I'll be honest in saying that my ability to close likely started as survival. I had several factors in childhood through young adulthood that could have taught me it was necessary.
I cannot even imagine being that exposed all the time, but I long for it. It's such a strange thing to describe.
When I'm closed, I'm primarily intellectual and read as intimidating, cold, disconnected from feeling. This interpretation makes me so sad.
When I'm open, I'm free, generative, silly, happy, loving. Most people outside of my house never meet me this way.
“Now I’m back to holding myself closed. I’m back to regular life, where depth isn’t on the table most of the time.”
This gave me an idea of what might be structurally difficult for me: I don’t think I’ve ever been able to fully close down. Normal environments often feel unnavigable, and seem to trigger a perpetual threat / fight-or-flight response.
I think it may be because the sealing away of depth has never made sense to me, either cognitively or perceptually. So the warped temporal perception, the resonance / dissonance sensor, all of it stays perpetually online, with no real downtune function.
I wonder if that might be partially accountable for the perplexing body sensitivity and fatigue I have always lived with. The version of daily life that would require me to reduce temporal and relational bandwidth even a little bit doesn’t register as a viable operating mode, so it effectively doesn’t exist.
Thank you for giving me food for thought by sharing your experience.
the relational field...I am following and also pretty amazed to find language for something I have experienced my whole life but could have never described without reading this. thank you.
I'll be honest in saying that my ability to close likely started as survival. I had several factors in childhood through young adulthood that could have taught me it was necessary.
I cannot even imagine being that exposed all the time, but I long for it. It's such a strange thing to describe.
When I'm closed, I'm primarily intellectual and read as intimidating, cold, disconnected from feeling. This interpretation makes me so sad.
When I'm open, I'm free, generative, silly, happy, loving. Most people outside of my house never meet me this way.
“Now I’m back to holding myself closed. I’m back to regular life, where depth isn’t on the table most of the time.”
This gave me an idea of what might be structurally difficult for me: I don’t think I’ve ever been able to fully close down. Normal environments often feel unnavigable, and seem to trigger a perpetual threat / fight-or-flight response.
I think it may be because the sealing away of depth has never made sense to me, either cognitively or perceptually. So the warped temporal perception, the resonance / dissonance sensor, all of it stays perpetually online, with no real downtune function.
I wonder if that might be partially accountable for the perplexing body sensitivity and fatigue I have always lived with. The version of daily life that would require me to reduce temporal and relational bandwidth even a little bit doesn’t register as a viable operating mode, so it effectively doesn’t exist.
Thank you for giving me food for thought by sharing your experience.
I meant to post my comment as a reply to you:
https://almoststructured.substack.com/p/contact-at-depth/comment/277902891?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android&r=gc8nr
the relational field...I am following and also pretty amazed to find language for something I have experienced my whole life but could have never described without reading this. thank you.