So talk therapy never works. CBT, gratitude journals, no way. I had to figure out something new.
One thing I do is I type these things out, or I cut them into wood, or I write them. Let’s go with wood because that was the most tactile and effective for me, and I guess maybe because the side that needed to do the processing doesn’t work in words.
Anyway I hold the event in mind and cut wood. It’s that simple. And sometimes I cut fast and sometimes slow and sometimes I stop and look around. With carving it’s more intense, but the same. My mind touches on the emotions and cuts them into the wood. This is my therapy.
What I think is happening is that TPN is being occupied and the DMN being steered to the matter that needs digesting. The art doesn’t need to be about the event; it’s just about keeping a modicum of focus so your mind can wander in the right direction.
Then off the mind goes, with its process, and it works shit out. It comes in waves: strong at first and getting weaker. At least this is how it goes when it’s going well, but it’s a process of coaxing out. Like peeling back the layers inside a golf ball. Gently, one tightly wound string at a time, mindful of the energy within.
I think this works better when high (cannabis). Bear with me. It’s because of dopamine. So. You don’t have to be high; it just helps me. But I think the fact that the art is a pleasurable activity means you have more dopamine in your brain and are better able to encode painful memories to have less salience. I think this is why sculpture is so effective for trauma therapy. Because it’s pleasurable to manipulate the physical world.
All this said, now I have the framework of audhd I will try a bit of therapy again. Mostly to get seed ideas which I can run with. I think people like me don’t need guiding, so much as we need pointing and releasing. In fact guiding feels stifling, suffocating. Get out my way! Where is the target? Off I go!
So once done (art; now raw blog posts) I will put it on display for a while. I will see it, in passing, in the corridor. Then over time I will stop seeing it. It will fade into the background. And then I’ll put it away. And that seems to work.
There’s no ‘done’ with this stuff, and no ‘done’ with art. That’s kinda why I started it; business is very much right or wrong, money or not; and my brain is that way to begin with. I wanted to train myself to work in mistakes and unknowns; to embrace the error that is humanity. Because what is art if not a mistake? What is evolution if not an erroneous copy? What is culture and society but a product of emotional rng being coaxed into some form of structure? Gettin’ philosophical here.
But yeah. With this page I take a similar approach. Sometimes a very raw post will pop up, and be gone a few hours later. That’s because I needed to display it, to other people, to remove the emotional charge. But the stronger the charge, the shorter the display, and the more sweary and offensive the post will be. Over time I will touch it up, maybe a couple more times, then put a bow on it, one final spellcheck, and then it’s a post. And done. And on to the next.
Because it’s never gone. It becomes part of you and that’s ok. You just optimise it and make it smaller. The most beautiful trees are those that grew through trauma.
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