Tortured

I'm tortured tonight by the things she said. 

I need that connection, love, to much to ever have it. What a cruel reality to know. The people who need affection the most, can't have it, because they need it too much. How wrong is that?

Isn't it like everything else though? People who need a loan, if they need the loan too much, can't have it. Too risky for the banks to invest in.

She loved me she said, and added.... but not enough. Not enough for what? To take a risk with me?

I've risked my heart enough for one lifetime. I don't know how to face the prospect of living without a love the rest of my life. I've had this feeling that this was how it would be for as long as I can remember. Can almost hear some nitwitted psychologist saying "self fulfilling prophecy." Just because something sounds like it might fit doesn't mean it does.

Where are the psychologist that can deal with the affects of being dramatically super Christian, and then turning atheist? Imagine all those coping systems lost in the process. For example, in one of my group sessions, someone said "Jesus loves me even if no one else does." I no longer have that to fall back on. It was a hard thing to give up. 

I don't know how to face a future indefinitely alone.

I wish their was some clear path to finding my place. I hope someday I can contribute through the Sociology degree.

I need to get to sleep.

Spring 2013, college, and Jung

The Spring 2013 semester started and it has the effect of keeping my mind busy. I am taking soc 245, psy 239, cti 110, and csc 234; to sociology/psychology classes and two computer related classes. Soc 245 is the sociology of American Drug use and I was invited to take it by the same professor who nominated me for the outstanding student 2012 award. 

I have mixed feelings about that award. I know that I am excellent academically, but my ability to interact in person is severely lacking. Nevertheless, I was proud to be recognized. 

The soc 239 class is the psychology of personality. Jung had some ideas that specifically interest me. He suggested that there are 8 main types of personalities. Half of those personalities are extroverts, the other half are introverts. Obviously I am the introvert. Those two personality traits, according to Jung, are further divided into either sensing, intuiting, feeling, and thinking. Feeling and thinking, he felt, were opposing forces of the psyche.

Jung might find it interesting then, that I experience the extremes of both introverted thinking and introverted feeling. I am both. Perhaps there is an element of truth here about the reasons I constantly feel ripped apart.

Group therapy in the morning.

Last Thought of the Day

I bought the believe CD of Emile Pandolfi. His piano describes exactly how I feel.

the last thought of the day...

Although my therapist didn't come out and say it, she may as well have said "to be loved you must change."

Most people can't love someone with low self esteem she said.

Thing is I have a mixture of self esteem. I'm an intelligent deep thinker. No self esteem issues there. Too nice, perhaps too sweet. Insecure..... I don't think the qualities I have are really attractive for the long haul. I fear the goodbyes. I don't know how not to fear them. Maybe the fear itself drove her away. Maybe there was someone else. Maybe I really am a monster. Maybe I'll never know.

Lost...

Sometimes I have to fight the urge to send her an email, tell her I love her, that I would move heaven and earth to make it work. Such an urge I have now.


The spring semester starts tomorrow.

The Song I Sent Her

She used to asked me if she was just another woman, or if she was the only one for me. I used to tell her that I cannot imagine wanting to be with anyone else. And I meant it. Now that she is gone I feel dead inside.  From time to time I email her though, and I sent the below song to her. I may have small delusions hoping she would respond but I know she won't. 

Something inside me broke this last goodbye. I know I am too far gone to give love another chance. I won't believe again those words: "I love you." 

The first time she said them.... she said "I've been trying to figure out how to tell you something." I said "tell me sweetheart," and she responded by saying for the first time "I love you."

As she said it I could not help but think in the back of my mind if this was the apex of our relationship, and I so hoped it wasn't.

My therapist says I'm too nice. But she has not seen me when someone says goodbye to me. Nor does she know how hard I have to suppress the urges to act on emotions that threaten to rip me apart, and anyone on my path, during those painful moments involving goodbye.

Lyrics:

My love must be a kind of blind love 
I can't see anyone but you 
And dear, I wonder if you find love 
An optical illusion, too? 

Are the stars out tonight? 
I don't know if it's cloudy or bright 
'Cause I only have eyes for you, dear 
The moon may be high 
But I can't see a thing in the sky 
'Cause I only have eyes for you. 

I don't know if we're in a garden 
Or on a crowded avenue 
You are here, so am I 
Maybe millions of people go by 
But they all disappear from view 
And I only have eyes for you

What Comes Around Goes Around

I've been thinking a little more about the therapy session a couple days ago. I am still bothered by some of the comments encountered in that group. One of the comments was “What Comes Around goes Around.” That statement was used in reference to my assertion that alpha males/bullies are accepted by society and they may even get ahead in life. To this a member of the group disagreed citing that old afore mentioned statement. The instructor agreed stating that they had more experience than I.

I am not very good at articulating in spoken words how I see a certain idea. I need to time think about why I feel they was I feel about something and I feel that their equivocating what happens to alpha males/bullies to karma is a type of illusory pattern perception.

Before I go further I should explain that there is some truth to the statement “What comes around goes around” on social grounds. Treat people bad, for example, and they are likely to treat you bad as well. I get the feeling, however, knowing that both the group leader and that individual group member are Christians, that they attach a magical karma like connotation to that statement as if there is some higher power ready to exact justice. Because of this I think the instructor is biased towards attributing alpha male hardships to something magical when the truth is all kinds of people, alpha bully or not, face hardships.

 Let’s now take a detour around this topic one moment.

Illusory Pattern Perception

A psychologist named Jennifer A. Whitson published a study in Science magazine relating to belief in god and Illusory Pattern Perception in 2008. You can actually read the full journal article yourself at http://www.sciencemag.org/content/322/5898/115.full if you sign up for a free account. One of the experiments mentioned by the study caught my eye. In the second set of experiments there were two groups of participants. Both groups were supposed to identify whether or not there was an embedded image in white noise. Think of a TV without a signal. Some of the images did have an embedded image, some of them didn't   The groups differed in the type of feedback they received when answering whether or not there was an image. One group received accurate feedback about their answers. In other words, if a participant correctly answered that there was an embedded image in the white noise, they would be told they were correct. The other group received random feedback about their answers that may or may not be accurate.

The result was that the group who did not receive correct feedback were more likely to see images in the white noise that was not there than did the group who received accurate feedback. What the researched gleaned from this is that in a world of lack of control humans resort to seeing illusory patterns in the chaos. The TV show, Through the Wormhole, took this a little further and suggested that people who lack control in their lives are more likely to perceived events as pertaining to acts of God (in other words, Illusory pattern perception), than people who have more control. It further went on to suggest that this might be why impoverished countries citizens are more likely to believe in God than wealthier countries.

Back to the main topic.

So you see then, when I hear people say “What comes around goes around” with a karma like connotation, I think they are having illusory pattern perceptions.

This kind of insight is why I have issues with DBT. When I hear psychologist throwing around the terms like “magical thinking,” I am generally annoyed by the fact that they themselves exhibit this magical thinking in the form of religious beliefs. It is just that their magical thinking is more socially acceptable. The hypocrisy of it all!

Solitude (trigger)

I used to play the world of warcraft. It's where I met her many months ago. Since goodbye in November I havn't been back. Couldn't bare to see her there. For a couple months straight we spent nearly every night falling sleep with our headsets on. Yeah I know. I'm the geek with no life who's girlfriend was online. But what you might think of as moronic was the most special thing to me. What kind of monster must I be that she would go from that to wanting never to speak to me again.

As I prepared to leave the game by getting everything in order I remember thinking that that must be what preparing to die must be like. Again, I get how idiotic it must sound. Don't worry, I'm not quite suicidal. If I go, I want to go accomplishing something, giving something, perhaps like in that movie Seven Pounds with Will Smith. I suspect quite a few suicidal morons, such as myself, after seeing that movie, had similar thoughts.

It's on my mind often.

Currently I am listening to such beautiful solo piano music. Occasionally Emile Pandolfi comes on. It makes me feel as if I could just let go and drift out of existence. So beautiful is that piano, and such a lonely melody.

More often than not, I am too curious for suicide. I want to know how the story ends. Are we merely computer programs as some scientist have suggested? Are their other intelligent life forms in our galaxy? Just recently I read that there are around 100 billion planets in our galaxy alone.

Sometimes though, as it has recently, the solitude becomes too much and the memories too many, and I am not sure I will make it.

More Babble

When I was younger there was a t.v. show called the incredible hulk. Even then... I must have been 7 or 8, listening to the lonely man theme song, I knew that was me. As I look back at myself in the past, I can almost see myself looking forward at me,  hoping my life would not be this endless loneliness.

I can almost cut this loneliness with a knife.

Hopefully my  next post will be more productive and informative.

Alpha Males, Bullies, and the Dunning-Kruger effect.

A few things have been on my mind.In anxiety group therapy the topic of bullies came up. I mentioned that there was a group of baboons studied by Robert Sapolsky who once displayed the typical social hierarchical stratification until one fateful day when the group came across some trash infected with, if i remember correctly, tuberculosis. The alpha males horded the food found in the garbage and did not let the females of the group, nor the low status males eat. As a result the groups alpha males died of the infection thereby leaving only the low status males and a female/male ratio of 2 to 1. The social essence of the group changed afterwards. No longer were there alpha males asserting their dominance over the others. Aggressiveness in the group dramatically decreased, food was now shared by all, and new baboons introduced to the group quickly learned that the typical alpha male dominance dynamic did not work there.

After mentioning the above I asked "Why is it that those displaying alpha/bully behavior get ahead in our society?" They responded by saying that they don't. I believe their response was biased with typical christian beliefs that there is a god of justice who keeps account of such things. The therapist, for example, said she has seen many in her old high school who were bullies that later in life fell flat on their face. I suspect this is merely a correlational cognitive error on her part. Because she already believes justice is served, when she sees a former bully fall, she attributes it to justice. The truth is, non bullies fail as well. 

I read an article not long ago in Forbes magazine that one of the most sought after qualities by hiring employers looking for potential employees is confidence. Most people reading this would agree. I think, however, that making confidence so important is a systemic error in our society. I base this thought on a sociological concept known as the Dunning-Kruger effect. Through research, Dunning and Kruger found that people who were highly confident in their ability generally scored in the bottom 1/3 of skills assessment test. Those who doubted their ability generally scored in the top 1/3 of skills assessment test.

What Does the Dunning Kruger Effect Have to do with Bullies?

I tend to think that alpha bullies tend to overestimate their skill and are blinded by their own arrogance. People, however, tend to follow the person who can dominate a conversation regardless of their level of skill. They figure that the loudest person must know what they are talking about. Employers hire these morons while overlooking better qualified, but less confident, competition. When my therapist then, said that bullies tend to fall later in life, all these ideas mentioned above were running through my mind.

The following is a mind map of those ideas:

Employers are not the only ones who choose confident idiots over quiet potential. I think people do with mates as well. How often have I heard that confidence is attractive? Is this why my ex lost interest in me?

After the group I spoke to my therapist about the ex as well. Yesterday morning was quite painful. I saw a picture of my ex on facebook. She looked sad. I've tried to email her a few times over the months since we last spoke. No response. What lead to that last email of hers where she said "dear sweet [my real name here]... I love you...but not enough...goodbye."

I have faults. Issues with love. I feel sometimes like the phantom of the opera. Isolated for so long that i've morphed beyond human social behavior. I need that connection too much to have it. When I feel it, the fear of loosing it becomes difficult and I struggle.

More Thoughts

I believe it is the social exchange theory which suggest that the person in a relationship that wants the relationship the most has the least power in it. How do I correct that about myself? How does someone so isolated, longing for connection, manage to keep a balance of power? In losing the balance, does it appear as a lack of confidence? 

Finally, I wish I could just be me, and be loved as I am; insecurities and all.

References

I mentioned several sociological/psychological concepts here which I most likely did not explain well. I'm not a writer by nature. Here are some references then to learn more about those topics:

1. Those baboons I was talking about
2. Dunning-Kruger effect
3. Confidence and Forbes
4. Social Exchange Theory

What is Silverscapes?

Silverscapes is a state of mind I sometimes feel when the emotional pain has flooded my existence and I cannot take anymore. This, at least, is what i suspect the purpose of it is. In a silverscape all the color is filtered and I only see in shades of grey. Perhaps it operates as a means to dampen the pain for a time until I have time to heal. Its a surreal experience.

What is the Purpose of this Blog?

I am a social phobic person with BPD. Currently I am almost completely isolated. I tend to have only a couple friends at a time and when they move on I often find myself in intolerable pain. This I feel now.

This blog then I guess is an outlet; the only outlet I have right now. In a more perfect world, perhaps it will also enable me to meet new people who can accept me as I am.

About Me

Most people who know me would describe me as intelligent. I earned an AA degree in the Spring of 2012 with high honors along with an outstanding student award. In the fall of 2013 I plan on moving on to a four your school for a BA in Sociology. Although I am far more interested in Anthropology, Anthropology does not offer an online degree for social phobics like myself. Still, Sociology does offer many of the same topics to study.

I am 35 and male. Beyond the AA degree with honors, I have nothing to show for my age. 

I have never been married. Just recently a relationship has ended. It had been such a long time since I felt close to someone. She taught me the word Cantankerous. Every time I think of it I think of her, her voice, and the playful way she used it.

How I Feel Right Now

I feel that I have morphed to far beyond social norms to have a lasting relationship. I'm to far disillusioned. So when I look forward in time all I see is loneliness, hopelessness. Right now I fail to see the point.