Cows in Berkeley, 1900
| Date: | Sat, 30 Sep 2000 11:38:16 -0700 |
| To: | "MHOCCA List" <mhocca@egroups.com> |
| From: | "Andrew Phelps" <starfish@northcoast.com> |
| Subject: | [MHOCCA] classical conditioning |
Sylvia:You wrote:I think this is part of what becomes called psychiatric disability, those triggers. For me, they come out of nowhere, are about unimportant things, and I rage. Once in a while I act, badly <sigh>. Usually, I feel that adrenalin in my shoulders, pace around stewing, and reinforce that trigger so when it happens again it is worse! I have no idea what to do about this except limit caffeine. It has very little really to do with the person or even the issue, though it does get set off by some more than others. I wish I understood this more. I think it has a lot to do with flaming on “our” lists, and maybe Internet flaming in general.I much appreciate that you have brought this up. Technically speaking 'triggers’ are the direct experiences of the social conditioning that psychiatric hospitalization/control has imposed upon us. This is a kind of social ‘cure’ by ‘branding’, whence no doubt the term ‘stigma’ — the source is hehehe Pavlov. If we want to ‘recover’ from the forced intervention, we have to face these triggers head on. On the other hand, to do so throws us into frightful rages/hurt spaces, as you and Dick have cited, and tends to perform THE INTENDED PURPOSE which is to keep us trapped in our ‘mental illness’ for which the conditioning IS the ‘adjustment’. For some reason our movement has been reluctant to take this problem on in full seriousness. We have allowed people to trigger others and not take responsibility, and we have allowed people to ‘go under’ due to excessive triggering. This is the cause of much grief. But we should take this matter on! At bottom, the issue is behavior modification and whether we are willing to envision a way to deal with madness that is more than a behaviorist paradigm. Unfortunately this brings up the question of mind control and that has proved to be an elusive topic. I can only say that — on a personal basis — I reject your attack on ‘caffeine’. But that’s personal biochemistry and I allow that your experience could be quite different. :-) As for the Internet, I don’t think it is in any way the CAUSE of this problem. But on the other hand with its lightning-like communication speeds, ‘trigger’ type of statements tend to hit us ‘below the belt’. So it requires a special training and awareness to be able to handle the heat of this. Nevertheless the bottom line is people taking more responsibility for their way of being involved with ‘triggering’, with becoming more accountable for how they deal with ‘triggers’. Respectfully Andrew Phelps |
