Tag: psychology

Comparing FIML practice to Schema Therapy

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Schema Therapy appears to be an effective treatment for people who are suffering with mental and emotion confusion.

An article published early this year claims:

A large scale randomized control trial shows Schema Therapy to be significantly more effective than two major alternative approaches to the treatment of a broad range of personality disorders. Schema Therapy resulted in a higher rate of recovery, greater declines in depression, greater increases in general and social functioning and had a lower drop out rate. The results indicated that Schema Therapy is also more cost-effective. (Source)

Psychological studies are notoriously unreliable and the source of the article linked above is the International Society of Schema Therapy, but still I think it is OK to to take their claims seriously.

Therapy is very difficult to study objectively and who else is going to promote Schema Therapy if not the people who believe in it? I am doing the same with my claims for FIML practice.

By comparing FIML and Schema, I hope to illustrate some of the values and drawbacks of both approaches to human suffering. I have chosen to do this with Schema Therapy (ST) because I just read something about it and it seems like a reasonable and workable approach.

ST seeks to correct “maladaptive schemas” that are defined as “self-defeating life patterns of perception, emotion, and physical sensation.” (Source)

Some comparisons with FIML:

  1. ST is based on the notion of people having “personalities” and thus “personality disorders.” FIML largely rejects the notion of personality or finds it trivial. FIML claims that all adults without exception have “disordered” minds, habits, emotions, responses, and so on. There is no need for a concept of personality or to classify types of “disorder” based on an ideal “personality.”
  2. ST claims that adults experiencing less than optimum psychological health use schemas to interact with the world around them. FIML largely agrees with this claim. We generally call dysfunctional schemas misinterpretations. We claim that adults frequently misinterpret what is being said and done around them. Some of these misinterpretations may have begun in childhood, but not all of them. Misinterpretations occur almost every time we interact with anyone. It is common for misinterpretations to occur several times per hour when two people interact. Some misinterpretations will go away on their own and some will cause serious disturbances in the relations between the two (or more) people interacting. Some misinterpretations will have serious ramifications beyond those two people. And some will have begun in childhood, but many childhood misinterpretations, though they may have become habitual, can be fairly easily corrected through FIML practice. They do not constitute a “personality disorder,” but rather a persistent or habitual way of mistakenly interpreting the world. In this sense, I agree that long-standing misinterpretations do look and act somewhat like “schemas,” though as described, I do not think they deserve reification as a classifiable entity called a “personality disorder.”
  3. ST asserts the existence of “schema modes,” which seem to me to be definitions or indications of personality modalities. Some of ST’s schema modes are the angry child, the impulsive child, the abandoned child, and so on. FIML does not use the concept of personality, let alone identify anything like a personality mode or a schema mode of that type. FIML recognizes that misinterpretations are common and that they arise throughout life. FIML claims that misinterpretations arise at discrete moments. These moments may have occurred in childhood and they may have occurred at any other time since childhood. FIML asserts that using classifications like “personality types” or “schema modes”, though marginally helpful to therapists, runs the considerable risk of distorting the always unique tangle of an individual’s complex suffering. FIML may use concepts like abandonment as a point of discussion and FIML may recognize that feelings of abandonment began in childhood, but FIML also claims that making “abandonment” into a classifiable “disorder” is misleading. FIML claims that reifying “modalities” like “abandonment” only makes them worse while obscuring their true origins and much more importantly how they actually function in real-time.
  4. ST uses a technique called “limited reparenting” which aims to correct unmet core needs that originated in childhood and that led to maladaptive schema. FIML does not require or use a therapist and FIML does not believe that maladaptive schema require “reparenting,” as ST claims.
  5. ST claims that it is cost effective in that it can achieve good results in 50 sessions with a trained ST therapist. A drawback of FIML practice is it requires a suitable partner, and a suitable partner can be hard to find for many people. If a person is suffering and cannot find a suitable partner, ST would be a better choice than FIML. If a suitable partner exists and if both partners understand how to do FIML, I believe FIML will be a better choice in most cases. FIML claims that all human beings are mentally and emotionally disordered and that disorders arise throughout life and on a daily basis at discrete moments as misinterpretations. There is no end to the constant arising of misinterpretations and thus there can be no beneficial end to stopping FIML practice. FIML can begin to correct mental and emotional disorders within days or weeks, but the process of doing FIML should be ongoing throughout life. FIML is like cleaning your home, washing your dishes, brushing your teeth, bathing. It must be done frequently and cannot be ignored for long without maladaptive consequences.
  6. ST claims to be able to create a “healthy adult” who is thoughtful, rational, happy and more. FIML also claims to be able to create a “healthy adult” with ST qualities, but FIML recognizes that the “interpersonality” of all adults requires constant monitoring. Once the major disorders of the pre-FIML individual have been corrected, FIML recognizes that new disorders may arise at any time and that they must be addressed as they arise. Basically, I do not believe that there is such a thing as an ongoing “healthy adult” that can be created in 50 sessions with a therapist. Health requires constant attention with a caring partner, not brief training with a paid stranger.

I would recommend ST for anyone who cannot figure out how to do FIML or who cannot find a suitable FIML partner. For those that do understand FIML and do have a suitable partner, we claim that FIML practice will help you become far less disordered mentally and emotionally but that you must remain vigilant for the rest of your days. You cannot remain healthy for long if you allow misinterpretations to accumulate.

This is an updated version of a piece from APRIL 3, 2014. ABN

Western malaise and defeatism

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Besides all of the reasons posted on this site and all over the interwebs on why the West is declining so quickly, one major reason has been consistently left out—culture shock.

Culture shock is real. It takes many decades for a culture/ civilization to overcome it. The entire world outside of Western civilization has been experiencing culture shock vis-a-vis the West for over two hundred years.

During decades of culture shock, the people affected by it will overestimate the shocking culture while underestimating themselves, the culture being shocked.

This happened in Japan. In the nineteenth century there were calls to abandon the Japanese language and replace it with English. In China, culture shock vis-a-vis the West is still ongoing. Name your country, society, or civilization they all have experienced the malaise and defeatism of comparing themselves to the West while trying, as most have, to adopt Western ways or at least catch up to the West.

Western medicine, which has produced massive population growth throughout the world, plus Western farming techniques, technology, economics, etc. have greatly contributed to the enrichment of the non-Western world while also causing most of it to have or have had an inferiority complex engendered by culture shock.

Over the last 30-50 years, Western peoples have been watching the rest of the world catch up while also immigrating in huge numbers into the West. The culture shock that has resulted from this is a very real and deep-seated psychological condition.

Beyond the shock caused by different cultures impinging upon it, Western peoples have also been assaulted by infiltrators inside the West who are using Western culture shock to even more deeply control the West. Mind-control techniques that degrade Western self-esteem through quotas, propaganda, censorship, lies, and government policies are especially effective because Westerners are in an ongoing state of culture shock.

Japan is an example of a civilization that has outgrown its culture shock vis-a-vis the West. But notice that Japan succeeded in this by recognizing what was happening early on, and facing it directly while encouraging many positive transformations in Japanese society. Notice also that to this day Japan is not allowing itself to be overrun by immigrants who cannot and will not adapt to their culture but rather undermine it, as is happening throughout the West.

Culture shock is normal. Historically, it has happened many times. It is not a permanent state unless a society gives into it too much and allows itself to be subjugated or overrun. Or if a society, such as ours, has been thoroughly infiltrated by bad actors who use every weakness they can find to destroy it.

To recap: culture shock is normal; the West is in the midst of it; it will pass if we can maintain our civilization. Our main hurdles are 1) understanding what is happening, 2) understanding that bad actors have infiltrated the West and are furthering Western culture shock with a passion, and 3) understanding that mass immigration is the most powerful physical weapon being used against the West today.

Reduction of neurosis through immediate feedback

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A recent study has found that persecutory delusions can be reduced by simulating fear-inducing situations in virtual reality.

…patients who fully tested out their fears in virtual reality by lowering their defences showed very substantial reductions in their paranoid delusions. After the virtual reality therapy session, over 50% of these patients no longer had severe paranoia at the end of the testing day. (Oxford study finds virtual reality can help treat severe paranoia)

The crux of what happened is patients faced and “fully tested out their fears.”

The virtual reality environment allowed them to “lower their defenses” enough to see that their initial fears were wrong. That they were mistakes.

Few people suffer full-blown persecutory delusions on the scale of the patients in this experiment, but I would maintain that all people everywhere suffer from “mistaken interpretations” that manifest as neuroses or delusions.

The virtual reality in the Oxford study allows for patients to face their “mistakes” (their exaggerated fears) and this is what reduces their paranoia.

The technique works because patients receive immediate feedback in real-time.

As they perceive in real-time that their delusions are not justified, they are reduced dramatically.

In FIML practice, a similar result is achieved through the FIML query and response with a caring partner.

All people are riddled with “mistaken interpretations” that wrongly define their sense of who they are and what is going on around them.

A basic tenet of FIML is that immediate truthful feedback reduces and eventually extirpates these mistakes.

FIML allows people to “lower their defenses” by focusing on micro-units of communication as they arise in real-time.

The study is here: Virtual reality in the treatment of persecutory delusions: randomised controlled experimental study testing how to reduce delusional conviction.

I believe the findings of this study lend support to the theory of FIML practice:

FIML practice eliminates neuroses because it shows individuals, through real data, that their (neurotic) interpretation(s) of their partner are mistaken.

UPDATE: The mistaken interpretations extirpated from individuals psychologies during FIML practice could be compared to mutations in individual human genomes. All individual humans carry several hundred unique mutations which occurred during gestation or that came from their parents gametes. These mutations are costly as they reduce our mental and physical efficiency, sometimes very considerably. If we could remove or correct them, we would all function better. Psychologically, as we develop and learn language and behavior we all incorporate many hundreds of errors unique to ourselves. FIML practice is designed to find these errors in thought, language, communication, and psychology and remove them. In many ways, these psycho-communicative errors are even more serious than genetic mutations. ABN

Public semiotics: how they are used and controlled

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Public semiotics are semiotics known to many people, semiotics that many people within a society or culture will respond to in similar ways.

Some examples of public semiotics are conventions in literature, film, news, customs, clothing, language use, courtship styles, and so on.

In film and literature, most viewers recognize the semiotic difference between first- and third-person narratives as well as typical plot-lines such as “the individual against the group,” “the individual who overcomes a tragedy,” or simply “good versus bad.”

Viewers responses are controlled by these narratives through expectation, emotion, and habit. Due to their short lengths, most popular films rely very heavily on a single strong emotion for narrative effect, while serious literature generally deals with more complex themes.

A recent scholarly study of US politics came to some conclusions about public semiotics and our perceptions of them that are not likely to surprise readers of this site.

The study and an interview with one of its authors can be found here: Scholar Behind Viral ‘Oligarchy’ Study Tells You What It Means.

In the interview co-author Gilens has this to say about the study:

I’d say that contrary to what decades of political science research might lead you to believe, ordinary citizens have virtually no influence over what their government does in the United States. And economic elites and interest groups, especially those representing business, have a substantial degree of influence. Government policy-making over the last few decades reflects the preferences of those groups — of economic elites and of organized interests. (Source: same as above. This source has the study as well as the interview.)

What this study says about public semiotics is the public does not control them. Rather, the public is controlled by them.

Interestingly, the study left out some of the main ways that public semiotics are controlled by elites. Public semiotics are not just controlled by interest groups and lobbies influencing legislation, they are also greatly controlled by:

  • elite control of the media
  • elite control of which topics the media covers
  • elite control of presidential debates by the Democratic and Republican parties through the Commission on Presidential Debates
  • elite control of members of congress by the parties they “represent”

In the linked interview, which is well-worth reading, Gilens mentions non-business lobbying groups, but does not say who they are.

If we do not understand that our public semiotics come from somewhere—that many of them are created and maintained by special interest groups—we will fail to understand how we are manipulated by them.

As this study shows, voting for a very limited selection of candidates who rarely, if ever, fulfill their very limited campaign promises is an exercise in public hypnosis. It is a complex semiotic that fosters the illusion of participation where there is none.

I do not think any of this will change. But I do think it is important for individuals, and especially FIML partners, to understand where the semiotics that jostle around in their heads are coming from. As individuals, we can have great control over what we believe, value, do, and understand about human life, and need not be controlled by the self-serving agendas of others.

It is important to understand that much of what is construed as “public life” is actually a complex mix of semiotics consciously controlled by people who work to create and maintain illusions of plots and themes in the world in much the same ways that plots and themes are created and maintained in film.

UPDATE: I wrote and posted this on APRIL 23, 2014. It’s just as true today and far more obvious. Semiotics is the study of how messages are sent and received. Since language and semiotics are loosely hierarchical, control of the top levels or meta-levels of language and semiotics yields control of whole societies. This can be seen in fashion as much as politics. The real-world result is most people are following semiotic illusions behind which the real wheels of governance are being turned by, for the most part, those who control the money—the huge investment funds, central banks, the super rich. The Ukraine War has been a semiotic fantasy, as was covid and the covid government response, as was the 2020 fraudulent election, the manufactured ‘crisis’ at the border, inflation, soon to be CBDC. We are right now living in an algorithmic psyop which strictly controls the ‘information’ we are allowed to see, the topics we are allowed to address. Boiled down, that information is the dominant public semiotics proposed and furthered by the forces mentioned above. This is why if the government said it or MSM said or a choir of HoWo influencers said it, you can be sure it’s not true. ABN

The Cluster B Society: How psychological dysfunction has been embedded in our institutions

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Good vid. The latest American version of the First Noble Truth. ABN

Huge increase in Natural Causes of Death since vax rollout in 2021

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Subception: a strategy for keeping unconscious a subliminal, emotion-provoking stimulus that threatens or is incongruent with one’s self-concept. The evidence is clear. Widespread professional ignorance or denial—conscious or not—is a clear marker of civilizational decline. One million US doctors and many more nurses and other health care workers, plus academics and government officials, are almost all riding this anti-science train of stupidity, denial, and death. A good many have spoken up and most people understand by now that the covid vaxxes deliver more harm than good, but it’s a good two and one-half years since the danger of the vax was known and it is still being recommended and mandated. ABN

UPDATE: My partner just remined me that there is plenty of science behind these data and how they are willfully misinterpreted—behavioral science. The behavioral science psyop of the covid plandemic, the vaxxes, and now their morbid aftermath has been brilliantly orchestrated against the world by a clandestine clique of mind-control parasites who see themselves as warriors but are actually parasites. Their ideological strategy is ‘whatever is best for us’ and ‘whatever works, no matter the damage to others’. Their tactics come from behavioral science findings on crowd-control and mind-control. Fear, lies, inversion, deliberate absurdity, undermining everything, destroying anything—these are their methods and we are their lab rats. ABN

Humans as networks

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The advantage of seeing humans as networks is we can say interesting things about them parsimoniously.

A network is an organization of parts that are all connected.

Humans are networks of language. It is quite easy to see that language is a kind of network. Words connect in many ways and any word can be added to an existing network without difficulty. One word is defined by other words and we understand how it is used by how it functions among other words.

Humans are networks of semiotics. Semiotics function and are networked much like words, though a single semiotic may require many words to describe.

Meaning or what things mean is another network that is a fundamental part of being human. Meaning can be expressed in words, it can be apprehended through semiotic analyses, and it very often has a strong emotional component.

Emotions are another network that is fundamental to humanness. Emotions are often not as easily analyzed as the other networks since they can be vague, changeable, and based on complexities that are difficult to see while the emotion is happening. I am pretty sure that most, if not all, complex emotions are socially determined. Since semiotics are by definition communicative, the emotional aspect of all semiotics is a major aspect of both the semiotic and emotional networks. For this reason, emotions are often best analyzed through their accompanying semiotics.

Humans also have biological networks, perceptual networks, chemical and electrical networks.

All of these networks are hooked up with each other and all of them send signals internally and to the other networks.

If we conceive of a single human being as being a vast network that includes all of the above mentioned networks and others that have not been mentioned (aesthetic, gustatory, sexual, etc.), we can see that that vast network that is all of the other networks must have a basic need to be unified.

The biology must cohere and be healthy and the mind and feelings that exist together with that biology must be unconfused enough to guide the biology toward what it needs to maintain itself.

The cognitive networks (language, semiotics, feeling, reason, etc.) must have a strong tendency to forming basic conclusions about the world around them.

For example, all humans live in fundamentally uncertain circumstances. We don’t know when we will die, what happens after we die, how stable our social lives are, our economics, our biology, and so forth. To function, our cognitive network(s) must have a basic answer to the question of uncertainty. Here are some ways that people answer or respond to the fundamentally uncertain nature of human existence:

  • Many just declare that this is how it is. People like this might say, “Life is tough and you gotta do what you gotta do ’cause that’s how it is.” Or, “I growed up poor so I gots to be rich now and that just how it is.”Answers of this sort, while not complex, can be very motivating. I am sure that many conventionally “successful” people deal with uncertainty on terms like these.
  • For many, religion, science, or philosophy answers this question. “God said so.” “Science has shown that.” “Do as thou wilt.”
  • Another common response is “No one has ever been able to answer that question, so I am going to ignore it and get all I can because you only live once.”
  • In my limited experience (wish it were more limited), a good many alcoholics love the feeling of being sure or of knowing how things are. Booze activates an easy confidence of this sort and can even be charming in an occasional drunk. By the time booze is an addiction, though, this form of confidence becomes a bad habit, declining in charm as the cognitive functions are eroded by the alcohol.
  • In cultures that have a belief in rebirth, the question of uncertainty is often answered by what happened in the past or resolved by what might happen in the next life.
  • Some people deal with this question by focusing entirely on one thing—their career, their children, their nation, their business, etc.
  • Some deal with it by facing it and finding that nearly everything produces a sense of wonder because hardly anything is known for sure. Others feel anxiety by facing it. Others anger or frustration.

I am sure that readers can add many more examples of how humans deal with fundamental existential uncertainty. What I find most interesting in thinking in this way is you don’t need to imagine a person’s ego or wonder too much about how or why their emotions developed as they did. You really just need to ask them how they deal with uncertainty and they will tell you.

The vast cognitive and biological networks of individual humans often can be understood as being based on a simple answer to a simple question like that.

Since psychological explanations are the coin of the realm today, many people will confuse themselves and others by further adding long stories about the development of their personality or how their parents treated them. These factors can be interesting and are real, to a point, but it is much simpler and more profitable to focus directly at the answer/response to the basic question of life’s uncertainty. A major bias or unifying principle of the human network can be found in a straightforward answer to that question.

Beyond this basic question discussed above, there are many other questions we can ask about a particular human network. Is the network closed or is it open? Is it complex or simple? Is it independent of social definitions/constraints or dependent on them? How well does it see itself, understand itself? Does it perceive other networks or does it see other people as two-dimensional aspects of its own network? Is it willing to interface with other human networks in complex ways or only in simple conventional or established ways? Is it secretive? Does it see the vastness of the networks outside and beyond itself? Does it see how it is connected to them?

The advantage of analyzing humans as networks is it avoids many of the ambiguities of psychological analysis. Rather than focus on such dubious concepts as personality, ego, the subconscious, or self, a network analysis simply asks how is the network functioning. From a network point of view, a personality or self is little more than a focal point, a unifying principle that provides an illusion of certainty where there need not be one and cannot really be one. A human can function perfectly well without an ego, self, or well-defined personality. Indeed, there is greater stability in seeing yourself as a complex network that is always open to analysis and always willing to add or remove parts as they show themselves to be either good or bad.

 After basic network questions have been asked and answered, I think the best starting point for a more detailed analysis is  an examination of semiotics and how they are functioning in the individual’s life, and especially in their communications with others. This is best done through FIML practice.

In this context, as in so many, it is important to remember that humans are entry-level conscious semiotic animals. As such, we are prone to processing semiotics with the abrupt and often violent instincts of animals. A network approach provides specificity (what semiotic are we talking about), malleability (oh, I didn’t mean that), an appreciation for the functionality of network nodes, what they are doing and how or why. Since FIML partners have a prior agreement to do analyses of this sort, it is fairly easy for them to segue from ordinary conversation to analysis of that conversation and then back to the ordinary conversation.

The Media Wants Us to Know That Jill Biden Has COVID — The Primary Election Variant

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Does anyone really care?  I mean, HIPAA laws prohibit the public display of health information. So, when the people behind the wife of Joe Biden want to proclaim that she has the newest and fashionable variant of COVID, there’s generally a narrative engineering reason for it.

I’m sure Jill Biden will not be the last to promote their infected status, there’s certain to be a line of Hollywood and pop culture figures enlisted in the useful narrative.  However, it will be interesting to see just how many people play along this time.

source

Fear is the basis of virtually all mass mind-control. Typically, it is fear of something you cannot see such as a virus or CO2. Or something you cannot clearly define or quantify, such as rising hate speech on the interwebs, systemic racism, white supremacism. It is always based on lies and gross exaggerations. Fear is a one-sided emotional ‘argument’, a form of psychological coercion that often leads to actual hatred of those who do not succumb to it. We saw it in spades with the vax mandates. Fear guides the understanding of far too many people in their appraisals of politics, foreign policy, healthcare, societal needs and possibilities. Mass fear campaigns promoted in concert by government, MSM, influencers, and academia are always suspect and rarely truthful. Promotion of fear is itself a very strong signal that mind-control is happening. ABN

The timeline for full deployment of the modern United States internet control system, is likely around late fall and early winter this year, in advance of the 2024 U.S. election cycle

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I share this information with you so that you understand what is being constructed and what is about to be deployed on a large scale throughout the U.S. internet operating system.  The U.S. internet will be different.  The social media restrictions became more prevalent and noticeable in the past several years; now it is time for DHS to expand that process to the entire U.S. internet.

The timeline for full deployment of the modern United States internet control system, is likely around late fall and early winter this year, in advance of the 2024 U.S. election cycle.

Everything will change.  Every route of online traffic including Internet Service Providers (ISP’s) to filters and rerouting on Domain Name Systems (DNS), to the Internet Protocol (IP) itself will be subject to change in the form of background shadow banning.  If the DHS partnership is successful, you will not initially notice – much like a shadow banned platform user doesn’t notice their new defined status.  The shift will become more obvious over time.

One odd outcome will be a regional targeting system.  Depending on where you are in the USA, your online experience will be different. There will also be enhancements to your internet travel based on your profile.  Good thinking users will have benefits that enhance the experience of the user and supports the interests of the national security guardians.

♦ Deployment of a Virtual Private Network (VPN) is irrelevant in this construct.  A VPN is like you renting a car without a license plate.  You travel past all the Automatic License Plate Readers, arrive at your destination, leave the keys in the ignition and just abandon the car.  Your personal travel was essentially invisible to the APLR system.  However, when the internet roads are controlled by the national security state, and there is no longer an offramp to the destination, your VPN use is irrelevant – you cannot reach your destination.  That’s part of the shift.

You will notice I use the term “definition” quite often.  That is because the root of every control mechanism is grounded upon defining things.  When you accept the terms ‘disinformation’, ‘misinformation’, and/or ‘malinformation’, you are buying into the process that permits definitions to determine your travel. Those who define both you and your destination, ultimately control your online experience.

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If you provide content online, you probably already have noticed this happening to you. Total information control by advanced AI is a modern iteration of the First & Second Noble Truths—that we suffer because we cling to delusion. Escaping our delusional group karma will require paying wise attention to the truths of our own unique mind-streams and experiences. That has always been the case in the human realm. The good side of this is it has become so obvious today (if you look) how delusions are made and propagated. Fully understanding the First & Second Noble Truths = Enlightenment. In this context, FIML has more value than ever. ABN

Peterson on the demise of Canada and the West

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Mildly of good analysis but leaves out that the decline of the West is not due only to the anarchic psychological vindictiveness of individuals. It is much more fundamentally the result of decades of organized infiltration into all major Western institutions. We are well past the mid-point of unrestricted war against the West through parasitic infiltration. Now that our institutions have been taken over, the battlefronts are chaos and complexity leading to civilizational collapse. Hatred of the host is the DNA of cultural parasitism. The infestation ends only when the host expires or succeeds in overcoming the parasite. The destiny of parasitic groups is different from the destiny of disturbed individuals. As the primary parasitic conquest grows and proliferates, other parasitic groups join in, as do many disturbed individuals, but their core goals are not the same. Peterson, who claims not to understand history, also fails to understand that we are facing an organized invasion. It’s not just many disturbed individuals acting anarchically. ABN

Continue reading “Peterson on the demise of Canada and the West” →

Malignant narcissism and identity

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Malignant narcissism is an extreme form of narcissism characterized by aggression against people who threaten the narcissist’s narcissistic supply.

A malignant narcissist sees the other person as the threat, not just what they say or do.

This makes sense in that a narcissist has at some level concluded that they as a person are the standard for all things; thus, other people are blamed and attacked far out of proportion to whatever the narcissist believes they have done.

In Christian terms, the malignant narcissist blames the sinner not the sin and thus attacks the sinner, even when the sin may be as mild as a withheld compliment or a deserved rebuke.

I think all narcissists behave in a manner similar to this, though the ordinary type, which is very common in this world, is less aggressive than the malignant type.

Since narcissism is so common, one can say that in some ways narcissists have good reason to be suspicious of others and take revenge on them. There really is a good chance that they are dealing with another narcissist, who will do the same to them if they get the chance.

In a previous post, I wrote about the vortex or tautology of identity, the tautology of basing our identity on a semiotic matrix that, by its very nature, always refers back to the same “identity.” A malignant narcissist is an extreme example of this problem.

The semiotics of malignant narcissism are such that the narcissist sees his or her identity as being the person they really are. Seeing themselves in this way, narcissists apply a similar logic to others—at their core they are people who must be opposed or attacked for even the slightest perceived offense.

A group example of extreme malignant narcissism might be North Korea. If an NK citizen makes a single mistake—even a slight verbal mistake—they run the risk of being executed and also having three generations of their family sent to prison for life. The reasoning is that the original offender is a very bad person, which can be known from what they said. And since they are very bad, they must have influenced every person in their family who is younger than them and been influenced by every person in their family who is older than them.

If that isn’t hell on earth, I don’t know what is.

It is my belief that most groups, even very cute and nice ones, tend toward narcissism and many of them tend toward and become malignantly narcissistic. This happens because groups form and maintain themselves on the basis of shared semiotics, which necessarily are formulaic or simplistic.

We can see malignant narcissism in many religious, political, nationalist, or ethnic groups. The clearest sign is a disproportionate response to criticism—banishment, murder, violence, loss of employment, etc.—but narcissistic groups can also be clever and hide these responses or delay them long enough that the connection to the “offense” is hard to see.

Just as narcissistic groups cannot bear criticism, even self-criticism from within, so individual narcissists are bad at introspection. For either one, to honestly view and assess the core value (me!) is to destroy the false identity. For either one (group or individual) this would be a wonderful thing for them and others, but it is hard to do because their semiotic matrix is a tautology and they cannot admit this, or usually even see it.

first posted JULY 31, 2013

Research and Studies on CBD and Anxiety

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CBD has gained a lot of attention in recent years for its potential therapeutic benefits for anxiety. While there is some evidence to support the use of CBD for anxiety, there are also limitations to the current research, and more studies are needed to fully understand the potential benefits and risks.

What does existing research say about the potential benefits of CBD for anxiety?

Several studies investigating the potential benefits of CBD for anxiety have borne promising results. Some of the proposed benefits of CBD for anxiety, according to emerging research, include:

  • Reducing symptoms of generalized anxiety disorder (GAD) and social anxiety disorder (SAD)
  • Improving sleep in people with anxiety
  • Reducing anxiety in people with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD)
  • Reducing symptoms of panic disorder

In the scientific literature, any drug or substance that causes a decrease in anxiety is known as an anxiolytic. Hence CBD is the subject of ongoing research into these proposed anxiolytic properties of CBD and their underlying mechanisms. Despite the need for some caution, these initial findings are exciting for researchers and sufferers of these varying facets of anxiety alike.

source

The linked essay is a thorough review of the use of CBD to relieve anxieties. Sent by a reader and well worth viewing if topic is of interest. ABN

What limits speech? In a word: Fear

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If we consider speech with only one listener and look firstly at the micro level, we find it is fear of wrong word choice, wrong gesture, expression, demeanor, or tone of voice that limits our speech because a misstep with any one of these may transgress interpersonal limits.

At the meso level, it is either fear of offending or embarrassing (our understanding of) the “personality” of our listener or the fear of an actual flareup from our listener.

At the macro level, it is the fear of introducing a largish idea with sociological or career implications that might disturb, embarrass, or anger our one listener.

With two or more listeners, the analysis is much the same though the numbers of people make it more complex, until we get to so many people we are speaking to an audience. Then it becomes simpler in some ways because the micro and meso levels will be less prominent due to distance between speaker and audience and there being no clear single target of our tone of voice or phraseology.

On the other hand, an audience’s response can be more complex and problematic because more than one person can become angry at us.

Human beings thus are stuck in a game that is controlled by how most of us listen most of the time.

Stated differently, human beings have magnificent speech and communicative capabilities, but rarely get to use them to their full, best effect because one or more of the many speech limits outlined above will cause us either to hold our tongues or else risk creating a disruption in the mind(s) of our listeners.

This seems like a Big Problem to me. I do not want to spend my life constrained by those rules. FIML can help us overcome this problem but even FIML cannot do it all.

We must also recognize that our very comprehension of meaning itself is grounded in fear.

first posted SEPTEMBER 23, 2019

UPDATE: This is a main area where I have some disagreement with traditional Buddhist practice which tends to put the onus of right speech entirely on the speaker. This makes sense in many contexts but in many other contexts it can cause speakers to withhold or be timid when they should not. Or it can cause listeners to believe that speakers must always keep in mind their weaknesses and that they (listeners) are being entirely proper when they misinterpret or mis-react to someone’s speech. This kind of thinking too often leads to overly emotional responses, a greatly reduced scope of discussable topics, and an overall pettiness that constrains everyone. Placing the onus for right speech always on the speaker and never requiring right mindfulness of the listener leads to a kind of hierarchy of speech or a totalitarian view of what is right and wrong to say. In the world today, we can clearly see how speech is constrained in this way through censorship, shadow-banning, muting, shaming, deplatforming, cancelling and more with almost no good purpose ever being served except elitist control of the masses. At interpersonal levels, our speech is too often limited by the narcissistic sensibilities of listeners or what we fear those sensibilities might be. None of this is optimal good speech. In Buddhism we want to optimize speech, thought, mindfulness, and listening. It is good to be mindful of what we say, when we say it, and to whom. But it is not good to always tread in fear every time you open your mouth. ABN

Your mindfulness can beneficially affect other people

~ ABN ~ Leave a comment

…Until relatively recently, mindfulness was studied in the context of the individual’s own well-being as a stress-reducing psychological mechanism. Researchers now are coming to recognize that some people are better at being mindful, and that those who are have not only less stress but better relationships.  According to the theory behind a new study by Auburn University’s Julianne McGill and Francesca Adler-Baeder (2019), it may very well be this ability to focus on the present moment that leads you to set stress aside and be more loving with your partner.  Indeed, the authors make the observation that such “positive relationship behaviors are associated with higher relationship quality and in fact, may be one of the most potent predictors of relationship functioning determined by individual studies and meta-analytic procedures” (p. 1).

Study is behind a paywall. The above quote comes from an article about the study: This Personality Trait May Improve Your Relationships.