grant

one of the cruelest parts of attachment conflict is that it doesn’t just estrange you from other people. in repeated stress, your self-concept reorganizes around others’ most uncharitable interpretations of you in their most wounded and wounding moments. attachment disturbance estranges you from yourself. an anxious partner might experience an avoidant’s need for distance as rejecting, cold, and abandoning. “you don’t even care about me!” the anxious person complains. and perhaps the avoidant buys it. over time, they internalize the anxious person’s interpretation: maybe i really don’t care about this relationship. or, worse: maybe deep down i’m not a caring or loving person at all. the avoidant comes to inhabit the anxious person’s worst characterization of them: unloving, selfish, harmful. maybe i’m not cut out for deep relationships after all, they conclude, and begin to avoid and isolate even further. likewise for the anxious person. what begins as a simple need for closeness or reassurance becomes: i’m too much. i drive people away. my needs are problems. in repeated attachment dysregulation, what begins as a basic need (for either closeness or distance) spirals until each person comes to believe they are a bad, impossible person. each becomes colonized by the other’s worst interpretations of them. the result is that each becomes alien not only to the other, but to themselves

something ancient is splitting us into twoness and you’re beginning to look like diverse ecstasies pulsing into life again

i’m a big fan of the “talking cure” and “communication skills” but real conversation is essentially about mutual illumination, transformation, and expansion

having a conversation with someone about past events is crazy because it’s like let’s mutually retrieve and revise our core memories into something new and hopefully more beautiful and fulfilling having a conversation with someone about future events is crazy because it’s like what if we compared and revised our assumptions and models for how the world works and unfolds into something new and hopefully more beautiful and accurate having a conversation with someone about the present moment is crazy because it’s like what if we felt into the space where each of our selves inhabit and meet until those selves morph, meet, expand, transform, and maybe even dissolve and resolve

@vividvoid your love and your hate are a package deal ❤️🖕

My favorite one of these safety-restoring techniques is to put one hand on your heart and give the middle finger with the other

@feral_eyes missed ya 🐳

@grantbels yoooo grant is back hell yeah

many psychological issues begin when we learn neuronal activations corresponding to something like “i made a mistake” can’t fire at the same time as those corresponding to “i am safe.” we learn that mistakes are life-threatening, for example many meditation or therapeutic techniques work by activating both of the previously opposed networks at the same time. we bring up the felt sense of “i’ve made a mistake” at the same time as the felt sense of “i am safe.” this creates the new pattern that mistakes don’t always mean danger; the mistake-sensing networks and the safety-sensing networks become less opposed for example, try holding both felt senses at the same time (your core wounds may vary): - “someone else is upset at me” and “our relationship is stable” - “someone views me negatively” and “i am essentially a good person” - “something went worse than expected” and “my future is livable” you need to get clear on the felt sense of each individual activation, and then toggle between them, until both can be felt as true simultaneously over time, life feels less black-and-white, more fluid, more responsive, and more alive

@silent_sabbath i’ve only been reborn about .5 million times so i have some catching up to do clearly!! oh and the deer ate all my ivy so now im a wild grasses guy

@grantbels I died and was reborn about a million times! lol! oh and I started eating oatmeal everyday. how about you?

@silent_sabbath 😭🙏💜 what have i missed?? what’s been changing in your world?

@grantbels the only thing constant is change, afterall. it is really great to see you. I thought about you more than a few times.

@silent_sabbath i am testing a return from hibernation…. how have things changed around here…. how have i changed ….

@grantbels well HI grant! what a nice surprise. :)

@jkeatn this is so sweet jake 🥹🥹🥹 the vibes on here have been off and it just doesn’t compare to back in the day. but i might return sometime… miss ya

@grantbels grant I miss your tweets, no one writes like you, come back

the most rewarding thing i know is feeling a new feeling (or an old feeling in a new circumstance) and suddenly a whole slice of previously incomprehensible human behavior and art becomes comprehensible. like, new empathy unlocked. my humanity widens it suddenly makes sense that person (yes, that person) did what they did; why that song slices the way it does; why that social phenomenon erupted the way it did; why in that one fogged-over memory, you erupted the way you did. your sense of yourself expands. your sense of others deepens. the surface area they have to meaningfully interact multiplies. there are more edges where you brush up against the world and other people. there are more surfaces for them to abrade, heal, and mutually transform

starting to feel like "independence" doesn't actually exist. there's just natural, unavoidable dependence and embeddedness and how you relate to it: "Psychotherapy does not take dependent people and make them independent; rather, it makes them capable of handling their natural dependency in their best interests. It confronts counterdependent people with their legitimate needs for others. The main differences between attachment in infancy and attachment in adulthood are that, unlike adults, children cannot choose those on whom they depend, cannot ordinarily leave inadequate caretakers, and have insufficient power to influence their objects to change their behavior. Many adults come to therapy feeling like children trapped in destructive relationships and concluding that there is something dangerous about their need for others. Ideally, they figure out during treatment that it is not their basic needs that have been problematic but their handling of them." (Nancy McWilliams, 1999, Psychoanalytic Case Formulation)

@cantoni yeah, it’s definitely not exclusively used maliciously

@grantbels The people I see talking about agency aren’t abusers but are instead trying to help other people access their own innate will, feelings, hopes, desires, and ability to take action in service of those.

the concept of “agency” entails a separate subject exerting control over a world of non-agentic, dehumanized, lifeless “objects.” but once you realize you’re not the only piece of the universe with “agency,” it opens up into the woo-sounding experience of relationality, mutuality, intersubjectivity, co-creation, etc

abuser: “if you have agency, then what i do to you is your choice to endure. if you don’t like it, then you should exercise your agency. if you don’t exercise your agency, then you’re non-agentic (read: non-human), and have no claims to being treated like a human”

there’s a very strong correlation between people who talk about “agency” and people who have a startling lack of ability to conceptualize you as a human with will, feelings, reactions, hopes, and desires. which is, of course, highly correlated with a willingness to abuse, exploit, and manipulate you

@sha_zng this is iconic

fun fact: i have no sense of time & the duct tape holding my life together is this

Dylan Thomas on words: “There they were, seemingly lifeless, made only of black and white, but out of them, out of their own being, came love and terror and pity and pain and wonder and all the other vague abstractions that make our ephemeral lives dangerous, great, and bearable.”

@feral_eyes thank you

the felt sense of god keeps molting. as a kid, it was awe on the edge of fear. cathedral thunder. then it softened into gentle presence. a silent, simple being with. now it’s like communing with something possibly absent, but definitely present. praying into negative space like pouring water in a cup I’m not sure is there, but somehow overflows.