Judy2

...* the friend has now sent me a link to the university's counsellor lol. not what i wanted to achieve, but okay.

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i have been reflecting a little in the past few days, and have also felt through some things....so i thought i would share some insights or try to put into words some of the shifts in awareness that i have experienced. *my nighttime dreams keep reflecting to me that i am still ashamed of my body weight, and, essentially, ashamed of having recovered from anorexia and being in a healthier, bigger body now. today was actually the first time that i acknowledged this properly, and maybe i am breaking the spell at least a little bit by writing about it. i keep thinking so much about external circumstances that are not quite right yet....but there also seems to be this big internal blockage, and it got me thinking today what potential i could unleash by acknowledging and overcoming this. as of now, i study psychology but have not told a single person in this city that i almost lost my life to an eating disorder, or that i was diagnosed with a personality disorder a few years later. it's tough for me to talk about it, for some reason. but maybe i could do good in the world by acknowledging what it took to survive these things...even though a part of me hates me for it, and for 'being healthy' now? i am still so focussed on not being enough, and having been at a bmi of 10.5 still seems like a much bigger achievement than the mental labour it took to let that go - even though i know what infinite degrees of courage it took. but i feel i have no right to talk about that anymore, since i am healthy now, and nobody who looks at me now would ever believe me that i once was underweight. in short, it is still a struggle to find a stable sense of self (outside of being the illest, thinnest, daintiest, weakest girl in the room) even after so many years. *i am in a sad mood. the past two weeks of lectures and seminars had me really stressed, since i am not quite content with where i am at in my life. it got me thinking about the following paradox: that i believe i am not enough....and so i am also being way too much at the same time, trying way too hard, ....instead of letting myself be. there is a certain elegance about Being that i miss in my life, and that i wish to express and embody more of. in more practical terms, i can tell that some of my friends at uni feel that i am way too ambitious and stressed - which is true, so i tried to do the mature thing and communicate to two of my closer friends why exactly i behave in this way....and this communication in itself made me a little sad or emotional, i don't know why. but i figured it is important to foster some authentic relationships, too... just as important as i believe it is to 'be productive' or 'make progress' - if not more. in the context of these two social dynamics, i also noticed that the core belief "i am annoying" keeps coming up, and i noticed it and held and felt myself throughout that. it had me thinking, though, because i tend to believe that the others are perfect and i am flawed... but they might also have their reasons for feeling annoyed, not understanding me, judging me... and again, that was just one more reason to seek an honest conversation and express truthfully what is really going on with me, and to give them a chance to connect with me on a different level... don't know if that makes sense, but it is part of what made me so emotional. i suppose i have noticed that i try to do too much on my own, i am alone with my own mind so often, i am so absorbed in it, even if i have a larger social circle nowadays... so that's not really healthy. i won't be happy if i rush through life at the cost of joyful presence, friendship, and authentic connection. *with the above in mind, i tried to be more conscious on my walk yesterday. i picked a thistle, plucked away its thorns and twirled it in my hands, brushed its soft petals across my cheeks and forehead... and i connected a little more with the present moment and also the love inside me. i know i am so stressed, constantly struggling, and the present moment is never good enough, i am never good enough....but i know how much love is inside me, how much good will, which is always trying to make things good. ...now i forgot the rest, but something to do with love. the above is just words, but it is all interconnected through presence...so this is all a little more profound when not seen in isolation:) *i have also been thinking a little more about my father, and that i hate him sometimes...but i also love him, and i would be devastated if he died. then i thought about why i like to think about people dying and why i kind of enjoy being sad about it...and it occurred to me that it is the permission to feel and be fully present with what is that i find appealing? i wouldn't have to hold myself together if something really bad happened, i'd be allowed to cry and scream and hyperventilate in front of everybody. maybe it's a relief to understand myself better in this regard now.

This winter term, one of the lecture courses I am looking forward to the most is personality psychology. I read up on it a little and one of the central questions - that also happens to be one of the key reasons for why I am interested in psychology - is if personality is consistent/ unchangeable throughout someone's life. From what I gather so far, it is, for the most part, although neuroticism may decrease with age while conscientiousness will increase. However, your "peer ranking" will stay the same...so if you meet with some old friends 60 years from now, chances are that despite a general increase in conscientiousness, the most conscientious one of you at age 20 will still be the most conscientious one at 80, and so forth... Now, as this is a community with the specific goal of personal development, I wonder if any of you would be interested in sharing how you believe your personality has or hasn't changed throughout the years (the exact period of time this commentary may cover depends on your age, but technically, from childhood until the present). I believe changes in introversion/extraversion are probably going to be the most obvious ones, but the other dimensions you could comment on are conscientiousness, openness to experience, neuroticism and agreeableness (or anything else you may have to add). I also wonder what the implications are for someone like me who ranks high on the neuroticism (=negative affect) dimension if personality is not as fluid or changeable as we may think....in my experience, I can put a lot of effort into therapising and changing this aspect of my personality, I can make efforts to be mentally healthy...but the predisposition to negative affect very much stays the same. ...anyway, i'd love to hear your thoughts on all this:)

In your series on Conscious Politics, I found your position on gun regulation interesting, as I am European and biased in the opposite direction. Essentially, you talk about drastically reducing access to guns, but then you go on to reassure (American) listeners that their weapons will not be taken away completely and they may still use them to "defend themselves". This seemed to me like a cultural adaptation you may have repeated, instead of really thinking from scratch and asking if weapons are even necessary for the average citizen. It was just a half sentence and not an elaborate argument you made, but I found it striking when I listened to you.

you should ask them all at least a hundred times using different accounts, then cross-compare lol:)

Sundays are annoying. I've tried my best to make them more fun, and usually that works until I hit mid-afternoon and I feel bored and lonely again. Throughout the week, I am so stressed with appointments, but Sundays are just... blank. I've been on two walks, listened to a new podcast twice, done my laundry, studied, read, revised some French on Duolingo, embroidered, polished my nails, cleaned my kitchen, cooked lunch... and I feel empty. Had I set a time to meet some friends, I probably would have felt stressed and uncomfortable because of it - but I feel lonely as is and wish they would make time for me on the weekends. It's not for a lack of passion or interests that I am so bored. Things are just difficult to coordinate, and I can't be a cook, dietitian, cookbook author, language teacher, and psychology student all at once...so while I do have to decide on a few things at a time (because of conflicting schedules and the physical distances between appointments) ... somehow, between all this, Sunday afternoons are still so sad and empty. I could go to a café, and maybe I will next Sunday, but this would be another appointment to stress over.

i finally pushed myself to keep reading my French book, and it's almost quite romantic....except that it's set in the 1930s and the love interest is called "Hans Krüger"....so i can't quite take it seriously, especially when i practise reading aloud.

wives poisoning their husbands used to be a lot more common when divorce wasn't an option yet and women had minimal rights, i.e., there was no other escape if a marriage was abusive. same with infanticide (=mothers killing their own children), which used to be more common some 150 years ago due to social structures that condemned unmarried single mothers rather than supporting them. nowadays, when these things happen, it is likely (not always) due to pathologies of the individual. although, apparently, there are still a lot of women in prison who killed their abusers in self-defense and had to go to jail for it.

okay. i mean a certain degree of change (i.e., development) is to be expected.

would you mind describing these changes? just out of curiosity.

i'm also an INFJ. i had expected it to change, but when i ask ChatGPT to type me based on our conversations, it says i'm still the same as i was when i first took the official test on the 16 personalities website.

i am surprised to find that i feel so much better, overall, now that the new term has started. the lectures give me something meaningful to do - more than i had hoped for, actually? - and, of course, it is also nice to see my friends again. yesterday was an incredibly stressful day, though, because i had to coordinate so many appointments and set up my new schedule, but now that everything is figured out, i can settle into it and actually start to enjoy the lectures and seminars. i know that in the weeks leading up to this, i have spent so much time thinking that it is a big problem that i don't have a proper job yet, even though i am already 24, and i sometimes regret having started over with a whole new undergraduate degree...but at the moment, it does feel right and meaningful. and again, i feel taken care of when i'm just sat in front of somebody and i have to do as i am told, and that's it. what a beautiful life. i can keep looking for a second (or third) job, though, while i am at it. one of my two jobs pays really well, but the problem is that my hours are limited and very irregular....so i have been hoping to expand in that area.

even if you are not hiding and are being authentic, some very distinct personal patterns can show up, though, right?

ok:) i get that a lot, too...very annoying.

@Carl-Richard i have had several ego deaths (sober and not) and it hasn't really helped with the neuroticism, since they tend to be isolated, temporally condensed experiences. a lot of the work i have had to do to stabilise has felt quite unspiritual. OBEs are so previous:) have you experienced them again after your trip?

@LastThursday okay, cool:) because of the decrease in conscientiousness, i am guessing you don't have children? sorry if i'm wrong😅 it's funny that you mention a decrease in neuroticism because this is consistent with the literature, but i'm not sure how that actually works. are you just coping differently, or are the emotions themselves less intense/pervasive? in my experience, there can be some changes in my openness/neuroticism, if i really push myself, but eventually i will come back to my baseline. maybe with 80 i'll be more chill:)

@oOo interesting, so you are basically saying that personality is the psychological equivalent of genetic diversification (don't know what the proper term for this is but you know what i mean). personality is genetically determined by about 50%, and then there are also epigenetic and environmental influences.

i agree with the first part, but then if you compare certain individuals, across situations some act vastly different than others. sure, as individuals we deviate from our patterns every now and then, but there are patterns.

i would say interpersonal differences that persist over time....but you are right that this is tricky...and i suppose it is the time frame that makes the definition so tricky. maybe i can tell you more 15 weeks from now after i'll have taken the course.

same:)

i feel dizzy from wearing headphones all the time...but it's not exactly safe when i take them off - not even in my own apartment, not even when i go to sleep, because i hear my neighbour stomping on the ground. when i fall asleep in the evening, i usually wake up again because i hear his steps...despite the fact that i started double-stacking noise cancelling headphones. i hate this, it makes me so uncomfortable and i feel so unsafe.

this morning, i feel a little better. it won't last, but it's also good to remember that i keep coming back to this state, just as i keep coming back to the unhappiness. a few days ago, i started taking my gratitude journal a little more seriously again, and while this can easily be yet another thing that i do only to improve myself, perhaps it's still worth it, and it's a valid way of looking after myself - so i'll keep doing that for the next few months. a gratitude journal won't make me happy, but not writing down gratitudes will not make me happy, either. so i believe i've got nothing to lose, and it is true that this sort of thing can have an impact on the mind/brain.

i made myself write a lot of applications today, until i decided i don't want to anymore, and now i am bored and, you guessed it....still unhappy. i believe the boredom thing is more about not feeling motivated to do anything....and i don't have a lot of "nice things" in my life that i could do without experiencing the pressure of thinking how they must make me better in one way or another (or i must make them better to make me better?). i can't just be in the present moment, cause the present moment SUCKS. it is filled with stupid noises and cringe thoughts about things i did and said in the past, with dirty roads and pains and aches ...and everything sucks, nothing ever goes right, it is all so messy, so complicated... i still feel so empty, so hollow....and lately i've had too much time on my hands to think about it. i've tried to take some steps to improve my situation - perhaps too many - but i am still so empty, so unhappy. happiness is quite paradoxical, anyway. things can't make you happy per se, but then certain things can still be beneficial, at the very least....they can even be prerequisites for happiness. jogging can't make me happy....but not jogging certainly won't make me happy, either. a nicer apartment won't make me happy, not for long...but it also wouldn't hurt, on average. and i'd want all the most ordinary things to feel a little more special, feel a little better about myself. there's nothing particularly innovative about wanting to look prettier, or live in a nicer (quieter!) apartment, have a nicer job, wanting to have a baby. i just feel like i suck so bad, and i feel so stuck and aaaah.... and the life i want for myself still seems so far away.