conversations in the story we find ourselves in

darkness, lightness and everything in between

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You can have a loving family, a close partner, and a dense network of friends, and still be measurably, scientifically lonely. The phenomeno

The standard popular framing treats loneliness as a problem of insufficient social contact. The lonely person, in this picture, lives alone,

Socially lonely.

Close attachment loneliness.

Premature death.

Great, I’m gonna die early!

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I'm a bit low energy today to think it through properly but I genuinely don't think either choice/thing/etc is a bad one!

[remanence-of-love]

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hm. maybe the happiest people also forgive thyself, love thyself, help thyself, care for thyself, and give to thyself when in need!

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Self-Compassion by Kristin Neff

Discover the power of self-compassion with Kristin Neff. Join our community and explore the benefits of practicing self-compassion together.

self-compassion

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https://self-compassion.org/self-compassion-test/

Self Compassion Test! I score low-med. Surprise!! (not)

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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nigredo

NIGREDO

In analytical psychology, the term became a metaphor for "the dark night of the soul, when an individual confronts the shadow within."[2]

Jung

For Carl Jung, "the rediscovery of the principles of alchemy came to be an important part of my work as a pioneer of psychology".[3] As a student of alchemy, he (and his followers) "compared the 'black work' of the alchemists (the nigredo) with the often highly critical involvement experienced by the ego, until it accepts the new equilibrium brought about by the creation of the self."[4] Jungians interpreted nigredo in two main psychological senses.

The first sense represented a subject's initial state of undifferentiated unawareness, "the first nigredo, that of the unio naturalis, is an objective state, visible from the outside only ... an unconscious state of non-differentiation between self and object, consciousness and the unconscious."[5] Here the subject is unaware of the unconscious; i.e. the connection with the instincts.[6]

In the second sense, "the nigredo of the process of individuation on the other hand is a subjectively experienced process brought about by the subject's painful, growing awareness of his shadow aspects."[7] It could be described as a moment of maximum despair, that is a prerequisite to personal development.[8] As individuation unfolds, so "confrontation with the shadow produces at first a dead balance, a standstill that hampers moral decisions and makes convictions ineffective or even impossible ... nigredo, tenebrositas, chaos, melancholia."[9] Here is "the darkest time, the time of despair, disillusionment, envious attacks; the time when Eros and Superego are at daggers drawn, and there seems no way forward ... nigredo, the blackening."[10]

Only subsequently would come "an enantiodromia; the nigredo gives way to the albedo ... the ever deepening descent into the unconscious suddenly becomes illumination from above."[11]

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This Is How To Change Someone’s Mind: 6 Secrets From Research - Barking Up The Wrong Tree

The world is so polarized these days that civil conversation seems impossible. Here's what research says can help you change someone's mind.

"Unexpected kindness, not restraints, changed minds."

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Workbook for silence & solitude

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https://traumadissociation.com/questionnaires.html

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https://stevenrhodes.threadless.com/

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Solitude is not a private therapeutic place, it is a place of encounter. -Henri Nouwen

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....if I was going to last, I actually needed to follow Jesus's words about loving others as myself, which required me to first be a friend to myself. 3 stages of love (from St. Bernard of Clairvaux) 1. Love God for our own sake, for what God can do for us. 2. We love God for God's own sake, for who God is in God's own character and glory and beauty. 3. We love ourselves for God's sake. We join with God in seeing ourselves in a gracious and compassionate light. Through the practice of petition, we learn to stand with God and see yourself as needy, weak, limited, imperfect, edgy, stressed, driven, frightened, or troubled. But you don't criticize, condemn, chide, or reject yourself. Rather, you join God in God's desire for your own expansion and well-being. You join God in wanting the best for you, and in that light you make your request for your friend, yourself.

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Life isn't supposed to be easy, and struggle can lead to growth. [...] There are days, of course, when we wish there could be some other system. We wish there could be a way of developing patience without delay, courage without danger, forgiveness without offense, generosity without need, skill without discipline, endurance without fatigue, persistence without obstacles, strength without resistance, virtue without temptation, and strong love without hard-to-love people. But it turns out there is no other way. [...] If the challenges were to get too great for our taste, we would roll over and die--quickly through suicide or more gradually through addiction, despair, capitulation, or escape. We could refuse to develop the virtues that life's challenges evoke from us and instead choose vice as our coping strategy.

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Most of the anxiety we face can be reduce to the fear that life might bring us more than we can handle. Maybe we'll fail, or if not fail, at least embarrass ourselves on the way to a second-best success. Maybe things we can't control will sneak in and control us. And maybe, as a result, our lives will not have a happy ending.

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Immature petition tries to convince God to remake the world in our image for our convenience and ease, but mature petition asks God to remake us in God's own image, so that we can expand our capacity to respond to the world as it is.

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"You're only as sick as your secrets." -from the world of recovery from addiction