"Just as the absence of hate is not love, and the absence of danger is not safety, the absence of illness is not the same as wellness." Thank you for sharing this opening with us! Looking forward to reading the book. And I know we've discussed this briefly before, but I really hear you on the book structure of what sells. What I've also found is that if the "solution" is too radical, that doesn't work for most publishers either. We just have to keep doing the work ...
This is the second time I've set this up on Substack. We pulled it down a few weeks ago because it started to go viral, and we had to re-conceptualize it and put in a paywall. Humans are interested in health creation. Someone should tell the publishers. Yay, Substack - dis-intermediating the middlemen between writers and their readers, right?
Yes - there's a 3-dot menu-access at the bottom right of each comment. When you click this on your own comments, you get the choice of editing or deleting.
I feel worried that i'll be seen as too 'geeky' or nit picking when i write what's on my mind, but withholding won't support my desire to engage with this process (and bring a so-called neurodivergent and 'hsp' voice into the mix though i may find myself amongst many others here who are also less than 'mainstream thinkers/sensers' and labelling is not my favourite way of 'explaining myself' and why i may seem out of step.
That having been rather clunkily said, here's the thing i 'react' to: it's the concept of 'connection'. The reason is, that in the English modernist lingo with its 'worldview' firmly foundationing it, 'connection' represents a mechanism, a mechanical concept that i can't relate to as Life or her ways. I do not sense life as making and breaking 'connections'. They can't be 'made' or 'broken' or rather.. the concept falls into a mechanistic worldview and seems born of that. I am not suggesting that there is no relation.. on the contrary, we can pretend things are not relational but relationing cannot be 'absent'. That's a modernistic psychological view born .. again.. within the field from which Modernism (etc) arose. It seems to me to be 'trauma-think' and a language that represents the (fact of) a peoples whose milieu is a 'trauma-field' and whose solutions are to fix. And to fix ... and to 'make connections and break them' feels more life 'fix' than would a view that Life is already Here... she can't leave us. So we may not need to 'make connection' or even 'find' such a thing.. because all the while that we employ a concept of connection, it brings along with it the disconnection ... in a way, they can't be parted, and thus they do not seem to me to represent safety. However, finding the Ground of Being....that's another matter. I realise that for many a year, the concept of connection has been familiar to many and many many therapies have based themselves upon such a notion. But i sense something is 'not quite right' here. What can be difficult for me is to word, to 'vocalise' what i mean, because words seem largely to be based on what 'isn't' ... or what is 'other than'. Life... well by obligation i call her 'life' but really she has no name at all. So it is with 'connection'. Is a tree 'connected' to Air? or a tortoise 'connected' to Earth? Is a leaf 'connected' to her twig? I think not. I think this is a man (sic) made notion that creates the belief, the notion of seperatedness that then must be joined up again. What if it's not possible to be 'not connected' but it's really possible to act and behave as if it were possible? So.. do i want the neurobiology to be of 'connection' or of something so alive that i as yet haven't sensed how to put a word to it? That the word 'connection' gets in the way of (for me). That it suggests that i have to 'do' something rather than to allow what's here (my traumatised life force) to find her way up from wherever i put her in my need to stay alive in intolerable circumstances?
Well as a first post, i probably ought (sic) to feel appalled at 'myself' ... i guess i sound horribly critical, rather than merely intense and longing to speak of what is so hard to say. And you will have put deep utter and very experienced care in to all your wordlings and wonderings and ways. So i must trust that whether clunky or not, it's going to be ok for me to share where something seems to lead me into a path where i wonder 'do these words bring me to life or do they remain in a form that i can see would be unproblematic for a largely neurotypically-familiarised readership and therefore to what extent will i need to keep my inner 'translations' going (in the way that for example any book where the word 'man' is employed for 'human people' or as i would say.. this bipedal tottering trauma-bagged attempt at a person (!) which is most of us in the Whiteness Era of the colononialised and ising so called 'West' (aka Modernity_ and all those other words related to the 'Way things Are (here). ). Please let me know if my remarks are out of line or not the sort of thing you want... it's a long post, and i'm new here, and unsure how to (safely) proceed ! To be clear, i am deeply thrilled by your work, and my 'critical voice' is by no means an indication of anything other than a voice of deep appreciation along with a mixture of fearlessness and fearings :-) I will take my comment down, if substack lets me, and if you'd like me to, if it's deemed to have missed the point or too extravagent or such like.
Hi Theia- I think this is great. First, just so you know, I am not writing the book to be agreed with. Not that I don't value people finding the ideas useful and interesting, but I am perfectly happy for them to be pushed against. I am looking for engagement with these ideas. I have had a similar conversation to some of the issues you are bringing up with my friend and colleague Tiokasin Ghosthorse, of the Cheyenne River Lakota, who makes this point with some force, that we are trying to fix something or bridge something, and it is already there. He does not like the word connection AT ALL. He points out that it already exists abidingly, as a sort of ground. You might enjoy his thinking about this and other things, he's quite brilliant. That said, I think there is something linguistic here, and also something phenomenological. English is a shitbag language. Did I just say that? It's the only one I know thoroughly, but it has so many holes in it that a bowl made from it would be a sieve. So the attempt here, of trying to name these phenomena in English, is a bit like trying to carry water in a cheesecloth. Not sure it can be done. Part of this linguistic shittiness is that English is full of lexical gaps around interiors and relating. The language itself is noun-based. It reifies a world of things. Lakhota, by contrast, is a verb-based language that Tiokasin calls a non-mathematical quantum mechanical language of intuition. It describes the movement of energies. I would much rather speak Lakota, but I do not know how to do so aside from a handful of words. What I am pointing at with connection is not a noun, not a thing. It is a verb. And as you get deeper in the book you'll find the Animist undertones of all of this. All of this noted, I am trying to reach an audience that has been thoroughly schooled in alienation, and part of what I am driving at is that most people, even if they are existentially connected to a ground of being, to a Source, because everything actually is, don't experience this. What they experience is alienation, disconnection, isolation, and loneliness. And part of this is neurophysiological, which is what the book is about. I am interested in helping people experience the verb of relatedness. Maybe there is a better title for the book, but this is the container holding this particular collection of musings, and so while I agree with the spirit of what you are pointing out, we're gonna keep the title. Warmth, Gabriel
aahhhh "the essential sense of relatedness".... i breathe again upon reading and delighting in thy wordlings. I confess that many and many a time, iye have written upon, musing upon 'thingification' and a patriachially/colonialised/trauma-based lingo they call the English Language. She carries such heavy burdens, and her deep verbing has so long ago found driven into darker corners, and can but whisper and rustle under the feet of Mouse or Bear, winging through Tree and calling out in longing ... aieeee. And such fun iye felt upon thy characterising of her bereft and squandered life.. or rather the bone that has been permitted to remain, spear in hand, as through gauze or a seive, she would slither like sand through the waist of a little glass hour of chronos, where, should she shatter or be permitted her freedom, we may find kairos awaiting in open arms and wonderings. So iye take thy wordings are permission to de-constrain a little of mye ways, in perceiving upon how ye may easily without upset, allow mye a little loosening of the straightjacketing girdle who constrains into framing of much who, though not alive, would pretend so.
aieeeeeee just so! iye heard a wondrous programme on Radio 4 on sunday (uk) about some Irish speaking still alive, but barely so.. and oh the beauteousing of this as she wove her stories and became clear in the telling that what of whom she speaks, cannot be so said in (modern) language of irish nor english, since unseen worldlings are banished by the de-fanging of all who inconveniently cannot belong in 'Enlightenment' and 'Reason' (ah those Greeklings alas) and thingifincationings... all unseen of faeries or of the winding of spirit and not-spirit, of named and unnamed lifelings and wondrous enspiritings.... iee would weep, and melt into water should she have been calling mye so....to hear of this so nearly in mye ways and yet, absent from all that this mouth could frame, this griefling silenced and no word to arise in polite company nor 'neurotypical whitemanlands of conquest and modernity and trauma-fields stretching into the streams of clouds left trailing from the winges of many an aeroplanes poisonous infiltration.
Hi Garbriel, Here are some thoughts I had about this first chapter - not criticisms.
I wonder who you are hoping to have as your audience?
In reading this first chapter it feels like it assumes a certain level of knowledge and desire to put a lot of energy and concentration into understanding. An example of what I mean would be words such as "precipitously" and "proximate". I wonder if these may limit your audience when this book would be so important to be shared and understand far and wide. Its back to the idea that you've spoke about before in trainings about language used and who can understand and who do you want to reach.
In the paragraph "secondly in our clinical research....." its a great paragraph but the paragraph below says it again in a really clear and understandable way so why have both?
I wonder if I did not know about the ANS already, would I be confuses as to what you are talking about in this first chapter. Maybe it assumes a certain degree of knowledge /awareness that might not be out there in the wider population....yet.
In terms of questions like "Do you understand what I mean?" I don't know if its just me but it doesn't sit well with me as I'm reading. I wonder would "What does this mean?" bring the reader along more?
Will you be adding references for your own clinical research?
Again please note this feedback with sent with love, & care.
Hi Claire- thanks for this important feedback. I think there are two different facets to what you are pointing at. One is what I would call discourse level, and has to do with specific vocabulary, complexity of ideas, etc. The other is about writerly style, eg., 'do you understand what I mean?'
There are a lot of people writing about Polyvagal Theory, including Porges, etc., but most of them are not writers by training.
I would be grateful for you to continue to post vocabulary (discourse level issues) you think might be an issue. I'll have someone from our team post our target audience (we've thought about this pretty carefully.)
As for style, we have a whole editorial team on that side, and I'm pretty particular about how my voice is rendered.
EDITORIAL FEEDBACK INTEGRATED.
"Just as the absence of hate is not love, and the absence of danger is not safety, the absence of illness is not the same as wellness." Thank you for sharing this opening with us! Looking forward to reading the book. And I know we've discussed this briefly before, but I really hear you on the book structure of what sells. What I've also found is that if the "solution" is too radical, that doesn't work for most publishers either. We just have to keep doing the work ...
This is the second time I've set this up on Substack. We pulled it down a few weeks ago because it started to go viral, and we had to re-conceptualize it and put in a paywall. Humans are interested in health creation. Someone should tell the publishers. Yay, Substack - dis-intermediating the middlemen between writers and their readers, right?
People are interested! The system just isn't structured to accommodate that ...
argh.. its it possible to edit our comments after we've posted them, please? And.. what is 'a note' on substack?
I think there is a button or three dots at the side of the comment that would allow you to do this if you wish.
Yes - there's a 3-dot menu-access at the bottom right of each comment. When you click this on your own comments, you get the choice of editing or deleting.
I feel worried that i'll be seen as too 'geeky' or nit picking when i write what's on my mind, but withholding won't support my desire to engage with this process (and bring a so-called neurodivergent and 'hsp' voice into the mix though i may find myself amongst many others here who are also less than 'mainstream thinkers/sensers' and labelling is not my favourite way of 'explaining myself' and why i may seem out of step.
That having been rather clunkily said, here's the thing i 'react' to: it's the concept of 'connection'. The reason is, that in the English modernist lingo with its 'worldview' firmly foundationing it, 'connection' represents a mechanism, a mechanical concept that i can't relate to as Life or her ways. I do not sense life as making and breaking 'connections'. They can't be 'made' or 'broken' or rather.. the concept falls into a mechanistic worldview and seems born of that. I am not suggesting that there is no relation.. on the contrary, we can pretend things are not relational but relationing cannot be 'absent'. That's a modernistic psychological view born .. again.. within the field from which Modernism (etc) arose. It seems to me to be 'trauma-think' and a language that represents the (fact of) a peoples whose milieu is a 'trauma-field' and whose solutions are to fix. And to fix ... and to 'make connections and break them' feels more life 'fix' than would a view that Life is already Here... she can't leave us. So we may not need to 'make connection' or even 'find' such a thing.. because all the while that we employ a concept of connection, it brings along with it the disconnection ... in a way, they can't be parted, and thus they do not seem to me to represent safety. However, finding the Ground of Being....that's another matter. I realise that for many a year, the concept of connection has been familiar to many and many many therapies have based themselves upon such a notion. But i sense something is 'not quite right' here. What can be difficult for me is to word, to 'vocalise' what i mean, because words seem largely to be based on what 'isn't' ... or what is 'other than'. Life... well by obligation i call her 'life' but really she has no name at all. So it is with 'connection'. Is a tree 'connected' to Air? or a tortoise 'connected' to Earth? Is a leaf 'connected' to her twig? I think not. I think this is a man (sic) made notion that creates the belief, the notion of seperatedness that then must be joined up again. What if it's not possible to be 'not connected' but it's really possible to act and behave as if it were possible? So.. do i want the neurobiology to be of 'connection' or of something so alive that i as yet haven't sensed how to put a word to it? That the word 'connection' gets in the way of (for me). That it suggests that i have to 'do' something rather than to allow what's here (my traumatised life force) to find her way up from wherever i put her in my need to stay alive in intolerable circumstances?
Well as a first post, i probably ought (sic) to feel appalled at 'myself' ... i guess i sound horribly critical, rather than merely intense and longing to speak of what is so hard to say. And you will have put deep utter and very experienced care in to all your wordlings and wonderings and ways. So i must trust that whether clunky or not, it's going to be ok for me to share where something seems to lead me into a path where i wonder 'do these words bring me to life or do they remain in a form that i can see would be unproblematic for a largely neurotypically-familiarised readership and therefore to what extent will i need to keep my inner 'translations' going (in the way that for example any book where the word 'man' is employed for 'human people' or as i would say.. this bipedal tottering trauma-bagged attempt at a person (!) which is most of us in the Whiteness Era of the colononialised and ising so called 'West' (aka Modernity_ and all those other words related to the 'Way things Are (here). ). Please let me know if my remarks are out of line or not the sort of thing you want... it's a long post, and i'm new here, and unsure how to (safely) proceed ! To be clear, i am deeply thrilled by your work, and my 'critical voice' is by no means an indication of anything other than a voice of deep appreciation along with a mixture of fearlessness and fearings :-) I will take my comment down, if substack lets me, and if you'd like me to, if it's deemed to have missed the point or too extravagent or such like.
Hi Theia- I think this is great. First, just so you know, I am not writing the book to be agreed with. Not that I don't value people finding the ideas useful and interesting, but I am perfectly happy for them to be pushed against. I am looking for engagement with these ideas. I have had a similar conversation to some of the issues you are bringing up with my friend and colleague Tiokasin Ghosthorse, of the Cheyenne River Lakota, who makes this point with some force, that we are trying to fix something or bridge something, and it is already there. He does not like the word connection AT ALL. He points out that it already exists abidingly, as a sort of ground. You might enjoy his thinking about this and other things, he's quite brilliant. That said, I think there is something linguistic here, and also something phenomenological. English is a shitbag language. Did I just say that? It's the only one I know thoroughly, but it has so many holes in it that a bowl made from it would be a sieve. So the attempt here, of trying to name these phenomena in English, is a bit like trying to carry water in a cheesecloth. Not sure it can be done. Part of this linguistic shittiness is that English is full of lexical gaps around interiors and relating. The language itself is noun-based. It reifies a world of things. Lakhota, by contrast, is a verb-based language that Tiokasin calls a non-mathematical quantum mechanical language of intuition. It describes the movement of energies. I would much rather speak Lakota, but I do not know how to do so aside from a handful of words. What I am pointing at with connection is not a noun, not a thing. It is a verb. And as you get deeper in the book you'll find the Animist undertones of all of this. All of this noted, I am trying to reach an audience that has been thoroughly schooled in alienation, and part of what I am driving at is that most people, even if they are existentially connected to a ground of being, to a Source, because everything actually is, don't experience this. What they experience is alienation, disconnection, isolation, and loneliness. And part of this is neurophysiological, which is what the book is about. I am interested in helping people experience the verb of relatedness. Maybe there is a better title for the book, but this is the container holding this particular collection of musings, and so while I agree with the spirit of what you are pointing out, we're gonna keep the title. Warmth, Gabriel
aahhhh "the essential sense of relatedness".... i breathe again upon reading and delighting in thy wordlings. I confess that many and many a time, iye have written upon, musing upon 'thingification' and a patriachially/colonialised/trauma-based lingo they call the English Language. She carries such heavy burdens, and her deep verbing has so long ago found driven into darker corners, and can but whisper and rustle under the feet of Mouse or Bear, winging through Tree and calling out in longing ... aieeee. And such fun iye felt upon thy characterising of her bereft and squandered life.. or rather the bone that has been permitted to remain, spear in hand, as through gauze or a seive, she would slither like sand through the waist of a little glass hour of chronos, where, should she shatter or be permitted her freedom, we may find kairos awaiting in open arms and wonderings. So iye take thy wordings are permission to de-constrain a little of mye ways, in perceiving upon how ye may easily without upset, allow mye a little loosening of the straightjacketing girdle who constrains into framing of much who, though not alive, would pretend so.
Amen. And in your cadences of an older Englishe, more breath & lyfe in the word(lings) themselves, no?
It is not much discussed in circles I frequent, but the language was de-fanged along with the feral creatures.
aieeeeeee just so! iye heard a wondrous programme on Radio 4 on sunday (uk) about some Irish speaking still alive, but barely so.. and oh the beauteousing of this as she wove her stories and became clear in the telling that what of whom she speaks, cannot be so said in (modern) language of irish nor english, since unseen worldlings are banished by the de-fanging of all who inconveniently cannot belong in 'Enlightenment' and 'Reason' (ah those Greeklings alas) and thingifincationings... all unseen of faeries or of the winding of spirit and not-spirit, of named and unnamed lifelings and wondrous enspiritings.... iee would weep, and melt into water should she have been calling mye so....to hear of this so nearly in mye ways and yet, absent from all that this mouth could frame, this griefling silenced and no word to arise in polite company nor 'neurotypical whitemanlands of conquest and modernity and trauma-fields stretching into the streams of clouds left trailing from the winges of many an aeroplanes poisonous infiltration.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m001zdwq
Hi Garbriel, Here are some thoughts I had about this first chapter - not criticisms.
I wonder who you are hoping to have as your audience?
In reading this first chapter it feels like it assumes a certain level of knowledge and desire to put a lot of energy and concentration into understanding. An example of what I mean would be words such as "precipitously" and "proximate". I wonder if these may limit your audience when this book would be so important to be shared and understand far and wide. Its back to the idea that you've spoke about before in trainings about language used and who can understand and who do you want to reach.
In the paragraph "secondly in our clinical research....." its a great paragraph but the paragraph below says it again in a really clear and understandable way so why have both?
I wonder if I did not know about the ANS already, would I be confuses as to what you are talking about in this first chapter. Maybe it assumes a certain degree of knowledge /awareness that might not be out there in the wider population....yet.
In terms of questions like "Do you understand what I mean?" I don't know if its just me but it doesn't sit well with me as I'm reading. I wonder would "What does this mean?" bring the reader along more?
Will you be adding references for your own clinical research?
Again please note this feedback with sent with love, & care.
Hi Claire- thanks for this important feedback. I think there are two different facets to what you are pointing at. One is what I would call discourse level, and has to do with specific vocabulary, complexity of ideas, etc. The other is about writerly style, eg., 'do you understand what I mean?'
There are a lot of people writing about Polyvagal Theory, including Porges, etc., but most of them are not writers by training.
I would be grateful for you to continue to post vocabulary (discourse level issues) you think might be an issue. I'll have someone from our team post our target audience (we've thought about this pretty carefully.)
As for style, we have a whole editorial team on that side, and I'm pretty particular about how my voice is rendered.
There will be endnotes with citations, yes.
Gak!! Soo excited for this! Thank you for writing this step by step path to healing through connection.
I'm grateful to be able to do so, in the village of readers, such as yourself, who are inspiring me to share it.