This is going to be a bit rambly and if you find in confusing, well, you've got company.

I think I found a trigger: I think I’m triggered when I set/defend a boundary. Looking back, I used similar language – feeling like I had manipulated someone – when talking to L after my Ashby house walk-about. (I was triggered by a tone of voice. Excused myself and went for a 6 hour walk in a rage)

But instead of triggering a flashback, it’s really a flip into the type of dissociation I would do for months on end at SJ.

Characteristics of this mode:

• Emotional blunting
• Lower libido
• Very low self esteem
• More asocial.
• Decreased interest in word play.
• General lack of interest unless items of “escape” science fiction novels, some types of video games/puzzles.
• Mild intermittent depersonialisation
• General feeling of resigned sadness.

This mode is quasi stable: It can basically can carry on indefinitely. Weeks. Months.

So on my walk (4 mi) today, I considered that it may be a part.

Me: Hi part!

Part: ???

M: What’s up? You seem sad.

P: Yes.

M: What’s wrong? Want to talk? I’m ready to listen.

P: {confusion. Seems unused to direct conversation}

M: It’s ok. Really. You don’t have to talk if you don’t want to. But if you’re ok, I’ll keep babbling, and somehow you’ll let me know if something is right.

P: {feeling of assent}

M: You’re sad about boundaries.

P: Yes. Can’t win.

M: Yup. If you lose, well, you’ve lost yet again. And if you win, you feel you cheated or don’t deserve it, and so you lose.

P: Exactly.

M: This started with mom, right?

P: Scrabble. Chess. When she won she would chortle.

M: You’re right. I thought chortling was only done in books… But yeah, she chortled.

P: And she had a way of making whoever lost feel small.

M: And….?

P: When she lost it clearly hurt her deeply. And she would sit and drink coffee and smoke and stare into space.

M: And so you couldn’t win. You could only choose to make us sad, or make mom sad. And they we were sad too. So you could minimize loses by just making us sad. That was only sad, and not shame and guilt too.

I am reminded of a movie called Wargames. A self aware computer is in charge of the American nuclear arsenal. The situation is getting tense, and the computer is playing a series of games against itself trying to find a winning strategy. Meanwhile the hero is discussing philosophy with the computer and the nature of good and evil. Of fair play. The computer knows many games.

Tens of thousands of war simulations leave both sides in ashes.

“A very curious game. The only way to win is to not play”

IMDB link for wargames if you are interested. https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0086567/

Is this why I avoid conflict? Because I can’t win?

In Zen, one of the concepts is that a yes/no question can have a third answer: “mu” (or chinese, “wu” Mu is non-dualistic negation. Mu unasks the question. Mu is saying, “You’re question is irrelevant” or “You aren’t asking the right question yet”

If conflicts is “I win or you win, or we win” is my response, “Mu”

L is sicker tonight. She’s coughing more than yesterday, but they are just hack-hack, not the deep wracking coughs. She’s running a fever. Not a huge one, but it may mean an opportunistic infection. Is this deliberate? I know the connection between mind and body is strong enough to do this. I don’t know that she chooses to do this.