeld who became a hermit after discovering that he, too, had been duped into working on a baby-killer project. We get these tantalizing glimpses of Lazlo in his subterranean redoubt, where he has built some kind of giant Rube Goldberg machine that is engaged in a mysterious mechanical process that involves manipulating cards of some sort.
At the film's denouement (spoiler alert for a 40 year old movie), we discover what he was doing:
Lazlo: These are entries into the Frito-Lay Sweepstakes. "No purchase necessary, enter as often as you want" – so I am.
Chris: That's great! How many times?
Lazlo: Well, this batch makes it one million six hundred and fifty thousand. I should win thirty-two point six percent of the prizes, including the car.
Chris: That kind of takes the fun out of it, doesn't it?
Lazlo: They set up the rules, and lately I've come to realize that I have certain materialistic needs.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I6kBfBXZBdc
Then there's a scene from the otherwise tepid (fight me!) Batman Returns (1992) in which we encounter the Penguin in his subterranean redoubt, brandishing pages full of kompromat that have been laboriously taped together:
The Penguin: What about the documents that prove you own half the firetraps in Gotham City?
Maximillian 'Max' Shreck: If there were such documents – and that's not an admission – I would have seen to it they were shredded.
The Penguin: Ah, good idea! [pulls out a sheaf of documents]
The Penguin: A lot of tape and a little patience make all the difference.
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0103776/quotes/
Both Lazlo and the Penguin are defeating the time-based security assumptions of their adversaries. Frito Lay treats filling in 1.65m sweepstakes entries as the same thing as filling in infinity entries; Max Schrek treats the time needed to piece together shredded paper as infinite. Rounding a very large number up to infinity isn't entirely irrational, but once you get organized enough, you just might be able to find the time – or a system – to bring that very big number down to an entirely tractable value.
Yes, this is a species of "careful shopping" but my point isn't to say that shopping carefully is useless – rather, that it's a drastic error to mistake this useful (and surprisingly satisfying) tactic for a strategy that will truly alter the system.
If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:
Something they never tell you about being an adult is the power of just being The Person Who Reliably Shows Up. Even if you don’t think you have much to bring to the table except being kind to people, wanting to learn, and contributing when you can. Many of the good things that have happened to me and many of the connections I’ve made have been because I just kept showing up and people were like, whelp, I guess we can’t get rid of your ass and now you’re a load bearing part of the community
Being a good person is a choice. Don’t let people fool you into believing that truly good people never have bad thoughts, are never tempted by the easier path, by the low road, never mess up or act out selfishly. Never believe a person can be good without making a conscious effort.
Every single time you do something good, you’ve made a decision to make the world a little brighter.
Goodness is not an inherent trait, it is a choice. Keep making it! I see you, I’m proud of you, and I’m rooting for you!
