On the advice of my doctors, I will no longer be drinking ethanol. I will, however, still be using it in hand sanitizer.
(The image is from Wikipedia’s “Ethanol” article.)
An Announcement, Regarding Alcohol
2
Category Archives: Mental Health
About My Father, My Own Personal Monster
(Trigger warning: this post contains disturbing material. Proceed at your own risk.)
My father, Daniel Lee Marsh, was from Jonesboro, Arkansas, and was alive from 1933 to 2010. At almost nine years after his death, there are still several things I cannot figure out about the man. Why did he do the things he did?
When he finally reached his long-delayed, long-anticipated expiration date, I had already been eagerly waiting for that day for years. I was utterly confused that my mother and sister reacted to the news of his death by becoming upset. He was finally gone. He could hurt no one, ever again. This was, in my view, an occasion for celebration, not mourning, for his long-awaited death meant he could harm no one else. They reacted with tears, while I was euphoric, and demonstrated that euphoria with hysterical laughter. I think I confused them as much as they confused me.
My father was a pedophile, who targeted young males, and horribly neglected the females in his life. Several of my childhood friends were molested by the man. He was also a teacher (as I am), and abused that position to find new victims. He was never punished by the criminal justice system. I did report his behavior to police, late in his life, but he had successfully hidden all evidence of his crimes by this point, and the police came to conclusion that my report was false. My surviving family had tried to convince me for years not to report his crimes, as a shameful family secret, but I eventually reached the breaking point, which means I had to act, which I did — not that it did any good. The police dropped their investigation, and then harassed me, as if I had filed a false complaint.
I have no biological children, having always been afraid to become involved in a pregnancy, for fear I would turn out like him. It’s an irrational fear, but realizing that doesn’t make it go away. I do have two stepchildren, whom I love as if they carried my own DNA. I fear this is as close to fatherhood as I dare come. I have a strong memory of his cruelty — many, in fact — but one sticks out from when I was six years old. I was angry at him for something (I don’t remember what), and he handed me a scalpel, then invited me to stick it into his head, just behind his left ear, which he told me would kill him quickly. No six-year-old should experience that.
For a time when I was young, I had a roommate, a college student named Jerry. I had no idea that Jerry was secretly my father’s primary sexual partner, only learning of that years later. My mother discovered this, but did not divorce him immediately, staying in that hell of a marriage for the sake of my sister and myself. Much later, she did divorce him. I reacted by legally changing my last name to my mother’s maiden name, just to show whose side I was on.
Can you imagine being a teenager, and having your own father molest your neighborhood friends? I don’t have to imagine it — those memories are burned into my brain. I’ve had to go so far as to be tested for HIV, just in case I was a direct target myself, for it is difficult for me to trust my memory. Fortunately, the test results cleared me of worrying about possibly contracting AIDS.
There’s more. When the two of us were going somewhere in the car, he would often masturbate, while driving, to the point of orgasm, in full view of me, under the guise of “sex education,” in my tween and early teen years. I did not realize until later how harmful this was to me, but now I know this is one of several reasons I have to deal with PTSD for the rest of my life.
There’s also the matter of religion. My father hopped from one religion to another every few years, and tried his best to drag the whole family along with him each time. The new “word from on high” was in effect, and previous revelations were abandoned. These religions varied from the ultra-conservative Church of Christ, to a degenerate form of Buddhism called Soka Gakkai, to his own version of a Native-American-belief-based magic-mushroom cult, and many others. He was quite charismatic, and never had any trouble attracting a small group of “disciples” to follow him along whichever pseudo-spiritual “path” he was on. I grew up, unsurprisingly, with the attitude that all religions were both harmful, and deeply flawed. If you want to raise a young child to become an atheist, there is no more effective approach than what my father did with regards to religion.
The inconsistency of his “parenting” was horrible. One year, he would be providing me with age-inappropriate hard-core pornography, such as Hustler magazine — and the next year, he would mark as “forbidden,” in the TV Guide, any movie which contained nudity. I can’t explain this. It makes no sense.
This is not a complete list.
He’s gone now, but my PTSD remains. If you have kids, please do not torture them, as my father did. If you know of any situation like this going on around you, please report it to the proper authorities. Monsters in human form do exist, and it is the responsibility of all of us to stop them.
“Feeling Yourself Disintegrate,” by The Flaming Lips, and the Inevitability of Death
I used to have serious ambitions to achieve immortality, first by having my brain transplanted into a cloned body, and then eventually having the information in my brain uploaded into a computer. Basically, I had a severe case of thanatophobia. The music of The Flaming Lips, and this song in particular, helped me to eventually accept the inevitability of my own death.
Because I’m a Teacher
Image
Mr. Trump, Please Get Some Sleep
Sleep is essential for good mental and physical health. It helps us heal when we need healing. I went to bed very early last night, and got all the sleep I need to do well at work today. I wish to suggest to our president that he do the same.
At least eight hours of sleep a night is healthy and helpful. Also, especially for a man in his seventies who is under a great deal of stress, long naps during the day can be a literal life-saver. In Mr. Trump’s case, the number of lives saved can be very large indeed.
To free up time for sleep, I have one more piece of advice for the president: limit yourself to one tweet per day.
Meditating, and Not
I just noticed that I can elect to pay attention to my breathing, or ignore it, but one or the other keeps happening. Changing which one I focus on changes the way I think. This is interesting.
2017: The Year of Trump Dysphoria Disorder
“Dysphoria” is the antonym of “euphoria.” Exposure to facts increases your risk of developing Trump Dysphoria Disorder, or TDD. To avoid the pain and suffering associated with TDD, you may wish to avoid any media outlets which are not Fox News.
494 Circles, Each, Adorning Two Great Rhombcuboctahedra, with Different (Apparent) Levels of Anxiety
The design on each face of these great rhombcuboctahedra is made from 19 circles, and was created using both Geometer’s Sketchpad and MS-Paint. I then used a third program, Stella 4d (available here), to project this image on each of a great rhombcuboctahedron’s 26 faces, creating the image above.
If you watch carefully, you should notice an odd “jumping” effect on the red, octagonal faces in the polyhedron above, almost as if this polyhedron is suffering from an anxiety disorder, but trying to conceal it. Since I like that effect, I’m leaving it in the picture above, and then creating a new image, below, with no “jumpiness.” Bragging rights go to the first person who, in a comment to this post, figures out how I eliminated this anxiety-mimicking effect, and what caused it in the first place.
Your first hint is that no anti-anxiety medications were used. After all, these polyhedra do not have prescriptions for anything. How does one “calm down” an “anxious” great rhombcuboctahedron, then?
On a related note, it is amazing, to me, that simply writing about anxiety serves the purpose of reducing my own anxiety-levels. It is an effect I’ve noticed before, so I call it “therapeutic writing.” That helped me, as it has helped me before. (It is, of course, no substitute for getting therapy from a licensed therapist, and following that therapist.) However, therapeutic writing can’t explain how this “anxious polyhedron” was helped, for polyhedra can’t write.
For a second hint, see below.
.
.
[Scroll down….]
.
.
Second hint: the second image uses approximately twice as much memory-storage space as the first image used.
On Therapeutic Writing, and Putting Hexakaidekaphobia in Remission
When my mother died, last November 16, I wrote an obituary for her, which I was then asked (unexpectedly) to read at her funeral, as one of two eulogies. This was one of the most difficult things I have ever done, but writing it did help me (somewhat) with the immediate problem I was having dealing with grief.
After the funeral, I felt numb much of the time, for months, until May 16 arrived — exactly six months after she died — at which point my tightly-controlled emotional state shattered, leaving me in worse shape (in some ways) than I was on, say, November 17 of last year. This was unexpected, and caused significant problems, including the development of monthly hexakaidekaphobia, a morbid dread and fear of the 16th day of every month. (The word is a modification of “triskaidekaphobia,” an irrational fear of the number thirteen).
June 16 was worse than May 16 — absolutely full of PTSD attacks. (I’ve had PTSD for most of my life; my mother’s death made it worse.) Fortunately, I don’t try to hide mental health problems, as I once did — I try to find the help I need, from physicians, to deal with such problems, and, when I find things that help me, I write about them. I also have long used recreational mathematics to help me feel better when depressed.
It was in this context that mid-July arrived. I went to sleep on July 15th with the knowledge that it was extremely important for me to find better coping mechanisms before the start of school in August. When I woke up on July 16, which could have been another horrific day of severe depression, anxiety, and other problems, I did not feel those negative emotions. This does not mean I had “gotten over” the facts that my mother did die, and that I miss her terribly. However, it did mean I was experiencing grief differently: I was feeling grief, rather than letting feelings of grief control me — and there is a huge difference between the two.
That morning, July 16, I knew what I needed to do as soon as I woke up: I needed to write. For me, that generally means blogging, and that’s what happened. This “therapeutic writing,” as I call it, was helpful enough on July 16 that I continued it the next day. When I next spoke to my doctors, I told them I was doing this, and why, and they agreed that such writing (like the “mathematical therapy” I have done for years) was an excellent, helpful activity. (This “check with professionals” step is essential, and I do not recommend attempting mental health therapy without the help of at least one licensed, qualified psychiatrist, and/or other type of therapist, such as a clinical psychologist.)
Of course, I could do this therapeutic writing in a spiral notebook, and keep it private; no writing has to go on the Internet. Why, then, do I choose to post such material where anyone can see it? I first explained why I blog about mental health issues in this post, but the short version is this: I hope that my openness on this subject can help reduce the social stigma which, unfortunately, still surrounds topics related mental health. This stigma is harmful because it keeps millions of people from seeking the professional help they need. I have also found it a personally liberating experience to come out of the “closet” on such issues, for, as with other metaphorical “closets,” it is the truth that closets are not good places for people to live their lives.
School starts on August 15 — only four days from now — and I’m going to do everything I can to make that day, the next day (the formerly-dreaded 16th of the month), and the rest of the days in the school year as good as they can possibly be for my students, as well as myself. I could tell I was on the right track when I decided to write about monthly hexakaidekaphobia early this morning, but in the past tense. Before I started writing, I “warmed up” by constructing the geometric art at the top of this post, which, if you examine carefully, you will see is based on — what else? — the number sixteen. In my case, at least, mathematical therapy and therapeutic writing go hand-in-hand, and this is what I am doing to try to leave my monthly hexakaidecaphobia in the past, where it belongs.
I still miss my mother. She was once, as I am, a science teacher, and was also involved in education in many other ways. She would want me to have good school days on August 16th, September 16th, and so on, as well as the days in-between — and, to properly honor her memory, and give my students the education they deserve, I am determined to do my best to do exactly that.
The Inverted Popularity of This Aspie’s Phobias and Philias, Part II: A Mathematical Analysis of My Phobias
First, here is where to find Part I of this post. In it, I explained the reasons for my view that my phobias are among the uncommon ones, while I actually like many things (such as mathematics, darkness, and spiders) which are feared by those with more common phobias. I find such self-analysis, and reflective writing, helpful. This is unusual, of course, but those with Asperger’s Syndrome tend to be unusual in many ways, and this includes being different from each other.
For Part II, I used Google, and searched for “100 most common phobias.” My goal was to determine the extent to which my current and past phobias are atypical, when compared to the incidence of various phobias within the general population. The top search result was http://www.fearof.net/, where 100 common phobias are listed, in descending order of world-wide incidence. These 100 phobias were then split into the seven categories, ranging from phobias about things I like a lot, to things about which I am phobic myself, as seen below.
Category 1: I have a strong affinity (a philia) for these things which people commonly fear, and I have never feared them myself. There are 17 phobias in this category, including four of the ten most common phobias.
- Spiders (arachnophobia is the most common phobia of all)
- Heights (acrophobia, 3rd most common phobia of all)
- Small/enclosed spaces (claustrophobia, 7th)
- Flying (aerophobia, 9th)
- Public speaking (glossophobia, 13th)
- Solitude (monophobia, 14th)
- Long words (hippopotomonstrosesquippedaliophobia, 26th)
- The unknown (xenophobia, 27th)
- Success (achievemephobia, 30th)
- Cats (ailurophobia, 32nd)
- Balloons (globophobia, 34th)
- Darkness / night (nyctophobia, 35th)
- The number 13 (triskaidekaphobia, 39th)
- Friday the 13th (paraskevideka-triaphobia, 46th)
- Sleep (somniphobia, 47th)
- Women (gynophobia, 48th)
- Numbers (numerophobia, 93rd)
Category 2: I like these things people commonly fear, but not with high enough intensity for the word “philia” to apply. There are 23 phobias in this category, including three more of the top ten.
- Snakes (ophidiophobia, the 2nd most common phobia)
- Thunder and lightning (astraphobia, 6th)
- Holes (trypophobia, 10th)
- Birds (ornithophobia, 16th)
- Chickens (alektorophobia, 17th)
- Intimacy (aphenphosmphobia, 19th)
- Falling (basiphobia, 29th)
- Love, or emotions in general (philophobia, 38th)
- Butterflies (lepidopterophobia 43rd)
- Buttons (koumpounophobia, 50th)
- Ducks (anatidaephobia, 51st)
- Fire (pyrophobia, 52nd)
- Doctors (latrophobia, 57th)
- Adult little people (achondroplasiaphobia, 60th)
- Moths (mottephobia, 61st)
- Bananas (bananaphobia, 63rd)
- Mirrors (catoptrophobia, 70th)
- School (didaskaleinophobia, 83rd)
- Technology (technophobia, 84th)
- The future (chronophobia, 85th)
- Halloween (samhainophobia is the 90th)
- Rain (ombrophobia, 94th)
- Zombies (kinemortophobia, 98th)
Category 3: I used to fear these commonly-feared things, although not to the level of a phobia, but now I no longer fear them at all. This category has a mere six phobias.
- Everything, or terrible things happening (panophobia, the 44th most common phobia)
- Food (cibophobia, 66th)
- Horses (equinophobia, 68th)
- Mice (musophobia, 69th)
- Pain (agliophobia, 71st)
- Worms (scoleciphobia, 97th)
Category 4: I am indifferent to these commonly-feared things, or have a like/dislike balance. In other words, for these things. . . meh. This is the largest category, which I view as healthy. It contains 25 phobias.
- Failure (atychiphobia is the 15th most common phobia)
- Needles (trypanophobia, 20th)
- People, in all situations (anthropophobia, 21st)
- Abandonment (autophobia, 23rd)
- Commitment (gamophobia, 25th)
- Bridges (gephyrophobia, 41st)
- Insects (entomophobia, 42nd)
- Feet (podophobia, 45th)
- Frogs (ranidaphobia, 53rd)
- Dolls (pediophobia, 58th)
- Fish (ichthyophobia, 59th)
- Animals (zoophobia, 62nd)
- Cotton balls or plastic foams (sidonglobophobia, 64th)
- Ghosts (phasmophobia, 67th)
- Beards (pogonophobia, 74th)
- Belly buttons (navels; omphalophobia, 75th)
- Depths (bathophobia, 77th)
- Obese people (cacomorphobia, 78th)
- Getting old (gerascophobia, 79th)
- Hair (chaetophobia, 80th)
- Hospitals (nosocomephobia, 81st)
- Work (ergophobia, 87th)
- Opinions (allodoxaphobia, 89th)
- Oceans (thalassophobia, 96th)
- Being buried alive (taphophobia, 100th)
Category 5: I currently have an aversion to these commonly-feared things, but my aversion, in this category, does not reach the level of a phobia, and never has. This category contains only nine phobias, and none are in the top 32.
- Change (metathesiophbia, the 33rd most common phobia)
- Sharks (galeophobia, 54th)
- Being forgotten, or not remembering things (athazagoraphobia, 55th)
- Cockroaches (atsaridaphobia, 56th)
- Choking (pseudodysphagia, the fear of choking, 76th)
- Loud noises (ligyrophobia, 82nd)
- Clowns (coulrophobia, 88th)
- Roller coasters (coasterphobia, 95th)
- Ants (myrmecophobia, 99th)
Category 6: I used to be phobic regarding these things, and still don’t like them. However, I can manage, now, to keep my aversion below the intensity of a phobia. This is also the category that has involved the most work, for it is difficult to shed a phobia. This category has three of the top ten, and 14 total — but these are former phobias, not current ones.
- Open or crowded places (agoraphobia, the 4th most common phobia)
- Dogs (cynophobia, 5th)
- Germs (mysophobia, 8th)
- Cancer (carcinophobia, 11th)
- Death (thanatophobia 12th)
- Crowds (enochlophobia, 18th)
- Water (aquaphobia, 22nd)
- Blood (hemophobia, 24th)
- Driving (vehophobia, 28th)
- God and/or religion (theophobia, 31st)
- Bees (apiphobia, 49th)
- Crime (sclerophobia, 65th)
- Wasps (spheksophobia 86th)
- Getting rid of stuff (disposophobia, 92nd)
Category 7: I am phobic, now (or very recently), about these things, and still actively try to avoid them, when I can. There are only six left in this category, and, with professional help, I am working on eliminating them, as well. Nothing left in this category is ranked in the top 35, which is consistent with my idea that my remaining phobias are among the less common ones.
- Men (androphobia, the 36th most common phobia)
- Fear (phobophobia, 37th)
- Vomiting (emetophobia, 40th)
- Pregnancy & childbirth (tokophobia, 72nd). In my case, since I am male, this means that I have been very careful, my whole life, to avoid participation in the creation of a pregnancy. The reason is simple: My now-deceased father was a horrible role model for fatherhood, and have never felt I could take the risk of becoming a biological father myself, for fear that I would turn out like him. His influence is also the reason I have both androphobia (top of this category) and PTSD. If there is a silver lining here, it is that I would not have learned how to focus on mental health, rather than mental illness, without him making such work necessary.
- Talking on the phone (telephonophobia, 73rd)
- Light (photophobia, 91st)
Further evidence that my phobias are rare was discussed in Part I. I may actually have some which are unique to me, such as my dread of the 16th of each month, which has plagued me since my mother’s death, last November 16th. Since fear of the number thirteen is called triskaidekaphobia, fear of the number sixteen is hexakaidekaphobia. This is what July looked like, to me, as I approached the 16th.
Yesterday was the 16th of July, and that is when I wrote Part I of this post, which is no coincidence. The 16th is now over. By focusing on improving my mental health, and using therapeutic writing (which I am also doing right now), I made it through yesterday without falling apart, although it was not easy. Sixteen is a rational number, and it is time for me to resume being rational about it.
This makes me hopeful that hexakaidekaphobia will now stay in the past, where it belongs. No one need suggest that I get medical help, including seeing a mental health professional, for the appointments to do exactly those things, before school resumes, are already scheduled.
RobertLovesPi.net 