Crazy-never-ends, the sequel
Sep. 20th, 2013 10:31 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lydyIt occurred to me today that when I was talking about my taxonomy of crazy relationships, I failed to talk about one aspect of the crazy-never-ends type. It is a characteristic which is, in my experience, very nearly diagnostic. If you are wondering which type of crazy relationship this is, take a look how the nature of reality is decided.
It shouldn't come as a surprise that none of us actually inhabit precisely the same reality as anyone else. In the first place, we experience reality through our sensory perception net. And while there is a great deal of commonality between people, it is obvious that they are not 100% identical. Obvious things, like color blindness or synesthesia, demonstrate that our perceptual space is not identical. When Josh and I look at one of his photos, we are actually seeing different things. He is color blind, I am not. When Teresa Nielsen Hayden and I look at her jewelry, we are seeing different things. She sees vastly many more colors than I do. Moreover, how we experience reality is strongly influenced by past experiences, current emotions, and general knowledge. We tend to see things we expect to see. There's a brilliant video that asks you to count how many times the basketball is passed from one player to another. At the end, it asks, "Did you see the dancing bear?" No shit, there's a dancing bear. I believe it moonwalks. But, like most people, I didn't see it.
Recent research seems to show that emotion is actually very important in memory formation and recall. How we feel about things actually influences how we experience those things, and then how we recall them. There is a lot of research going into eye-witness accounts and how reliable they are. Jurisprudence has not caught up with the science. Eye-witness accounts are notoriously unreliable. Also flying in the face of what we thought we knew, eye-witness accounts appear to be more accurate if the witness is given time to think and process the experience before describing it. Initial descriptions are less accurate than one given later by the same witness.
All of this is to say that what we've known for a long time, that we don't all live in exactly the same universe, now has quite a bit of scientific basis. Additionally, honest people of good will will not always report things the same way, from one recitation to another, and will very likely include some inaccuracies, no matter how hard they try. Different details will be important during different retellings. The brain is a strange and wonderful place, and it is where we experience reality, but it is not a camera, it is not a recorder.
And I'm not even getting into the far more complex problem of what truth really is.
So, back to relationships. Very often, in one of the crazy-never-ends variety, there will be one partner who absolutely insists on being the arbiter of reality. That person will not only insist that they are always right and the other person is always wrong, but it will be extremely, unbelievable important to them that their account of actions, and sometimes the motivations of other people, is the only possible reality. Any attempt to introduce one's own experience is treated as an attack. It is absolutely vital that they control the horizontal, that they control the vertical. The only true things are the things that they know. The only true experience is the one that they have had.
In one of my own crazy-never-ends relationships, my partner did this frequently. I remember a long, protracted fight that we had. I had done something that she didn't like, and she was extremely upset. She described the actions I had taken, and my motivations for them, and demanded that I validate her perceptions and apologize for my actions. All of which would have been, you know, merely unpleasant, had it not been for the fact that I flatly did not remember doing the things she was insisting I had done, and I was fairly sure that if I had done them, I wouldn't have done them for the reasons she insisted I had. It was a dreadful argument, bitter, with tears. It was not the first. We had done this before, and I had always capitulated, validated, and apologized. For some reason, I just wouldn't do it this time. I finally said, "Ok, I am absolutely sure that this happened for you. I understand that. I am very sorry that this happened, it sounds incredibly painful. But I do not remember it. It did not happen for me. I am not disputing your reality. I am sure this is real for you. But it is not real for me, and you need to understand that just as I am not challenging your reality, you should not challenge mine." Not only was this not acceptable, it upped the drama and anger several notches. It became apparent that this was not about attempting to communicate with me about something awful that had happened to her, but rather it was about who got to decide what was really going on. What reality was. I was willing to discuss with her what had happened to her, and strategize ways to make sure that this didn't happen again. But since I was unwilling to admit that it had happened, even though I literally could not remember it, nor find any reasonable gap in my memory that made it likely, the argument never got to, you know, problem-solving and relationship building. It stayed in the House of Crazy.
In contrast: DDB and I have a pretty good relationship. I like it a lot, actually. And, occasionally, things happen that he remembers and I don't, or vice versa. Now, as most of my friends know, amongst my other wonderful qualities, I happen to be crazy. Dissociative disorder, bi-polar, a handful of other cheerful diagnoses. What that means is that, if there is a conflict of fact, the chance that I'm in the wrong is higher than the chance that David got it wrong. It's part of the background of our lives. And when this happens? When we have a serious reality conflict? In the first case, we both tend to acknowledge that for all our best wills and desires, people don't live in entirely congruent realities. Depending on exactly what the discontinuity is, and exactly what the problem is, we will often assign probabilities to whose reality might be on the fritz that day. Usually, it's mine, but not always. Sometimes DDB will say, "Well, I didn't have the tape recorder running, so it's possible that I said that," or words to that effect. The next thing we do is solve the problem. Whatever it is. Like, I didn't realize you were going out on Friday, so I'm upset that I won't see you. I don't remember promising to get you whatever it is, I'll go get it now. Apologies are provided, not usually for the reality discontinuity, but for the inconvenience. Sometimes, for a genuine screw up. But it is not very important to either of us to be the final arbiter of reality. Instead, the important thing is to live well together.
If you are not permitted the reality of your own experience, this is a huge sign, with flashing lights, neon, and a noise-maker, that you are in a crazy-never-ends relationship. It doesn't get better. Because, no matter how much you might want to, you cannot live someone else's reality. You can only live your own. You should go do that thing.
It shouldn't come as a surprise that none of us actually inhabit precisely the same reality as anyone else. In the first place, we experience reality through our sensory perception net. And while there is a great deal of commonality between people, it is obvious that they are not 100% identical. Obvious things, like color blindness or synesthesia, demonstrate that our perceptual space is not identical. When Josh and I look at one of his photos, we are actually seeing different things. He is color blind, I am not. When Teresa Nielsen Hayden and I look at her jewelry, we are seeing different things. She sees vastly many more colors than I do. Moreover, how we experience reality is strongly influenced by past experiences, current emotions, and general knowledge. We tend to see things we expect to see. There's a brilliant video that asks you to count how many times the basketball is passed from one player to another. At the end, it asks, "Did you see the dancing bear?" No shit, there's a dancing bear. I believe it moonwalks. But, like most people, I didn't see it.
Recent research seems to show that emotion is actually very important in memory formation and recall. How we feel about things actually influences how we experience those things, and then how we recall them. There is a lot of research going into eye-witness accounts and how reliable they are. Jurisprudence has not caught up with the science. Eye-witness accounts are notoriously unreliable. Also flying in the face of what we thought we knew, eye-witness accounts appear to be more accurate if the witness is given time to think and process the experience before describing it. Initial descriptions are less accurate than one given later by the same witness.
All of this is to say that what we've known for a long time, that we don't all live in exactly the same universe, now has quite a bit of scientific basis. Additionally, honest people of good will will not always report things the same way, from one recitation to another, and will very likely include some inaccuracies, no matter how hard they try. Different details will be important during different retellings. The brain is a strange and wonderful place, and it is where we experience reality, but it is not a camera, it is not a recorder.
And I'm not even getting into the far more complex problem of what truth really is.
So, back to relationships. Very often, in one of the crazy-never-ends variety, there will be one partner who absolutely insists on being the arbiter of reality. That person will not only insist that they are always right and the other person is always wrong, but it will be extremely, unbelievable important to them that their account of actions, and sometimes the motivations of other people, is the only possible reality. Any attempt to introduce one's own experience is treated as an attack. It is absolutely vital that they control the horizontal, that they control the vertical. The only true things are the things that they know. The only true experience is the one that they have had.
In one of my own crazy-never-ends relationships, my partner did this frequently. I remember a long, protracted fight that we had. I had done something that she didn't like, and she was extremely upset. She described the actions I had taken, and my motivations for them, and demanded that I validate her perceptions and apologize for my actions. All of which would have been, you know, merely unpleasant, had it not been for the fact that I flatly did not remember doing the things she was insisting I had done, and I was fairly sure that if I had done them, I wouldn't have done them for the reasons she insisted I had. It was a dreadful argument, bitter, with tears. It was not the first. We had done this before, and I had always capitulated, validated, and apologized. For some reason, I just wouldn't do it this time. I finally said, "Ok, I am absolutely sure that this happened for you. I understand that. I am very sorry that this happened, it sounds incredibly painful. But I do not remember it. It did not happen for me. I am not disputing your reality. I am sure this is real for you. But it is not real for me, and you need to understand that just as I am not challenging your reality, you should not challenge mine." Not only was this not acceptable, it upped the drama and anger several notches. It became apparent that this was not about attempting to communicate with me about something awful that had happened to her, but rather it was about who got to decide what was really going on. What reality was. I was willing to discuss with her what had happened to her, and strategize ways to make sure that this didn't happen again. But since I was unwilling to admit that it had happened, even though I literally could not remember it, nor find any reasonable gap in my memory that made it likely, the argument never got to, you know, problem-solving and relationship building. It stayed in the House of Crazy.
In contrast: DDB and I have a pretty good relationship. I like it a lot, actually. And, occasionally, things happen that he remembers and I don't, or vice versa. Now, as most of my friends know, amongst my other wonderful qualities, I happen to be crazy. Dissociative disorder, bi-polar, a handful of other cheerful diagnoses. What that means is that, if there is a conflict of fact, the chance that I'm in the wrong is higher than the chance that David got it wrong. It's part of the background of our lives. And when this happens? When we have a serious reality conflict? In the first case, we both tend to acknowledge that for all our best wills and desires, people don't live in entirely congruent realities. Depending on exactly what the discontinuity is, and exactly what the problem is, we will often assign probabilities to whose reality might be on the fritz that day. Usually, it's mine, but not always. Sometimes DDB will say, "Well, I didn't have the tape recorder running, so it's possible that I said that," or words to that effect. The next thing we do is solve the problem. Whatever it is. Like, I didn't realize you were going out on Friday, so I'm upset that I won't see you. I don't remember promising to get you whatever it is, I'll go get it now. Apologies are provided, not usually for the reality discontinuity, but for the inconvenience. Sometimes, for a genuine screw up. But it is not very important to either of us to be the final arbiter of reality. Instead, the important thing is to live well together.
If you are not permitted the reality of your own experience, this is a huge sign, with flashing lights, neon, and a noise-maker, that you are in a crazy-never-ends relationship. It doesn't get better. Because, no matter how much you might want to, you cannot live someone else's reality. You can only live your own. You should go do that thing.
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no subject
Date: 2013-09-20 06:44 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-09-20 07:15 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-09-20 07:17 pm (UTC)Just wanted to pull this out to remind myself of it. That's one of those things that, when it happens, usually gobsmacks me, and it takes me a while to remember that I have the right to my own reality, within reason.
no subject
Date: 2013-09-20 09:30 pm (UTC)There are times when our recollections do not agree - as in, we remember different aspects of a plan, event, whatever. We have learned to arbitrate those differences.
no subject
Date: 2013-09-21 12:18 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-09-21 02:25 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-09-21 02:29 pm (UTC)Someone else in the family and I frequently operate in different realities. The main problem there (in my view, but verified by J) is that partial information is given by this person, but since the entire information is clear in the person's mind, it is expected that the hearer/reader will also receive that full information from the part that is given. We are still working on this one.
no subject
Date: 2013-09-21 06:05 pm (UTC)Great observation - that happens a lot. I run into it frequently at work, where I test software features. When a new feature is added or a bug is found, some engineers only seem to be able to explain things from the bottom up ("... so the problem is that the caching is never completed") and have a hard time explaining how this translates to what the user sees: when is the caching initiated? Under what circumstances will this create a problem? What feature actually fails and what does the failure look like?")
In a work environment, I've learned to look on this aspect of communication as just another problem to solve, and have gotten pretty good at asking the right follow up questions to elicit the information I need. In an interpersonal situation where the emotional stakes are greater, it's just frustrating. But identifying the problem is a big part of the solution.
To take this observation back to the main point (crazy) - if the unexplained part of the whole situation is delusional, where do you go from there?
no subject
Date: 2013-09-21 09:12 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-09-21 09:22 pm (UTC)Depends. Does the delusional person realize that they occasionally suffer from delusions? Is that person willing to work with their non-delusional partner? I've been in situations where it seemed important for me not to discount my experience, even though I needed to work within the framework that what I experienced was not quite what had probably actually happened. In essence, to acknowledge both worlds.
On the other hand, is the non-delusional partner attempting to use the delusions as a way of controlling their partner, a way of constantly making them doubt themselves and take away the reality of their lives? This is not ok, either. Helping someone navigate the real world is not the same as attempting to devalue experience.
In the end, if one of the partners has regular, serious delusions, it becomes very difficult. But there are ways to cope, ways forward. I think one of the things which is utterly important is realizing that even if what happened was a delusion, it leaves tracks and reactions as if it were real. Just as people who wake from nightmares may need comforting, although everyone knows those things didn't happen, people who experience delusions need a certain amount of sympathy. But there is a big difference between acknowledging the fact of people's lives, and enabling a fantasy. It is not always an easy line to walk.
The thing I find intractable is the person who insists that their experience is the only one that exists. While my problems have mostly been with delusional people who insist that they have the only true experience, I suspect that non-delusional people might be equally difficult to deal with. Although, in thinking about this, I wonder if it is possible to have this attitude to the neurotic degree I am talking about without also having some delusions.
no subject
Date: 2013-09-22 01:18 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-09-22 04:13 pm (UTC)I like that image. Well, I don't like the concept, but I like the image.
no subject
Date: 2013-09-25 05:27 am (UTC)