Transitions

[flamingsword]

I think it is maybe time for me to let go of the feelings-naming exercise, and to start writing into the Shadow work section of this year.

What things do you notice trigger your body to tense up?
It used to be when I felt misunderstood, and now it’s just when someone deliberately wants to avoid the truth of me but still wants things from me. Like, ohoho buddy, that’s not how any of this works. So I guess it’s still when people are wrong about me - but are also likely to hurt me, “punish” me for breaking the mold of their expectations / social norms. And I get tense when there’s unfairness, too.

I am currently thinking about the difference between wanting to do nice things for people and trade generosities and be fair, but realizing that how I approach worthiness, fairness, and gift economies are so deeply weird to other people that I can’t really even figure out how to solve the interpersonal dilemma I’m having where someone gifted me some handspun yarn, and now I want to do something nice for her and our mutual people, but am not allowed to - and it bothers me. Like, I get that she spins yarn like I knit, mostly for stimming purposes. In some ways it can be considered me doing her the favor of taking off her hands the byproduct of her stimming, much the same way that I feel grateful for ot_atma taking the knitted fractal cowl off my hands. But if they wanted to buy me a tasty food or something for that, I would let them and neither option, reciprocity or none, would feel weird to me? But I would not tell them, “I have done a nice thing that you benefitted from, and you are not allowed to do anything in return” … not even pay it forward to our mutual community? Which is also weird and feels stifling?

I think that might be the crux of it, really: my dispute is not that the gifting economy doesn’t require reciprocity, it’s that reciprocity and all its antecedents are verboten in this case. I want to be free to do things that I think are fair.

And now that means possibly confronting someone I’m having a miscommunication with about that forbidden-ness and asking her to explain. It’s weird to me that I was gifted multiple cakes of lovely hand-spun yarn and I now have to feel awkward bc we’re not emotionally close enough to have a discussion about the metacommunication? What is that even.

---

In other news, today I went to a #HandsOff political protest/rally for economic justice. It was loud, hot, and still pretty rad. Gotta figure out how to protest in heat for later this summer.

Comments

[otter]

Um, do those gifting people not realize that gifts work better when the good feelings keep spreading? Perhaps it isn't "verboten" as you say, and is some sort of miscommunication. Maybe I fall into your weird camp, but what you describe does feel stifling to me, as well. When I run into such things (and I do), I try to approach people from a place of curiosity. Like, "the way my mind works, I thought you meant x,y or z. Am I close?"

Thank you for going to the protest. I'm allergic to pepperspray*, and as I'm not ready to risk martyring myself, I find other ways to support the movement. *Nightshades in general

Edit: things that make me tense up are any sense of rejection, real or imagined. Loud noises in general. and a bunch of other stuff.

[flamingsword]

If you’re on Discord at all, I’m in the OneFreeCommunity server and if you want to organize with other (mostly disabled) folks and do virtual protests, then I can find the invite link for you?

Rejection sensitivity super duper sucks, I’m sorry your brain does that to you still. Mine went away in my 20’s, either on its own or possibly when I started pulling shame out of my head by the roots. I wish I could explain how to do that in a way that makes sense to other people, it was an affirming and life changing thing to do, but I’ve never met anyone else who’s tried it or been willing to give up on part of an aspect of human experience to maintain their mental health. Let me know if you ever want to try and I’ll dig up the post where I explained.

[otter]

I'm on discord, so yes, an invite would be welcomed.

As for the rejection sensitivity - mine is certainly much milder than it used to be. The past couple years it's flared up more, probably due to recent traumas.

[flamingsword]

https://discord.com/invite/JsbdwPefpR Let’s see if that works, otherwise I’ll have to DM you the link to my Discord, friend you there and invite you from the widget inside the group. Which is totally doable, it’s just more steps.

[otter]

That worked. Thank you

Gifting

[nyyki]

The basic thing I embrace is that gifts are non-transactional among emotionally intelligent folks. It shows up in several places in my writing, a gift is repaid in the giving, and acknowledgement of the gift is a plus. Giving a gift to drop an ob on someone isn't honest, it's manipulative, so I treat all gifts as good faith expressions. As for paying it forward, that's between you and your recipient(s), because gifts are non-transactional, so once a gift is given that's one transaction done. Anything more required isn't a gift, it's a contract and probably also an ob. I like reciprocating when I can, but thanks to modern economics that often isn't possible.

Or to put it a different way, we have our own love languages, and like all relationships they're non-reciprocal. You giving gifts is about you, not about the recipients unless receiving gifts is one of theirs.

Re: Gifting

[flamingsword]

Okay, so like, I bought you the yarn for the duster as a present for you, but my getting to knit a thing that will be useful and allow my brain to unspool while I’m working on it is a present from me to me. You accepting the physical thing so that I don’t need to worry about it anymore is a gift from you to me.

If I had said to you that you could say thank you but that you were not allowed to do anything nice in return, would you feel weird about that? Why or why not? Does the concept of fairness or feeling controlled enter into it?

Re: Gifting

[nyyki]

A bit of an oversimplification, because I see both the yarn and the work you did to make it a gift, but break it down -- you get yarn, you make something, you give it to someone, those are all individual steps or actions. Someone saying thanks, though nice, isn't required in the interaction. But saying to the recipient that they can't show their appreciation with something they encounter that they think you'd like is as you said troublesome, because then you're dealing with setting controls on gifts, and yes, that would make me feel uncomfortable. A better option would be for the giver to say that the other person didn't need to gift them anything, but in our culture that's considered odd because gifting is treated as a bi-directional transaction and assumptions of gratitude and reciprocity creep into things. This kind of stuff is why some of my friends don't participate in gift exchanges, because expectations (which of course decrease joy) get involved. Ex: I gave you a brand new laptop and you gave me one of those little green army men?" Charles Schultz created a great phrase to bounce off of in It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown with Charlie Browns repeated comment, "I got a rock." I heard that same phrase with a very different inflection to it, many many times, at earth-centered holiday gatherings, and the person saying the line was saying it with joy because they appreciated rocks/stones/gemstones/crystals/so on.

And yeah, stuff gets in the way. Going back to the duster (which is awesome by the way, and nice and warm, it'll be welcome on cool summer nights) I'm grateful for the gift and it's about you making something for me that I wanted, not so much about the garment itself, because though I like it a lot I like that you took the time and effort to make it for me a whole lot more. So, to sort of drive the point further home, I hold the same regard for the awesome duster as I hold for my turquoise miniskirt and the sun hat you gave me.

What sort of muddies this is motivation from someone for a gift. And I get that this is a key point with the yarn cakes -- Let's break it down again -- Person A buys fibers of some flavor, spins them into yarn, and gifts some of it to you. You say thank you and they say don't give me anything in return. If giving you the yarn is for the purpose of distributing stuff it's reasonable that Person A doesn't want to fill that vacated space with other stuff. And if Person A made the yarn because it was a way to deal with energy that needed to go somewhere and they don't want to be reminded of that need to do something with their hands that can factor into it -- looking at all of the yarn cakes piling up might be a reminder that their drive to stem is more than they can cope with. But telling you that you're not to give them anything for it isn't okay -- lets sort of reductio ad absurdum this: In an extreme case of this their stricture/command/request for you not to give them anything could go on and on and on, so that in the person's mind they could later associate something you gave them as a sort of repayment for the yarn. That's where the problem pops up, because they're dictating actions to you, potentially in perpetuity. So there's a question about motivation behind them saying they don't want anything in return -- are you supposed to track the oxygen released by nearby plants that were fed CO2 from your exhalations, because that O2 could be construed as a gift?

It turns into a mess in short order.