Improving the conditions within my cage.

I was quiet the last couple days, but not because of gold backwardation or anything. I never had a chance to explain what the gold backwardation was, and I was preoccupied with something else.

I avoided using (or accidentally contaminating myself with) St. John's Wort this week, because I needed to do something very difficult, and I didn't want it to be a big puppet show. If I used sjw, I would behave differently, my emotions would change, I would say and write things that I didn't intend to, and it might have prevented me from doing what I needed to do.

I gave someone a note - actually, I gave it to his friend - so that I would be sure that it was received. I don't know that person very well, but I think it's pretty likely that they passed along the note. I'm not absolutely certain, and haven't had a chance to ask or to observe. But it's better than sending emails and phone calls that could get hacked. Even cell phones get hacked, and it's technically possible that those two or three voice messages were never received. I wanted to communicate in a way that would prevent me from having doubts about whether the messages were received.

I still keep getting voices pushing me to interrogate this person. They make me 'practice' or 'rehearse' a conversation ahead of time, over and over again, for hours, while I'm busy doing other things. Because of these experiences, I've decided that almost ALL conversation rehearsals are fake and forced. I think there are situations where I might voluntarily choose to rehearse a conversation, in my mind, ahead of time, but I think it almost never should happen in everyday life. I have reason to believe that I would almost always 'wing it' somehow instead of rehearsing. It's physically possible to consciously, deliberately practice something ahead of time. But this is happening in an unintentional way, while I'm at work or driving my car or doing other things.

They are pushing me to ask about things that I don't feel like asking right now, such as whether or not he received the emails or the couple of phone calls, why he didn't answer, whether or not he attempted to write or call me, etc. Those questions are being 'acknowledged to exist,' right now, by the fact that I am writing them in this blog. I am aware that those questions exist. However, I am not confronting this person with all of those questions right now, and I have my reasons why. The questions are ACKNOWLEDGED, but they are NOT BEING ASKED. It's the same as if I acknowledged the existence of the question 'Why is the sky blue?' The question exists, but I'm not asking anybody at this time. Instead I am willing to listen to whatever he chooses to say, and also if he says nothing at all.

Those conversation rehearsals trigger anxiety and increase anxiety. They destroy originality. They destroy the self by preventing me from saying what I myself would have said - even if my own words might not have been 'clever enough' or 'intelligent enough,' or if I would not have achieved the particular goals and purposes of the people forcing the questioning. They imply that I couldn't 'wing it' spontaneously by saying something random, or saying nothing at all. They imply that the conversation is 'life or death,' instead of something mundane. The conversations are actually very trivial conversations, in which everything would be okay, and there is no disaster. If I didn't rehearse them, if I neglected to say this or that thing, if I failed to ask this or that question, if I failed to get this piece of information, the world wouldn't end - it would be okay. They imply that it's absolutely crucial that the conversation must go PERFECTLY ACCORDING TO PLAN. But I insist: everything will be okay even if some particular thing isn't said some particular way. Or even if the conversation doesn't happen at all.

I've said this many times: By my own choice, if somebody had stopped answering my emails and phone calls, I would have stopped writing and calling. In fact, I remember when I was a young child, and my family moved from Greensburg PA to Scott Depot WV, I was occasionally writing snail mail letters to one or two of my old friends. And back then, I was an infrequent writer, and I began almost every letter with 'Sorry that I haven't written in a while. I don't have much to talk about.' I've often thought that I would have been 'the strong silent type,' someone who might be intelligent but with little to say. That fits with my Myers-Briggs description, the ISTP type. It fits with my childhood memories, when I didn't enjoy small talk, and had to force myself to learn how to make fake conversations so that I could fit in with people who were chitchatting instead of talking about something that interested me. But then, there are occasional conversations that interest me, and if they do, I'll talk a lot. And there are some people who are always thinking of good conversation topics, and when I'm around those people, I'll join in. But, on my own, I'm not the best at just making up things to say.

I am doing things now based on the idea that I was reluctantly pushed to do things I wouldn't have done, and I was prevented from doing things I would have done - and, now that that's happened (and continuing to happen, daily) I have to make some kind of compromise goal that agrees with my own feelings and beliefs. There are books about that, and I can't remember the name of the book, but the idea is that you can't choose everything that happens to you, and you don't have control over everything, but you are able to choose within a limited area, no matter how bad things are. They give the example of people who were still kind and generous to others in the middle of the holocaust concentration camps. (It's a specific book and I'm sure I'll remember the name.) The idea was that no matter how bad things are, you still have a limited area of choices and actions that you can take.

So in my situation, I said things I didn't want to say, and sent letters I didn't want to send, while feeling constantly terrified that this was going to end with a harassment conviction. I was forced to act against my own perceived best interests.

My compromise goal is to continue refusing to do the things that I don't agree with, as well as I can, even though I am being pushed to do these things every day. I can make something out of this, or rather, I can describe it or visualize it a certain way that is more agreeable to me than the way that they are treating it.

Instead of interrogating him to find out all the details of why he didn't do this, why he didn't do that, what happened, etc, my goal is to 'rebuild trust.' That is the phrase that I'm using to describe it.

I myself feel very distrusting. I have no idea whether he's being honest or lying to me. THERE IS NO WAY TO KNOW.

I learned that from being the victim of electronic harassment. All this time, all these years, many of the attackers behaved as though I myself was a criminal or an evil person, somehow deserving to be attacked, while I knew that was wrong. Nothing that I said or did could convince them that I shouldn't be attacked. There was nothing that would convince them that it was okay to just leave me alone and let me control my own life. To this day, they still do not voluntarily stop - instead, they continue, every minute of every day. Nothing changes their mind.

I told them the truth, as much as I could, but they still behaved as though I was lying or doing something wrong, and that I 'deserved' to be attacked. I learned that EVEN IF YOU USE TECHNOLOGY TO READ PEOPLE'S MINDS, YOU ARE STILL FALLIBLE AT INTERPRETING THE INFORMATION. They misinterpret my thoughts and feelings all the time, and they always interpret me in a very narrow, restricted way, closing off an infinite number of other possibilities and interpretations. It's a very shallow person they've imagined, and it's not me. It's not just a shallow image of a person, but a shallow image of the whole world, a shallow and narrow idea of all that is possible, all that can happen, all that can be done.

They are very bad about, for instance, interpreting things negatively instead of positively. To them EVERYTHING is interpreted negatively, as a dangerous, harmful, evil thing, instead of something potentially good and valuable. To them, everything must be restricted and controlled, and randomness cannot be tolerated, and unpredictability cannot be tolerated, and creativity cannot be tolerated, and imperfection cannot be tolerated. It's only a very shallow person that they can allow to exist. They are absolutely certain that they MUST control and surveil me constantly, without stopping for a single second. Nothing can convince them otherwise.

So from that I learned: there is no way to know whether or not somebody is 'lying.' There is no way to define what it MEANS to 'lie.' The goals, purposes, assumptions, and beliefs behind the 'Interrogation Mindset' are structured according to a harmful, destructive, negative belief system that destroys human potential and is designed to control people and crush individuality instead of bringing out the best in people.

With every question and answer, you then assume that they are either lying or telling the truth. Then, you branch into both possibilities, testing to see if they're lying, testing to see if they're telling the truth. It's very narrow minded. I will mention Edward de Bono here, because of his books about creativity and different ways of thinking, and he's one of the authors I listed on my myspace page. (If I think back, or dig through my bookshelf, or just go to a bookstore, I could find dozens of other examples.) The Interrogation Mindset isn't the ONLY way of interacting with people. There are infinity ways. There are thousands of good books available describing people's different ways of communicating. Some of those books are better than others, but the point is that in normal human relationships, we don't benefit much by using the Interrogation Mindset to ATTACK somebody whenever we get hurt or have problems.

Also, people have a million different reasons why they might lie in some situation (if you can even define what a lie is). The answer isn't always 'BECAUSE THEY'RE EVIL!!!'

So I feel hurt and distrusting now, and it's hard to talk to this person, but I am not going to do the interrogation-style questioning that they want me to do. I am trying to build some kind of relationship out of a disaster that has been nothing but a puppet show from the beginning. Our conversations are manipulated and controlled by somebody outside of us, but I don't agree with their way of thinking, their way of acting, their way of talking and interacting with human beings. I feel like I'm in a cage or I'm like an animal in a zoo, and there is no hope of experiencing a 'normal life' or 'freedom,' and all of my surroundings are so artificial that it will never resemble the real world.

The real world is the cure for my problems.

It's like making prisoners go to a therapist while they're in jail. Most of the anger and the psychological problems are caused by the fact that they are in jail! You can work within a very small, limited, narrow area, but you're still not allowed to release them from prison, so the therapy just won't do very much. Many of my problems REALLY ARE caused by the fact that I am constantly being surveilled, attacked, and prevented from thinking and sleeping, 24 hours a day. Within that narrow little world, there is very little that can be done to solve any problems, until the attacks stop.

Building trust, and building a relationship, is my narrow little goal within this artificial situation. I am not going to ask questions. Instead, I'm going to assume that almost 100% of the verbal pre-rehearsed conversation is fake, while the nonverbal and emotional aspects seem to be more real. Whatever words I would have said and whatever I would have done, that has been suppressed. I have to talk about myself (Nicole) as though I am somebody else, talking from outside myself: I am the representative of a silent person, someone who doesn't speak, and she and I are both in an unnatural situation that distorts all of our actions and suppresses who we really are. And I will do whatever limited things I can do to improve the situation.