289. frisson

This past weekend I attended a four-day mini gaming convention with some friends of mine. It’s a biannual event, with one in the spring and one in the fall. The spring one is usually smaller, but it’s still a bit of a stretch for this highly sensitive introvert because of the sheer number of people.

Thankfully though, the combination of meds, therapy, going on walks (thereby getting some vitamin D), and taking introverting breaks helped.

A couple of years ago I attended this con prior to starting grad school, after which my schedule (and inability to cope with most social situations) did not permit my going. This year though, with all the positive steps forward, I decided it was a good thing to test out my new outlook on humanity.

Overall, with a few instances of feeling overwhelmed, it was a good experience. For me, it was less about the gaming and more the freedom from the normal responsibilities of life to just “be” and refresh my wells of creativity.

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On one of the evenings, I had a surprisingly frank conversation with a few people about emerging awareness of their sexual orientation or acceptance of a shift thereto. Some of the conversation was about poly relationships and the realities of dating – or being partnered with – multiple people.

(To me, that sounds exhausting, but I’m glad it works for other people.)

Another of the longer conversations though was with a guy I met last time who is coming to terms with the fact that he’s probably bisexual. This is complicated by the fact that he’s married and hadn’t really had that talk with his wife yet.

This was further complicated by the fact that we appeared to be attracted to each other, and actually talked about that, something that may have been facilitated by how much we’d had to drink before this conversation. At first, he said he thought he might be “drunk bi,” but later acknowledged that he’s been noticing this when he’s sober, too.

Apparently later he confided to another friend of mine that he’s now fairly certain he’s bi and was going to have that talk with his wife over the weekend.

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Speaking of shifts in one’s sexuality, I’ve become aware of experiencing a recent uptick in attraction to guys. On one of the long walks over this weekend I tried to parse through my feelings about this, ponder what might be going on, and assess whether I’m actually demisexual these days or if it’s a mix of anxiety and growing up repressed.

One of the truths to come out of therapy is that I spend a lot of time in my head analyzing and picking apart everything and that my brain often works much faster than my mind. By the time my mind gets around to even considering something, my brain has already fast-forwarded to the conclusion it has determined absolutely will happen, which is usually the worst-case scenario.

This bodes not well for living in the moment and taking things as they come.

Another truth is the reality that I’m pretty rigid when it comes to things like sexuality… or if I’m being honest, most things. It’s funny though because I’m actually pretty open to change—even though I still like to have some degree of control over those changes, even if that just means knowing as much as possible about what’s coming next.

Now that I think of it, this rigidity is probably my parents manifesting again.

This was a theme that came through in a tarot reading I did for myself on Friday evening during an introverting break.

(If anyone is curious, you can see the spread here: https://bit.ly/2IRFG2P.)

I was reminded by Temperance and reversed Judgement of the need to be kinder to myself and to find balance—essentially becoming friends with my inner critic and acknowledging the fears and worries that get expressed as negativity.

The reversed Page of Wands blocking my Magician makes that pretty clear.

Breaking free of unhealthy cycles of thinking and action was another message that resonated. Fixating on worst-case scenarios is one way my mind protects me from hurt or disappointment, which is also self-defeating but understandably fear-based.

Taking back control of my life and not fixating as much on what I don’t have was yet another theme that came out of the spread.

As was learning to manage my emotions better. Hmmmm…

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This led to a couple of insights on my walk on Sunday.

First, in regards to demisexuality, I don’t think there has to be conflict with experiencing an uptick in attraction. The nature of these attractions continues to be chiefly emotional rather than sexual.

What I do think has been going on the last few years is the fear to even entertain those attractions when they arise.

Again, my brain is awfully good at shutting down any hopes or possibilities.

And a big thing for me is the fear of rejection, because without fail, every guy I’ve been attracted to has wanted nothing to do with me beyond being friends. (This goes the other way for me, too.) So at the first sign of interest, my brain quickly fast-forwards the tape to the end of the scene where yet again I’m getting let down.

It would be easy to dismiss this if there weren’t ample justification for the fear.

The reality is I do tell and re-tell myself these stories about how no one is interested in me and how I’m going to literally die alone and forgotten someday.

Another reality is that I seemingly have zero control over who I’m attracted to (e.g., a married, currently monogamous, and emergently bisexual guy), so it’s impossible to predict when and where it will occur.

So am I unconsciously selecting guys who will fullfill my brain’s worst-case scenario to maintain control over a situation in which there is little control?

And what do I even want??

And how to loosen up but stay true to myself?

288. plasticity

Hi, friends.

The 454 intervening days between my last post and today have been quite eventful.

For one, I finally started seeing a psychiatrist and learned that the symptoms I’ve been experiencing for a while are likely due to the combination of anxiety and depression. I’m currently on Lamictal to stabilize my ever-changing mood.

I discovered I have a pretty severe vitamin D deficiency, which could explain my energy level, cognitive slowing, and back pain. It could even exacerbate my depression.

I also finally got around to scheduling an appointment to see a new primary care doctor, which is something I’ve been avoiding for a while because of how anxious it made me.

So I’m gradually getting a handle on my health and planning for the long term.

I’m also seeing a new therapist who is helping me process the complex trauma of growing up in a deeply dysfunctional and emotionally abusive home. It’s difficult to pinpoint any one incident from those years since it was more like a steady stream of hurtful and toxic messages that were repeated so often that I simply accepted them since there was nothing to compare it to. It was just normal.

Finally, in 2018 I co-wrote an original musical over the spring summer and music directed a concert in the fall, so from about April to November was an absolute wash. It was often stressful and exhausting, but it was so good to get back into being creative.

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The work I’m currently doing in therapy is to identify ways that trauma has shaped my life, how I view myself, and the myriad of ways my parents manifest in my unconscious behavior. For instance, my mother is a control freak, possibly a consequence of moving around a lot as a child and not having a stable environment, which results in going overboard to hold on to people and relationships and thereby driving them away.

For me, this often manifests in anxiety around uncertainty and in outbursts of anger when I feel out of control or blocked in achieving a goal. I also don’t like surprises.

My father had a truly fucked up childhood, enduring physical abuse from his father, his mother dying when he was six, his father remarrying a woman whose son tortured him, and finally being sent to a boys’ boarding school. As a result, he was often emotionally withdrawn as a father but quick to discipline or criticize.

Consequently, I have serious issues with authority figures and get incredibly angry whenever I feel misunderstood or betrayed.

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It’s remarkable how much trauma resembles a virus, infecting each generation. There’s even evidence that trauma can be passed on at the level of our DNA.

Because I never felt safe or able to be myself as a child (especially once I understood the ramifications of my sexuality), I have lived in a survival mode, anticipating rejection or judgment whether or not there’s evidence of it. I resort to wearing masks in social situations where I feel uncomfortable or uncertain, limiting my ability to truly connect with people, which my therapist and I have identified as a core need.

Also, because my parents never let me fail growing up or overreacted when I did, I was never immunized against stress or disappointment, so both of things hit me harder than most people. And because I was homeschooled for most of my childhood, I had little opportunity to develop social or coping skills for dealing with adversity.

Consequently, I often feel a lack of agency or fear making wrong or miscalculated decisions for myself. I’ve avoided seeking out a primary care physician for just that reason, worried that the patient-doctor relationship will be a poor fit, that I’ll freeze up or forget to ask important questions, or that they won’t be well versed in LGBTQ issues.

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Because of the deeply repressive environment and culture in which I was raised, I’ve been spending a lot of time thinking about the effect that it had on my ability to thrive as a sexual being. Because that is an important aspect of our evolutionary development, and it is something that’s important to me.

Since discovering I was demisexual nearly three years ago, I’ve wondered what effect my upbringing had on my development and the absence of lust I experience. The closest thing to it for me is essentially an intense emotional crush. But I have wondered if my being on the asexual spectrum is somehow related to having grown up repressed, and the concurrent effects of stress, trauma, and worry on all of it.

I do not experience primary attraction, that instant attraction one feels based on some quality of another person that may lead to sexual desire. What I do experience is a secondary attraction that develops over time as the emotional connection grows deeper.

Source: AVENwiki

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In his matrix of needs and satisfiers, Manfred Max-Neef identified how axiological human needs (such as subsistence, affection, identity, and freedom) intersect with the existential human needs of being, having, doing, and interacting.

I’ve been thinking about this in relation to being demisexual and why I’m feeling frustrated and stuck on the subject of dating and sex.

For most gay men, it seems, relationships begin with sex and either dissolve or progress to something deeper if there’s enough compatibility (emotional or sexual).

For me, relationships begin with the emotional connectedness and eventually progress to the physical. Because I’m not purely asexual. I do have a sex drive, but 99.9% of the time it’s not directed towards anyone.

There’s a disconnect somewhere on “Affection” axis.

It seems that that’s a problem for many gay or bisexual men who expect to have sex on the first or second date—as if to establish sexual compatibility at the outset. I, however, move at a comparatively glacial pace.

And this is where I feel frustrated, because while I’d like to get back into dating, finding someone with whom I’m compatible has seemed virtually impossible.

More later.