Intimate Interactions

“If you say mental wellness three times, some asshole in a ‘Live, Love, Laugh’ t-shirt will appear and tell you to go outside.” - sign at BitF 2019

Relationship to the self is critical when considering mental wellness. Often we think of that relationship being purely a mental one, but many things comprise one’s relationship to the self including sleep, hydration, diet, and exercise.

Dax is my guest today as we discuss the evidence based approaches to coping with struggles in mental wellness. We discuss our real life experiences of coping with depression and hopefully throw in some insight that might help you understand of people with depression if not help you gain insight into your own human experience.

https://intimatevictor.com/resources (scroll to the bottom for mental health resources including Vancouver specific ones)

https://www.cocothelouder.com/coco-resources/

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Hi Intimates. Today we’re talking with Yana, the criminology researcher, about why it’s important we start looking at issues like homelessness and the conditions in prisons. If we each of us is to be safe in our quarantine from COVID-19, the sooner we reduce the number of new infections, the better. So, let’s talk about why keeping ourselves safe means taking care of social issues we’ve ignored with Yana Skorstengaard on Intimate Interactions.

Link for petition

Alternative relationship spaces like polyamory groups or kink organizations sometimes struggle to see when Racism is going on in the space because it tends to be more subtle than traditional violence.

Jazz Goldman is a mixed Black-Jewish American, and I’m a mixed British-Indo Canadian. We bring our mixed experiences of our heritages to this conversation about Racism. I try to document how Racism looks to us in these communities and what recommendations Jazz has for organizers looking to make these spaces more inclusive.

There is, in my opinion, a great importance of making a concerted effort to change culture among several organizers or events at the same time. Posters, policies, and hands-on education is the way to go in my opinion. It’s worth hiring an anti-oppression consultant if you can, and it’s always more effective when it’s more than one organizer.

Good luck taking an anti-Racism stance in your community, friends!

Jazz mentioned microaggressions as bee stings during the episode and it turns out it was microaggressions as mosquito bites.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hDd3bzA7450

I also just started reading an article about dealing with microaggressions as a POC here: https://everydayfeminism.com/2015/02/ways-racial-microaggressions-sneak-in/

Note: This episode published a day early so it could be in time for Halloween even though it's focused primarily on Diwali. As time goes on I'm going to continue to try to rush themed episodes to you in time for the appropriate dates but may not always be able to do this.  Hey Intimates. I wanted to do a Hallowe'en episode because it’s such a popular holiday and I’ve been challenging myself to create and release special episodes around festivals or holidays. It turned into a Diwali episode because despite being descended from a half Roman Catholic family, I have been far more interested in my Indian heritage recently. This year, I’m celebrating both dates.

Before getting into the Indian celebration, I do my best to explain and do justice to Allhallowtide, a three day festival where Hallows Evening or Hallowe'en is just one part on October 31 involving a vigil for the Catholic saints in heaven (hallows is synonymous with saints).

Irene joins me today as an Indo Canadian woman who hasn’t lived in India like I have, but who has in my opinion had a far more traditional Indian upbringing as I haven’t. Our different perspectives as parts of the Indian diaspora hopefully offer one incomplete and imperfect portrait of folks grappling with culture and community in a very Canadian way: perhaps slightly distanced from it for likely different reasons, balancing different ideas of what it means to be from a place, and practicing culture as a form of identity.

If you want to learn more, feel free to wikipedia Diwali and the Ramayana or throw it into google and check out some of the awesome images of this Indian Festival of Lights. I wish you a Happy Diwali, and many cozy Autumn evenings with family and friends. Enjoy the episode, Intimates.

1. Can you give a brief explanation of what Diwali is about in three sentences or less?

2. Could you explain to folks who don't already know: what is the Ramayana about? [Itihasa]

3. How many days long is Diwali?

4. What sorts of rituals do you take part in over Diwali (do you do any rangoli, pujas to Lakshmi)?

5. Are you aware of any other variations of Diwali rituals that you don't participate in?

6. Who celebrates Diwali with you?

7. Does Diwali build a sense of community for you?

8. Do you relate your experience of Diwali to hope in the context of colder, literally darker days?

9. Do you draw strength in your identity from your culture as an Indian?

10. How does your sense of Indian culture relate to mental wellness in your experience?

Race is a complicated topic to discuss, because there are quite a few misconceptions out there. I want to tackle how white a lot of alternative spaces are because of how inhospitable they can be for people of colour. This episode discusses what races are, how eugenics impacted ideas that we internalize today, the supposed scientific basis of eugenics, and who gets to be white.

Despite our best efforts, I think we both agreed that this episode centered whiteness too much for our own liking, but it is my hope that it’s a great episode for you to listen to if you are a White person or are looking for some basics around Racism in alternative spaces like a polyamory community or a Kink community - of course depending on city.

Jazz mentioned people who survived the Bubonic Plague (Black Death) may carry a mutation that resists HIV infection!

https://www.the-scientist.com/research-round-up/could-the-black-death-protect-against-hiv-54468

Jazz mentioned a book on stereotypes which turned out to be called Typecasting and is written by Ewen and Ewen (not bowen and bowen). It’s a researched book on eugenics and Racism. https://www.amazon.com/Typecasting-Arts-Sciences-Human-Inequality/dp/1583227350

Jazz mentions a Sweedish girl who protested the government’s inaction on climate change. Her name is Greta Thunberg and her story is here: https://www.theguardian.com/science/2018/sep/01/swedish-15-year-old-cutting-class-to-fight-the-climate-crisis

Person on the internet: “Wow you’re so mature for your age.”

Other person on the internet: “Thanks, it’s the lifetime of depression and self-isolation.”

Intimate Interactions is about relationships and intimacy. I can’t think of a more important relationship than the one to yourself. Some educators talk about self relationship from the perspective of being your own partner first and foremost, before you partner with anyone else. I like that view.

Speaking as a person who has lived with depression and anxiety his entire life, I have to ask: are you in an abusive relationship with yourself?

It’s worth reflecting on your internal conversations. If you have an abusive internal voice, who does that abusive voice remind you of?

As a person who has been through years of counselling and has unlearned very harmful beliefs about competence, intelligence, elitism, etcetera, I have to ask: What mistaken beliefs did they teach you if any?

Could you come to new conclusions about those things and start to cultivate the self awareness to monitor what you’re saying to yourself, to catch yourself, to confront yourself and change your own mind about those things?

Depression to me is often the consequence of a mind divided against itself, and that’s not a long term ideal situation. It’s often unsustainable long term.

Today my guest is Dax, a person with a degree in Psychology who is a long time depression sufferer.

Fact check and research time. tl:dr, everything we say in the podcast is correct but we lacked the confidence to say so definitively and I’ve done the research and shared the links in the show description to confirm what I found.

To restate: a psychotropic drug is one that affects the mind or mental process. A psychedelic drug is one inducing hallucinations like LCD or as I correctly guessed, psilocybin - the compound in magic mushrooms. Thus psilocybin is a psychotropic drug that is psychedelic.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psilocybin

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychoactive_drug

Ketamine is a tranquilizer and it is used by veterinarians on horses as well as other animals. An eponym is a thing something else is named after. For example, a dog in India is named Victor after me. I am his eponym. He is my namesake.

https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/eponym

https://intimatevictor.com/resources (scroll to the bottom for mental health resources including Vancouver specific ones)

https://www.cocothelouder.com/coco-resources

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Have you ever heard of non monogamous people having “comet” partners? Today we’ll discuss what that means and how it’s different from long distance relationships.

Jazz Goldman and I talk about what a comet partner relationship might look like between the two of us. We talk about sustainability, and make a distinction between being community-oriented non monogamous folks, and being individual-oriented non monogamous folks.

One way to think of community-oriented non monogamy is how focused we are on our greater collection of lovers and our lovers’ lovers - that is to say on our polycules. One way to think of individual-oriented non-monogamy is more like solo polyamorous folks, though not all solo polyamorous folks are individual-oriented. I mean to say if we take a radically personally autonomous stance - that we are each responsible only for ourselves, we would be embodying more of an individual-oriented philosophy rather than a community-minded one.

Sustainability of relationships and thinking about how they fit in the context of one’s polycule is an important assessment for me, even if I do have strong needs for autonomy and independence. I think the information is good to have for everyone, even if they are quite individual-oriented in how they practice their consensual non monogamy.

And now, the conversation with Jazz Goldman about Long Distance Lovers on Intimate Interactions.

Maita is a men’s coach living in Victoria who teaches healthy relationships between men. We talk about emotional labour, exercises you can do with your friends or at home, strategies with intimate partners, socially acceptable ways men share intimacy with other men, and about the challenge of restoring intimacy between men if they’ve received gender messages that have poisoned their relationships or have been “toxic” in some way to them.

We hope you enjoy the session. It might be somewhat binary at times but is designed for people who identify as men, and I think gender non conforming and non binary folks who present as masculine or men in any amount could still get some use out of the content. Content warning: when talking about depression and men, suicide may come up. Please resource yourself appropriately.

Resources

The Pyramid of Regulate-Relate-Reason from Dr. Bruce D. Perry (https://twitter.com/bdperry/status/931235578976329728)

The Window of Tolerance Image from Dr. Marie S. Dezelic (reposted on my site because her links appear broken). Read her article.

Relationships can be thought of as strategies for meeting our human needs with each other. They can also be thought of as the sum of our interactions. That might sound complicated - and it is! That’s why it’s much easier to think of them in cookie-cutter, pre-set ways. We are given scripts and categories. This is what “friends with benefits” looks like. This is what “getting serious” looks like. The problem with categories is often their inability to manage the spaces between them, the liminal spaces.

Accordingly, we have a concept called the relationship elevator that shuttles us between our preset categories, but always in one direction. Have you ever tried to call off an engagement to go back to solidifying a relationship before marriage? I certainly have. Spoilers: it ends the relationship.

Jazz Goldman and I discuss today what our relationship is, the sum of our interactions. We talk about our boundaries, our expectations, and our intentions. Enjoy!

Left Brain vs Right Brain

https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/321037.php

Welcome to the second session of the Tillie-Victor Friendship Project - or TVFP. We’re recording outdoor sessions documenting our friendship as it progresses. This is a continuation of our first session and as such it was accidentally recorded on our H1N Zoom recorder as a low quality MP3, but we solemnly swear to be up to higher fidelity good in future sessions.

Today we chat about Liminality, possibly our favourite topic; we mention the c̓əsnaʔəm Musqueam city before Vancouver; we discuss mental health, bipolar disorder, and suicidality. I share a breakthrough I had on valuing myself; and of course: content warning: we talk about indigenous rights, rapid cycling bipolar disorder, depression and suicidality. That sounds about right for our second session of getting to know each other as friends, right?

The village of musqueam folks living here before settlers like ourselves called it Vancouver was called c̓əsnaʔəm. Here are notes on the pronunciation: The first letter /c̓/ sounds very much like "ts" in the word nuts. Note also the apostrophe which causes /c̓/ to have a slight popping sound. The /ə/ is similar to the "u" sound in "but." The /ʔ/ is a consonant with no sound, like the space in "uh-oh." (Source). There’s even a film about it (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c1RnkCdDKLQ).