Ambi Oct's Library tagged identity →  View Popular, Search in Google

when women have power and influence, women are better off.
To have ambition is to have a sense of how things could be but aren’t yet. It’s to nurture a radical sense of possibility – and strive to make that possibility a reality. To value your ambition means to value yourself. Your self. Your identity, your soul, your birthright.
Power is being told you are not loved and not being destroyed by it.
When you have work that you love, you don’t live vicariously through others, and you don’t look to others to give your life meaning – which means that no one can take it away from you. You raise your unique voice, and inspire others to raise theirs. Your playing small does not serve the world.
Those who have received recognition can sustain the effort required to pursue their interests successfully; this in turn leads to more recognition and increases their feelings of self-worth and capability. Furthermore they are motivated by the realistic expectation, based on prior experience, that future efforts will indeed produce additional recognition.
ambition is not static. It grows and shrinks throughout your lifetime, according to what you can see and believe about your own abilities – and how they’re reflected back to you by the people around you. “Everybody is a genius. But if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it is stupid.” So if you become what you are perceived to be, and you’re perceived from day one to be a major contender, then you become….?

A different perspective equals different priorities, a different approach.
Don’t kid yourself: size matters…..[sustainable] cultural change requires collective power. An abundance of research shows that few lone women, no matter how exceptional they are, have little impact on the conversation of a nearly all-male group, let alone its decisions. It takes critical mass to shift group dynamics. It isn’t until minority voices reach “a tipping point” of one-third representation in groups that they begin to significantly influence outcomes.

"when the female perspective carries such little weight that discussions about events that directly affect women don’t include women (witness the recent GOP all-male gathering to debate women’s access to birth control), or don’t include enough women to make a difference. "
when women in the developing world hold assets or gain incomes, they invest in their home and their community: family money is more likely to be spent on nutrition, medicine and housing. Consequently children are healthier.
the conflicts that we have in so many places in the world, there’s a direct relationship between the subjugation and oppression of women and extremism. It is therefore in our interest to stand up for the rights of women. Because by doing so, we enhance our own security.
male norm is taken as the norm for males and females both. As a result, heart disease in women has gone undetected and untreated.

identity starred

in list: how to be an adult & be great at it too, BUILD SOCEITY: psychological law

"described and detailed, our faces and bodies analyzed and picked apart, our worth ascertained and ascribed based on the reduction of personhood to simple physical objectification. Our voices, our personhood, our potential, and our accomplishments are regularly minimized and muted."
good and bad are equally fanciful interpretations. I do not want to give my power, my self-esteem, or my autonomy, to any person, place, or thing outside myself. I thus abstain from all media about myself. The only thing that matters is how I feel about myself, my personal integrity, and my relationship with my Creator. Of course, it’s wonderful to be held in esteem and fond regard by family, friends, and community, but a central part of my spiritual practice is letting go of otheration. And casting one’s lot with the public is dangerous and self-destructive, and I value myself too much to do that.

Patriarchy is a system in which both women and men participate. It privileges, inter alia, the interests of boys and men over the bodily integrity, autonomy, and dignity of girls and women. It is subtle, insidious, and never more dangerous than when women passionately deny that they themselves are engaging in it. This abnormal obsession with women’s faces and bodies has become so normal that we (I include myself at times—I absolutely fall for it still) have internalized patriarchy almost seamlessly. We are unable at times to identify ourselves as our own denigrating abusers, or as abusing other girls and women.
A case in point is that this conversation was initially promulgated largely by women; a sad and disturbing fact. (That they are professional friends of mine, and know my character and values, is an additional betrayal.)
I do serious work, such as publishing op-eds about preventing HIV, empowering poor youth worldwide, and conflict mineral mining in Democratic Republic of Congo, all ran this “story” without checking with my office first for verification, or offering me the dignity of the opportunity to comment. It’s an indictment of them that they would even consider the content printable, and that they, too, without using time-honored journalistic standards, would perpetuate with un-edifying delight such blatantly gendered, ageist, and mean-spirited content.

What is the gloating about? What is the condemnation about? What is the self-righteous alleged “all knowing” stance of the media about? How does this symbolize constraints on girls and women, and encroach on our right to be simply as we are, at any given moment? How can we as individuals in our private lives make adjustments that support us in shedding unconscious actions, internalized beliefs, and fears about our worthiness, that perpetuate such meanness? What can we do as families, as groups of friends? Is what girls and women can do different from what boys and men can do? What does this have to do with how women are treated in the workplace?
It doesn’t actually matter if we are aging naturally, or resorting to surgical assistance. We experience brutal criticism. The dialogue is constructed so that our bodies are a source of speculation, ridicule, and invalidation, as if they belong to others—and in my case, to the actual public.

feminism bodyimage identity

in list: BUILD SOCEITY: psychological law

"When a media universally misses the point, it's on purpose." -unconsciously deliberate avoidance of the larger issue.
I am so polluted by the world that my reflex thoughts are someone else's.

The real problem with fairy tales is that the protagonist never actually does anything to become a princess. Forget about gerrymandering or slaying a dragon or poisoning her rivals: does she even get a pretty dress, go to the ball and seduce the prince? Those may be anti-feminist actions, but at least they are actions. No. She is given two dresses, carried to the ball, and the Prince comes and finds her. Twice. Her only direct and volitional action is to leave the ball at midnight, and even that isn't so much a choice as because of a threat. (1) The clear problem with this isn't that girls will want to hold out for a Prince, but that it might foster the illusion their value is so innately high that even without pretty clothes or a sense of agency a Prince will come find them. Sleeping Beauty and Snow White are worse: they don't even have to bother to stay alive to get their Prince.
Katniss never makes any decisions of her own, never acts with consequence...at every turn is prevented from acting on the world. She is protected by men-- enemies and allies alike; directed by others, blessed with lucky accidents and when things get impossible there are packages from the sky. In philosophical terms, she is continuously robbed of agency. she is "god from the machinaed" all the way to the end...she doesn't choose to kill or not kill-- it doesn't come up...The story goes out of its way to prevent her from having to make choices and especially from bearing their consequences. Events unfold in such a way that it appears she made a choice, but decisions are actually made for her...does not allow her to make irreversible choices, it lets her believe she is making free choices and then negates them, again, just like a five year old girl with terrible parents.

What's fascinating/horrifying is that this fairy tale has managed to convince everyone, especially people who consider themselves feminists, that it represents a form of female empowerment when it is exactly the opposite. What you should not underestimate is how deliberate this magic trick is. This is society successfully pretending to change so that nothing changes. The goal is making the other team contribute to their own oblivion. The goal is status quo.
The classic feminist example of "robbed of agency" is the woman who "chooses" to wear makeup, do her hair, display/hide the right amount of cleavage. Is she choosing this, or is society imposing this false choice on her? Because if she feels she has to do it in order to land the account, then it's not really her choice.
What makes this such an impossible, lose-lose situation for a woman is that this choice isn't about "what to do" but about who she is, what society wants a woman to be: while she must make herself look pretty, if she is observed doing this she is immediately and simultaneously critiqued for being vain. The decision about whether to be or not to doll herself up is thus somewhat up to her, but the judgment about whether she is vain is entirely out of her hands-- it is a judgment imposed on her for doing exactly what is expected of her. Her only hope is that she is can make herself look pretty enough that it looks like it was not on purpose, i.e reveal the results but hide the process. (4) This manipulation of her is all deliberate design-- what society actually wants is that it gets her to be pretty, demarcates her as an object to be gazed upon-- but not bear any of the guilt/responsibility for forcing her into this. If it works and you are pretty I guess that's some consolation, but imagine if you're not pretty but still have to go through all this, suspecting but never admitting that everyone is going to think, "why'd she even bother?" Being pretty is in many ways worse, because you're not only competing with other pretty women but with yourself ("you look tired today") and, as the old saying goes, a beautiful woman dies two deaths. But before you go try some of our Nivea skin care products. That's the system, it wants you to participate in your own marginalization so you don't dare unplug.
It has managed to convince everyone that a passive character whose main strength is that she thinks a lot of thoughts and feels a lot of feelings, but who ultimately lets every decision be made by someone else-- that is a female hero, a winner.
That these "adolescent girl" stories-- Twilight and THG-- have women who are essentially lead by men, circumstance, and fate-- whose main executive decision is "do I love this guy or that guy"-- is a window on our culture worth discussing. When you have a daughter, your first question should be, "how is the system going to try to crush her?" and plan accordingly.

Note that the person who is aware that he has free will feels as though he lacks agency ("it doesn't matter what I do") becomes either depressed or paranoid, or both.

isn't illusion or delusion, he is not imagining what his wife looked like, the single body part is enough to generate arousal, in the same way that any fetish (specific kind of shoe, or a foot, or a piece of lace) is entirely sufficient. The problem is that this doesn't make the woman look hotter, it replaces the woman
anorexic is trying to control an idea. "I can see that my shoulders are sticking out, I know everyone can see my ribs, but yet I know I am horrifically fat." The control, the act of not eating, is the special body part; it is the obsessed-over fetish that exists for its own sake.

psychoanalysis identity

in list: how to be an adult & be great at it too, BUILD SOCEITY: psychological law

"An act of surrender is an act of letting go. It’s an admission that the old model (the one we’ve been clinging to so stubbornly, since some ancient part of our brain is always figuring Hey, if nothing’s killed us yet, then it ain’t broke so why fix it) is no longer working. "

Since I had surrendered/quit/given up/thrown my hands in the air in utter despair, I was no longer controlled by the usual ways of thinking about the story and its characters. This liberated all of the things that the old model, the outline, had been suppressing.

when we write something that challenges us, we’re seeking what lives beyond the edges of our personal reality-model; we’re fighting to punch holes in that model until new, much-needed knowledge can get in. These are the scenes that we shy away from: the points of resistance, the problem areas, the reasons we procrastinate. We need to write them but don’t want to write them.

If we are what we are attracted to (the qualities in others that lie latent in ourselves) – then we are also what we are repelled by (the qualities in others that we don’t want to admit as qualities in ourselves).
My brain had chosen not to see them because they didn’t fit the way I wanted to perceive her. Thinking harshly about her had been a way of thinking harshly about myself.
If we could simply accept whatever comes up in our lives — and our work — as neither good nor bad, but awakened forms of energy with important things to teach us. If we could recognize that being ‘stuck’ is the latest opportunity to expand our vision of ourselves, to change the old model so that it can let in all kinds of light.
We’re trying to learn not to split ourselves between our “good side” and our “bad side”, between our “pure side” and our “impure side”. The elemental struggle is with our feeling of being wrong, with our guilt and shame at what we are. That’s what we have to befriend. The point is that we can dissolve the sense of dualism between us and them, between this and that, between here and there, by moving toward what we find difficult and wish to push away.
Getting unstuck involves a shift in understanding – and, since we are what we think, a shift in ourselves. We absorb new information and we incorporate it into our model, our outline, our paradigm. We bring something out of the darkness.
And when we are no longer running away from the charnel grounds, we can move closer and see them for what they are: neither good nor bad, not shameful, just there. The sharp points lose their power.
where I’m forced to grow in my understanding of myself by reaching for parts of my identity that have been waiting all this time. Those parts might not seem, on the surface, to be very nice, but they provide strength and nourishment and the ability to tell a greater truth. And when one person tells her truth, it gives others permission to do the same.

identity

in list: how to be an adult & be great at it too

"Belief seems to be easier when it’s supported by a community, even if that community is made up of only one other person.
When you see other people change, it’s easier to believe that hey, if that guy did it, you can do it too. Communities make change seem believable in a way it might not if you’re struggling alone. "
“It seems real when we can see it in other people’s eyes.” I wonder if that’s because other people tend to treat us more kindly than we treat ourselves. Pay attention to the self-talk that loops through your head on a daily, even hourly basis, and tell me this: is it positive or negative? Would you talk that way to a friend, or a stranger, or, really, to anyone?
We create ourselves every moment, and we do so through our language, through what we say to ourselves on a regular basis. You have to see it to believe it – turns out to be wrong. It’s the other way round. The beliefs that we’ve internalized from others or acquired on our own become a filtering system for the world. The brain is primed to pick up and interpret things in a way that will support pre-existing beliefs, and reject, deny or minimize the things that don’t.
real change seems possible only when you accept yourself as you already are, your life as it already is. When you pursue the change not out of loathing, but love and self-care. when she regresses, or makes mistakes, or seems uncertain, or doesn’t believe, that’s okay, because you can believe for her.

identity

in list: how to be an adult & be great at it too

"a woman’s moral character isn’t judged by what she does, but what she doesn’t do (have sex). " This is a brand of misogyny embedded in our cultural DNA. Stories shape the soul of a culture. They transmit the values and beliefs of a culture. if you want to change a culture, change the stories.

slut-shaming as “the survival tactic of a second-class human being. sad attempt to weird power by those who feel they don’t have any. Women and girls lash out at other women and girls when they recognize that no matter how hard they work, and no matter what sacrifices they make, they will always have more to prove than men and boys do. We do it in a kind of self-defense: by calling you a slut, I am implying that I myself am not. We do it out of jealousy, competitiveness and scorn. We do it to exclude.
all it does is reinforce the very idea that you’re trying to fight. As soon as you buy into a reality that brands any woman a ‘slut’, you buy into a belief system that attacks femalehood itself. This includes you. You sacrifice someone else in your effort to escape the boiling water, but you can’t get out of the pot. [crabs-in-the-pot syndrome -As one crab gets near the top and attempts to climb over the edge, another crab will naturally put it down in its own attempt to escape. As a result, all the crabs go to their collective doom. This is the problem whenever a woman defends herself by saying I am not a slut. ]

There are countless examples for history of women who have risen to the top because they’ve helped other women excel.
We can transcend. We can act like the pot doesn’t exist. We can refuse to use the word against another woman, or to acknowledge the word if and when it’s applied to us. We don’t need to explain or defend; we know that as soon as we do — as soon as we buy into that particular framework of beliefs – we end up perpetuating it, and we lose.
Better to create – to force into being – a new reality, one in which we are all sluts and whores and dinner whores – or none of us are.
We can commit to each other. We can lift each other up.

identity strategic insight

in list: how to be an adult & be great at it too

"It is the intensity with which you listen to what’s happening around you.It is the way you gather information and translate it to wisdom about yourself, your work, your audience, your marketplace, and the deep instinctive sweetspots where they start to intersect. "
in a way that draws on your unique layering of personality and intelligence and personal history. You bring all of yourself (your selves) to your work: your shadow as well as your shiny public face.
Your right audience can’t recognize you until you step out from hiding. If you operate behind a mask, people will be attracted to the mask and not to you. When it gets knocked off — and sooner or later it will — people will be confused, or dismayed, or angry, and they will desert you.

identity blogging presentation insight

in list: how to be an adult & be great at it too

identity

in list: how to be an adult & be great at it too

"One way to plan your life is to reverse-engineer it. You dream up a vision for your future. You imagine yourself having already achieved your goals.The nature of goals is to force us to stretch: we need to acquire new skills and develop new aspects of our character."

Growth can announce itself with little, seemingly superficial changes[little gestures, tiny departures, modest risks, change their music, speech, clothing, residence] that audition a much larger change.You can bring this about yourself: change your hair, change your dress. Fashion can serve as the thin end of a wedge that separates you from your past.

You could help the pupa by enlarging the hole with a knife or scissors so that the pupa simply slips out:But it will have a swollen body and small, shriveled wings. The antagonist is whoever or whatever traps, restricts, and opposes the protagonist; what the protagonist must struggle against to escape. They know how to push her, to ignite her flaws, to create gaps of imbalance, and become what she must overcome for ultimate success.

identity

in list: how to be an adult & be great at it too

"Voice is about style of expression, but it's also about the ideas that shape that expression. Readers take that 'voice' and construct a sense of identity around it."although the person isn't the work, the work (at least of a matured artist) is the person: an identity expressed through a particular point of view.

People are like sheep: they follow the leader. It is the leader who has a point of view about which way they should go….Having the courage to stand up for it in the face of public opinion is what makes you a winner.It's why telling your story isn't (just) an exercise in narcissism, but a political act. It's the overriding point of view that shapes the culture. It not only sets policy but influences the way we talk and think about different groups of people as well as ourselves. But if it's to mean anything to anybody other than yourself (and your mom), it has to connect with an audience in a way that resonates: they have to see themselves in you.
When you shift your focus from your self (and your own self-consciousness) to the ideal that you want to serve, and how you embody or manifest that ideal for other people. When you know what you represent. So when your wrong people attack you (and they will) you recognize that they are attacking what they think you stand for, not you personally; and you, in turn, are defending your ideas (or opting out of the argument altogether). your purpose chooses you, and you don't discover it so much as unearth it from your layers of personality and personal history.

ideals that inspires fierce deep engaged loyalty r 5:
eliciting joy/wonder,
enabling connection in meaningful ways,
helping ppl to explore/experience,
evoking strength/security,
impacting/redifining soceity nd challenging status quo.

identity leader

in list: how to be an adult & be great at it too, BUILD SOCEITY: leader qualifications

every time a therapist writes something down it's a nervous thing. They write to discharge their anxiety of too long looking into a person's eyes and it not leading to either "I love you" or "I'm going to kill you." You're not a detective, you're not looking for inconsistencies or lost time, the patient is there for answers and the structure of your relationship is itself the answers. Why does she like me? Why does she get bored/angry/expansive when I do this? Why did she continue with a therapist who is so uncomfortable around other people that they need a yellow pad as an emotional shield? Seriously, that's not an accident at all, answer that question and the therapy is done, the patient is cured. the point here is to establish that these two people are creating "environments" that are safe for themselves. It may also be safe for the patient, it may be labeled as "for the patient" but I hope it is evident that the real impetus is the comfort of the therapist.

Note the phrasing-- this is good for the kids, which is actual kids, not the adults-that-were-once-kids. Adults' anger gets to remain justified.
And it's a lie anyway. Sure, it is good for the kids, but is there anyone who can't see that the primary reassurance is for the parents who can't handle being hated by their kids?

The old adage that shrinks go into shrinkage to figure themselves out sounds awesomely correct except that it's incorrect and inawesome. They go into it so they don't have to figure themselves out. Best way to avoid judgment is to become the judge. Overruled. I said overruled.The therapist has a sanction to create narratives, and there's nothing better than being able to create a narrative that also defends your ego from all manner of attack.

" "too perfect" parents who coddle and overprotect their kids aren't doing it for their kids, they are doing it for themselves, in defense of their own ego; and that, not the bike helmets, is why their kids end up adrift and confused. The problem isn't that kids are too wussy to go out and play, but that their parents do not trust themselves"
paranoia. Ego vs. reality, and you can't appraise either. And then one day your kid is punched by some bully raised by Nascar fans or baby mommas and you shut down the school because you think the problem is the bully. The problem is you. The bully may have punched your Edward in the belly but you mobilized the school district to DEFCON 2, who has more power? Who is the biggest bully?

More than likely kids overcome all this, everybody finds their own way, but to those who feel stuck the only solution is to forsake all attempts at figuring out who you are, conveying who you are-- because you aren't anybody yet-- and just accomplish stuff, yet be ready to discover in 50 years that the sum total of your life's real accomplishments may be very different than what you expected, and it must be enough.
unhappiness comes not from thinking they are better than they are, and not even from the inevitable future failures, but from not being sure how good they are, if they are good at all. They are not sure what is supposed to define them. "How can you know what kind of a man you are if you've never been in a fight?"

parenting identity psychoanalysis narcissism

in list: how to be an adult & be great at it too, BUILD SOCEITY: psychological law

" What's wrong isn't your lack of feeling, but that you think you have to feel something, that you have to tell this woman, remind this woman, how horrible is her loss. You think the only way to connect with people is to have their emotions. You think she wants to connect with you. You think she wants your help."What you should say is, "I'm very sorry to hear that. Is there anything I can do?" and that's it. But that feels insufficient. You think this because you think that there is something you can do, that the sadness is not real for you so it must not be real for her and you thus have the power to change it.She's not looking for you to be sad, she's not looking to you for anything, her loss is bigger than you. If she needs anything from you, it's sympathy, not empathy.The problem isn't that you don't know how to connect; it's that when you do connect at all, you don't know what to do next. It's your unrealistic expectations of what connecting is supposed to be. TV is always about beginnings, not middles.
You are so unsure of your own identity that you don't know if you are supposed to be feeling, what you are supposed to be feeling, when you are supposed to be feeling. This is the same trouble actors have when rehearsing a character.
The problem wasn't TV, the problem was the absence of adults, real adults who took seriously their responsibility to the next generation, who lead not by words, but by behavior. Who, even if miserable or unfulfilled or unconnected had the decency to fake it for the next generation, for the people they touched. Who didn't cheat on their wives not just because they loved them, not just because it was ethically wrong, but because what kind of an example would that be to their daughters? try playing a different role whose aim is someone else's happiness.
If the problem was the unopposed influence of TV-- not the TV, per se, but the lack of opposing influence-- then the solution is some opposing influence.Do the opposite of what the narcissists did. They wanted to know enough to fake it. They read just enough to use the book to build an identity, so they read about books, but not the actual books.

If nothing else, reading will keep you out of trouble: every moment reading those books is a moment not doing something your current adults created for themselves that you're stuck with by default.

"Why do you waste your time with pop culture?" Because you may not be interested in pop culture, but pop culture is interested in you.

psychoanalysis identity feel

in list: how to be an adult & be great at it too, BUILD SOCEITY: psychological law

"changing your memories changes you.
The man who holds onto childhood anger; the person who doesn't forget a certain grudge, people who "remember where they came from"-- these things anchor identity, keep you the same. I'm not making a value judgment, I'm describing a process. We believe that growing, or therapy, brings us to a point in our lives where we can reinterpret memories. But simultaneously, the act of reinterpretation changes us.

You don't just look back on your parents differently when you become an adult. You also become an adult when you are able to look back on your parents differently.

Every moment of every day, you decide who you are, and you decide how things will be remembered. Memory isn't a hard drive; it's a text editor.
"

identity

in list: how to be an adult & be great at it too

"You may get to choose an identity, but you can't pretend to be someone else."you have no control over first impressions and even less over second and third impressions. Hold tight to your identity, I sometimes say, because no one else is buying it.In her defense, if defense is actually needed, she tried to downplay her looks.but as is the problem with some women who don't know the game, all this had the opposite effect. You may get to choose an identity, but you can't pretend to be someone else.

since no one can understand her they are left only with what they see-- the very thing she was trying to mask. The result is she is incomprehensible except as attractive: "...and you can tell she's really hot underneath all that..." Take a highly technical paper and black magic marker out one sentence, people will spend more time trying to look through the magic marker than they will trying to understand the technical paper. And if they manage to figure out the redacted sentence, it will be assume to be a proxy for the entire paper, even if it isn't.

You can't judge a book by its cover. But if no one understands the book, they will judge it by the cover, if they bother to at all. And if the cover is confusing also, well, forget it.

These parents need her to be real, but she can't be real, her whole professional demeanor is based on the suppression of real.

identity insight

in list: how to be an adult & be great at it too, BUILD SOCEITY: psychological law

"kids demand of adults to be different than them. More stable, more future oriented, more careful with money. Not someone they want to emulate, but someone they want to go beyond. The adult serves as a foundation to build on. That desire to be a foundation-- not a support or a model or a goal-- is lacking in the older people. There's little thought given to multigenerational advancement, that the primary point of their existence is their kids', and their kids' kids, progress."
youth obsessed and frankly delusional. They're not pretending to be young, they actually believe they are young. A "residual self image" in a person's mind of who he thinks he is, despite that image being 20 years younger. They picked an identity not supported by the facts. So the actual young get squeezed out of their own demographic, into being even younger, or jumping over and becoming too old, too quick. If the kid is parentified, or grossly immature, you may want to consider that.

parenting identity

in list: how to be an adult & be great at it too, BUILD SOCEITY: psychological law

That shame is the result of faking it, of putting on an identity that isn't really you (I'm powerful) and having it exposed (rejected.)

The solution is to not fake it. That doesn't mean not try, that means instead of sitting up straight before the presentation, sit up straight all the time. At least train your body to naturally adopt what your mind is too nervous/self-conscious to do.

If this study is at all representative of the truth, it means that eventually you will physically change into the person your body is pretending to be.

presentation identity

in list: BUILD SOCEITY: psychological law

a kind of love that substitutes magnitude of emotions for quality of emotions because that's the next best thing. I don't mean this next part as an insult: toddlers do this. They want you to extra love them up, but if you're watching the Radiation King they'll not hesitate to lick an electrical socket to get attention. They would rather you yell at them than ignore them, and that emotional charge they get temporarily sustains them. Spam isn't ham, but if you're starving it'll do. And yes, eventually you will get used to, and even like, Spam. It is repetition compulsion and it is inevitable.
Yes they are afraid but the real fear is abandonment, starvation: this is your whole life, how do you walk away from everything you know? You know it got violent yesterday, but you also feel emotionally full: the contrast between yesterday's anger and today's teddy bear gift is so gigantic that your emotions top out, like cocaine or winning at blackjack. The absolute value of that love may be much less than "a good man's," but he can't provide the differential. That's the toddler problem.
While you're yelling from the outside "get away from him!" from the inside they try to deflect with high emotion substitutes: drugs, pregnancy, cheating. After a while, your life is that cycle. You can break up, sure, but each of you will probably repeat that pattern elsewhere, because the problem isn't the specific partner in front of you but the way you sustain your relationships. And when you both work off the same patterns, you'll be together ten years longer than you should be.
The only solution I have ever seen work is that one of the people has to change the way they respond to the other. one thing I've noticed about the mutually abusive is their clinging to spirituality because when you live by no rules the psyche demands you to impose them from without:

And when the toddler comes ferociously upon you and yells, "I AM TWO AND I AM UNCONTAINED!" do you beat him like a dog? Teach him that the rest of your life will have to wait while you unleash your anger on him-- so central is his existence? Or rather, do you calmly show restraint, neither do you reward his mania with your emotion? They are filled by your love, but they will settle for your attention. He who feeds a Chaos will raise a Demon.

You can complain about who is glorifying what and how someone is being represented as whatever, but in doing so you ignore the millions of people-- kids-- who are feeling neglected by you and represented only by Eminem et al. If you focus on Domestic Violence and miss their internal struggle, then you will neither stop Domestic Violence nor affect their lives, and they will abandon you. They already have.

psychoanalysis marriage parenting insight identity

in list: how to be an adult & be great at it too, BUILD SOCEITY: psychological law

If people are only interested in you for your looks, then you’re not a person, you’re a commodity; and you get discarded.

Sensuality, to me, is about who you are as a person, how you move and laugh and talk and think and style yourself and relate to other people. It’s the fullness of your life. It’s your charisma and your character.Prettiness fades, but sensuality evolves.Sensuality is living and organic; it’s not a thing, but an energy.

What if, instead of being hot, we encouraged girls to be fascinating?
What if we gave girls attention and recognition simply for being their own lovely, creative, complicated selves? What if we celebrated them for doing well in school, for chasing and achieving professional success, financial independence? What if girls looked out at the culture and saw women celebrated not just as models and actresses and the reality TV stars that we love to hate, but teachers and nurses and doctors and engineers and investment bankers and mothers (including single mothers) and artists and orchestra conductors and politicians and venture capitalists and entrepreneurs? What if we expected and demanded of them to develop their minds and talents along with their wardrobes?
What if we didn’t punish them for seeking attention, but offered them lots of legitimate, constructive ways to do so?

insight identity

in list: how to be an adult & be great at it too

denial -you learn to be polite and respectful and fair instead of being honest with yourself: you'll override your intuition when it seems inconsiderate. Better to try and see things from the other person's perspective and find ways to excuse his (or her) behaviour, even when that inner voice is telling you to get the fuck away.

To ignore what you feel is to shut down a big part of your brain, which makes it a lot easier for the world to take advantage of you. It means you have to rely on what other people tell you is true. You take what they say at face value, since you have no way of sensing what's going on beneath their words.This is what it means to be gullible.

When you become your own rebellion, you establish psychological independence.Going with your head makes it arbitrary.Language is not reality, but our best attempt to explain reality. We can edit it any way we want to rationalize or justify ourselves (otherwise known as "confirmation bias"). We put a certain spin on things. Or we allow other people to spin them for us, and we absorb those distortions as truths. when we refer to a person's authenticity or sincerity, we talk about who they are in their heart or at their core: words that locate that 'self' in the body. You can spin any decision in any you want, but it either feels good - or it doesn't. It either makes you feel light - or the opposite. It might even make you feel ill.But it is what it is, and it can't be argued with. Your truth is your truth. You can move toward it, or let your head lead you away from it, but you can't change its essential message, or the fact that it knows what you need better than you do (especially when what you need isn't exactly what you want.

identity rebellion insight

in list: how to be an adult & be great at it too

" We learn what is wrong with us – or rather, what other people perceive as wrong with us. Those external voices get internalized and become the inner voices that we carry around with us until we decide (if we decide) to finally stop listening to them.
What we often don’t recognize is that it’s the things that we get criticized for, that get declared as the ‘weaknesses’ that we must fix and fix and fix (until we fail, give up and watch American Idol), that hold the key to our potential Remarkableness. In our weaknesses lie our strengths (and vice versa). If our brains can only learn to perceive them that way. "
surrounded by expectations that may have little to do with who we really are, expectations held by people who are not trying to discern our selfhood but to fit us into slots. In families, schools, workplaces, and religious communities, we are trained away from true self toward images of acceptability…our original shape is deformed beyond recognition; and we ourselves, driven by fear, too often betray true self to gain the approval of others.
safety found in numbers, in being average and ordinary, is no longer so safe or secure. Management guru Tom Peters argues that “The White Collar Revolution will wipe out indistinct workers and reward the daylights out of those with True Distinction.” we’re all freaks. We just need to reclaim those parts of ourselves that we’ve been hiding away out of shame or embarrassment – for being too this or too that – so we can look at them with a retrained eye.

we are gloriously and perfectly imperfect. but often the smart thing is not to try to change our natures, but our situation, including relationships that prove toxic to us.
It’s perhaps one of the biggest tragedies of our nature that we take the people we love and attempt to change them into who we think they should be…because it makes life easier for us, because it suits our agenda, because it makes us feel more comfortable.

identity

in list: how to be an adult & be great at it too