Phone update

I woke up this morning Very Late, because my phone (which is my alarm clock, calendar and music player) rang without a tone. After futzing with it, I realised it was because it wasn't reading the 4GB memory card I've had since about high school age.

I've transferred it over to a memory card I've had sitting in a drawer for ten years, hoping it'll last out until I get a chance to buy a new one, but now I'm in the unpleasant position of trying to decide if I really need a 16GB memory card (which is about a 12€ order) or of I'll just walk my ass to the store and get a new 4gb one for about 8€. On the one hand I like having space constraints that I need to manage, it helps me KonMari my music collection and stop me from leaving stuff I don't really like playing on the background, but on the other hand a bigger USB means I can put podcasts, audiobooks and noise blocker files on it easier.

Probably not a new observation

Michael comes across very much like an autistic person who made it all the way up to adulthood without really internalising the concept of passing.

It is charming and relieving.

(okay yes I forced myself to get over the cringe curve with The Good Place so sue me.)

Cleaning up sudden thoughts...

... that went into the Tumblr tags of a post about emotional overstimulation/understimulation.

Because, like, holy shit, do you know how ABSOLUTELY relieving it was when I started therapy and started talking about how I'm the happiest when I'm... like, low? But not in a mood way as much as in an intensity way. Around the time I did my first round of mental health counselling was when I first started explaining my emotions using a two-axis scale -- hot-cold for positive-negative, and then... essentially pressure for relative intensity. It was around this time I realised that extremely intense joy felt a lot like extremely intense anger or sadness, which, around the time, I took to mean my way to process emotions was probably broken and Not Feeling was the safest recourse until I could feel good feelings without it being painful.

When I started my meds and got to talk to a proper psychiatrist, I settled into describing it as a scale that goes up to... like a 110%, and that anything above 40% was... actually quite uncomfortable for me? Like, emotions that strong are just flat-out hard to parse and react to, and the higher it goes, the less I remember about the experience. My happy range for both negative and positive emotions is about the 25-35% range -- a little higher for cold/"negative" emotions and a little lower for positive ones.

And after some more talking it over, my psychiatrist worked out and then explained to me that I've probably been. Emotionally overwhelmed for the majority of my life? I've always had a disconnect towards being described as angry or temperamental (I default to calling it "frustrated", actually) and while I do have an aggressive streak, it shows itself mostly when I feel threatened or out of balance... which happens the most when I'm dealing with intense emotions. Or, at least, emotions that are intense by my standards.

It's still pretty mindblowing, to realise that I'm not broken or a bad person, but that my comfortable range where I'm neither overstimulater or understimulated is just... narrower than most, and it's not due to any failure on my part but rather just a part of the same package as my OCD. It's very comforting, knowing that when I run too hot, I'm not "failing" to manage my emotions in a way that requires I be punished, because my overstimulated state is a literal barrier for processing them, and that once I'm brought back down to my comfortable range, I can do it just fine. I'm not an out-of-control monster, I'm just... sensitive in a particular way.

And at the same time? I'm also insensitive in ways that make relating to people weird! I feel things in muted ways and apparently that is totally healthy. The only real way to increase that emotional intensity comfort zone is also related to general Best Practices stuff I need to relearn about OCD, including a better tolerance for uncertainty and slowly working out my issues with responsibility. It's been really helpful in making me feel more human and has helped me like myself a lot better.

So if you've never given thought to where your overstimulation/understimulation thresholds are... I definitely encourage you to think about it. IDK how hard working that stuff out is for other people, I keep getting told I'm very (in fact, damagingly) good at self-reflection and self-analysis, but it's so worth it when you figure out exactly how comfortable you are with feeling... anything, and at what intensity.