The importance and usefulness of journaling

Yep, another srs post. Refer to the below King Henry meme. Same applies: feel free to read if you're interested in what I think about mental health, emotions, self-awareness and shit, and if you have time. It's about two pages long. Fun and/or personal stuff will come down the tube later, but I just wrote these so I figure I'd share them.

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The importance and usefulness of journaling

Journaling exceeds psychiatric and psychological resources in dealing with emotions, thoughts, actions, and self-awareness in general. The reason for this, I think, is that journaling is 100% confidential, if done properly. I personally type mine and encrypt it in a zip folder with a password only I can know. If there are entries I feel comfortable sharing either on my blog, with my docs, or with a trusted, intimate friend, I simply amend them and save them in a less-encrypted manner. I don't think this is excessive, because it assures me that what I write is as confidential as I choose it to be, for my own good and to maintain my sense of security in being very, very honest in my entries.

The key service journaling offers is free expression. It probably takes a while to cultivate this, especially for people who struggle with expressing their feelings and thoughts. Personally, I've become pretty good at this, even when it comes to sharing with others and knowing my boundaries when doing so (granted, I fuck up with this from time to time, erring on the side of over-sharing my thoughts and emotions). As such, I don't think it'll take me too long to do so with this journal. However, I think it could take me a while to comfortably write about any recent events, even as remote as months or years ago. This is INCREDIBLY difficult, even if it's ideal. As I always say, as humans, we are imperfect and can't expect to be able to do this stuff when we want or need to. There's nothing wrong with that and we need to accept it, along with other basic, key things about us as humans, radical acceptance-style.

However, it is also VERY important, if you can force yourself through the immense discomfort of it, to write about your FRESH feelings about the big stuff, not feeling the need to censor yourself or judge or overcompensate to sound more wise and reflective. This is perfectly alright to do, and also important, so I don't want to say that it's ideal to not do this at ALL. It can definitely serve to help you mentally and emotionally purge and get by without having these thoughts plague you non-stop. This is ALSO pretty hard to do. Journaling might not work for some people – it could even end up hurting more than helping – but it's worth trying, even for the small stuff. Personally, I'm really bad at committing to and maintaining a journal. But I hope, with all I've learned, that I can follow through this time for at least a while, and remember to go back to it from time to time. I know I certainly won't delete any of my entries even if I don't read them for years. I'd do myself a major disservice to do so.

So all that I've described in the last few paragraphs explains why I chose to make my very first journal entry in this particular journal so generic, not about what I'm feeling or experiencing. It's what I'm most comfortable with right now: trying to be objective, in the sense of explaining my own philosophy about self-awareness without judging myself in an over-compensating manner. I think this will be a good reminder for me, from time to time, and I'd love to share it on my blog but even more so, with the people I love when they need it, or even just to start a philosophical discourse using this as a starting-point for what I believe – at this moment, at least. Journaling is especially good at tracking what you believe or feel or are experiencing and what you think about it at any given time in your life.

I suppose this is a good point to explore THAT aspect of journaling. If you use it to frequently track your thoughts and emotions, in-depth and honestly or even just venting, then you can use your journal to track how you grow and how your mind develops over time. What I mean is how you approach emotions, how your ways of dealing with them change, what you believe to be true about yourself. This works for tracking your view of the world, your actions, and the way you think as well.

Psychiatrists and psychologists also do this, from an outsider's perspective, but their ability to do so is limited by their position AS outsiders: they can't really know what's going on in your head because no matter how honest and comprehensive you are in the way you express your self-awareness and thoughts, I think it's impossible to do so as comprehensively as you can in a personal, secure-feeling journal. As doctors, THEIR purpose is to be the CLINICAL outsider who can use the information you give them to track your thoughts and self-awareness as they apply to your mental health, and can try to advise you and inform you of how they see your progress. Sharing with intimate loved ones, in a different manner of course, also serves this function. They are also good at simply being emotionally supportive people who can advise you, or, much more importantly, simply LISTEN and comfort and commend, when appropriate. This is yet another resource which I personally think is very, VERY important in staying grounded and functional as people.

To sum up: journaling is a resource for tracking how you feel or think, how it changes, and how it affected what you did at a given time. It tracks how your mind and life changes, because they DO, a lot, over time – even over short amounts of time. There are many ways to write in your journal, and sometimes you can't do ALL of them; in the best of circumstances, you can. But being able to do ANY of them, whenever you can, is a great thing to do for your own good. It also affords the chance to share either your very personal and raw entries, or your philosophical entries, or any entires you choose, with your doctors or loved ones when you choose to.

If you can bear to, it's absolutely worth it to NEVER delete your entries, as every single one can be worth re-reading at various points of your life, even if just to amuse yourself. In addition, it's important to allow yourself to keep them secure in whatever way makes you feel safest so that you continue to feel comfortable writing in as raw a manner as you want to or can throughout your life, or as long as you value the journal. Keep in mind that this can and WILL change, so even if you feel like something or even the whole journal is obsolete, it really, really isn't. If nothing else, the entirety of it or some of it would be a wonderful thing to leave as a testament to who you were throughout your life for those who survive you, loved ones and strangers as well, in case you end up being famous or someone happens upon some or all of them.

The reason I think the part about strangers is true is because of my work in the classics, oddly enough, because the most accurate and beautiful way Greeks saw immortality (through Homer's philosophy) is not through transcendental or spiritual means, but through word itself. It is ultimately the only form of immortality I believe in. Written word is one of the most spectacular things we're capable of as human beings, for society, for history (if written records are able to survive for a while), for a lasting impression on the world through loved ones AND strangers. And, as I argued above, it can be crucially important to knowing ourselves at a given moment and throughout our lives.

The importance and usefulness of psychologists and psychiatrists

This is a pretty serious, personal-philosophy-esque entry. But it's not too long so if you're interested in what I think about this, I'd love you to read it and hear what you think about it. Smiley-face.



The importance and usefulness of psychiatrists and psychologists

I always think these sorts of doctors are great resources, especially when you're really trying to be self-aware or need to just to stay sane and functional, if you get the chance to use them. They are not to be taken for granted. But that's another long story.

These types of doctors act, ideally, as objective and 100% confidential people to express your thoughts and emotions to at any given time. Their job is also to track how these change throughout time, in the time they work with you, to evaluate how we can think about and deal with them (particularly with CBT) and what we might try to do to best improve our lot and act in our self-interest, including not being total jerks to those around us. This also includes how to deal with and think about those we love and trust and cherish most, since as people this is another crucial part of our self-interest and personal image.

I'll preface this and all that follows with the addition that these ARE humans, and there's really no guarantee that they're good at their job. Even if they are, once in a while they'll fuck up or offer suggestions that really don't do anything useful. So in approaching how we use these resources, ideally we want to be as self-aware and vigilant we can be WITHIN ourselves, so we can take what we hear with a grain of salt. On the obverse, when they offer really good input – even if we deny it or if it hurts or is very painful and difficult to put into practice – we should try to listen to and accept it as ultimately worth absorbing. This includes drugs, when you need them, though some prescribers are quick to over-medicate - “better safe than sorry”. Also, drugs are very rarely guaranteed to do what they claim to do. Such is the nature of practical, science-based medicine, not just bad medicine.

But I think, even more than the input they give, the absolute most important function these doctors serve is a forum for expression. They provide as safe a space as possible to share our thoughts and emotions with another human being. While a journal is even safer and more honest, being able to share yourself mentally and emotionally with another human being is a very, VERY good way to deal with our lives and our minds. This doesn't only apply to when we're in a personal crisis. It's good to keep in mind that even our day-to-day lives, personally and with other people, can have a huge effect on us and how we act in relation to our own self-interest and our desire to help those we love.

I want to avoid being judgmental here, because I really doubt it's true, but I think this applies most especially to those of us who are very sensitive and prone to over-thinking our lives and feelings. These tend to be people with a lot of brain and often a lot of self-consciousness to go with it. Other people deal with the same experiences, though, to a lesser extent. And, of course, it's not practical for everyone – in fact, it's only practical to relatively few people – to even HAVE this resource, due to finances and many other limitations. Other people might have other versions of it, from church confessionals to trusted family and friends to other types of counselors, but because of their oath to patient confidentiality and the protections of it put in place, I think psychologists and psychiatrists are ideal.

Due to the stigma of psychology – that you have to be crazy to even need to talk to such a doctor – the vast majority of people at this time wouldn't believe what I have to say here. This especially applies to psychiatry To an extent I agree, due to the unreliability of how these drugs really work on the human brain. As such, psychiatric medication should PROBABLY be reserved for people who really need more than just a forum for expression, whenever they need it. (That's subjective, of course. If there's such a thing as an objective way to ascertain it, I doubt it's possible for us to know it.) There's a lesser stigma among people who accept that psychology and psychiatry are significant resources – especially people who have actually benefited from them or have close loved ones who did – that there are only a few times one “needs” a psychologist or psychiatrist. They have a good point. But, as I said before, even dealing with day-to-day interactions and feelings is enough to warrant using these resources for people who are very self-aware, self-conscious, or prone to over-thinking emotions and actions.

I think that's all I need to say to express my own thoughts and feelings on the importance of psychologists and psychiatrists.

Tentatively Returning

God knows I've said this a billion times before, but I'm trying VERY hard to come back to this blog from time to time when I want to and am able to really use it. This includes personal entries (not too personal, natch), observational entries, philosophical entries, and entries for the lolz alone. I'm gonna stop promising "I'M FOR REALS GONNA POST A LOT NOW, CATS AND KITTENS" because I know it's not something I can really promise. So instead, I'm just gonna post entries on my Facebook and mail them out to the people I really want to read them who AREN'T on Facebook, so that they can read them whenever they end up online. Mkay? Mkay.

Fate and a Triumphant Return to Blogging!

Sometimes Gchat can produce some wonderful existential thought.

Them: To think how tenuous the odds are
that it would hapen
happen*
almost makes me believe in fate
lol
Me: hmmmm not me XD
it makes me believe in how amazingly true chaos theory is
there is nothing BUT chance
Them: true
Me: and most of the time it leads to either boring shit or occasionally awful shit
but once in a blue moon it leads to something amazing
and it's not luck or fate. it's the human capacity to recognize that and make the most of it
with our own potential for strength and determination
SO THERE. take that, faith and fate.

I was going to elaborate on this a little bit, but at least for now I want to leave it as is because it pretty much sums up my feelings on the matter. I'd only add a quote a friend shared recently: “I don’t think, honestly, that we’re an animal built to be happy.  We’re an animal that was built to reproduce. I think the happiness we find, we make.”~ Helen Fisher, neuroscientist

I appreciate this because it expresses the fact that science is perfectly capable of telling us a lot about how we are and how we function as human beings, but her quote also includes our ability to help shape our lives and our feelings in some way. Our power is limited, but it's enough for us to have the agency to take advantage of the randomness in ourselves and our world to make us a little happier within it.

I've decided to find my way back to this blog, after a summer in which I experienced too much uncertainty and pain to really think clearly. Things are going much, much better for me now, and the things making me so happy and secure are still so new and precious to me that I prefer to hide them selfishly. I want to hold it firmly to my chest, wallow in it, appreciate it fully after years of self-hate and depression and anxiety preventing me from ever feeling so free and in control and fully HAPPY. I can share it with the people who helped make it happen, but not yet to the internets and to my wider circle of friends. At least for now. In the meantime, I hope to keep posting my various deep and not-so-deep thoughts, and hopefully some music too. Like this!

Silly:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7b2_MtRc_h0

Less silly:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yqf_Hh9Dprc

Your Typical Blog Post, for once.

I guess I might do that whole "meaty, introspective post" or "post on something that is not defined as Felice Ford for old times' sake" later today, but in the meantime I feel a pressing need to respond to a claim on a water bottle next to me. This was too long to post as a Facebook status, so I had no choice here.

This arrowhead bottle with a nice, ergonomic, hourglass-figure claims that the reason it's shaped so obtusely is because it is an "Eco-Shape Bottle", and it was "purposely designed with an average of 30% less plastic to be easier on the environment."

THIS IS A LIE. If they were going to be honest about the reason the bottle is designed this way, they would admit that it is for their product to stand out visually in the expansive bottled water aisle. Moreover, they would likely be more genuinely pandering to consumers if they peddled some bullshit about the more comfortable grip, going too far if they claimed it was to make it easier on people with arthritis. But the fact remains that if they honestly felt the need to reduce the amount of plastic used to make the bottle, they would either make it out of a different, biodegradable substance OR simply make the bottle shorter. But that would reduce the volume of water within, so any shape that can hold the standard .5 L of fluid would sufficiently serve this purpose as well.

I MEAN, JUST SAYING, DUDES

Oldies: A poem about a death.

I honestly don't remember writing this. The filename claims it was on 5/25/10. I'm pretty sure it was inspired by some of my feelings at my father's death and funeral, but I think it ended up being a more generic description of losing part of your family. It fragments more than your family and your home; it fragments your life. It fragments yourself. Once again, I'm sure at the time I thought this was awful because it was during my dry spell, when I would sometimes push myself to write then regret the outcome and give up again. But I rather like it now. No title.

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It was late in the month of May
And I slept in the church all day
Waiting for some shining god, or his priest,
To come and sweep me away

There were terrible ghosts in my head
Some of them not even dead
But the sound of the homily made me feel sickly
And the wine was a bit too sweet
So I called it a day

It was late in May

Crisp with shimmering dew
There were flowers and sparrows and
Pictures of you
With a smile on your face,
Hiding scathing disgrace
And me in your embrace
Smiles with tearful eyes

There were no goodbyes
Only the sorrowful dirge
Of a monotone wail
Wind gone out of our sails
A house of empty rooms
20 years, nothing left, because
It all left with you
Now we live in empty rooms

So late in May
I remember to this day
When the chaplain did speak
Of the glorious feats
Of the man who existed for the purposes
Of a soaring eulogy
So they cried for him, but not you
As we slipped into June
And the days became thicker than glue

But I lay on the pews
Dream of cobwebs and you
And the pump in my chest, under brutal duress,
Made me pick up my shoes
I said no goodbyes with no tears in my eyes
Only pride and a smile for what we went through
And with you, I said my adieus, and I left in June.

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Commentary:

Two realizations on reading the poem now that I guess I must have known then as well: Second-to-last stanza is about the history rewriting that goes on after someone's death. No matter how complicated the deceased is - troubled, hard to live with, perhaps even abusive or sick - or how insignificant, in the eulogy, he becomes a saint and a hero. And beyond the eulogy, we remember what we choose to, in order to live with the fact that they're gone. The religious either convince themselves that they've earned a place in heaven or in hell; the less religious justify their resentment by recalling the negative actions he made while the guilty do the exact opposite. For a year or more, depending how traumatic the death and the aftermath are, this quasi-delusion continues and it's very difficult to hear other people with a different, even less extreme memory of the individual. But in time our memory is generally moderated; it can relax enough to realize both the good and bad in the person and his actions, and accept that we can still grieve for him without having to pretend he was a saint, or to admit that he can't be hated because he wasn't a monster. Very few people are saints or monsters. Too many people are convinced they know a lot of both in their lives. It makes them treat each other pretty poorly sometimes.

The last stanza just stands out because I don't remember what I meant when I wrote it. I think I was referring to my own situation: that I came home to grieve and deal with my father's death for months, then had to get up and come back to the East Coast to move on. I had to force myself to move on, in many ways. But I think it really means something else, figuratively and literally. It wasn't really about moving back when I wasn't ready. It's about moving on when you are. We lay in the shadow of a monumental death - I would literally lay upon my father's grave when I visited - and absorb the death, the finality, the crushing weight of memory. Then either we can't take the obsessive tragedy anymore, or we live in grief and memory so long that we can comfortably leave, feeling we've done enough, and then life does somehow move on.

In the few weeks after he died, I remember walking through the streets full of people and feeling like an alien...in a different way than usual. Not an alien: I was like a person who had just witnessed the end of the world, and was wondering why I was the only one who experienced it, why no one else seemed to care. The experience amounted to the end of the world for me, and for good reason, I think. This faded after a while, but the feeling that it would be impossible to move on anytime soon didn't. How could the universe continue without a center? How could I move on from something so desperately lacking closure, closure that I would never receive except for maybe within myself?

But my world did continue. It took me months to get back to Harvard, and when I did, I felt as if I did push myself to try to move on a little too soon. Some of the wounds were still open and I was still doing renovations on my shattered universe, adding a new fulcrum at the center that was the shaky column I had become. I was forced to be the center. Like every new adult, this is a terrifying burden to accept, even if it's necessary; it's unfortunate that many people have to wait so long to realize it and try to make it happen, because it's only harder when you're older. The same could be said of having to do it younger. Either way, I began shakily in late 2008, faking it until making it, then maybe a year before I wrote this poem, I got up the guts to not just leave the cemetery, but to admit that I didn't need to be there anymore. Now I could go back when I visited not because that's where my heart and mind still lived. I could go to accept the finality, accept that my life has moved on despite how significant the person gone was to my whole world (much as I hated and doubted it during our time together), and comfortably look at the grass his body was beneath and be okay with the fact that the bones beneath were where they would be until they disintegrated, and his lasting impact on the world would stay in the minds of those he left behind, the genes that he left behind in me, until they disintegrate, too. Moreso, that's how it should be. And I can accept that that will never change, for anyone who dies, no matter how saintly or how awful.

I no longer have to imagine my father as a saint to prevent myself from being destroyed by guilt. I can remember him for what he was. I know he did a lot of bad things. He was an incredibly good man with a terribly difficult life that made him do plenty of wrong things, things that hurt the people he loved fairly often. But he did them out of his own pain and fear and neuroses, not out of malice, and so he was no monster. He was my center and I'll never forget how significant that was. He made me who I am and it turns out that person isn't so bad, even if it's a fractured person who has to do a lot of work to stay functional and adjusted in the world. And I can do so with no tears, but with pride in what we had and what we went through.

Apparently that was in June - not literally, but maybe figuratively, who knows. I hate forcing symbolism and meaning on poetry despite lack of intention on the artist's part. Thanks, high school English.

Oldies: Gender Dysphoria

This poem is from 2006, when I was about 15, I think. I had just started to mess around with poetry and felt pretty incompetent with it; I tried to figure out how to make it poetic by making my thoughts feel more rhythmic, in a beat poet sense. God knows I didn't attempt meter or rhymes. Commentary to follow.


GENDER DYSPHORIA

Not without gender,
But with an excess of it.

I am the Yin and Yang
United and coalesced to the milky gray
Of Wholeness;

I am the contents of the balance
Of the Universe and Man and Life
Intertwined;

I am Mother, Father and Child
United as the entity of
Humanity Complete;

Not the snake biting its own tail,
But the snake eternally fucking itself
From within the womb;

And yet, I am also the truthless Mime
Whose gender is but a performance
Containing no trace of meaningful subtext.

My cock is red and virile,
thicker and slicker than that of Oscar Wilde's beau
and from its pneumatic insistence springs both the seed of life
and the thousand little deaths of Shakespeare.

My breasts are full and heavy
with the sweet nectar of sustenance,
pillows awaiting the mouths of babes
and offering the greatest comfort known
to heads weary of life and toil.

There is within me an open womb
and outside the member to fill it.
I am at once the penetrator
and the penetrated,
At once the heterosexual
and the homosexual,
Always the transvestite
in the rags of my other half,
Never quite sure what to tuck and what to bind.

The best and worst of both worlds.
A marriage in myself.
Without designation,
borders,
restrictions;
The unclassified embodiment of sexuality as a whole.

I fuck myself
into creation.

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Commentary:

First off, for anyone who doesn't understand this distinction fully, this poem and what I'm about to discuss is entirely separate from my sexual orientation. I am bisexual, and have a similar combination of male and female INTEREST, but what I'm talking about here is a combination of male and female IDENTITY inside me. I understand if this is confusing, but there ya go.

As far back as I can remember, I felt a little odd about my gender. I enjoyed being girly when I was little but if I did it too much, I got very uncomfortable. I liked the option of being a tomboy often, but not often enough to BE one. It kind of evened out to something normal. But as I started going through puberty, I started moving in more extreme directions in terms of my gender expression and how I felt about it inside. For a while - late elementary school and most of middle school - I felt the need to go as far to the masculine pole as I could. I was interested in seeing what was happening to my body as I developed, but I started to hate the parts of me that were still feminine and wanted to come off as male. Maybe not as passing for male, but still I refused to wear dresses or skirts, and often behaved in the way I thought a man should. I spent time with girls but didn't like being around feminine girls; I might even describe some of my feelings toward them as misogynistic.

As I got older, I started to feel a little more comfortable with looking and sometimes acting female. I needed to go back and forth a lot, and both felt like a performance. I began to think that I was either somehow both genders, or devoid of gender at all. I would switch back and forth so often and so dramatically that occasionally I would be convinced I needed a sex change to be comfortable with my body, and if I needed to be female, I would be a transvestite, which I enjoyed anyway. Then the next day or week I would feel the exact opposite: I needed to be physically female, and be a male transvestite on occasion. The most comforting thing I encountered in relation to this gender discomfort came on a day in health class when a trans-male came to discuss gender expression, and he introduced the term "genderqueer" to me. It seemed so very appropriate at the time, and kind of does now as well, but I still felt frustrated with my gender regularly.

At the end of my high school tenure and shortly after college began, I began to realize that I could get away with my current gender. I didn't need a sex change and I didn't need to feel like I was lying if I stayed physically female. I could switch back and forth, be masculine or entirely male one day and female the next, sometimes even in the course of the day. It could be a performance, specific to context and environment, or it could be for my own comfort. And I wasn't just being a provocateur to do so: I was being myself without fear of breaking gender norms or fear of being too afraid to be entirely trans, if that was what I was hiding from. It helped that I no longer felt such discomfort with my female body (how curvy it often was) and especially with my sexual organs - I could find pleasure in them and not feel the need to have a hysterectomy to feel comfortable. I'm still struggling a little with embracing the fact that I am physically female and can be genuinely female without feeling gross or silly. I can even be romantic and submissive and wistful and like makeup without feeling like a stupid stereotype, because I know within me is the perfect mix of both gender types for me.

This poem seems to express where I was at the time in terms of how I viewed my gender, and the start of my acceptance of it and knowing how to live with it.