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Pastimes : Don't Ask Rambi -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Rambi who wrote (18480)	3/6/1999 12:58:00 PM
From: Don Pueblo	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 71178

Joyce is a moron, IMHO. Here's my take, from personal experience and watching other people; Creating stuff is the high point. That is the top. I think that there are degrees of this, and that somebody that "fails" at creating Good Stuff will continue to create even though it's Bad Stuff. Failing that, the person will sometimes try creating Very Bad Stuff. (Hitler, failed artist, then failed mass murderer, is a prime example.) (Does the period go outside the parentheses?) Anyway, failing to create Good Stuff, (Hemingway), Bad Stuff (that bonehead Nirvana dude) or Very Bad Stuff (Adolf) = no reason to go on living. Just a question of degree. When a person is put in a social setting where the cards are stacked against him or her, for whatever reason, the ability to create stuff is to that degree shut off. I mean the person really believes, or has really "accepted" the "fact" that they cannot create anything. At that point, one alternative is to uncreate themselves. (Unfortunately, it doesn't work, but that's another line of thought.) I'm guessing this starts at about age 2, when somebody laughs at your attempt to draw your own face. All kids draw, most give up. Solution is simple: make something. Make a pie, make a song, make a garden, make a funny noise. Barring that, make a rude comment, or break a piece of furniture. Don't break a small animal or rob a bank, that Very Bad Stuff. Just don't give up. I gave up one time. I didn't like the feeling at all. I decided not to give up again. But that's another line of thought. And watch it when you start hassling a kid that is trying to make a boat out of marshmallows. Better to say nothing than to laugh and tell him he can't do it. But that's another line of thought, too.

To: Rambi who wrote (18480)	3/6/1999 2:44:00 PM
From: Ilaine	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 71178

Have you ever read "Listening to Prozac"? I recommend it. Very interesting book by a practicing psychiatrist who discusses how different drugs affect the personality, and how the personality is hard-wired differently in different people. I took anti-depressants for a while a few years ago when I was going through a very tough time. I did not like the side effects of Zoloft, which is a selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor (SSRI) like Prozac. It made me less depressed almost immediately. I sat up in bed the night after I took it and said "This is different. This is better." (I am a so-called "fast responder.") I was also more focused, more on-task, I have posted before that I am kinda ADD and scattered. But I did not like the fact that it made it totally, and I mean totally, impossible for me to come. I prefer feeling suicidal, thank you. Anyway, once I realized that it was chemical, the depression didn't bother me so much and I got over it. Once in a while I bum a Zoloft off my mother, who takes it all the time, as do my brother and sisters. One will do me. Haven't had one in months. Funny, when I was taking it regularly, my husband and I got along much better. I am cranky and irritable much of the time, and the Zoloft stopped that. But I don't mind being cranky and irritable, it's not something I'd take medicine for. I mentioned a few weeks ago research on personality by Cloninger, but have yet to find anything on the web, much less one of the personality tests. I do have photocopies of a few of the tests from psychiatric journals - taken a few years ago, don't know what I would score now. Briefly, I scored much lower than I would have expected on "Harm Avoidance," 26%. I scored 100% in "Persistance," 95% in "Self-directedness," 93% in "Cooperativeness," 73% in "Self-transcendence," 65% in "Novelty-seeking," and 54% in "Reward-dependence." I just saw a footnote that explains that "Novelty seeking" includes exploratory excitability, impulsiveness, extravagance and disorderliness; "Harm-avoidance" includes anticipatory worry, fear of uncertainty, shyness with strangers, and fatigability; "Reward-dependence" includes sentimentality, attachment, and dependence; "Self-directedness" includes responsibility, purposefulness, resourcefulness, self-acceptance and congruent second nature; "Cooperativeness" includes social acceptance, empathy, helpfulness, compassion, and principled; "Self-transcendence" includes self-forgetfulness, transpersonal identification and spiritual acceptance.