if I’m in therapy and you’re in therapy...then who's driving this societal collapse
we don’t negotiate with emotional terrorists
wild how american politics have devolved into “why are you booing me, i’m white”
your honor, it stands for “truly humble under gaslight, gatekeep, girlbossing”
“histrionic personality disorder?” you mean clinically dramatic?
how can you read tarot and not read the room? quickly
drake’s energy towards kdot rn is giving desperate reply guy in an IG model’s dms
why not, throw another once-in-a-lifetime experience in. another war? a recession? new pandemic? fuck it
we gotta RICO white people, they both got a subliminal and criminal conspiracy
chismosas and mimosas - a new podcast name? latinas, never say i don’t contribute to the culture
people pray that their enemies don’t prosper then they themselves don’t prosper…lot to unpack
some of y’all be letting genocide genoslide and i don’t like that too much
i love the brain, some of my best friends are brains. therapy is a wonderful tool to diagnose root causes of our emotional (and sometimes somatic) hurt, deep-seated trauma, break generational curses, the mental clutter of day-to-day, to assist with the hard work of understanding ourselves and the past, present and future of the world we live in, etc. i have myself been in and out of therapy since college, my longest consistent stretch being 2016 to present (suck it, duolingo owl) but i gotta say…
some of y’all lying about therapy.
it’s the only way it makes sense. i don’t see most people within 6 feet of real-deal therapy but they be doing all the talking online. i’m just saying — i’m seeing mad untherapized behaviors out there and then celebrated??? tf??
can’t allow it, won’t sanction the buffoonery. summer’s coming up and i don’t wanna be two-stepping at day parties with the fakes — stop the hooplah, dead the malarkey — we are all moving insane.
i’m hearing “i’m a people pleaser” and i’m seeing a trail of emotional destruction that says otherwise.
i’m seeing people try to win conversations, interactions, dates, etc choosing headass “healed” hills to die on.
revisionist history written by emotionally illiterate people
chatting about purging unhealthy behaviors, then stalking people’s likes
giving grieving people more grief
“interventions” turning into blame games and shame games
throwing stones and hiding hands
talking about being real, having fake accounts to stalk people but it’s not real stalking because they’re “digitally everywhere not physically specifically there, ya dummy, it’s different”
cruel isolation as rehabilitation from “abolitionists,” deification and demonization from atheists, hierarchies from anarchists
something ain’t making sense — am i buggin?
yeah healing is messy and it’s a complicated journey. i’m locked tf in on all that but i’m seeing emotional domestic terrorists running rampant on the streets and the tweets like smirnoff isis or al-caitlin or phi beta gaslight.
the math ain’t mathing and some of us are trying to make the math math and we not not even good at math! as a former teacher, i’d say show your work but no one has a job rn and the “intuition” is giving self-diagnosed mental illness. hang it up!
maybe, perhaps, perchance some of y'all mfs is lying about therapy (not you though, sweet summer child, you’re perfect).
i figured i gotta say the quiet part out loud. rather than sit here and chat shit, i’ve been trying to understand with friends, family, and my therapist and i wanna share that process with you.
every week (until i get bored), I'm gonna give it a shot and break down phenomena that I am noticing, look for some root causes in behavior behaviors that we've normalized, get my jokes off, and posit a solution.
for now (subject to change) here are some buckets (and let me know if you have any to add):
the oversharing economy and performance healing
toxic individualism
therapy as a merit badge
investments in dysfunction
community responsibility
but today we’ll start with—
what the fuck is anyone saying anymore
pros of more therapeutic language in the world: putting words to feelings/events/people can be liberatory, seeing that you’re not alone in your pain can be validating, barriers to access can be broken down more easily, etc.
cons: what the fuck is anyone even talking about anymore? like for real? i can’t be the only one who be looking at this confused. words are beginning have no meaning like saying lozenge over again until it’s just sound.
throw the normalized hyperbolic nature of the internet in the pot with the sheer volume of self-help terminologies coming out every day, add a pinch curating of your pain to match the current aesthetic, and it all starts to wash over you, don’t it?
remember when “woke” meant woke? now it means damn near everything else but woke; if i see the word anywhere i wanna punch through drywall (sorry to appropriate white culture). “toxic,” “lovebombing,” “attachment style,” niche personality disorders,” “gaslighting,” “c-ptsd,” “histrionic,” “narcissist,” “people pleaser,” “empath,” “adhd.” all of these things exist on a spectrum with specific applications in specific contexts — even my therapist hesitates to diagnose someone she’s only heard about in our sessions and it’s been her job for decades — how are we so ready to diagnose and ship to the loony bin off the strength? are we labelpilled? brandmaxxing?
I told my therapist this “it seems like everybody is traumatized and nobody is traumatized but everyone’s hurting.” through our conversation, it evolved: the vibe online feels like if everybody is traumatized, then nobody is as traumatized as me.
i love my therapist: she is an absolute gem and someone who i appreciate has been able to hold my anger and frustration because publicly as a black person and a man, I don't have a lot of places to put it. but one time she turned up telling me that whenever there is a giant social phenomenon or trend/uptick in a specific malady, everybody believes they have that same thing that a celebrity is going through — classic pop psychology (not as good as punk or hip-hop psychology imo)
the example we talked about was amber heard and johnny depp. the moment that amber heard revealed she had “histrionic personality disorder” on trial, my therapist (as well as many of the therapists she communicates with) started seeing everyone and they mama come in either asking if they had it or worse, telling their therapist what they had. not coming into your therapist’s office like a pirate and commandeering their job!! [more on this another week but this trendy self-diagnosis feels less like tailored healing and more like people pretending a 2003 NBA draft class-sized suit fits them perfectly (they fit no one perfectly).]
words have meanings. because of the hyperbole it feels like a whole spectrum gets collapsed into the most extreme definition, making it tough for real victims to self-report, hard for regular people to sift through any nuance whatsoever, and dilutes complex dynamics to whoever is the loudest, first, or holds the most power.
i shared this graphic with my therapist, just to gauge her thoughts around the use of this language, and she agreed wholeheartedly (with some edits on “triggered”):
maybe it’s simply comparative human nature, trying to fit in or find our place on the spectrum. perhaps the gamification of everything (including trauma). or a path to genuine connection through trauma dumping. or it’s trying to relate through pain on the way to pleasure (what is a trauma bond but a complete lore speedrun)? maybe it’s sensationalized clickbait becoming the journalistic norm so much that it’s bled into us as civilians trying to clickbait our basic existence. to me, it’s some confluence of all of this and something very delicate to pick apart and we do it so clumsily.
it’s getting a little nuts to look at the trauma of a literal survivor of present-day genocide and someone who is using the word microaggression in a very macroaggression way about a situationship from 8 years ago and put them on the same trauma scales. a question keeps coming up for me: are we tryna understand each other or top the medal count at the trauma olympics?
in a world where unquestionably “your pain is your pain,” with a culture where people are encouraged to commodify their entire life story including traumas (and if you got the gift of the grift, cash out), and a subjective definition of what pain is valid (and also can’t be questioned for fear of minimizing an experience), how do we define truth?
who decides who gets to be in pain and how to navigate it?
how do we divest from individualizing our struggles and collectively uprooting the environmental and social roots of it?
how do we allocate support?
how do we cultivate safety, trust, and belonging?
how do we create space for repair?
and the biggest question: do we even really want peace for everyone or just ourselves?
vagueness is dangerous. that grey area is where a million demons live and we can naturally project our deepest fears onto them before our biggest hopes. only antidote? transparent specificity allows us to respond with specific remedies (pharmaceutically or socially prescribed) and deliver the biggest gift of all: accepting the complexity of a person’s humanity.
harder still, it’s difficult to be specific about trauma, no two people heal or process conflict or harm the same way or on the same timeline, in order, out of order, in and out of relationships – too many variables to consider and many do not have the range to judge (especially when you add a cold disposable western culture meeting immigrant, class, gender, racial, and queer experiences all in the mix).
as non-monogamy, polyamory, abolition, community care, and building a new just society become more prevalent, communication is key, repair is necessary, and handling conflict in direct ways (with a mediator if necessary) is paramount to making sure a healthier world can be built.
I don’t say any of this to minimize anyone’s experience or sow doubt but rather to eliminate the grey area where abuse exists and shine a floodlight into it to help survivors from drowning in a sea of trust issues, compounding trauma, etc. a lot of us fly blind into situations which is scary. but there’s no need to crash out if we can be each other’s eyes and hopefully, be better ears and bigger hearts, too.
if we’re forced to use the court of public opinion in the place of a justice system that fails so many of us, the court stenographer shouldn’t have to decipher mumblecore psychobabble and the court record should be aiming for restorativeness both for individuals and the community at large.
behavioral neuroscience degree never fully in rearview, i be reading and here’s some picks:
freya india’s substack post “maybe you’re not anxiously attached” nailed it
how to counter tiktok’s mental health misinformation | psychology today
hey, i have that: mental health self-diagnosis in the age of tiktok by autumn bippert (undergraduate thesis)
social media and mental illness identity formation: the role of community culture and misinformation by allyson clark (undergrad thesis)
gaslighting workbook: if you’re truly a victim of gaslighting and narcissistic abuse or even think you may be, definitely consult a professional and also consider this book, it saved my life
conflict is not abuse – sarah schulman – i cannot stress enough that if you have someone in your life is a) hyperbolic to a wild degree that you don’t know if they’re being honest, b) is somehow the center of chaos but it’s never their fault, and/or c) makes their “opps” your enemies without letting you ask any questions (aka most artistic communities) this is the book for you. overstatement of harm and repair are touchy subjects but she does a great job outlining it.
watch baby reindeer on netflix ASAP. it’s a spiritual cousin to i may destroy you that genuinely wrecked me. i’m still gutted from richard gadd’s story, honesty, and bravery
also monkey man was gas. there’s one shot of a fish's reaction shot in there that was magnifique but the whole movie made me wanna go learn more about the hijra, thanks dev patel, for a solid action flick with some dope storytelling.
part of the reason i took a big step back from comedy was the offstage disrespectful unseriousness, unchecked hyperbole, and the constant slow drip IV of drama we were always part of. it’s not to say that i never played the game in the beginning but when i learned better, i stepped away. nothing but love to all those i still see around and even those i don’t — just needed time and space to get some perspective.
where there was “power” (by which I mean professional opportunity, stage time, and for some, drink tickets and vibes), moths flocked to those flames. it was a game to play with people’s lives and careers and a lot of “power” was consolidated by gatekeepers under the guise of progressiveness, inclusivity, and radical kindness.
it was copsplay cosplaying as community, jestering as justice — what’s worse: people knew what they were doing. people knew it was wrong. gatekeepers wrapped bad behaviors in therapy speak, performative social justice, and professional carrots hung in front of hungry newcomers in exchange for their comedy co-sign (and in some cases, a venmo payout, iykyk).
any dissent or discomfort was spoken in whispers for fear of losing out on an opportunity…to have an opportunity. i got the texts, emails, and stark memories in dark bars as proof. community only in name, a tenuous and nebulous fear state in practice, and crumbling brick by brick in the present.
i guess even whimsical haha heehee clowncake power corrupts and corrodes all the same.
i went in search of true community and found the homies, the gang, the fellas, the cousins, the mandem, gyaldem, and the deydem. so many names to thank but a few specific one who helped pull me through the fog of vagueness and remind me who i was when i needed it the most: mikey, rama, miriam, milly, karen, jordana, yedoye, grace (hbd🎁), ray, jahmia, ashley, stephanie, ify, and jennie 🌱
big up to the youth out here risking their futures for palestine 💕✨🍉
to be continued Thursday, leave me a comment 💕