Against my better judgment, I'm not friends-locking this one

[tim]

I used to think that arguing on the Internet was a way of procrastinating, and that if I got into an argument it would distract me for the rest of the afternoon because hey, I'm a lazy procrastinator. Now I'm not so sure. I don't want to appropriate the language of triggers, because I'd rather leave that for the people who actually have PTSD (and I'm not one of them, as far as I know). But I am tempted to appropriate it because I'm not sure how else I can talk about the physical effect on me that it has when someone makes a boundary-crossing remark (usually not personally directed at me, but at a group I'm part of, for example); I engage because it's my reflex to; and they respond by shitting all over boundaries even more so. It's a heart-racing, dreading-opening-up-the-next-reply but doing it anyway and then it just gets worse kind of thing. And then I either stay in the argument, or do other equally non-productive things because my ability to focus on anything else is ruined for the next few minutes, the next few hours, or the whole day, depending.

Knowing what I know now, I'm less inclined to explain it in terms of conscious mechanisms (I don't want to do work -- or I don't want to go to bed -- so I procrastinate by seeking out wrong people on the Internet so I can tell them they're wrong) and more inclined to explain it in terms of subconscious mechanisms. Except I don't know how the latter work, or how to talk about it, or whether that even applies to me because my mental health is "not that bad". This doesn't tend to happen to me when arguing about anything work-related, and it doesn't even always happen when arguing about politics. That, I think, has less to do with the content, and more to do with how invalidating the other person is being (which is why the Mozilla code of conduct discussions ruined my ability to do much work for a few weeks -- but that's another post I'm still writing); while there are some technical communities where emotional invalidation is common in technical discussions, I'm fortunate to be in one that's not like that. (It's happened a few times in work-related discussions at places where I used to work; essentially hasn't happened in those discussions in the past year, though.)

I don't recall being actively invalidated or dismissed as being a big part of my early life (although being ignored sure was). I'm almost tempted to posit some sort of collective memory shared by abuse survivors that would explain why it's so upsetting to me to feel like I'm actively not being listened to or not being heard (when someone replies to what they think I said, or to what I represent in their mind, rather than what I said), when I don't have clear memories of having experienced that early on in life. Then again, there's a lot I can't remember.

Does anyone have ways of explaining / thinking about this kind of thing that doesn't step on anyone else's feet? I'm not sure any of this is even understandable; hi.

Comments

[juli]

Well, I'd say that trigger is a mechanical descriptor that's useful everywhere it's useful, which is certainly not limited to PTSD. Experiences like the ones you're describing are nearly-universal; everyone does things like send off a nasty E-Mail or reply to a nasty E-Mail or get into a confrontation where they're on the one hand amped up to reply to the next thing, and on the other hand terrified and debilitated, and on some other hands some other things.

As for why some of those experiences are more intense than others, the subconscious side of things might be explored by looking at where in the past you've felt that same feeling in a situation that was different, or when you've felt differently in situations that were similar. What's going on in you and in your environment and in the situations that you respond to? That doesn't require getting into any kind of breakdown into syndromes and pathology and whatever, but still can help isolate (as you're doing here) what the operant factors might be.

For me it's worst when I feel like it really matters in an immediate way. When I had more abuse-type crap floating around in my head that I wasn't dealing with, I felt very much like something bad was going to happen to me, by way of the other person, like they had some tremendous power over me. And they did, so long as I was stuck in that way of engaging the situation. Now, it's interactions with authority figures who seem to be acting arbitrarily, adversarially, etc., such that it seems like I really do have to fight or fly, because there really can be consequences.

Not everyone sees those consequences, because not everyone has the experiences from which to know how those situations can play out. Not everyone has a visceral sense of what might happen next, or how much it might matter. Or, they might, but only in other areas. I find that to be the worst shit, when people implore me to not get "bent out of shape" who don't know how wrong it can be. And where my sense of wrongness is not just my shit, but a real quick-read of the situation. And then they're continually blindsided when dicks continue to cause trouble in their lives and sort of wonder where it came from, but still dismiss my intensity in the instants where I feel like I can actually interrupt the cycle of shitlordery, or at least get the other side to show their cards in a way other people can make sense of.

I don't know if that's helpful.

[tim]

It's totally helpful! Last full paragraph is totally spot-on IMO.

In re: next-to-last paragraph, I think personally, I'm still not over that sense of immediacy. That sense that if someone is saying something Wrong, something bad is going to happen, I mean. I'm not sure what I think the "something bad" is. I guess that they will keep saying whatever it is, and be allowed to hurt people that way, and not have anyone ever point out in public how wrong they are. And, like you said, I *have* seen it actually end that way, and seen it not be pretty. I suppose my mistake is sacrificing my own well-being in order to come to the rescue, but I was never taught how to value my own well-being or that it was even a thing, so...

In re: second paragraph, right now I have absolutely no idea but it would be a good thing to try to start observing.