anotherjunkie

I would assume that if someone is going undercover they get at least a crash-course in how to look like a local. Was your group responsible for training operatives in things like this (how to fit in while wearing the disguise) or was there another department that did that?

therapists just tell me to practice mindfulness. but the more I analyze my surroundings the more I think that nothing is real.

Perpetual existential crisis. I get it, man.

Mindfulness was only one aspect that helped me. How it helped, though, was not in the way I was told to practice it. What worked for me was noticing ‘concrete’ things. Not being aware of other people doing stuff, or birds flying or whatever (though that is helpful later), but instead focusing on things I can still “know” with my eyes closed. Trucks passing on the road, the warmth of sunlight on your skin, or the cold on your face when you open the freezer. It somehow helps to make the connection that the world is still “there” even when you close your eyes. From there it was a matter of mindful actions (recognizing that I was making a deliberate choice to do something, and knowing that I had alternatives if I wanted) and being mindful of emotions (I am feeling anger/dread, and that’s okay because it’s an emotion that will pass).

I feel like a lot of doctors jump straight to that last phase which is, in my opinion, the absolute wrong way to deal with dissociation. If it does anything, it serves to underscore that your mind is creating your reality on the fly.

Other things that helped were making concrete associations with things other than myself. Schedule guitar lessons (or whatever) and make a standing engagement with friends to play MMO/Boardgames/TTRPG etc., with the intention of creating a situation where you know that other people are counting in you, and that it will impact their lives if you bow out. If its a matter of finding friends, check local stores related to your hobby. For me it’s games, so local board game stores have weekly game nights. Sometimes they have D&D campaigns, but if not you can play online at [Roll20](www.roll20.net) which is a great service for figuring out how to talk to people in a relatively safe/controlled environment.

Good luck.

Yep. This isn’t just him, it’s also the xfree(?) PR firm. Extremely unlikely they risk relationships by answering this.

Edit — also because he may have been involved. From the Vice article:

male performer in Czech Casting videos named Alekos Begaltsis admitted that the women who show up for shoots sometimes don't know what they're in for because of deceptive advertising.

"The girls get here through agencies as well with the help of private agents or through friends, anyone can recommend," Begaltsis said. "We can't control every piece of information in the advertising. It can happen that a girl gets here thinking she'll do an underwear photoshoot.

Edit 2: lol they deleted the post. Here’s some more information on the investigation into the company he was involved with from a Czech source

The shooting of sex scenes is replaced in the contract by the words "artistic performance". It is written in one point that if the girls refuse to shoot, they will be fined at least 200 thousand crowns.

It is considered a scam because the company invited the girls to take photos with a reward of up to four thousand crowns. The girls did not find out about porn until they arrived at the casting room. When some of them said that they did not want to shoot anything or were against publishing the video on the Internet, the staff quickly swept the signed contract into their faces and especially the point where they can demand "lost" money from them.

Are they better off under a unified rule than they would be as a collection of states and smaller economies?

As long as it’s only ice water you’re probably fine. Just keep an eye on it. It sounds like we’re very alike, and I struggle with more intense forms of self injury.

God, the hobbies though. I have a wood shop that doesn’t get a ton of use, carving knives and chisels, bead making supplies, model kits, drawing supplies, guitars, yoyos, books on writing... and that’s just from the last couple of years. I fucking hate that about myself. I can’t get good at anything because it becomes so boring and repetitive, or difficult enough that I set it down one day, thinking that I need a break before practicing again, and I never come back to it.

I’ve also moved all around the country, both running from things and chasing other things.

Your past has an important place, but I think it’s more in terms of accepting that it’s the past. That the experiences you had then helped to shape you, but they didn’t make you, and you may be a completely different person from who you were then. “You can’t step in the same stream twice” is a powerful sentiment; no matter what, you’re always different from who you were before, as is everything else around you.

I didn’t mention it in my first reply because I didn’t want to sound preachy, and this may not seem relevant to you at all but... something that really helped me was Zen Buddhism (which, if it’s how you want to approach it, doesn’t have to involve the supernatural beliefs of other Buddhist schools). I encountered Zen Buddhism in a number of ways through college and after, but I pushed against it for a long time because “zen” is such a common pop-culture phrase. However I slowly came around and started investigating it more deeply. Most people/religions/functional philosophies I’ve encountered try to push back on the idea that things aren’t real and that they don’t matter. For me, Zen really takes all of these feelings about existence and reality and puts them inside a framework that not only sounds reasonable but is also helpful in dealing with the problems those thoughts give rise to in the future.

An important concept is the idea of duality. We assign values to things (especially those of us who are actually BPD, as another poster mentioned) as either Good or Bad, and can have trouble seeing past that. The idea of non-duality is that there isn’t a good and a bad, because those are things that we came up with as a society. Nothing is inherently good or inherently bad, it just is. Because things are just what they are, our past isn’t bad, it’s just our past.

If it interests you at all, there is a book called “Hardcore Zen” by Brad Warner. It’s a good read to kind of get excited about learning this stuff, and touches on many of the basics (and was written by someone who seems similar). However, don’t take it as gospel. I personally don’t like the guy very much. I feel like he has made a strange path on his own in recent years (Hi Brad!), but that book is solid. If you want a more traditional read, or one that focuses more on the practice than on exciting you about the practice, read “Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind” by Shunryu Suzuki. It’s sort of a foundational text of the North American branch of the Sōtō Zen school.

Like I said: that may not appeal to you at all, but the more I read what you wrote the more similar so believe we are, and it helped to save my life when I was in a similar spot.

I should underscore that I don’t have everything figured out or resolved. There’s a reason we’re in this thread. Still, though, I’m in a much much better place than I was ten or even five years ago. I’m generally happy and at peace with things, and that counts for something.

I’m happy to talk and answer questions here, but I also want you to know I read and respond to PMs pretty consistently. Just for what that’s worth.