Decibel #16
Some things from around the internet I consumed this week and found interesting:
- Turning Your Lightsaber Off (8 min youtube video)
- Michael Ashcroft on ADHD (tweet)
- Alexithymia (wikipedia article)
1. Turning Your Lightsaber Off
“As Jedi we’re taught to not have attachments… and I’m not attached to the normal lightsaber curriculum.”
This whole saga is SO FUNNY and is worth your 8 minutes.
2. Michael Ashcroft on ADHD
Michael compares ADHD to erectile disfunction, but I think his identified actions are interesting for anyone with any task.
1) find ways to make the task more arousing, or arousing in a different way
2) identify any anxieties that may be present that are interfering with finding the arousing thing arousing and explore ways to turn them down
3) stop overstimulating yourself in other ways such that the thing in front of you that would otherwise be arousing becomes arousing again
Steps like these that rotate ideas in our brains so that new light may shine on them are worth noticing. I’ve found it useful to have a few such tools sometimes when stuck or wrestling with a tough idea.
3. Alexithymia
I’m continuously surprised by just how different people’s internal experiences are.
Have you ever sometimes struggled to describe how you are feeling? This week I was introduced to the term Alexithymia, or emotional blindness. People with Alexithymia might always struggle to describe how they are feeling. It’s characterized by difficulties in recognizing and describing one’s own emotions.
This contrast is even stronger as I think back on someone I dated a long time ago who I feel had something akin to reverse-alexithymia — an uncanny ability to read the slightest body language, subtle tonal shifts, and subsurface emotions of others. How wild is it that we can have such richly different inner experiences of the world?
What blows me away is just how many ways our different internal experiences comes up. Just last week I saw this poll:
Forgetting even the most extreme example, even one worried thought every minute must be a hugely different lived experience than only a handful a day!
Then there are internal dialogues. I have a friend who an an internal dialogue that is very negative and talks to him all the time… meanwhile I hear nothing.
Triggers. Some people get triggered by things while the same information is safe for most. Back in Decible #8 I quoted this:
[18:58] How would it be that one person would react in one way another in another to the same stimulus? That has something to do with your programming.
…
[23:19] Imagine you’re waiting in a line for a ticket and somebody breaks the line. Can you imagine how crazy it is that because someone has misbehaved you’re going to punish yourself. It’s like taking a sledgehammer and hitting yourself on the head; you’re going to get angry; you’re going to let your blood pressure go up; you’re going to lose your sleep; this is crazy!! And everybody says it’s normal! Well they’re all lunatics that’s all.
When I think about such variety, I’m reminded to give a little more grace, be a little more forgiving, and to ask a few more questions. I was recently asked what I enjoyed most about socializing with new people. My answer? “Seeing how they look at the world.”