I have a hard time showing inappropriate humor and for the most part keep it to myself. I've been often called too serious but anytime I was sarcastic around my parents I was in trouble therefore carrying it into adulthood where I have to be aware of my audience. It has now come to the point where some jokes really bother me. I use to make jokes about my rape but I stopped after awhile. When I was followed I use to think of Patrick from SpongeBob yelling "who are you people" lol. I find .most jokes are best kept silently unless you know your audience. It has been hard for me to navigate if I am being honest in terms of sharing jokes. I simply choose not to.

Another part of me feels it's not professional for someone as a striving leader for others.

As for the craziness,, I havent really liked that term because I have always felt it put me in a box that said I was unintelligent. Which is really me caring about what people think when I shouldn't. I received a lot of judgment from others going through the worst of trauma that has sat with me. I was told "I should just get over it" , "let it go", my mom would often say "I'm crazy" for sharing my emotions.

sarcasm was such a huge part of my own childhood that my recovery needed a solid distinction between sarcasm and humor. it helps me to remember that "sarcasm" is derived from the greek word for "tearing of flesh."i watch my sarkasmos and keep the emphasis on "gentle compassion."

i've never found it difficult to distinguish between crazy and stupid. to my senses, they are as different as love and sex. i'm okay with people confusing my craziness for stupidity. being underestimated gives one far more room to navigate than being interesting enough to watch. whatever it takes to get **my** life working in **your** head, wise one.

oopsie. . . did i just let that sarcasm beast out of it's cage again?

Hola
Yes I’m probably loca (or would have to be) for surviving half the stuff I have & for continuing to try to lol :)

I’ve noticed A lot of good comedians have had some pretty rough childhoods & lots of traumas, I’ve always noticed a link there

Also I think of a lot of tails in folklore & like the Shaman who lives outside of the main town, on the outskirts.... you know like will have something like a scar over their eye & cant see out of one or whatever the scar or trauma that is visible & how that shaman will live on the outskirts but people will seek out that Shaman in need of healing when all else goes wrong, & it makes me think that maybe sometimes being through such extreme traumas or life & death situations that it can kinda open up something different in that being. & how they had to survive & also work on healing themselves so there has to be some wisdom that stems from that ..

Lol I’m sorry if that was some spun out weirdness :)

Big hugs <3

apology NOT accepted for the weird spins. i like compassionate weirdness as much as i like compassionate crazies. i often wonder if "normal" even has room for the compassion required for healing. i'm not overly impressed with the so-called normals, nor the way THEY have been running the world. just mask it all and increase your social distance.

let your freak flag fly, mi loba loca. you earned it.

If the definition of sanity/normality is the abuse, then I'll gladly be a freak.

I'm not sure about "normals". I married one, somehow (?!) and he has immense compassion. So I suspect many "normals" are far more abnormal than we see. It would explain a lot about the world, IMO.

Or as Christopher Titus mentioned in "Norman Rockwell is Bleeding" (comedian, stand-up), 2/3 of famlies are dysfunctional. That would, by statistics, make dysfunction the norm.

End of the day, I figure if you're not harming anyone (self included), then is it really being "weird" or is it being able to safely express trauma's consequences?

No idea if that was relevant or made sense, but if I'm over 50 and I wanna wear a goofy t-shirt because it makes me smile, then I will. If I want to wear tie-dyed canvas shoes, I will. If I want to hunt crawdads with the raccoons, I will. Am I weird? Yep. But I have come, over time, to embrace my Weird. It lets my inner child have a childhood in safety.

I was just sharing with my s/o here in Mexico how much Dr. Viktor Frankl helped me with my PTSD, since he was not only a psychologist but also a Jewish survivor of the Holocaust. He said

“An abnormal reaction to an abnormal situation is normal behavior.”

― Victor Frankl, Man's Search for Meaning
https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/191620-an-abnormal-reaction-to-an-abnormal-situation-is-normal-behavior

I like that attitude toward what to consider normal or sane post trauma. It helps me, that's for sure.

guess i ought to know better than to use certain words around you, leo. "normal" is pretty high on that scale. is it out of line to think of you as, "the anti-norm?" i reckon i oughta owe you a red pen by now for all the editorial corrections you have made on me. i'm still trawling with the trollers. . . or am i troll trawling?

victor frankl is new on my radar, muji. the quote is definitely going down the lines of what i was reaching for. while i was introducing myself, i came across his "logotherapy" and? ? ? hm-m-m-m. . . the intro continues.

just in case you might be interested.
https://www.viktorfranklinstitute.org/

@Arfie, ouch, that wasn't meant as an editorial comment but is part of my own thoughts on the meaning(s) of such words as "nromal" and "norm".

I quite like "anti-norm", btw, and ask permission to use it?

steal away. i stole it from the spouse of an "anti-norm." her teenaged kids called her, "an againster." this woman was against just about everything except for her own opinion.

apology for the incorrect verbage. political correctness never has been my strong suit.

Thasnks for the Frankl link, arfie. Yeah, for my own purposes I call what we do here at DSPTSD Frankl's "logotherapy." It's not for everybody because not everyone is word or logo-centered, but it is for some of us, thank goodness.

i kinda wonder if the psychotherapy i healed by could be called, "logotherapy." when i started my healing journey in 1972, not too many of the current dx'es had been established yet. far less the therapies being used for those conditions. ragtag theories and hopes for a brighter future.

dunno. . . still, it is making for an interesting read. thanks for introducing me by name. i think it is entirely possible that i read one or three of his books during the years i was addicted to self help books. i read so many books during that addiction that i can't remember too many of them any more than a crackhead remembers the individual rocks s/he has smoked along the trail of tears.

No criticism ever intended, Arfie. With my mom's fam not being English-native-speaking, I have had to focus more on the words than some, perhaps, and it tends to nto leave me despite the decades of road traveled since then.

And I tend to have mangled syntax and grammar at times, too.


Words are like soap. You fall on them. They drop away. They slip out of your hands. They leave residue. And everyone has their own preference.

personally, i see grammar as the art of using the words to discredit the message. having started life with a severe speech defect which still arises under duress, it is not difficult to get me stuttering anew in any of my languages.

word sensitive folks frighten me, whatever the source of their sensitivity, whatever the language/justification of their origin.

and here we've arrived again. . .
so far off topic that i'm wondering if i should delete the post for the sake of changing the subject. just troll trawling again. . .

I used Frankl's book Man's Search for Meaning as a college textbook when I taught my 10 death and dying classes to nursing students every year, arfie. It helped them see someone who was both a doctor and a patient cope. They seemed to get a lot out of his book, old as it is now.

good choice, muji. it would, indeed, make for an insightful glimpse and perhaps even some exposure to the classics.

reviewing the reviews, etc., for that book have me believing it is among the books i read during that mult-year binge of self-help books. several of my early therapists came down hard on me to break the self-help addiction. their claim was that i was confusing myself further with all the conflicting theories. one claimed i was keeping my mind so open that my brain kept falling out.