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RE: [Dream Report] Plague of the Twisted Flesh
This is horrifying but so fascinating. I'm really enjoying reading these dreams. Do you enjoy having them, or are they too disturbing?
I have enough mundane, "I'm back in high school, naked, and failing biology" type dreams, that I get excited when I have a dream that's half as interesting as yours. Even if it scares the hell out of me. But maybe it would get old to have them all the time.
I enjoy having them. I do not process fear of personal harm correctly. That's not me trying to sound like I'm fucking batman or some badass person, the necessary connection between danger to my bodily wellbeing and fear in my brain is broken. Instead I just get really excited because something unusual and interesting is happening. I can be startled, and feel anxiety though.
I also am a strict materialist, so it's impossible to be scared by stuff like ghosts or anything supernatural. I recall when I was in scouts, We were telling each other ghost stories around the fire, then they dared someone to go get some dr peppers from the bus.
I ran and did it without issue. They were impressed until I told them I wasn't scared because ghosts are impossible, since to see them photons would have to bounce off them into our eyes, which could not happen if they are immaterial. Likewise they would have to vibrate the air to make any sound, and be tangible in some way to harm a physical person.
I am scared of losing people I love. That's a lot more realistic than bogeymen, demons or ghosts. It doesn't "jump out at you", usually it happens very slowly as you must sit there and watch, powerless to stop it. That sort of slow, grinding, hollowing fear is worse than anything I could conjure up in writing.
Damn. I was hoping you were batman. ;-)
Maybe the connection in your brain between bodily well being and fear isn't broken. Maybe it works just like it's supposed to. Without people who get excited and explore scary things while everyone else is huddling in fear, we probably would have died out a long time ago.
Well, Batman and I have never been seen together in the same room. Just saying.
I'm sure there are upsides, but I have no compunctions about frank self-analysis. I am brutal with myself because in the opposite direction lies dunning krugeritis and various other forms of narcissistic self-delusion. If I cannot accurately gauge my own strengths and weaknesses, I will really be in trouble.
The result is that I make wildly varying first impressions on new people depending on whether they first hear me talking about areas I think I am strong in ("Oh, he's arrogant") or areas I'm weak in ("he's a depressive sadsack").
It seems a totally alien concept for some people that I would, for example, have no reservations describing autism as a mental disorder or myself as mentally defective to a degree. My own life experience bears that out. There are good reasons evolution has decided that human brains, by and large, should not work this way. Trust me when I tell you it has hindered more than it has helped.
So it goes with everything else about me. Where I am deficient, I acknowledge it, because otherwise I cannot know where to focus my efforts at self improvement. Where I am strong, I allow myself to say so, because that should be one of the rewards for developing a talent.
I am 33 now and by this point perfectly comfortable being a strange, flawed, mixed bag of a person. Not in the sense that I am done trying to improve, but I don't need to hold an artificially elevated view of myself in order to get out of bed in the morning.
Sweet of you to say, though. I certainly appreciate the sentiment.
I have some well meaning friends who insist my deficiencies are inseparable from my strengths and having them is just an alternative way of being. This makes me want to kick them. They may be right, but it minimizes the difficulties those weaknesses cause. I'm not sure why I did the same thing to you, but you're welcome to give me a good cyber kick if you'd like. ;-)
Also, I don't know how I got by all these years without knowing the term dunning krugeritis. Thank you for rectifying that. I suppose it's useless to point it out to someone who has it, but I'm happy to know it anyway.
You're a really interesting person. If you hit me up on FB (https://www.facebook.com/AlexBeyman/) I think we'd have a lot to discuss.