when that happens the queue stops functioning. i can’t easily skip the current item to get to the next one. my emotional and cognitive capacity get partly taken up by a conflict between “hey, this is the current item” and “aaaah no bad item go away”
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like for a hopefully pretty relatable example, during tax season it’s pretty easy for “do my taxes” to become the current item and for me to be like aaaah no do not want to think about money too many feelings, and that just kinda sits in me preventing me from using the queue
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when i can’t use the queue in a natural way then i need artificial ways to get to other items in the queue, hence to-do lists and explicit reminders to drink water or w/e and other external tracking tools. but i can also instead sit down to process my feelings about taxes
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(which i did last tax season, and a lot of stuff came up related to my parents (naturally) that ended up feeding into the acid thread)
anyway very curious to hear from other people if they’ve noticed stuff like this or if it occurs somewhat or very differently to them
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on days where i feel like i have very few “spoons” it’s like the current item is so scary and brings up such uncomfortable feelings so early in the day that i can’t even easily access items like “get out of bed” or “go to the bathroom” or “eat” as a result
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this is btw like - i didn’t discuss this in the acid thread at all but one interesting effect of being a spoiled rich kid like me is because i’m effectively never financially constrained i am constantly aware of how much the constraints i’m operating under are psychological
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like i’ve sort of been forced to become interested in psychology because it’s been so clear for such a long time that that’s where all my real bottlenecks are. obviously other people can have very different bottlenecks but maybe this will be helpful perspective on me
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ah what i’m describing in this thread is a kind of collapsed awareness. like simultaneously my awareness collapses onto the current item and also i am blocking out the feelings it generates from my awareness?
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[guy who has definitely never studied alexander technique] what if EVERYTHING is collapsed awareness
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in grad school the current item was often “work on thesis” and that one would just get stuck there like most of the time in the background, for literal years. not coincidentally in grad school i had mild asthma almost all the time and really persistent coughs 🙃
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My left arm hurt throughout grad school and through my attempts to have an academic career, went away the day I got fired and hasn’t come back even when I was delivering Jimmy Johns sandwiches
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