also i am generally extremely allergic to all sort of hippie interpersonal feelings oriented stuff. I don't like authentic relating games, or anything structured, or any of those burn workshops where you feel into your body and pair up or whatever. I friggin hate that. willies.
Conversation
but circling *accepts* me hating that. I can loudly, aggressively, express how much I hate it, and I have total freedom to push back against any of it inside the circle. And I often do! It's weirdly the *safest* feeling activity I've done - it accepts all of me
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i feel like i should say, after hating on it, that i actually think circling is really good for the people it's good for, i have seen the positive emotional effects it can have, i just have an allergic reaction to it for reasons i can maybe semi-explain
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yea i also wanna say I don't think circling is for everyone, some ppl just don't jive with it, get it, enjoy it, or learn from it, and that's totally fine - it's vaguely similar to psychedelics imo.
but also interested in hearing the semi explanation
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any structure designed to make me feel free and expressive typically makes me feel un-free and muted -- i understand social freedom to be not "no constraints" but "mutual understanding that constraint violation is fine, but they're still there to riff on and default to"
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alessia once told me, when we were dancing at the luna loft, to "loosen up" -- but my jerky movements were my looseness, goddamn it
seems related, along with my feeling that the nude photo shoot at the castle, while fun, was also kind of hokey
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by "no constraints" i just mean "no normal constraints," i understand that circling has its own constraints, and i do think there are arguments to be made for them
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the impression i get out of this is something like; a deep suspicion that people are lying to themselves; trying to get somewhere; holding an ideal version and judging what's not that without owning it; top-down modification of interaction being flawed cause it's top-down?
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like; if circling wanted to do itself in our conversations then it would have been done already; thus circling does not want to do itself, and trying to do what does not want to be done is artifice?
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idk how well this comports with Sasha's experience / feelings but my revulsion to this is mostly based on a gut-level belief that induced intimacy is dangerous
or it's probably just personality and that's my rationalization, which is kinda the same anyway
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i mean this would be included in a circle; you can go into a circle with a severe guard against everyone and all intimacy, and use the circle as a time to meditate and explore that sensation, and what in the circle makes it soften or harden, etc.
Everyone in Austin has been super welcoming of my boundaries - my guards against intimacy.
Which, I assume, is what keeps it from devolving into a cult. Boundaries are seen as Good.
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