I actually barely remember anything from before I was 15 years old. And anything I do remember is just a sequence of facts, no emotions or feelings.

Yeah that sounds like a lot of emotional distress & suppression from an early age, at least in my unprofessional opinion.

My last therapist was saying that it’s impossible for me to have trauma (probably because I never show much emotion at all during a session)

O_o

Maybe they had a different definition of trauma than what I know of. There are different responses to traumatic experience. Some of them make big, flashy results. The fight response can make people highly abrasive. The flight response can make people nervous workaholics. The fawn response can make people into over-gentle doormats. The freeze response though can make people clam up, to hide and to bottle, to show as little externally as possible. It’s also, funnily enough, the strongest trauma response. The other 3 are active responses, trying to do something about the danger. They’re biologically preferable to freeze because they’re options for solving a problem. The freeze response is a last resort when other solutions have been tried, and no way to deal with the traumatic situation has been found. Showing no emotion is not an indication of lack of trauma, it can be an indication of inescapable trauma.

I have found that it helps for me to do some writing of things that randomly pop up in my head, but this is always extremely difficult, as I’m rarely aware of my thoughts at all.

Hey that sounds good! Even if it’s hard to do with any regularity, having any healthy medium for processing is good. Maybe you can even try turning it around, start writing literally anything that’s in your head, even if there’s hardly anything you can perceive, and just keep going, see if you can sort of prompt thoughts to start flowing through a medium like writing. That type of technique works for me sometimes.

I’m sorry to hear what you’ve gone through, no one should have to grow up in neglect like that. Keep searching & observing, I don’t know if what I’ve said will help you much but I do think you can find the answers you need if you persist.

Neglect is definitely something which can cause CPTSD-like reactions in the psyche. Emotional neglect was a part of my upbringing as well. For what it’s worth, I actually have been able to identify it somewhat by talking with friends who had healthier emotional upbringings, and noting what they experienced and I did not.

Talking with your parents so little that you don’t even know much about them after living together for 30 years definitely counts as neglect.

I’d recommend having a look at the book “Complex PTSD - From Surviving to Thriving” just to see if what it describes matches. It does talk about emotional neglect as one of the things which can cause long-lasting problems.

Is it possible that this is a trauma response? I’ve had trouble expressing and feeling my own emotions to a somewhat lesser degree, and I’ve realized that a lot of the reason why is that I was punished for showing distress when I was growing up, hid and suppressed such things as a result. Learning about the concept of CPTSD (Complex PTSD, less like normal PTSD than it sounds at first), and practicing something similar to IFS (Internal Family Systems), have both helped me more than any of the therapists I’ve seen. Identifying internal “parts” and trying to listen to what they in particular have to say has helped me connect with and integrate my emotions to some extent. Expression has been happening in the form of a kind of freeform journaling, both writing and drawing whatever I feel like, which has worked better for me than normal rote prose journaling. I don’t know if any of those concepts or techniques will help your situation, but it’s what I’ve got to offer.

I, also, have had a fairly disappointing time with therapy. I’m currently seeing my 4th therapist and wondering how worthwhile it is to keep seeing this one. Most of the real progress I’ve made was on my own, just doing research and exploring the Internet (mostly Reddit though I’m trying to move away from using that). If I look for a 5th therapist I might look specifically for one who is autistic themselves to see if that works better.

I wish you well, and hope you find what you’re looking for.

To quote the actual abstract, not just the headline,

There is mounting experimental evidence that lifetime exposure to these increasing atmospheric CO2 levels can negatively impact the normal physiology of organisms. However, directly assessing this in humans is very difficult.

It does not say that they for sure know that atmospheric CO2 levels are going to be toxic within 50 years. It only says that, based on one examination of indirect proxies, it seems like that might be the case. Something which definitely should be studied further, because even the possibility of global atmospheric toxicity is worrying, but not something to jump to conclusions on, because doing so is bad science.

Their study result makes me feel kind of sick to my stomach too, I just want to keep a level head and not jump to “welp I guess we’ll all be paying billionaires for clean oxygen tanks in 50 years”.

If this really does turn out to be a problem we’re heading towards, it’s also premature to conclude that it won’t get fixed. I know that if I learn that this is for real, I’m certainly going to be telling everyone I know about it and looking for ways to spur useful action.

Just looked on their website at the list of ways people can help, there’s more variety of tasks & skills on there than I was expecting. I don’t know how to modify or repair bikes, or craft a solar oven, but if someone was willing to teach me I’d be excited to learn.

Carpooling with people I don’t know scares me a little, but I have friends of various ideological alignments in the different places I’ve stayed who might be interested in doing a little field trip with me. I’ll try to keep it in mind.

Also, thanks for reminding me that foodnotbombs exists. That is definitely a group which helps people directly.

Have you thought about translating, transscribing or proof reading for texts and other media? Also making audio versions of texts or translated audio tracks are digital tasks that often dont have enough people doing them.

No, I didn’t even know that was something people needed. I figured modern translation & transcription software was good enough to do most of these tasks. Where is it needed?

Do you have things that you believe you could do but currently dont because you dont have the confidence / skills you think you need for that?

Kind of, yeah. I am a competent programmer and generally have a good mind for technology. There are a few reasons I haven’t applied it to anything anarchist-y yet:

• I’m a game programmer, and have almost no experience working with any other kind of tech, software or otherwise. The fundamental skills & mindset are very transferable, but anything which is practically useful will require the effort of learning how to do new things.
• I could contribute to open source projects, but coding is a lot of work and I’m not sure what a minimal first step would be. The idea of having to get to know an entire code base just to fix a small bug or add a simple feature is daunting.
• I’m not actually sure how much I could really help people through code. Maybe a project like Meshtastic, decentralized communications? Software is a tool, and more than just a tool, it’s like a meta-tool, it’s multiple steps removed from physical reality, which makes it harder to gauge how much help I’m really providing. It is definitely something I am well suited for, and it’s something I like doing, but I don’t want to get lost in the sauce of making tools for the sake of making tools or making the efficiency more efficient without it being grounded somewhere. Unless people really want someone to put more effort towards open source game projects, then I guess I could do that lol, it just feels like a very indirect way of making the world a better place.

I live as a nomad, so I don’t really have a “local” for more than a few months at a time (at most). Without putting all my lifestyle details on the internet, it’s a large part of why I’m hoping to find ways to help people directly that are online. I have no fixed location, no local community, and usually not much means of local transport. I guess my “local community” is whatever parts of the Internet I frequent? Makes me wonder if there’s something out there for remote workers, I’ve sure seen some BS in the industries where I’ve worked.

To be frank, I do not want to make flyers or do admin tasks for a political organization I’m meeting for the first time. My goal is to help people directly. I will take your advice though,

Start small, start local, don’t burn yourself out, speak to people

The first anarchist I met suggested I write a list of all the resources & skills I can offer, and a list of all the people in my social circles (I feel like I should include online communities as well), and just start with mutual aid on a small direct scale like that. There was a term he had for doing this that I can’t remember :/

Good luck!

Thanks, I feel like I might need it.

I am actually usually in rural areas, so that option is not going to be available to me very often. I appreciate the suggestion though, never heard the term “infoshop” before.