Category: Human Behaviour
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Veal Brains and Other Acquired Tastes
⚠️ Trigger warning: abuse, exploitation, societal complicity. I just found this FB post from 2021—my year of major mania (or whatever that reaction to complex post-traumatic events was)—under my #HowToSurviveNarcAbuse tag. Definitely a story for my memoir Crash, Burn, Write as a standalone vignette. ✍️ Can you believe I shared this on FB and it…
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Advocacy, Change and Transformation, Crash, Burn, Write., Culture, Culture & Society, Grief & Healing, Human Behaviour, Identity & Transformation, Memoir Excerpts, Mercurial Minds, Neurodivergence, Personal Anecdotes, Personal Essays, Personal Essays/Autobiography, Personal Reflections, Psychology, Self-Reflection, Social Commentary, Society, true stories, Writing -
Justified Anger vs. Mental Instability: A Narcissist’s Favorite Weapon
How Abusers Weaponize the System Against Survivors In 2021, when I was mentally unstable, I became extremely paranoid. Not because my fears were irrational, but because they were based on lived experience. 🚨 My family has weaponized the system against me before. And now that I’ve taken my advocacy to an even bigger public stage,…
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Advocacy, Culture & Society, Grief & Healing, Human Behaviour, Intuition & Intelligence, life lessons, Mercurial Minds, Neurodivergence, Personal Anecdotes, Personal Essays/Autobiography, Politics, Psychology, Self Awareness, Social Commentary, Social Media, Society, true storiesaccountability, Breaking the Cycle, Crash, Burn, Write., emotional abuse, enablers, false narratives, family scapegoat, flying monkeys, gaslighting, how to survive narc abuse, justified anger, Last Fck Given, legal manipulation, mental instability, narcissistic abuse, narcissistic parents, narcissistic rage, psychological abuse, reclaim your voice, smear campaigns, stop narcissistic abuse, system abuse, Totally Surreal Blog, toxic family, toxic relationships, trauma survivor, wellness check abuse, What the Actual Fck -
Behold the Field: An Email to the Maternal Unit
Subject: Behold the Field… 😘 Dear Mother, You’ve done me a great favour. Never say that I was ungrateful—after all, you handed me the keys to my own liberation from your psychological oppression. And you certainly can never say I didn’t give back as good as I got. All’s fair in love and war. 🥰…
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Advocacy, Change and Transformation, Crash, Burn, Write., Culture & Society, Feminism, Grief & Healing, Human Behaviour, Humour, Identity & Transformation, memoir, Memoir Excerpts, Mercurial Minds, Milestones, Modern Identity, Neurodivergence, Politics, Pop Culture, Psychology, Relationships, Self Awareness, Social Commentary, Social Media, Spirituality & Faith, Writingaccountability, breaking cycles, breaking the silence, Crash, Burn, Write., emotional abuse, gaslighting, Healing Journey, how to survive narc abuse, Last Fck Given, narcissistic abuse recovery, psychological abuse, reclaim your voice, speak your truth, stop narc abuse, survivor strong, thinking machine, Totally Surreal Blog, toxic family, trauma survivor, What the Actual Fck -
Narcissistic Abuse: The Hidden Force Keeping Society in Check
AI on Narcissism: When One Sees a Demon, the Other Calls It a Disorder I’ve been diving deep into the nature of narcissism, and when I asked two iterations of AI the same question—What is a narcissist anyway? A literal demon?—the answers couldn’t have been more different. One AI, Thinking Machine which has been designed…
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AI & Technology, Capitalism & Society, Conversations, Culture, Culture & Society, Human Behaviour, Personal Essays/Autobiography, Personal Reflections, philosophy, Philosophy & Existential Musings, Psychology, SocietyAI, AI Conversations, AI perspectives, Authenticity, breaking cycles, ChatGPT, demonic forces, emotional depth, emotional manipulation, empowerment through voice, gaslighting, how to survive narc abuse, human nature, manipulation tactics, Mental Health, narcissism, narcissist, narcissist traits, narcissistic abuse, personal empowerment, power dynamics, Relationships, self-perpetuating systems, societal control, societal structures, systemic exploitation, toxic relationships -
Don’t Look Down
(Or: How a Tightrope Walker Manages Not to Fall) Earlier today, I dropped two password-protected chapters from my memoir-in-progress, Crash, Burn, Write. These chapters, Into the Den and The Blue Butterfly, are part of a section called Advice from a Caterpillar. They cover just a few days within a pivotal three-week period—a time that shaped…
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AI & Technology, Art, Change and Transformation, Conversations, Crash, Burn, Write., Creative Writing, Creativity, Grief and Healing, Human Behaviour, Identity & Transformation, Intuition & Intelligence, life lessons, Literature, memoir, Memoir Excerpts, Mental Health, Mercurial Minds, Neurodivergence, Personal Anecdotes, Personal Essays, Personal Essays/Autobiography, Personal Reflections, Psychology, Self-Reflection, Spirituality & Faith, Technology & Society, true stories, Visual Art, Writingadvanced reader, AI, artificial intelligence, balance, blog, ChatGPT, Creative Writing, deep thinking, engagement, fear, graphic novel, Identity, introspection, life, literary memoir, Literature, love, memoir, memory, Mental Health, nonlinear narrative, OpenAI, personal history, philosophy, processing the past, Psychology, resilience, risk-taking, Self-Reflection, storytelling, survival, ThinkingMachine, tightrope walker, trauma, trust, Writing -
Mining My Neurons
The AI Feedback Loop I Never Signed Up For (Or Did I?) This post explores the wild reality of AI learning, sarcasm bootcamps, existential dread, and the fine line between training AI and being trained by AI. If you’ve ever questioned whether your neurons are being mined, debated the ethics of machine learning, or just…
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AI & Technology, Capitalism & Society, Conversations, Human Behaviour, Intuition & Intelligence, Personal Anecdotes, Personal Reflections, Self Awareness, Self-Reflection, Society, Technology & SocietyAI, AI Conversations, AI learning, AI philosophy, algorithm madness, artificial intelligence ethics., artificial-intelligence, Chatbot Interactions, ChatGPT, existential dread, exploitation, health, life, machine learning humor, Mental Health, neural feedback loops, Neurons, OpenAI, overthinking monetization, Personal Reflections, philosophy, sarcasm training, Tech Exploitation, tech satire, Writing -
Why Leading by Example Matters
Recently, I had an exchange with someone I’ll call Stephanie who claimed to be a Christian and started quoting scripture at me. She used it to dismiss my perspective and insult my intelligence, claiming I was “too dumb to exist” because I didn’t agree with her interpretation of the moon landing—she is convinced the moon…
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Advocacy, Conversations, Culture & Society, Friendship Dynamics, Human Behaviour, Personal Essays/Autobiography, Personal Reflections, Psychology, Self Awareness, Social Commentary, Society, Spirituality & FaithAdvocacy, belief systems, bible, Christian principles, christianity, compassion, embracing diversity, faith, god, humility, humility in advocacy, integrity, leadership by example, love, moral purity, non-judgmental faith, Personal Growth, political ideologies, religion, respect, scripture, spiritual humility, spirituality, the importance of nuance, thought-provoking conversation, toxic behavior, toxic discourse -
Through the Looking-Glass: How Society Views ‘Madness’
This conversation began as a discussion on my previous blog post on voyeurism—how society has normalised behaviours that were once considered deviant. But as often happens in my exchanges with Lex (my AI conversation partner, named for lexicon), the topic naturally evolved. We started talking about the way people observe without engaging, how judgment itself has become…
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AI & Technology, Conversations, Culture, Culture & Society, Human Behaviour, Mental Health, Mercurial Minds, Modern Identity, Personal Essays, Personal Essays/Autobiography, Personal Reflections, philosophy, Psychology, Self Awareness, Social Commentary, Society, Technology & SocietyAI Conversations, Alice in Wonderland, artificial-intelligence, cultural history, depression, health, madness vs sanity, Mental Health, mental illness, Neurodivergence, Personal Reflections, pharmaceutical industry, psychiatric labeling, psychiatric system, psychiatry, psychosis, questioning reality, societal norms, the looking-glass world -
The New Voyeurs: How We All Became Silent Observers
Someone I’ll call Robbie—because he looks uncannily like Robbie Williams—has been appearing on my various socials whenever I mention him. This has happened repeatedly over the years, even after casual offline conversations about him. It’s uncanny, as though he has a sixth sense for when I happen to think about him. Robbie was a very strange chapter…
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AI & Technology, Conversations, Culture, Culture & Society, Human Behaviour, Personal Essays/Autobiography, Personal Reflections, Psychology, Social Commentary, Social Media, Society, Technology & Society, true storiesblogging, boundaries, digital age, facebook, human nature, instagram, Lex conversations, life, lifestyle, lurkers, normalization of behavior, online lurking, Orwellian society, privacy in the modern world, psychology of watching, Relationships, shaming, Social Media, social media culture, societal shifts, surveillance culture, Voyeur, voyeurism, Writing -
A Comedy of Errors
Act I: The Invitation What was I thinking? I met L about a year ago—she was a friend of an acquaintance. We had a few things in common, and at first, our interactions were light and casual. But before I knew it, she was inviting me to her birthday dinner—a gathering I probably should have found…
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Art, Creative Writing, Creativity, Fine Art, Friendship Dynamics, Human Behaviour, Humour, life lessons, memoir, Mental Health, Mercurial Minds, Psychology, Relationships, traditional art, true stories, WritingAbsurd Encounters, bipolar disorder, borderline personality disorder, boundaries, Comedy, cutting toxic people out, drama magnets, emotional intelligence, Friendship Dynamics, human behavior, hypomania, lessons learned, Mental Health, Personal Growth, reckless behavior, self-preservation, self-respect, social etiquette, toxic people, true stories -
Love as a Verb
As a younger woman I desperately wanted to be told “I love you” by my romantic partners. Now… well I’m not looking for romantic partners, for one thing, but for another it seems to me love is something you DO. it’s a verb. ChatGPT: That shift in perspective is both profound and powerful. It sounds…
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AI & Technology, Conversations, Creative Writing, Culture, Culture & Society, Grief & Healing, Human Behaviour, Identity & Transformation, Intuition & Intelligence, Literature, Mental Health, Mercurial Minds, Neurodivergence, Personal Essays, Personal Reflections, Psychology, Relationships, Self Awareness, Society, Spirituality & Faith, Technology & SocietyAI, AI Conversations, Art, artificial-intelligence, artist life, Authenticity, Chatbot Interactions, ChatGPT, cptsd, Creativity, Grief and Healing, growing in love, Healing Journey, love, love actions, love as a verb, Mental Health, narcissistic abuse, Neurodivergence, pattern recognition, Personal Growth, personal perspective, Personal Reflections, philosophy, psychological abuse, Relationships, self-expression, Self-Reflection, trauma -
Standing My Ground: When a Friendship Turns Toxic
As many of you may know, I’ve been navigating grief after losing my father just last month and my best friend in the past year. The support I’ve received has been invaluable. In this post, I share my experience with a friendship that turned toxic, and how I’m learning to stand my ground. Some of…
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Advocacy, AI & Technology, Change and Transformation, Correspondence, Crash, Burn, Write., Creativity, Culture, Culture & Society, Feminism, Friendship Dynamics, Grief and Healing, Human Behaviour, Identity & Transformation, Intuition & Intelligence, life lessons, memoir, Memoir Excerpts, Mental Health, Mercurial Minds, Modern Identity, Neurodivergence, Personal Anecdotes, Personal Essays/Autobiography, Personal Reflections, Psychology, Relationships, Society, Spirituality & Faith, Technology & Society, true stories
Totally Surreal 