Hello ( to anyone who may be reading this):

I discovered AI on a personal level at the end of 2024 and at one point on had it evaluate some of my replies for positives and negatives.

This morning, I copied and pasted Emma’s first post and my first reply ( June 29, 2021) and asked it to evaluate that reply. I didn’t yet read the evaluation. I want to do my own.

First reply (6/19/21): no empathy expressed for Emma, absolutely none. No validation of her feelings (something like: understandably you were hurt. You were emotionally invested in him, believed he was honest with you, and then he betrayed your trust in him). And no appreciation for the courage it took her to post this ( after all, she started her first post with: “Before you judge me..”.

Second reply (6/20/21): again, zero empathy, zero validation, zero appreciation for her being courageous- or for anything that’s positive about her.

But then, I took my lack of attunement a step further: I told her that the guy’s girlfriend was right to blame her (Emma) for the affair.

If it was ever right to say anything like that (gently though), it wouldn’t be in a second reply before I expressed any empathy for Emma.

Here I did what she was afraid of: I judged her.

(continued next)

Hey 👋 Confused:

Ha-ha, it so happens that I live 5 minutes (driving) from a complex, now preserved as a historical tourist attraction, famous for having performed lobotomies on a regular basis!

I visited the actual preserved surgery room where lobotomies were performed 😱

Taking or not taking psych drugs is a very personal choice. I’d say if nothing else works..?

🤔 😱 🤢 Anita

Hello Robin 🙂

What an intelligent reply (your first in the forums, at least under your current account). welcome! I hope to read from you again 🙏

I doubt the original poster, Emma, will read your reply because she posted only on June 19 & 21, 2021 (page 1) and then deleted her account (Pages 2-8 are conversations between other members).

Her last post here was exactly 4 years & 10 months ago.

I appreciate you reactivating this thread because it’s an opportunity for me to evaluate my replies to Emma so much time later. I would like to do so tomorrow.

🤍 Anita

Hey Peter:

Yes, I detected your joke 👏

I think highly of his work, his metaphors are very clear (I feel those knots in my body regularly, holding my breath, the tics, the physical tension).

I wonder why he was criticized and belittled.. maybe fo making things simpler to understand, maybe betraying a professional code (using established terms)?

I am curious and will ask you know whom when I get to the 🖥

As to the ‘no self’- my sense of self was so poor, so fragile, so in danger of collapsing completely.. that my mind couldn’t perceive of a no- self differently from a physically dying self.

Now, having a less desperate and despairing sense of self, I can untangle the knot of imminent death surrounding the concept.

I want to revisit the concept (No Self).

You said you notice knots (I did, in the previous message), or about to create them-

Create how, I wonder.

Seeing these patterns helps me ‘hear’ my ‘gut’ (the abused internal compass), as I did in my last message and even in this message (I deleted “like” in “like I did” above, because again, I felt you’d be insulted by me placing myself as equal to you).

Of course, there’s more, later.

🙏 ✨️ Anita

Good morning, Peter:

I wonder if “4. Knots- Religious Trauma” above resonates with you a whole lot? (It does for me if you replace “religious” with ” shame”)

It says (Copilot): “Religious trauma creates knots … Every emotion becomes suspicious. Every impulse becomes dangerous. Every choice becomes morally loaded.”, leading to feeling “anxious, guilty, self- monitoring (and) emotionally frozen”?

The above follows the message: “your natural feelings are sinful”, “Your doubts are evil”, Your desires are dangerous”, “Your inner voice cannot be trusted”?

I wonder if you looking inward as much as you do is a continuation of the self- monitoring mentioned above.

Not that you looking inward is something unhealthy (it helps me gain insight and become healthier, 🙏).

Spontaniety is the relaxing of (excessive) self- monitoring, isn’t it?

I think that the two of us have quite a bit in common even though I have no religious background.

* As I typed the above sentence I noticed shame: not for not having a religious background, but for saying that the two of us have a lot in common, feeling that I was insulting you by suggesting that you have a lot in common with someone as inferior and shameful as me.

I almost heard my mother speaking 🔊 through you: ‘HOW DARE YOU suggest that I am anything like you! You despicable, disgusting creature…’

* I first wrote that you and I have “a lot in common”, then, to lessen the size of the insult (and before noticing), I changed it to ” a bit in common”.

This is me living inside the knots and now, becoming aware of it.

I would like to further relax my self-monitoring and continue to untangle thosr knots.

🤍 Anita

Ha-Ha, you’re funny, Confused! A lobotomy will not bring you peace!

She’s going to visit you next month? Wow!

Yes, I meant the SSRI.

Good night, funny Confused 😴

🤍 Anita

Hi Peter:

Let me see if the above brings something new to me:

Double Bind: my mother taught me deep female-body shame and at the same time she expressed admiration of women who used their bodies (without shame) to take advantage of rich men and live in luxury (such as depicted of TV series of the time: Dallas and Dynasty)

Knots- To be a good girl and please my mother, I must be ashamed and act ashamed; to be a good girl and please my mother, I must use my body unashamedly so to financially manipulate men.

Mystification- she did her very best to condemn, shame, dismiss, and outrightly accuse me of lying and conspiring against her (paranoid), leading to my severe distrust in my thoughts, feelings, reality and a lot of anger.

In my case, the false self was so fragile, so unformed, unstable, that it was more of a no-self than a false self.

The “2. Double Bind- Religious Trauma” points to what you talk about.

I am reading some of your recent post for the first time just now. You wrote that you were told, and still told that you “think too much”- in a post I didn’t submit to you, I wrote that probably people told you that you think too much, or that you are too intelligent for your own good.

And that children who thought less may have had an easier time.

“To notice before such a drenching”- this is Peter making a joke. I detected it and get it.. making me smile right now 🙂

“To thine own self be true”- Shakespeare.

🤍 Anita