What is… a Good Conversation?

I often say that my posts are conversations with myself. I’m not sure if you believe me when I say that… I’m not sure that it matters whether you believe me or not. Anyway I thought that I’d show you what I mean, give you a visual of sorts… I didn’t actually realise I was doing that until I reached the end of the post.

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Melanie of Sparks From A Combustible Mind asked an interesting question in this week’s Share Your World:

Had any good conversations with yourself lately? Did you listen to yourself? And how’d that work out for you?

Melanie credited Ally Bean of The Spectacled Bean for the question, which can be found at the end of this witty and wacky post: Talking To Myself: Evidence Of Impending Decrepitude Or Productivity Hack?

I read that post and several others on Ally’s blog, and decided to press the “Follow” button since Ally has a wonderful writing style which is conversational, as though she is both talking to herself and others.

What I loved the most is that she sounds like she’s listening to herself as she writes.

I only pressed “Like” on one of the posts which I read of hers…

This one – What The Sheriff Saw: A Story About Yours Truly Doing Her Gardening Chores by The Spectacled Bean – as it’s a brilliant play on perspectives.

because I still haven’t finished that conversation I’m having with myself about the “Like” button.

Thus far I’ve figured out that my problem isn’t with the button itself, or the way people use it, it’s to do with an old issue which has attached itself to the button… and yes, that issue is connected to narcissists (don’t worry, I’m not going to elaborate, this post isn’t about that).

Other me (aka the one who often notices things connected to aspects of narcissism): Let’s elaborate, maybe we’ll finally figure that personal puzzle out if we do…

Me who is in charge of writing this post (aka post-writing me): No, I’m experimenting with not elaborating like I usually do because I’m working on a different personal puzzle.

Other me: But maybe the two puzzles are connected and elaborating on one will solve the other too.

Post-writing me: Exactly…

Me who is responsible for going off on tangents (aka tangential me): Oh, you used the word “exactly” remember that other post we read where the author used that word to reply to a comment and it triggered one commenter off on a logical rant at the author because they used that word. And then the author tried to explain it and didn’t explain it well at all… they lost complete control and they were trying so hard to control the narrative.

Other me: The problem was that the author wanted to set the narrative, tell others what to think, how to perceive, and that kind of conversation never ends well… but it can be a good conversation nevertheless.

Post-writing me: I’m going to add the link to that post in case anyone reading this is interested in exploring further or just wants to know what is being discussed, needs context, or wants to have their own internal conversation about it.

12 Ways to Spot a Female Misogynist – Women who hate women may not consciously realize it. But their acts reveal them by Berit Brogaard D.M.Sci., Ph.D

Me who researches things inside and out, usually due to Tangential me’s promptings (aka Explorer me): Reading that post lead to some interesting further research, both outside and within… it’s worth noticing where we have contempt issues and then figuring out why. That post tied in nicely with Jeff Green’s take on Pluto in the 11th house/Aquarius which we read after reading Midara’s post that was “predicting the future” as in taking a stab using astrology at what will happen after transiting Pluto finishes the mess it is making of the old order in Capricorn and moves into the next mess it’s going to make for all of us in Aquarius.

Post-Writing me: Hang on, sorting out the link…

Preview of Pluto in Aquarius – Deepfakes by Midara on Elsa Elsa

And here’s an excerpt from Jeff Green’s book:

“Individuals who have Pluto in the Eleventh House or Aquarius have been learning to break free from crystallized and outmoded forms of self-definition as reflected through the composite effect of society, parents, friends or anything else by which the individual was influenced in his or her early years. In effect, the evolutionary intent has been to shed skins of the past.

…

All of these individuals must learn how to detach, objectify, and sever their most cherished visions as to how things should be, when those ideas and visions are not appropriate to the situation at hand. Through environmental challenges or confrontations they must learn to objectively and impersonally change what must be changed. The potential trap is to remain detached in stoic defiance against those who do not agree with them – not to change.

…

Common characteristics of those with Pluto in the Eleventh House or Aquarius include: behavior ranging from being extremely anti-social to following the crowd to rabidly defending tradition, intrinsic feeling of being different, obsessive and compulsive thought patterns, innovative, unique, creative, a good friend, cycles of utter detachment within cycles of intense focus upon themselves, potential for sudden and erratic behavior, iconoclastic, hard to really know or define correctly, aloof.”

excerpt from Pluto: The Evolutionary Journey of the Soul, volume 1, chapter on Pluto in the Eleventh House or Aquarius by Jeff Green

Tangential me: While you were typing out that excerpt from the book, parts of it reminded me of the posts of that other blogger we have also recently pressed the “Follow” button on, especially something they posted… was it today?

Post-writing me: This is the post by Millennial Life Crisis which we came across while exploring WordPress’ Recommended Posts which made us press “Follow”:

Life With Social Anxiety – Millennial Life Crisis

Other me: I was particularly taken by what Vee said in the very first line of the post – “I once read somewhere that social anxiety is self consciousness on steroids. That’s actually a pretty perfect description of it.” – as I have social anxiety although people often think I don’t because to them “I don’t look like I do” …although nowadays I don’t have it like I used to… and it does indeed make you extremely self-conscious, painfully “mindful” of everything you say, do, are, appear to be, how you are dressed, how you sit, what expression you’re wearing on your face, how you may be sweating (which you often are if you suffer from social anxiety and are out in public) and how it affects those around you even if they’re strangers on a bus who really haven’t noticed you at all.

Explorer me: And all of it tied in with that post on Happiness… so many posts about happiness at the moment online.

Happy People – A deep and revealing dive into who is and isn’t happy and why by Lawrence R. Samuel Ph.D.

Other me: Alain de Botton has been obsessed with finding happiness for decades, some of the articles are connected to him and whatever he’s doing now in his search for it…

Post-writing me: You didn’t bookmark the article we read connected to Alain de Botton’s happiness project, did you, Explorer me?

Explorer me: No, sorry, I was going to but then Other me saw Alain de Botton’s name and “noped” the action.

Me who observes all the other me’s (aka Observer me): Why does he annoy you so much?

Other me: I’m not entirely sure, I know it’s unfair to him and I should not be so attached to my annoyance with him, but… it isn’t one of those random people-who-bug-you-for-no-discernable-reason…

Explorer me: Those are so intriguing to explore! Especially when it’s someone you haven’t met, don’t know personally, have no logical reason to like or dislike because they’re not part of your tiny world within a smaller world within a medium world within a large world…

Tangential me: Oh that reminds me…

Observer me: Shhh! Tangential me, not now! Listen…

Other me: I did read one of his books on happiness and found it depressing, and did watch a bit of some TV show he did before tuning out since I found him boring, but the bug didn’t kick in until that interaction I had with him on Twitter years ago, when he was whining about being stuck at the airport, grumbling about all the people who were annoying him there, it was everyone else’s fault that he was unhappy… and I may have pointed out to him that he wasn’t practicing what he preached and expected others to practice because he preached it to them to do so.

Observer me: When you say that you “may have” what do you mean by that, what version of “may” are you using?

Other me: It’s the one which goes with not being able to recall if I had the interaction with him in my head or not. I know that I followed him on Twitter and was reading a stream of live-tweets he wrote during his airport troubles. I’m certain that I @-ted him, but I think I may have not said what I wanted to say – which was that for someone obsessed with being Happy he seemed to be more inclined towards being Grumpy – and instead I was polite… and he wasn’t polite in return, he may have ignored me and yet he was asking people to @-him. I just didn’t say what he wanted to hear. Or maybe I did and he did reply and that annoyed me…

Observer me: You got annoyed with yourself for repeating an old pattern…?

Other me: Yes.

Tangential me: Yesterday we, me and Explorer me, looked up his astro…

Explorer me: That was so weird, wasn’t it!? He’s younger than us and we always thought he was at least 10 years older!!!

Tangential me: Remember that BBC TV Series – Grumpy Old Men… that was funny! Love Arthur Smith!!!

Other me: I think maybe that’s why we assumed he was older… because he expresses himself like an old man who is oh so wise for his years, he’s placed himself on a pedestal of ancient philosopher.

Observer me: You do that too sometimes… according to some, you do it more than just “sometimes”, and it’s worth considering why it keeps coming up in one form or another recently in conversations = it needs to be explored.

Explorer me: I’ve already started doing research, when it was briefly mentioned that we were too cynical…

Cynical me: I’m staying out of this. I promised to go quiet for a while as best as I could… I need a break and you could all use a break from me too, so could others outside of us too it seems.

Explorer me: …and found this the other day which made us all go Hmmm… especially the bit we firmly rejected which has a word that came up constantly in that post and comments on Misogynistic Women.

definition of “cynical” – it’s from Oxford so it must have gone to one of the prestigious mental institutions there, right? I wonder if it visited the Asholean Museum (that’s a terrible play on the word… I know but it makes me chuckle).
The chart at the bottom is interesting… might need to explore that further.

Tangential me: The author of that post set themselves up as the “expert” and viewed everyone else as “not-the-expert” and…

Other me: That wasn’t the main issue though which the readers of the post had with the post and the author, although they did eventually mention that as an issue in the comments. The main issue was that the author was sitting in an ivory tower, judging others from her special place high up in i’m-perfectville, and didn’t include herself in the narrative she was creating for all other women. If she’d just said something along the lines of: “I also am prone to doing this and writing about it is helping me to understand the how and why of my part in this story…”

Observer me: We all do what she did when we’re working on a personal puzzle but aren’t really seeing all of the pieces… we all have our blind spots.

Blind spot me: We tend to notice in others what is in us too, the problems we have with them, what we see as being “wrong” with them, is part of our own inner personal puzzle of us – it’s one of the reasons relationships are so important and so complex. We rarely notice in others what isn’t within us too, or what is in us but is resolved – those things don’t bother us from within thus they don’t bother us from outside of us when they’re in others.

Observer me: That sounds like something I would say… are you just repeating something I said to you as though it’s yours, and not giving credit where credit is due?

Other me: Blind spot me never listens… but hears things and then thinks they’re things they thought.

Observer me: I know… but maybe one day…

Cynical me: Hope’s a bitch, you know why it was in the box, right, because it’s the worst… sorry, shhh, I know, shhh…

Tangential me: But the “expert” thing stood out to me more than the other issues because we personally know how much that triggers people. It triggers us when others do it, and when we do it it triggers others. Remember that time we used the word “expert” about ourselves and how it annoyed those people on a forum…

Other me: I’ll never forget that…

Observer me: You used the word “never” but… you might forget it at some point when it is no longer necessary to remember it.

Other me: Sigh… At this point in time I’ll never forget that because the forum was for victims of abuse, and those people on the forum knew that as that’s why they were on the forum. They also knew that the person who shared a link to our post was a victim of abuse who stated that they had personally found our post helpful for their recovery… so their behaviour towards that person was bang out of order. They ranted at her rather than us about our post… which really pissed us off.

Post-writing me: It was triggering but also a very insightful experience – one of many mistakes I’ve made while blogging from which I have learned lessons which have helped with personal puzzles. Not sure if I blog better because of it, probably not because this isn’t about that for me, but…

Observer me: Nice save!

Post-writing me: I added a disclaimer to that post, explaining why and how I had used the word “expert” and I asked people to be considerate of others when it comes to discussions of narcissistic abuse. It was strange to have to ask people to be considerate in that context, because you’d think that would be a given.

The post which I felt needed a disclaimer: How To Play The Narcissist’s Game

Other me: It’s not a given if some of those discussing narcissistic abuse are narcissists. Narcissists don’t intuitively or instinctively know how to behave considerately in scenarios which require empathy until you tell them how to behave that way in that scenario and similar ones to appear to be the way they want to appear to be. The average narcissist wants to appear to have empathy because society considers it to be a desirable trait to have, maybe by instructing them to appear to have it, through mimicry, with pretend practice they might develop it?

Cynical me: …

Tangential me: That reminds me of that other forum about narcissistic abuse where someone shared a link to one of our old posts recently, and what they said and asked of the other forum members when they shared the link…

Post-writing me: I guess I’ll just… here’s the link to that forum post:

40 Things to Expect: Narcissistic Abuse – Reddit

Observer me: What they said was interesting – “The author below suggests an approach that is radically different than entire Internet’s view on narcissist.“

Post-writing me: Then they added the link to my old post – Are You A Magnet For Narcissists?

Other me: Then they asked – “Has anyone tried above approach? Any tips?” – which was interesting.

Explorer me: Yes, it was… some thoughts I had about that question they asked and how they introduced it were – If it interests you, spoke to you in some way, why not just try it out for yourself and then see… why do others need to try it first for you? So they’ll make the mistakes and you won’t? If you’re hesitating about it and need someone else to weigh in on it… maybe it’s not for you and you should move on.

Post-writing me: And yes I sometimes say things in my posts which aren’t what everyone else is saying… but lately I’ve read a few posts on narcissists written by professionals which have stated things I’ve said which others found to be “way out there”. Such as when I said that narcissists do have a version of empathy… and got some “don’t you dare say that ever” feedback about it.

Here’s a post written by a professional wherein he states – “In fact, narcissists may very well have empathy in a twisted sense.“- which is almost word for word what I said about narcissists having empathy (and no, I’m not saying he got it from me, he didn’t, he got it from someone else whom he credits in his post, I’m just saying that I’m not the only one who thinks that):

Tangled: Rapunzel’s 5-Story Tower of Narcissistic Abuse How and why Rapunzel got in the tower of abuse? Answer: Wasn’t her fault. Pt 3 by David C. Strubler Ph.D.

Tangential me: Reminds me of that post, nothing to do with narcissists, but everything to do with blogging and writing things which others might decide is shit and tell you that’s what they think of it and you:

5 Ways That Blogging Is Awesome!!!!!!!!!! – Dysfunctional Literacy

Other me: Why are you linking to that post, you commented because the author seemed to want feedback and your comment was ignored, no reply from author, but other comments weren’t ignored, they got replies from author, so the author wants feedback but… doesn’t give it in return, because they matter but you don’t, surely…

Tangential me: Because it’s a good post and I’m the part of the us of me which doesn’t care about things like that, there’s always an interesting tangent and I found one from the non-reply, so I appreciate the experience and it’s a good post.

Explorer me: There’s always something to explore whichever way things go…

Observer me: Some people may find the fact that you’ve “closed comments” on old posts to be frustrating (A few inventive-thinking souls who decided to put their comments for old posts on new posts have said as much…) in a similar way as you find it frustrating when bloggers ignore comments, not just yours but those of others too which are in some ways yours too… are you the keeper of ignored comments?

Other me: What?…

Explorer me: OMG what’s that… I need to explore that whatever it is!!!

Post-writing me: Can I explain why I “closed comments” on old posts…

Observer me: Not now, we all know why and agreed to do it after a lengthy debate about it, instead let’s get back to the previous discussion, the one which prompted all of us to reread the old Magnet post which we haven’t done in a while to see if we could see what that person saw in it.

Explorer me: What was most interesting was that we’ve reread that post many times in the past, it’s sort of a “glory days” post for this blog, but this was the first time we reread it and read it completely differently from the before.

Other me: I know it was weird, it was the first time I felt completely disconnected from that post. I’m no longer attached to it and what it meant for me when I wrote it and the different meanings it took on throughout the years after I wrote it. In some ways it was written by a me who doesn’t live here anymore, however the advice at the end is something I did which worked for me and still works for me when I find myself in a narcissistic situation.

Explorer me: Thanks to me and my need to explore, experiment, and discover new ways of being and doing…

Observer me: Thanks to all of us me’s who reside and have resided within the whole me…

Other me: I think my advice was good for me but probably bad for others, because they’re not me, and aren’t used to being a strange mistake-making mess.

Tangential me: Reminds me of that person who plagiarised your narcissist questions post and then kept deleting it and reposting it – I wonder if they deleted and reposted because they couldn’t handle the reactions, the comments, they got to it. The first time we noticed they’d done that there were loads of comments on it but we didn’t read those at the time…

Answering Questions About Narcissists…

Explorer me: If only we had… that would have been intriguing!

Other me: We were too flummoxed by someone plagiarising our post… that was so weird. We still find it strange that people find something in what we say, but in those days… for someone to plagiarise us!?! And it was trigger too because of our experience of narcissists doing that but not quite like that. We were confused. We couldn’t figure out how to perceive it or what it meant.

Observer me: It gave us a new perspective on ourselves.

Explorer me: We did eventually read the comments but it was after one of their delete and reposts, and there was just one comment from someone else which said something along the lines of – you must be hated by every narcissist in New Jersey for what you said in this post – and one from the poster who didn’t answer the comment (how could they since they hadn’t written it) but instead went off on this self-narrative of having been a writer since they were 5 years old.

Post-writing me: Guys, hey, it’s nice to chat but can we please focus on this post in the here and now, I’ve been trying to write this but you keep…

Tangential me: Oh, you called us “guys” which reminds me of that post we read yesterday evening while browsing the WordPress Reader which we were going to comment on to inform the author of a mistake he might have wanted to correct since he explained that he had changed the name of the person he was writing about to preserve their anonymity but then he blurted out their real name (or maybe he just gave them another anonymous name!?).

It was a post on Pointless Overthinking … I’m kind of thinking it might be that time to press “Follow” again on that blog and do the opposite. It’s a great blog with interesting posts from different bloggers… but my interest in it is waning.

Other me: But then we decided not to comment for several reasons, one of which was because the guy who wrote it wasn’t listening to himself as he wrote, which is why he made that mistake, or at least it was not the sort of self-listening which boded well for someone who might comment and point out that kind of mistake. Pointing out mistakes is always tricky… and we were tired, it was late…

Observer me: Excuses…

Explorer me: We should check to see if anyone else noticed it and commented on it, and how he reacted to that – bet the name has been changed and the mistake has been corrected.

Observer me: Why were you really reluctant to comment?

Other me: You know the answer to that.

Post-writing me: So, we’re not going to write this post… shall I give up on it?

Tangential me: Reminds me of that quote we came across yesterday…

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If you made it through the entire post from start through middle to finish…

How confused are you now on a scale of ram to fish?

One thought I had before this post which this post kind of perhaps maybe confirmed for me was that – And that’s why I’m an Introvert level: Hermit.

I have so many different types of people inside of me that I don’t need that many different types of people outside of me… Mmmm… I wonder how I can absorb and integrate the rest of those outside of me into me?

If that sounded sinister… well, it is Scorpio season!

Post-writing me: I didn’t add any pictures, maybe I should add a picture? But where and of what?

Tangential me: That reminds me of that tiny slug on a mushroom photo you took the other day… what about that as it goes with what Explorer me said about worlds?

Observer me: What I would like to know is why we kept adding an extra “e” to “Explorer” turning it into “Explorere” and why we didn’t leave it but corrected the typo?

Explorere me: Ah! What if it isn’t a typo!?! Let’s explore it further…

Other me: That’s it from us… over to you!

Post-writing me: Hey, Other, that’s what I usually say… never mind, I’m done with all of you, and I’m just going to press publish on this mess, we can’t possibly reread it again or you’ll just add more chaos to it… when all I wanted to do was clean the mess up!

All together me: Hahahahahahhahaha… nice one, p-w me!