The system of me (y055.caesium, y056.barium)

[elainegrey]

A diagram showing my perceived interrelationships between my health -- fundamental and at the bottom -- and some very embodied capacities of physical energy, cognition, executive function, and "ground and center." "Ground and center" points toward embodied emotional health, but opens to a more spiritual understanding. I know comfort and stress interact with my health; i used the term perspective to denote a positive capacity that has the opposite quantification of stress. Joy and creativity, meaning, and gratitude all have strong coupling with "ground and center." It takes being grounded and centered for me to engage in connection; connection feeds back to joy and meaning. I should also have a line showing connection supports cognition (per aging research).

I've drawn confidence having an uncertain relationship with executive function. I added confidence because confidence, self esteem, recognition and some other concepts came up in some systems i saw, and i felt a stirring that these are concepts i disregard. In drawing the connection to executive function and the question mark, i felt a deep ache.

Health is, i admit, an extremely broad topic, and there were versions of the diagram where it was not treated so differently. As i read about strength and resistance training improving executive function capacity, aerobic fitness improving cognition, the emotional health impacts of exercise, diet and nutrition having effects, sleep.... the care of this aging structure seems critical beyond the positive impact of not aching and not itching and not coughing.

Not all connections are drawn. Comfort includes the absence of clutter irritations which also reduces stress (increases perspective), which also improves health.

That's a tidy little system to think about: to deal with clutter requires executive function, which -- like the other basic stocks of physical energy, cognition, and ground & center (or "emotional capacity")-- is a finite resource that get replenished, more or less, by a good night's sleep. So, investing in addressing clutter may cost exec function for the day, but may mean more over the long run.

It would be nice if there was a dungeon master manual for this: invest 5 points of exec function over seven turns in decluttering and earn an additional 2 exec function points per future turn, plus one point that rotates randomly around the other capacities per turn.

Exec function doesn't point to many things, but basically it's needed to do the things that improve all the other things. Want to meditate? Reach out to others? Exercise? Develop a system that makes it less expensive to do things on the list? Spend your executive function points!

It's possibly a telling gap that i didn't point connection back to perspective and ground & center. When distressed, it is helpful to turn to others for more perspective, which then helps one find that center or grounding.

Comments

[tamena]

I love this and your ability to break it down and give yourself a visual of it all is amazing.
I wish my brain worked this way, I do so much better with visuals.
I keep scrolling back "up" and looking at it again, this makes so much sense

[elainegrey]

Thanks! Now to see if this can help me motivate myself to plan for when in don't have executive function so i can have my health last for a while.

[egret]

This is an impressive diagram. I like the color washes.

I got a new iPhone with the iOS updates. I've been using the new mood tracker and finding it useful. I didn't think I would; I thought it was sort of dumb. But it's helping me see that yes, it's the traffic that upsets me, and yes, I am in a worse mood when I'm tired, etc. Somehow there's a difference between knowing this and seeing it in a diagram with colors, which is what the mood tracker does, which is why I'm reminded of it by your diagram. You of course are too wise to need Apple to show you these things :)

[elainegrey]

Do you have to tell it your mood? Or can it tell? The new watch i have has a stress sensor/algorithm and when i turned it on for continuous measurement: wow. One fascinating thing is that over the last handful of days i've felt sick, my average stress has been much higher. (So, Samsung shows me things!)

[egret]

Wow. Your watch sounds science fictional.
I have to tell my watch how I feel (or my phone - the query will show up in both places). It asks me once around midday how I am feeling right then and then in the evening how I am feeling overall. After I pick a general mood - from very negative to very positive - it asks me to choose from some emotional mood words to describe it. (Sort of like DreamWidth's mood picker.) Finally it asks what in general is affecting my mood (e.g. work, health, relationships, family, weather, etc.) In the end it makes a graph of them all.

I think I would like it if the watch sensed when I'm stressed out. Maybe they'll add that with the next watch. I've been waiting for Apple to develop one that will monitor my blood glucose without a blood sample. Supposedly they are working on it. When that happens, I will upgrade to the new watch model with that.

I hope you don't mind this super old comment reply. I was away from DW.

[elainegrey]

I don't mind at all. I'm a very slow asynchronous communicator.

[amaebi]

Wow, that's interesting. It took me a while to consider it, and I'm still chewing.

I don't think it's a telling gap to get reality check from friends. Especially in a world where so much human activity seems to involve at least intermediate-targetting making others miserable.

Or if it's a telling gap, I'm a fucking basket case. :D

[elainegrey]

The telling gap was that it took me a long time to recognize reality check from friends. It wasn't until i was writing about the diagram that i realized that friends can feed back in that way. As i was drawing the diagram, i was thinking about how hard it is for me to engage with people when i am not at my freshest. There's something i am currently lumping under executive function -- maybe it's the filtering, but maybe it's also the focus i need to bear.

[amaebi]

Oh! Thank you for explaining! And please forgive my stupidity.

I know that I tend to shut down and off from the external world including other people, when I'm in a mess. I only figured that out when I was in my forties, since then I can often catch myself doing it and apply remedies. And that's helped a lot.

I wonder to what extent having experienced pervasive gaslighting increases the value of those reality checks, and to what extent it makes it harder to access them.... (Talking about me, not you, though I don't think I've experienced abnormal amounts of gaslighting for a cisgender-enough woman in the US.)