Sep 17

 Whoosh 4 days go past.

Work was meh this week. Again. Kinda getting into a routine where the 2 days I do are hardcore, busy, difficult, frustrating or all of the above. There's less time to smell the roses and I suspect the impact will be I enjoy the work less.

Allergies have kicked in hardcore, runny sneezy nose, itchy eyes, itchy palate, wheezy chest, bleh, some really shitty days, and of course, it has been raining almost continually. The rain it seems is no longer my friend. At least. This year. After a super hot and dry period ?

But on the whole I'm still doing good. Had a bit of a blip yesterday, the general malaise was back a touch, my mood also went down, some nausea. Uh huh. The fascinating thing is how much of a difference it makes. It's like switching the lights off. I go from being capable to being incapable. It's a shocking contrast and really very peculiar, this isn't your oh I feel tired, or oh I ache a bit. This is like hitting a wall at 50mph. With better days surrounding it, the dip back down into shit territory is all the more horrifying about just how debilitating it is. Really in the scale of things it was a minor dip. But definitely a warning, a headsup, ey, EY, still here fuckface, no miracle cure all.

Interesting.

I listened to some long covid stuff today. People relating their experiences. And then docs talking about what they were doing, their current understanding and research. The symptoms were like a checklist for me. Yep. Yep. Yep. Heh. It has made me consider writing a summary of what I've been through for the last few years to where I am now - feeling considerably better. Just another anecdotal record of the journey, but one that maybe someone can learn from, or compare to, or maybe even find helpful from the point of view of The Things I Have Tried. I think the benefit of my own journey is that I am very analytical, methodical and will stick with shit to see if any results happen. A more studied approach to my own situation.

At the moment I am still kinda enjoying just not being ill all the time, albeit the allergies really are putting a severe dent in my capability to do shit, when my eyes are super scratchy and crusty, mmm, tbh, it's hard to do much of anything except go to sleep !

This is where the swimming has an even more positive effect. It wipes out the allergies instantly. Not only do I feel better after swimming, it also alleviates the allergy problem. Uh huh. The pool is fast becoming my healing spot. Perhaps I just need to live in a chlorinated world from now on ! It has occurred to me whether this whole rise in allergies and bullshit is just yet another twist to the ongoing shifting symptoms of The Bullshit. A new chapter that has slowly shifted from one bit of my body to another. It wouldn't terribly surprise me to learn that I have now become a great deal more susceptible to allergies post Bullshit. Or maybe my body just doesn't appreciate the flip from ultra clean chlorinated pool into the real world.

Moving on.

Gaslighting. The word du jour for the last decade or so. Very much a key term in the zeitgeist of abusive relationships, feminism and all sorts of social politics.

What does it mean ? Someone mind fucking with someone else basically. In a variety of ways. From telling them they're crazy, making them doubt themselves, in the worst cases fucking with things to make them doubt their memory, but also a whole bunch of usual suspects about someone disagreeing with you and using shitty argument constructs. In that way, this is actually pretty common. Politics itself has become a grand art of "gaslighting", ignoring problems, distracting, whataboutery, rewriting history. In a way these kind of things are as old as human socialisation.

But of late it's been summarised as gaslighting. And achieved a lot of weight. Mainly from the guise of abusive relationships where the man controls the woman.

It's a very real thing. And forms a core part of an abusive setup. It can vary in strength and nefariousness, and at its less overwhelming end I find can be surprisingly common.

And this starts to be a problem. Because. Whilst gaslighting is a very real and serious problem. It also lies on a scale of there actually genuinely being a problem, and someone trying to tell another person there's a problem. Your memory sucks. You have a mental health problem. You're flipping out at people.

From one angle you could paint this as gaslighting. From another angle it's someone desperately trying to help someone in mental difficulty.

And if you think the difference is really simple, and just down to the person having a mental problem or not, yeah, that's not how mental problems work.

Often times the struggle to get someone to realise they have a problem is half the battle. And until you get to that point, they might see themselves as being gaslit. This goes for all sorts of issues, addictions and otherwise. Consider the alcoholic who does not see themselves as having a problem. Oh you're just nagging me. I am fine. It's YOU that have the problem. etc.

Interventions have long been a thing.

So somewhere on that line, you have at one end, a genuine problem and people trying to communicate that. And at the other, someone trying to manipulate - whether consciously or not - another. And somewhere inbetween towards the gaslighting end, you have *very* common scenarios of people just being people with each other. Using shitty methods to gain the upperhand in an argument. Making it personal or whataboutery or any of the rhetoric sins.

Tricky.

Some of the problem is that the term gaslighting has taken on a holy, unquestionable status of Always Being Right. In that world you can't tell anyone anything. Even if they are completely nuts. The customer is always right. Which is not true. And an over compensation towards always believing everything you hear.

This is on trend for a lot of the current zeitgeist. Over compensation towards belief in everything, and a hostility towards questioning and finding of facts. Don't think. Just react.

But very difficult. All of this begins to hide the fact of what a problem gaslighting can be and how easily abusive behaviour can ghost by unnoticed.

This of late has been a surprising find to me. That abuse in relationships is a whole lot more prevalent than I had thought. Perhaps I was blind to it before. But now I am seeing its ugly head pop up almost everywhere. And people by and large accept it. Even when it's really alarming. Psychological abuse is something that's really super poorly understood and tracked. And even tolerated as just part of a relationship. Not cool.

It's also something that strikes at people regardless of their intelligence, background or otherwise. Smart, strong people are just as suspectible to this shit as anyone else. Being smart or strong doesn't always convey into protection from abuse. It just makes their own self rationlisations or doubt about themselves even stronger.

It can be very hard to break out of abusive cycles. Very. Hard.

Watching others trapped in those situations is also very hard. More often than not, like many problems that assail people during their life, they have to want to solve their problems - you can't do that for them. You can lead a horse to water, but you cannot make it drink. And the abused so often just don't want to drink.