So anyway if you don't wanna listen, fuck you. I gotta coupla tree tings to say.
First of all I wanna make clear to alla youse that I bin in this thing FROM THE BEGINNING. First fucking episode, first fucking day alright? I recognised the potential from the start. So don't be giving me no attitude.
What it is, is that this fucking show, this fuck tv progrum has reflected and predicted some bits of my life, and maybe not just by chance but because of a couple dumb choices I made. Or maybe I'm the one who needs to get my head examined, I don't know. Paging Dr Melfi! Fuck that, I couldn't afford her pass me another Zoloft wouldya?
So anyway back where I'm from I got involved in a coupla things, nothing heavy, took a few risks. Never faced no consequences. Then I met this girl. Madone! From the first I was smitten. Thick curly black hair, dark eyes and an ass to die for. My thing was kinda windin down and I was ready for pastures new so we upped and moved back where she's from. Now this is Spain. These muthafuckas don't got things organised the way they do in Italy, but believe you me behind the scenes there's a lot going on. None of that interested me however, I was going straight and that was that. For the most part.
But the fucking family. Now my own family are a shitshow in their own right, but I walked right into a whole thing here.
Let me start with my jagoff brother-in-law. This stoogatz was a lazy fucking chifosa gavone, and a complete bullshit artist to boot. When I met him he seemed to make a living by doing some shit in nightclubs, who knows. He was always with the stories, how he was with a crew of mulignans in London, how he was tight with the Bulgarians that ran all the doors in the city, how he'd been a bodyguard when he was in the army. I didn't give a fuck. All bullshit as far as anyone could tell. So anyway, this is maybe 2002, 2002 and I start buying up the DVD boxsets when they come out. You remember them? You kids these days got know idea how it was back then. I was sick of listening to this motherfucker so I lend the cunt the season 1 box set. Mistake.
Thing is the stoonad really, and I mean really started to identify with it. First of all it was Livia. I mean the asshole was not wrong- his own mother, my mother-in-law, yeah, she was a Livia. God rest her soul she's gone now and there isn't a day I'm not thankful.
Then he watched the episode where Chris and Brendan jack the truck, and fuck me if he doesn't start telling me the very next week how him and his crew jacked a truckload of watches or some shit over the weekend. I just looked at him straight-faced while he tells me THE FUCKING EPISODE but with him as main character. He doesn't bat a fucking eylid, I think, this cunt is deranged, he's fucking loonytunes. I get the impression that while he's telling it, he's really believing it.
Anyway he goes from bad to worse but I'll get onto that.
But now my fucking fawtha-in-law. I mean this guy is a piece of work too. At times he's not around much in those days, as he can't spend all that much time around Livia before he fucks off to Florida, I mean Malaga, or the islands where he's got like two whole other families. This guy made a fuckton of money in the 80s and 90s somehow- I mean, he had legitimate businesses but there was some connected stuff going on too. They ran clubs and parties, and had close friends who did too, and there was even a couple of things about helping out some pretty high up people with looking after associates and stuff at critical moments. Colombians and Gallicians (they are up on the far north west coast and in those days they were bringing it all in that way). But by this time 2000 and whatever, he's past that for the most part, though he still was doing a bit of beach lookout stuff down south and hanging out with some questionable characters for a while. He's the type you know, he can be funny and charming and entertaining, but by and large he's just a fucking toxic narcissist. Used to be a tough guy, but to be honest in Spain they are more about talking about violence than actually doing it. Anyway, muthafucka pointed a gun at me twice, threatened to kill me one time. By this time my wife and I had built a house on the family compound, so after that he had to go away as far as I was concerned. Where I come from you make a threat you gotta be prepared to go through with or face the consequences as if you were gonna. Spanish people talk to much but I'm form where I'm from. So he was gone again, for a few years, till his goomars or whatever the fuck you wanna call them got sick of him and he put the feelers out to be able to come back. I gotta say, the family worked on me and I gave him a pass. We got drunk and high together a coupla tree times and worked it out, for a few years anyways.
So to the fucking brother-in-law. He gives me a ride one time in this car. Cracks open a hiddenc compartment he's got under the glove box, pulls out a pistol. Now this isn't the USA, where that shit is normal. Who knows, maybe it was fake. He's still living in some shithole apartment and from what I can tell conning women into paying for his lifestyle. Who the fuck knows it's all bullshit anyway, but things are obviously moving along for him. One time some friends visit for the weekend and he's around. They need to go to the airport in the morning and he says he going that way and can take them. I warn them they'll be better off taking the train but they go with him anyway. He shows up in full military uniform. Now this asshole did legitmiamtely spend a coulple of years in the military, but he shows up dressed as a major or a general or some shit. In the car on the way my friends are terrified as he drives at about 120mph all the way, weaving in and out of traffic, and all the time he never shuts up. Guy speaks ok English. He tells them how he's in the special forces, and he's getting a helicopter to Afghanistan to do some top secret shit, then coming back the same day. Some fucking helicopter. Turns out he's actually running some con on some poor woman in airport security. Another my brother comes over, he's only like 18 or something. Felipe (my b-i-l) invites him out clubbing. He's clearly at least a little connected as they waltz into every club straight past the line and sit in the VIP area drinking rum and cokes and doing lines. Another time another brother of mine is over (there's a few of us, my dad was Irish and he put it about). Felipe shows up ready for a night out, dressed in black suit, black shirt and some fucking blood red shiny tie, shiny shoes and all. Now me and my brother have had a drink or two, smoked a couple joints already (we went out a nearly got in a fight with some lesbians later that night) and anyway he's a bit of a roughneck fucker. Spent a couple years in the can too, later on. My brother-in-law is trying to be funny, I'm ignoring him, he makes some racist joke which my brother isn't into so he looks him in the eye and asks 'why the fuck you dressed like an extra from a gangster movie?' Fucking stoonad soon leaves. Another time he's like come up to my apartment, and he pulls out a big bag of coke and offers it to me. We do a couple lines, it's junk, no good shit like it always is here and I'm about over that stuff by now anyway, but I spent a while in Colombia and I can hold my own. He tells me he has it because someone owed him money and they gave him it in lieu after having to threaten the guy, so I think huh ok you talk a good game motherfucker let's see what you do. I think my wife is away with the baby at her sister's at this point maybe, at least that's how I wanna remember it. Anyway this shit is cut to fuck and not that strong so I think I'm gonna make the biggest fucking lines and see if we can do all of it and see if he makes a fuss. He makes a noise a couple times but doesn't try and stop me.
At this point I pretty much think it's all just basically cosplay. But then shit gets real. We get a call that he's arrested, locked up. And it's not just some bullshit either. The guy played the lead role in a stick up, dressed as police. The story goes the person they were sticking up was also connected, but I don't know. Anyway he gets caught and the rest of the crew don't, and he spends like three years in jail. His girlfriend comes over night of, telling me all kinds of tall tales, asking me to go with her to his apartment to pick up some shit the next day cos she's afraid to go on her own. My wife's away at this point down at the house by the shore with the kids, and I think about trying something but think nah fuck it, it'll be more hassle than it's worth.
When he comes out, I think he knows he aint got the stones for the carcelary experience really. The one time I go visit him he's got a black eye. Slipped in the shower, he says. I give him Goodfellas, Scarface and The French Connection to watch in there. When he comes out he sets up in the building trade, which is a pretty good way to rip people off if you know how. This goes on for years, he even manages to rip me off at one point but I stiff him on some of what he wants from me so I guess it works out even.
So it's years later. I'm just a working joe basically. We are still on the family compound. The father-in-law is there too, but in another building a little ways away, and my sister in law is also there. We've built a granny flat for Livia, but she doesn't get much time to enjoy it. We're away at the beach and we get the call that my other brother in law has found her floating in the pool. A stroke. Unsurprising really with the way she enjoyed a daily mix of uppers and downers.
Motherfucking Felipe tries to shake us down straightaway. The property was in Livia's sole name, for various legal reasons and her dying really made the shit hit the fan. We tell him fuck you. This is like 4 years ago now, maybe 5.
Since then motherfucker has snitched on the property for whatever the fuck- nothing here was ever exactly legit and up to code, but there's usually ways around stuff unless some motherfucker meddles. Has tried to, pretended to be going to run us down with his car. Has made sundry threats and calumnies to anyone willing to listen. So one night he shows up when we are celebrating something or other round a fire out by the woods. He gets into an argument with my wife and says some things he shouldn't, so I get up in his face and tell him to watch his mouth. He pushes me, like a fucking playground fight, and bad luck I fall back over the picnic table we got set up there. I get up an my wife and fucking daughter, who's like 18 by now are up in his face and he starts pushing them so I punch him in the face. Not a good shot, I'd been drinking 18 year old scotch all night. Mayhem, other guys there separate all of us but he keeps on screaming and raging. One point I pick up an empty vodka bottle but I don't do nothing with it. People manage to push him away, get him to his car but he keep screaming how he's gonna kill me, one time he'll find me on my own down the track (we've got more than a mile of rough country road to get to the compound). The highlight is I'm gonna get put in the trunk, he's had people in the trunk of his car for less. Oh and various slurs, anti-Northern European discrimination I call it.
This is all a couple years ago. Like I said I've got a few brothers. A couple of them we've always said anything heavy needs doing we'll be there for one another. Like I said, one of them did a couple years in the can, another was in the forces for a while, been under fire, shot a couple or tree bad guys in his time.
But I aint done shit, and he aint done shit neither. I sometimes think if I'd a realised the true point of the show that I'd'a run a mile way back when. Or if at least I hadn't lent the motherfucker my box set, things might coulda gone another way.
Fuck it, it's all a big nothing anyways.

The Defense Mechanisms Episode, Part I

So, the way that the Defense Mechanism are often presented rather exemplifies one of the things that often annoy me about enneagram literature, which is that you often just get shown a table or list of traits listed under each type without any real definition of what it is, elaboration on how it’s meant, or an explanation of the how and why or how it’s connected to everything else.
Maybe it’s a Ti vs Te thing?
In any case, just having a term thrown at you isn’t really helpful unless your goal is to win an argument by accusing the other person of doing it. Being able to recite what term goes with what number only gets you so far.
I would figure that the goal is to eventually be able to spot those mechanisms operating in yourself for greater self-awareness and whatnot, and for that I’d reckon that one needs a substantial, tangible idea of what’s meant by it so you can begin to connect and map your intellectual understanding of the process to your actual lived experience of your thoughts and emotions.
It’s one thing to read a description of a rose and another to see/smell/hear what goes with the words, and yet another to have the linkage of the two, spot the theoretical symmetries there should be in the petals in the actual flower and know what it means and how it connects to its history and makeup.
IDK, but as they say: If you’re complaining you’re just part of the problems and: If it doesn’t exist yet, you have to create it yourself.
So, you might be familiar with those listings of one defense mechanism per type, and have heard that it goes back to Naranjo – once in a while you could come across an author that has one of the swapped out or a longer, also unelaborated list.
In truth Naranjo didn’t actually assign a 1:1 correspondence but discussed multiple ones for each type (though they are often ultimately related in nature), and of course in the exty years since his day, numerous other authors have had a go at it & had arguments about it & whatnot (Lukovich, Condon, Rohr etc.) but often its just psychobabble words being thrown around and looks to an outsider like a theological argument of a religion they don’t believe in.
So, uh, let’s start with the basics.
What is a (Psychological) Defense Mechanism?
The basic idea goes back to Freud, who probably came up with it by observation, just from noticing seeming distortions or knots in the thinking of his clients.
In life, we can’t always get what we want, and we are sometimes confronted with facts that we don’t like.
What does a toddler do in such cases? They throw a tantrum.
Why do they throw a tantrum? Because they are experiencing distress. They want the thing and they can’t have it, or, they’re upset about what they’ve been told. They don’t like it. It’s experienced as aversive and dysphoric. Do Not Want.
Why is an adult different?
Because an adult has a more mature ego, a pattern according to which to filter, sort, interpret & deal with their experience, to reconcile both their animal drives and social expectations/ideals with a reality that sometimes won’t give them that and hence triggers distress.
You can’t cry, kick and scream every time you don’t get what you want – it doesn’t help you get it, and it will probably get you scolded.
Having a way to make sense of or cushion the negative experience, to mitigate the distress, is crucial to being able to cope with adversity, mitigate distress, regulate the self and act in some self-directed goal-oriented manner as an emergent independent entity rather than just reacting to whatever stimulus comes along.
This is why defense mechanisms are a part of the ego (means of self-organization) and characteristic of which ‘flavor’ of ego you have: They are a part of the mechanism of how it is maintained, how you don’t mechanically do or accept whatever someone else tells you but have some mechanism for rejecting some suggestions, ideas and criticisms but act as an independent entity with consistent behavior.
So one takeaway here is that using a defense mechanism doesn’t immediately mean you’re in denial about or refusing to face something or “refusing reality” – what is reality even, or ‘right and wrong’? How would you know it when you see it? ‘Self deception’? Based on which “truth”?
Some things are relatively clear like the earth being round but many don’t have a correct answer like which opinion is correct on some complex argument.
Resisting something doesn’t mean that it’s secretly true and you’re just in denial. If I go to you & say ‘youre a fucking idiot’ you are not going to like that regardless of your actual idiocy because it’s a hostile action & humans are wired to dislike this. It’s an attack on your feelings & self-image.
Even if you shrug it off totally, that is because some process happened to dismiss it & protect you from feeling pain.
A small child would be hurt if you’re randomly mean to them; You, an adult, can dismiss it because you have defenses. They are a part of self-control – particularly when you consider that they don’t just ”defend” against outside imput but also unwanted thoughts & feelings from within.
Maybe you want to throw a tantrum and hit me if I say youre an idiot & point & laugh at you, but, punching me might bring consequences you don’t want, or it doesn’t fit your self-image.
So you must diffuse this urge to punch somehow, or else Mommy is gonna punish you for being mean to your siblings.
Another, third function that defense mechanisms can serve (besides defending against unpleasant input and controlling yourself) is to justify yourself to others. If your tell your mom you should get the toy instead of your sibling because you want to she probably won’t accept it. So you need to come up with a reason. Your parents are already using rteasons to tell you why you should do what they tell you to do, so eventually the child copies them, taking in those justifications and beginning to form their own superego.
You might internalize that fairness is important so when your sister had her turn with the toy you will insist that its now your turn, because of fairness.
Again it’s important not to look at this as deliberate trickery or “secret true intentions”, but rather the nuts & bolts of the machinery that produce your very real, very sincere subjective experience.
In the “fairness” example with the toy, the child isn’t deliberately using fairness as a pretext to get the toy, they really believe in fairness. (though claiming to believe in fairness when you dont and justifying this to yourself might be another, different strategy)
But let's assume the genuine belief for now: The black box machine of the ego takes ‘wanting the toy’ and ‘social belief in fairness’ as imputs and produces the subjective experience of believing in / arguing about fairness.
Causes (when you look at a person like a complex machine of biology) are different from intentions. (the personal experience of feelings & wants)
You evolved to crave sweet food because it is full of energy, but you don’t think “Oh, sugary food, gotta get that energy!” you eat it cause its tasty & makes you feel good.
You explicitly aren’t consciously calculating about the energy, or you would stop wanting sweets when you consumed enough calories for the day.
Under the hood in your body there is a regulatory network going on, signals between your brain & liver etc. but that’s a blind process with no conscious will ‘keeping track’.
Thinking of subconscious mechanisms as ‘secret intentions’ is not only incorrect, it lacks validity as, if its by definition a secret intention from yourself, anyone could claim that you ‘secretly want’ anything as long as they could come up with a semi plausible ‘just so story’ for your behavior.
It also leads to a startling lack of empathy or invalidation of ppl’s subjective struggles & suffering of the ‘the wife totally wants to be beaten’ variety.
So it’s better to think of it as consistent patterns of emotions and reactions that have a cause in the “machinery” of your mind. Your conscious experience is what’s on the desktop & the defense mechanisms are like the guts of the computer.
However, while keeping in mind not to see it as an invalidation of your subjective experience, it is of great usefulness to know how the machine works under the hood, however, because what your ego & its defense mechanisms certainly are doing is dismissing or filtering out unwelcome information and possibly suppressing, deprioritizing or distinctly coloring aspects of inner or outer reality -
and this goes doubly if you don’t realize they are operating and don’t even know that you rejected an idea.
It creates “unknown unknowns”, things you don’t know you filtered out. For example someone might argue based on ‘fairness’ but be unaware how their own wants might be influencing them.
Also, the interpretation of the world that your ego is creating may be more or less sustainable, more or less congruent.
For example, if you believe that you are totally fine & okay after the death of a loved one but are constantly confronted with things that remind you of them, which triggers an emotion of grief, you have to expend energy to filter out the grief, trying hard not to think of it is still focussing it & might still ‘reinforce it’ so it doesn’t lead to the desired outcome.
The incongruence you experience between ‘Im ok’ and the experience of grief is going to cause more distress in the long-term than it averts.
Or you might believe you’re always right & never wrong, but then what do you do if stuff explodes in your face or people do not validate that self-image? You can rationalize it away but you have to expend energy to do it, and you won’t really get what you want if that involved the other people liking you.
In both cases, you move closer to being like the toddler rather than the 'mature adult' in the first example (less able to deal with distress, get what you want & so on), though it might be due to too much or too rigid interpretation of what you see rather than its absence this time. Either way an overly rigid, low congruence ego doesn't do its job very well.
So I hope that by now it’s clear that it’s a bit nonsensical when you see ppl try and type themselves by saying which defense mechanism they “relate to”, as there is a very good chance they don’t know it’s happening. It’s rather part of what you want to learn from finding your type so you know what to look for.
Some people might know already – if they’re very introspective, previously did work in therapy, had others point it out, learned from bitter experience etc.
This information is observable, how else would the people who came up with it have figured it out?
But as Dunning Krüger is a thing, it’s very dangerous to start out assuming right out the gate that you’re in the more enlightened 20%. You might be, its totally possible, but don’t bet on it.
Find your type by other means and then you’ll see how much of it you were already aware of or not.
After all, even if you are very aware of your inner processes themselves, you could be wrong about what psychobabble word it best maps to.
The Role Of The Primary Defense Mechanisms
Another thing to realize is the difference between any ol’ defense mechanism or psychological process, and the ones that have a special role in maintaining your ego.
We all use lots & lots of them cause our brains are roughly similar. Even for the most unique person it’s a pink fatty jelly thing with lotsa wrinkles, right?
6s aren’t the only ones who project things, that is, explain other’s actions through disowned thoughts & motivations that we have labelled as not-self. Condon talks a lot about how for many types it’s related to the lines of connection. (which are, after all, qualities & parts of the human experience that can be blocked or labelled not-self)
4s aren’t the only ones who introject things – 6s for example tend to have strong mental impressions of powerful figures in their life.
3s aren’t the only ones that identify with things or try to keep congruency with a desirable self-image.
But it has a special role for them.
Take projection.
Most people can be liable to projection when they’re wondering about the intentions or motives of someone they don’t understand. It baffles you, & you want an explanation, and in trying to come up with one you more easily think of explanations that, in some way, seem “natural” to you.
Now what’s so special about 6? They are very concerned with people’s intentions.
It’s one of the main features of their attention pattern: What are they thinking?
You can tell a song was probably written by a 6 (or someone with a strong 6 component) if they’re telling the love interest what they are probably thinking. Or the authority figure or ex they’re mad at.
Are they gonna take advantage of you? Are they going to abandon you? Very salient information if you wish to be prepared for whatever might happen.
So it’s rather easy for projection to sneak in if you’re thinking about other people’s intentions all the time. Tempting, too, since it ‘defends’ you both from the chaos/uncertainty of not knowing what the person can do, and by relieving the distress of self-doubt. (“I’m not aggro, they’re aggro!”)
And hey, sometimes it actually works! They are a human just like you, so they might well have inner mechanics similar to yours! But not always.
So it makes a difference is you know what you’re doing. Without self-awareness you might take that perception as fact: This is definitely totally 100% their motivation. They can’t fool you!
Or you might be aware that it’s a perception: “This might be their motivation, or maybe I am thinking it for a reason that comes from me. Let’s look closer & see which one it is.”
The “Obvious Temptation”
In the literature you often see the types explained in 2 ways, one beginning from the weakness or deficiency – that you start with your fear & then compensate with your desire to make up for it, framing all as being just illusory cope for our wretchedness etc. whereas others (incidentally, often frustration types) start from the inspiring vision of the ‘essential aspect’ and so on & how you lose you way chasing after that ideal.
But in the end it’s sort of a chicken & egg situation because whether you start from coping for weakness or the corruption of a strength, there is going to be a self-sustaining loop.
Because, if you ever find yourself strapped for copium you are likely going to end up going for a method that is easy for you to do, leaning on what strengths you have (not a strength as in anything exceptional, but just the best one you have)
Conversely, if you start relying on a skill for psychological “survival” that’s one heck of a motivation to practice.
So did our baby 7 get good at seeing silver linings or talking their way out of tricky situations as a way to soften the blow on harsh situations, or are they more tempted to explain away their problems because they are so good at seeing multiple options or talking their way out of difficult situations?
Is there even a hard objective distinction between a genuine silver lining and a fake one?
There are probably similar emotions involved, its the same basic mechanism – it’s all the same strategy that sometimes works & sometimes doesn’t, uncomfortable as it may be that ppl we find admirable and ppl that we really really disapprove of may actually be functioning on fairly similar basic premises.
This isn’t to say that the existence of a grey zone is an excuse not to be honest with oneself when you know in your heart the primary motivation behind what you’re currently doing is to make the ouch go away, but rather to illustrate that it isn’t always obvious.
It’s not so simple as to say “ah, those 2s don’t actually care about helping ppl it’s all just an evil trick”, “Those 1s don’t actually care about justice its all hypocrisy” or indeed “those 5s don’t actually care about understanding the world its just for cope”. In a way, it would be easier if that was that case cause then it’s all black & white.
I don’t think it’s all just cope, if only because doing those things actually does simply feel intrinsically satisfying.
The types are also programs of ‘this feels rewarding, this makes me feel good about myself, this other thing makes me feel not so good’ which also comes down to survival reasons at the causal level but as we said before, causes and subjective intentions are different.
I would still want all the nerd facts even if I had zero problems or insecurities whatsoever to “defend from”, if not for any noble high-minded talk of values then simply because reading & theorizing is fun and other things aren’t.
But the temptation is naturally there, that, if I’m going to be preoccupied with or analyzing stuff anyways, that it might serve as a nifty convenient excuse to be conveniently preoccupied, focussed on something else or have a “buffer” of mental distancing going on when I feel like avoiding a challenging situation.
I’m not tempted to use the flavor of cope that a 2 or 9 might not because I’m too good & pure & wholesome for it but simply cause I lack the necessary skills and/or temperament to get away with it. Anticipate what they need & what their feelings are? How? Just don’t think about it too much and enjoy this ice cream? Easier said than done. Look on the bright side? Ah, but every silver lining is but evidence of a dark cloud.
And analogous for the other types.
Confused Intuitions
Which brings us to another great reason why learning to spot your defense mechanisms at work is really useful. It’s a way to “clean your lens”.
Remember when they thought there were canals on Mars because the astronomer had actually seen the shadows of the blood vessels in his own eyeball?
That’s what happens if you can’t separate what comes from you & what comes from someone else.
Note that the issue is not that the blood vessels exist, but that the guy thought that they are on Mars.
Seeing the blood vessels could have been a worthwhile observation in & of itself – they are not simply in the way, they are info about the human eye.
The human eye isn’t “bad” but if we don’t account for it being there, we won’t get an accurate picture of Mars.
In the end there is no way to completely do away with subjectivity because any perception involves interpreting and labelling. But if you look around you there are obviously people who are more discerning than others and being in that category sure sounds like the preferable, more dignified option.
Your go-to defense mechanisms are potentially interfering with your greatest strength, the most practiced parts of your discerment that you tend to trust. So they lead you to be wrong in an area that matters to you & get in the way of you using your intuition/strength to its greatest effect because there’s all this icky bias gunk on your “lens”.
Or well, it presently acts as icky bias gunk but it could instead be valuable insight about yourself, important information that could help you make well-informed decisions that feel congruent and make you happy.
For example, say you’re a 2. You’re pretty confident in & proud of your ability to know others’ feelings & what will make them happy. It’s important to you. But what if some repressed desire or fear of yours is interfering with what, and rather than really seeing ‘whats best for them’ you’re seeing what you want to be best for them so that they will need you.
If you act like it’s the person’s real need, the worst case is that they could end up thinking you’re a self-absorbed narc who doesn’t care about their feelings. Not what you want at all, right? Whereas if you learn to realize when it’s your own repressed desire at work you not only get a better understanding of other’s feelings that isn’t clouded by bias, you also learn what your desire is. You can now do something with that information. There is probably a better way to grant the desire than to tell them what you want their feelings to be.
Of course, the elephant in the room, and the reason why people don’t just do it if it’s so great, is that the reason you yeeted that desire out of consciousness to begin with is that it once provoked distress and/or felt incongruent with your conscious self.
In the above example with the 2, the person might be afraid that it’s ‘bad’ or ‘selfish’, or that it will expose them to being powerless (cause the request to have the desire granted might be denied)
There was some pain, threat or incongruence involved that now hangs as an ‘or else’ over the prospect of admitting that fact into consciousness.
You might be afraid that, if you admit the feeling or desire, it will mean something about yourself, or that it means you’ll have to act on it and do something that is contrary to what you consciously want or aspire to (maybe that one fear’s a competency triad thing?)
But actually that’s not true! Acknowledging it doesn’t mean you have to change how you think about it, that you have to act based on it, or that you’re “bad”, it’s just a feeling.
You can acknowledge it & be aware of it without doing something.
You might decide to do something in the light of all the information (for example, maybe you can think of a way to grant a desire without compromising your values?), but before you eve consider that, let it sink in that no one’s gonna make you.
Indeed, just acknowledging the feeling, letting it be heard, may lead it to resolve & dissipate.
Although, if this leads you to realize that there is something that’s repeatedly touching you off and causing the distressing emotion to reappear, you might want to feature that in into calculations as to which courses of actions are realistically sustainable or conducive to happiness.
Even if you choose that your feelings don’t matter on this account you’ll at least make an informed decision & not be blindsided by it. And maybe there’s some comfort/outlet you can find.
It’s against my principles to ring the bell for humiliation o’clock without going first, so I’ll confess that there’s times that I probed & introspected & felt into something & like Did Techniques (thanks to the person who recommended that Gedlin Focussing thing), and the result I got is that… [tw: barf cringe blegh] sometimes… somewhere… there’s a teeny tiny part of me… that kinda sorta wants to cry and whine and get held & comforted and have somebody come in and sweep aaall those pressing, overwhelming problems away & take care of it for me.
Consciously I don’t want this – at all.
It’s not in the least compatible with my values, will & life-plans.
If ppl ask me if they can help with it I tell them no.
I would vehemently reject it, protest against it, even fear it.
Even fear it to an irrational degree. Which is silly & distressing on its own, but it’s a silly distress that I apparently allow into consciousness no problem because it’s not a threat.
Because it’s quite congruent with my belief/understanding that the problem in question isn’t something anyone can help me with. It’s up to me and I’ve arranged it so that it’s up to me because I’d rather it’s up to me than any of the alternatives.
But ‘snot like my inner mammal gets that. It doesn’t understand the logical reasons – of course not, its like a tiny mammal. Might as well imagine one of those tiny Lemurs with big googly eyes 🥺
It’s pre-verbal. That’s probably the no-bullshit way to say it. Monke no speak English.
Also, is the sky gonna fall if I go hug a plushie, or a family member? Or if I maybe casually mention this to a living soul?
Nope.
I have this option available, right? That’s something to be grateful for, not everyone has those.
It is gonna solve the problem? The one that I’ve intellectually ruled unsolvable? No.
But it might just solve the feeling, cause my inner mammal is really quite dumb & doesn’t understand the intellectual complexities of the problem anyway… It just feels houded, right? But you know what it does understand?
Hugs.
Also, none of yall know where I live so its not like you can come after me. xDDD
Sooo… in the interest of self-awareness and self-transparency, it might be worth asking yourself...
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1. Is this really the best way to do this, or is it a justification for doing it your way?
2. Is that the other person’s feeling, or is it your desire?
3. Is this what you really feel, or what you think a smart/sucessful/dominant/[insert desirable trait] person would feel in your place?
4. Is that a deep insight about your life, or does what just happened actually have nothing to do with you personally?
5. Do you really not want or care about this thing, or are you scared of what might happen if you did? Is it really settled what is going to happen, or are you avoiding action?
6. Is that really the other person’s intention, or is it your fear of what their intention could be?
7. Is that a real solution, or are you explaining the problem away?
8. Does it really not hurt, or are you blocking out the pain?
9. Are you really fine & content with things as they are, or are you giving up?

Sometimes the answer will, in fact, be the first half!
Don’t fall for masochistic ontology. The truth may hurt but not everything that would hurt if it were true is the truth.
Constantly assuming the worst of yourself isn’t gonna help either. Indeed that’s probably some kinda misfiring defense itself, punish yourself first before others have the chance to keep a sense of control, maybe?
Rather, when you catch yourself doing the thing, use your defense powers for good & frame it in a way you can live with. Like you might see it as feedback or information, as a sign to know to improve yourself, as an invitation to apply self-compassion.
Maybe it helps to think of it as an ‘inner child’ or ‘inner animal’ or some such concept.
Would you be mad at a child or a pet for wanting something silly, or avoiding something painful?
No, you’d direct them towards a healthier outlet wouldn’t you?
Or at least, if it’s really not feasible, you’d comfort them about it.
So yeah.
(So the ‘preliminal explanations’ turned into an essay. But, I did promise “what the individual mechanisms actually mean”, “how to actually spot them” and “putting together the Best Of from the authors”, and that I plan to deliver in Part II without any further ramblings. But first I have to ‘recharge my imagination battery’, as a wise sponge once put it, that is, get some sleep.)

Got a vip text this am from bask in fairhaven. They have their 4g baller jars of captains catch & tiki rum cake badder on sale today and tomorrow for $65. Not sure how they are but what a killer deal. I enjoyed the db live rosin and nectarine squeeze badder. We’ll worth the money.
Edit: for claritys sake, I am not employed by bask or any other company in the Massachusetts cannabis industry, nor am I related to anyone who works at or owns bask or has any stake whatsoever in the MA cannabis industry, though I am employed in the RI industry.

Dear rums lovers, I am planning to do a Tiki party at my home and would like to do a rum tasting. For that I will use the Smuggler classification (age, production methode, raw material) For now I will go for a 1:1 testing for each classification type, that is why I am looking for rums which are similar except for one characteristic. Exemple : 2 rums with the same age, and rum material in the same range off price but with a different production methode. So, do you know good pairs of rums that will allow me to highlight the comparison of each type of characteristic ?

Hi all,
I recently found people saying Wray & Nephew OP rum is not a style used in any historical tiki drinks.
I don't think this means it's useless however and I want to hear tikis opinion.
Here's my own:
I think it does play a role. From my understanding older rums used in Tiki especially Jamaican rums were much less refined and almost entirely pot still. From my understanding modern Jamaican rums are much more tame and usually have a significant amount of column still rum in them (Appleton). As such I find that adding small amounts of W&N can give that Jamaican funk and more intensity to drinks that I find are a bit flat using the modern Jamaican rums.
Has anyone else used W&N OP in this way? How do you use W&N OP?/similar style rums?
Also if anyone knows why wasn't this style of rum used in historical tiki, is this W&N OP rum a recent creation only?

Smugglers Cove is a great book and it really helped me figure out tiki drinks such as the zombie and Mai Tai. The zombie is really fun for me especially and it makes sense to me how each rum plays its part in it. However. Don's own Grog, the combination of aged and lightly aged blend rums with a blended black rum didn't make sense when I made this. The aged rum is kind of diluted by the lightly aged leaving a lingering woody note which I feel takes away more from the drink then it adds.
The drink would not be significantly different if the aged rum was removed and I think would likely benefit from a higher content of black blended rum. I think it would have a bit more... punch/character. To be honest I think especially with the blackberry liqueur adding so much flavour a potent black rum on its own would likely balance it better than this mix of rums.
For reference I used plantation 3 star, Appleton 12 and old Hopkin Dark Rum. And a house made blackberry liqueur which was right 1 part brandy and 1 part vodka for the base.
Recipe below.
¾ ounce fresh lime juice
¼ ounce SC Demerara syrup
1 dash SC Grenadine
½ ounce Leopold Brothers Rocky Mountain Blackberry Liqueur
1 ounce blended aged rum
½ ounce blended lightly aged rum
½ ounce black blended rum
1 dash Angosutra bitters
Freshly grated nutmeg for garnish
Has anyone else made this? Did you make the rum combination work for you? What do you think the target flavour profile was aimed for with these rums?

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