in any case i believe that basically all of my own psychological issues are downstream of complex PTSD, or at least that that's one way of looking at them. so this is a topic of major interest to me personally and i've done a lot of self-experimentation in this direction
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i believe there's a lot of potential for extremely good therapy to basically completely resolve complex PTSD so what i'm excited about here is oxytocin as an aid to such therapy, not as a miracle cure by itself which it is apparently clearly not
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anyway, should you try oxytocin? what else should you try if you're gonna try it? what's its deal anyway?
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oxytocin guy's story is worth reading carefully, there are really significant events that he describes very briefly like talking to his wife for *multiple hours* (in addition to all the sex, there's a lot of sex). he doesn't emphasize this but i believe this was critical
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(i want to take a second to emphasize here that i am not a doctor or a psychologist or a biochemist, i am spitballing and pulling things out of my ass here based on having some experience with the phenomenological side of things and reading therapy books)
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so let's spitball: oxytocin helps you bond with your ingroup, reduces fear and anxiety, reduces depression, increases trust, generosity, and romantic feelings. it's naturally released by hugs and sex, and has something to do with contractions during labor
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the pop psych gloss on this is that oxytocin is the "love hormone" but that doesn't sound quite right to me. what all that sounds like to me is that oxytocin is the "social safety hormone," that it means "you are safe among your people." love (and sex) is downstream of that
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but apparently that's not quite right either. googling "oxytocin and social safety" turns up the following paper containing the following sentence:
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"When social cues in the environment are interpreted as “safe” oxytocin may promote prosociality but when the social cues are interpreted as “unsafe” oxytocin may promote more defensive and, in effect, “anti-social” emotions and behaviors."
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this is fascinating and really puts the "oxytocin makes you more racist" stuff into context. what this paragraph suggests is that oxytocin is the "social salience hormone"; it turns up the salience of what's going on in your social environment, good and bad
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googling "oxytocin social salience" gives us a name: this is called the "social salience hypothesis of oxytocin." nice. let's run with it for now
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"oxytocin turns up social salience," to my mind, already strongly suggests why it can't be a miracle cure for anything: it won't do much for you if your social environment *actually sucks*
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oxytocin reddit guy was extremely lucky that he was in what appeared to be a basically happy loving stable marriage already, and it sounds to me like the oxytocin let that sink in at a deeper level: deepened his appreciation for and ability to relate to his wife and kids, etc.
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this is why i find it significant that in the early parts of the account he spends so much time touching, having sex with, staring at, & talking to his wife. that's a lot of reconditioning he can do now that various things about his wife and their relationship are *more salient*
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otoh if your social life kinda sucks, if you feel like the people around you basically don't understand or care about you, if you don't have a partner or you have a bunch of unresolved conflicts with your partner... maybe oxytocin will just highlight that? idk :/
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so, we can't expect oxytocin by itself to do much for people in tough situations socially. the people most likely to benefit might be people with safe happy stable loving social lives who can't seem to really let that stuff in; still feeling unsafe, etc.
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(this is, i want to emphasize again, completely untested speculation on my part)
the next most likely to benefit might be people willing to use the oxytocin to have difficult conversations with the people close to them, and unbury all the buried resentments, hurts, etc.
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and then the next most likely to benefit after that might be people willing to use the oxytocin to have difficult conversations with *themselves*. idk how oxytocin shapes your relationship to yourself but i'd love to know if it makes IFS easier, for example
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if anyone is feeling up for taking on the risks of doing oxytocin self-experimentation and wants to do it solo i would be very interested in seeing people test something like the following:
1) take the oxytocin
2) look at your face in the mirror
3) talk to yourself
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i think talking to your loved ones is likely to be even more powerful if that feels like an option but it might not feel like an option. in conclusion, this all seems enormously complex but i'm still very curious and i still want to hear about people's experiences
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reading 's "deep okayness" post may also be helpful inspiration for any self-experimentation here
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This year I discovered how to love myself fully and changed my consciousness forever
You can do it too, we all can, and I want you to have this, so I wrote this chronicle of my journey, and what it means
sashachapin.substack.com/p/how-i-attain
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