Conversation

Zoe
@CurziRose
The specifics vary on the person, but it's usually accompanied by a distinct feeling of being off-center, unable to fully make decisions, or not totally online. It can feel like having my priorities, sense of identity, realness or importance suddenly shift dramatically.
2
2
68
Zoe
@CurziRose
For background-- my model is that reality distortion fields occur when someone convincingly, implicitly offers a high-value promise of something most people deeply want, especially a sort of subconscious egoic fantasy...
4
4
110
Zoe
@CurziRose
...(i.e. total connective immersion; total sexual surrender; total significance; an all-powerful person who will tell me what to do; a perfectly good human I can trust; a villain who can read minds; etc)...
2
1
79
Zoe
@CurziRose
...to a mostly-unconscious, unintegrated part of our psyche with which we're not consciously identified. We respond from our own unconscious. It's our own unconscious participation that actually causes the effect.
1
1
78
Zoe
@CurziRose
From this place of having our sense of self, other, or world shifted, we are much more vulnerable to influence by this other person. Our critical thinking is often compromised and even our emotional responses can become suspect.
1
1
54
Zoe
@CurziRose
This can be terrifying if you don't want to be impacted in this way & can tell its happening anyway! You feel, and are, out of control. Given my model of the cause, I've often felt betrayed by my own mind, like it was giving itself to someone else against my conscious will.
1
1
56
Zoe
@CurziRose
(Some people impact ppl more than others…maybe I should start putting them on like an earthquake scale when I encounter them? "This one is only a 1.5-- good practice. That guy is a 6-- steer fucking clear, Luke, you're not ready yet…") (am I mixing my metaphors? Moving on.)
1
51
Zoe
@CurziRose
Smtmes, we notice & walk away. But sometimes, even if that's obvsly best, we just...don't. Before we knew it, we'd lost our ability to choose. We'd been seduced. Our conscious mind usually thinks that's absurd (“I can stop anytime I want to!”) but our actions reveal otherwise.
1
1
47
Zoe
@CurziRose
Strong but unintegrated internal protectors *can* be a saving grace (that is if we've been burned badly enough before that they exist already). They’re like big warning bells in our minds-- "GET THE FUCK AWAY. NO MATTER WHAT YOU THINK HE'S OFFERING, YOU'LL GET IT ELSEWHERE."
1
1
53
Zoe
@CurziRose
This has mostly been my response to whenever I felt swallowed by someone else’s charisma over the last 2 years; reactive anger/terror, paranoia, & an animal panic to get as far as humanly possible from the bad actor. Mostly, I did just this. I got the fuck away. (Good on me.)
2
4
53
QC (in Berlin 7/29-???)
@QiaochuYuan
Replying to
@QiaochuYuan
and
@CurziRose
you could say that an unintegrated shadow part in me was behaving in a seductive way to an unintegrated shadow part in her, *and vice versa*. this was extremely confusing for both of us and when we understood it neither of us wanted it
1
2
QC (in Berlin 7/29-???)
@QiaochuYuan
it all felt like the sort of thing that could happen in an ordinary romantic relationship, where two people go crazy about each other and it makes them do crazy things they don't normally do, just magnified a bit and confusingly with no romantic love on her side
2
2
Show replies