Conversation

· Jan 26

i don't talk in these terms often because i think a lot of people don't like the framing but in my own mind i am sort of a complex PTSD maximalist; i think almost every serious psychological issue is basically a subtype of complex PTSD pete-walker.com/fAQsComplexPTS

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(although otoh looking directly for the tension is complicated by the fact that at the beginning you'll likely have little access to a lot of it due to numbness)

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Visa

SF (Aug 2-14)

@visakanv

· Oct 13, 2021

i keep expecting to feel like I'll be "done" (stretching my hips and hamstrings) but every couple of days it feels like I'm finding some new tenseness and tightness that I couldn't even perceive before because I was too numb

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"look younger" is the one i feel the least confident about but vaguely speaking i think holding chronic tension diverts bodily resources away from the physical maturation process, especially during puberty. it may specifically interfere with sex hormone production, idk

there's a whole 'nother aspect of the nerd phenomenon that has to do with the particularities of nerd obsessions and nerd thinking; i have fewer speculations about this because it overlaps with autism stuff i can't claim to understand at all

but loosely speaking thinking and getting lost in thoughts can be a coping mechanism (i don't mean this as a criticism; coping mechanisms are good, they're for coping, it's right there in the name) enneagraminstitute.com/type-5

one version of what you could call my main thesis that i'm exploring on twitter is: it is possible to go from being a nerd to being a jock, to go from being tense all the time to not being tense all the time

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· Jan 25

guys can we talk about this completely insane thread where oxytocin nasal spray apparently makes an autistic guy not autistic temporarily? i'm gonna be fucked up about this for days twitter.com/punished3liza/…

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tensions can be discovered and met and understood and loved and melted and integrated and all sorts of stuff; we have many ways to do this stuff now and we can use them and spread the word

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· Jan 10

thread of therapy and therapy-like thingies that have helped me or people i know:

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lately i've been focusing on tension in my legs and pelvis (historically i've focused on tension in my chest and gut) and i definitely don't feel done with it yet but there have already been moments that walking and running feel amazing 🥲

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· Jan 27

idk how to describe this but i think i can... feel the connection between my feet and my pelvis and the base of my spine now? like something about the way weight gets distributed all along that length has popped into awareness

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other nerd stuff i don't feel like i understand as well: wearing glasses (is this just from not getting enough sunlight?), allergies (spending time indoors + autoimmune issues from chronic tension?)... there must be other stuff, what else?

Prince Vogelfrei is in New York

some amendments: "Nerdness involves contraction of the body, granted, but it involves expansion elsewhere" "being in one's head" as primary which someone else also mentioned

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@PrinceVogel

· Jan 28

Replying to @QiaochuYuan

Still think those people are not all nerds Nerdness involves contraction of the body, granted, but it involves expansion elsewhere The relationship between those pressures is important. It's not *just* a cope, but a pressure model of investments

2:16 AM · Jan 28, 2022Twitter Web App

also, several people have mentioned this and they're right: something shadowy for me here about how i feel about nerds and being a nerd 😬

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another amendment: i’ve been informed that many jocks are also very tense which, yeah, makes sense (eg finance bros). my source says jocks hold their tension in a more diffuse way throughout their whole being 🧐

Blissfully Dark Desire

@DesireeHoogerh2

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Is another sign of nerdiness mental illness? Do we compute energy differently thus our brains are more psychically and 6th sense oriented. Thus why the schizophrenic brain literally proves string theory and how it's all connected? Since society doesnt understand us?

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Encouragement here. I imagined some of this when I worked closely with the ‘nerd kings’ of the eighties and nineties. Compassion is necessary and so is understanding of how nerd values permeate our systems.

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It's really wack to me how you're pathologising this. As arguably a life long nerd, the only tensions in my life have come from non-nerd kids being absolutely awful human beings, and a sense of responsibility for a messed up world.

sylibia

@sylibia

I can do just fine socially, I'm not chronically tense. I have just always loved min-maxing for things I care about. You're correlating a lot of independent variables to suit a narrative here.

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throwing it out there: you aren't going to be thinking straight about the nature or cause of "nerdy" traits as long as you perceive those traits as defective/shameful

Sarah Constantin

@s_r_constantin