myth's Belated DMSI 3.1 Journal

[myth]

Mid-detour report! Not technically a DMSI post... just a brief (well, brief for four months of detour) postcard, in case anyone was actually curious about how my detour from DMSI was going. Currently on a PTPA detour from my SE detour because I needed PTPA to clear obstacles encountered on SE.

Two months on SE (plus another near-month of SE P6-fade-out) were interesting:

• "I hate me" thoughts became "I want to feel differently about me" thoughts.
  
• Translated a life-long unreceived message from garbled emotion to coherent thought: a parent treating their kid as a second run at life denies the kid their first life.
  
• Discovered that I became a private person (held back info) to keep decisions from being made for me (a familial form of identity theft through micromanagement), not out of fear of that info being used against me. Progressively hiding more and more of my life was the only avenue for keeping my future my choice. I don't enjoy being used as someone else's avatar.
  
• Noticed that my self-esteem and my freedom of choice/freedom of all available options appear to be interconnected. Someone else's reduced subset of options denies me fair decisive control over my own future (who I am free to become). The person that I've chosen to be and the person that I've been cornered into being are two different people, and I'll have a more favorable opinion of the former.
  
• Accepted that living up to someone else's fantasy of me is not my responsibility; it's their false expectation. I'd been applying that perspective to unwanted interest for years, but I'd repeatedly overlooked how important it is to all self-estimation. It's not my job to bring accuracy to everyone else's beliefs about me.
  
• Saw that my OCD might partly stem from taking childhood responsibility for others' fallibility and irrational routines. ("If, at first, their way proves false, try, try again.")
  
• Got even more sick of the protagonist over-identification ("life revolves around my story, and everyone else is a plot device/competitor") perspectives that've been fostered through movies and video games to sell more units. The rest of us have never been NPCs or an unpaid supporting cast, and the TV babysitter was illustrating an author-controlled escape (!) from reality (satire, fantasy, hyperbole, self-indulgence, opinion, art, etc), not training viewers in how reality really operates. But it seems like people got trained anyway. In short: got exhausted by watching so many people trust fun-house mirrors and then resent them for painting a distorted picture ("lying to them" about the real world when "the truth" was never on display in the first place).
  
• Increasingly saw modesty as dishonesty.
  
• Got increasingly annoyed by contagious hearsay, even when only implicit.
  
• Got more annoyed by people overvaluing consensus as proof or wisdom. Mass hysteria is consensus too.
  

So, since I kept hitting a lot of negative attitudes about other people (while fully aware that I'm far from flaw-free myself), I turned to a PTPA detour from SE. It's hard to like myself when I don't like the way that I see others. Been on PTPA since March 18th:

• Noticing that negative expectations are fertile soil for fear, stress, distrust, and contempt to bloom. Refusing to expect the worst cuts off their nutrient supply.
  
• Seeing that negative opinions of others add external excuses that encourage me not to fix problems that "aren't mine" and distract from problems that are. Without extra excuses and distractions, I can try to fix more of them.
  
• Really feeling how "right" and "wrong" are only subjective reference points for our own differences in values, standards, and beliefs. The greater the differences, the more "wrong" people merely seem to be to each other. But they're not necessarily wrong in any objective sense (although they may lack accurate/complete information), just drastically different from each other at that moment.
  
• Seeing that the concept of people wanting each other to be "better" is subjective in similar ways. Better according to others' values is not necessarily better according to one's own values, and vice versa. "Better" often ends up as polite-speak for "more like me than like you."
  
• Been thinking that we're stronger together as a whole because of our differences -- provided that we show confidence in our own strengths, stop envying the strengths of others, heed what we currently lack, show compassion for what others currently lack, and have the humility and bravery to step into the unfilled position that we already embody, not the already-filled position that we covet.
  
• I'm accepting more that, no matter how disagreeable, others can help me save me from myself. It's not that no man is an island, but that no human reaches their full potential in isolation (or in homogenization!). Our variations stimulate and inspire each other -- as a springboard, not a photocopy. Each of us is limited by our senses, momentary perspective, comprehension, logic, past experience, etc. My continued differences can enrich others, and others' continued differences can enrich me.
  
• Finding that so much of human reasoning is a difference engine -- learning, building values, forming opinions, making decisions. Spot the contrast, and pick your favorite. It's no wonder that we tend to be overly critical of difference (interpersonal or otherwise) when life is a relentless eye exam: "Which is better, 1 or 2?"
  
• Considering testing "similar" and "different" in place of "right" and "wrong" to see if it changes my attitude toward other people and their ideas. If nothing else, it might at least be more honest in a lot of cases.
  
• Productivity-to-effort ratio and problem-solving have seen improvement.
  
• Getting to things faster to get to the upside of the result sooner.
  
• Reflexive rejection has been replaced with cautious consideration.
  
• Short-term setbacks seem to be displacing long-term roadblocks.
  
• More tempted to hear the angel on one shoulder than the devil on the other.
  

Still planning to continue on PTPA for a bit and return to SE after that, then returning to DMSI after SE. I can't say that PTPA's been a completely pleasant ride, but I seem to be clearing more toxic beliefs with it than I was on UD (and with a lot less of the feeling that I am the sum of my toxins). I also discovered something very beneficial to my health while on PTPA as well, although that may just have been coincidental timing. Female attraction has also been interesting while on both, but that's not really the focus of my detour.