IMPRACTICAL
COGNITIVE
RESPONSE
or, subjective writing on objective subjectivity, and the art of internal forgiveness and cognitive art™.
I hate long texts, they intimidate me, please press the Forgiven button here to skip to the end.
The proper way to be is to maintain a Practical Cognitive Response during adverse conditions. However, as I’m learning, objectively, about myself, I tend to naturally lean towards the impractical.
Impractical Cognitive Response is brought to you today by way of complex post traumatic stress disorder, intermittent self awareness and the lack thereof.
I have problems with processing behaviours of other people, specifically holding them to a standard of behavior, -which I believe, has mellowed over time, but for all intents and purposes, is impractical, as it has a tendency to get dinged frequently, causing cumulative internal negative cognitive response.
I have identified that I now have some expectations, something I believed I was immune to until recently. My expectations are, basically, as I’m still figuring them out with the professionals, based on a set of parameters which, I hate to admit it; manners & politeness. I hate it because I remember as a child, how that thinking and behavior was banged into me by others who weren’t practitioners of their beliefs. I hated the humiliation that came with that protocol training. I have vague memories of prefabricated buildings with eggshell blue walls and the burned underside of piano keys.
However, here I am, with these expectations, now as an adult. Those vague memories don’t make much sense but have something to do with early humiliation, loneliness, ostracization and arithmetic.
Im also learning about boundaries. Im learning how not just to have them, but how to internally justify them to myself, which is is fundamental stuff, the most basic sense of self and integrity, which I obviously didn’t have as a child. Learning these things is like going through puberty part deux. Some of us are born with these necessities instilled from the get-go, some of us spend our childhoods in survival mode, which lays waste to everything else of lesser importance, all of that shit comes back in adulthood and by that time, there are standard societal expectations of you, which are unbearable because you are still doing remedial studies that you missed out on earlier.
With age, the brain hardens, and the learning isn’t easy, and it comes with radical change, and the broaching of safety zones; I have to feel safe to make any moves.
These terms help. Clinical language about one’s self, and what that self is, from a semi outside perspective: audience of one- myself. Otherwise known as objectivity, but that word I reserve for others, or art, or critical thinking; things I actually like. That’s not to say that I don’t like myself, I do, mostly, for reasons I’ll get to later, or maybe never. Maybe I’ll keep that stuff to myself and be happy with it, or just not discuss it for other reasons I don’t want to consider now, because I have something more pressing to do.
My method of communicating with myself is like negotiation. The closest thinking I can think of, in literary terms, is that of Samuel Beckett, or Louis Ferdinand Celine, though these are merely similarities, and not necessarily the minutiae of my cognizance.
Negotiation, because in order for me to get a thing out, I feel like I have to substantiate it, reinforce it, and I do that by a mixture of anecdote, example, and literary fact. I use this as foundation building material, but ultimately, I think, this looks like hedonistic digression. Maybe it is, but I like to think of it as cognitive art™, so I embrace it.
Again, audience of one.
I record my therapy sessions. I have been using these recordings as fodder for learning new audio editing programs, learning how to make podcasts and learning how to formulate dialogue for radio and the short span of attention syndrome. I say umm and ahh a lot. So much so, that I can now visually identify them in a wave file. I am 90% correct when I don’t listen to the audio and make cuts. Thankfully these are non-destructive programs..
There is value in the pause. Gaps in dialogue that are filled with the whirring cogs of thought and structure. They give me clarity upon listening, which shows me both my internal process and an external struggle. Objectively, they present a sense of genuineness, subjectively, I know what they are; shuffling paragraphs and chapters of explanations and foundational texts into position like an psychological air traffic controller, shifting pieces to fit within the allotted timeframe that the space of therapy provides.
I think thats enough for now, I’m actually satisfied I was able to get this out, insofar as out can be.
