sappho

I'm familiar with PolyBio because I have long covid and I follow organizations that are doing studies and looking for treatments. My impression thus far has been that they're doing pretty promising research (unlike the government's RECOVER trials, which have been inadequate and disappointing). Viral persistence as a root cause of long covid is something they're investigating.

I have a similar thing where I lost my love for/ability to write creatively. For me the origin was a bit different - I had some strange experiences with multiple English teachers who like, identified me as a "gifted" kid and in need of extra attention, and then used me as a little ego-booster. They put additional pressure on me to perform that the other kids didn't get, assigned me extra/different assignments from the rest of the class, and then consistently singled me out as a "good example" in a way that made all my classmates despise me. I just wanted to be invisible, but if I didn't go along with what they wanted, or continue to produce the kind of work they had come to expect from me, they got horribly disappointed and took it as a personal insult to their teaching ability and thus to their very identity. I was just a kid, so I internalized that my inability to meet these distorted expectations was literally harming the adults in my life.

It was strange and bad and scary. I was already being abused at home and the extra bullying did not help. In the end it made me so anxious about writing anything and having it be seen by others. I used to have panic attacks about writing ordinary essays. I have gone many years without writing anything for fun, when it was my childhood dream to be an author.

But this isn't the kind of thing that most people think of as capital-T trauma, so I put off addressing my feelings about it for a long time. I'm still working through it today - I haven't fully reclaimed my creativity yet. But I have made very meaningful progress and it's given me a lot of hope. The key for me was addressing it in the way I addressed my other sources of childhood trauma. For me, that's been trauma therapy but also breathwork, somatic techniques, and the use of entheogens in community.

Aside from trauma healing, I've also tried some clever ways to be creative while circumventing my fear of writing. One of these is solo TTRPGs. They are a great way to experience a story of your own making, building up characters and a complex world, without any expectation to write it out and show it to others.

The other strategy I've been using is to write in another language. I use toki pona, mostly because I have pretty severe cognitive impairment from long covid, and so it was the only language I felt I could reasonably achieve fluency in. Writing in not-English is like using a room in my head where all the other trauma never happened.

Possibly these specific workarounds won't work for you, but maybe they will give you some ideas of other creative ways you can circumvent the anxiety response you currently have. I think of my creativity as something like an injured kitten, who needs to be gently coaxed to trust me again. Anything I can do to get her playing is a step in the right direction.

In second grade I asked to go to the nurse's office because I didn't feel well. The darling teacher actually shriveled up her face and sneered at me - "You're fine"

Ten seconds later I puked directly on her

I think most people are extremely numb. Maybe emotionally just to get through the day, maybe as a result of the constant barrage of stimulation we get online. So media portrays things that are horrific and shocking because it's the only thing that makes anyone feel anything.

I can't tolerate it personally. I have to skip out on a lot of media that is popular these days because it's just too brutal for me. But I am probably an outlier for neurodivergent reasons (mirror-pain synesthesia, high affective empathy).

For me it's cost, convenience (not having to remember to buy something regularly), less waste - but I also use hypochlorous for other household disinfecting so making large quantities is useful to me. If you're just doing skincare with it, I can see it making sense to buy it premade, especially at first when you don't know how much you'll like it. Though I will note that, while the information can be intimidating at first, once you make it a couple times it's extremely simple going forward. Now that I know the ratios of vinegar and salt I need for my own machine, I just dump things in and run it and it's good every time without having to make any adjustments.

It's the most effective single chemical I've used for acne and I've tried a lot of stuff!

I bought a water electrolyzer from Amazon. (You can also apparently make your own but I haven't tried.) Fill it with distilled water, add vinegar to adjust pH (important, otherwise you can accidentally make bleach), weigh out a couple grams of non-iodized salt, then run for like 15-30 minutes and bam. If you're using it on your face you should definitely get chlorine test strips to make sure it's not too high ppm.

It gradually loses efficacy and reverts to water after a week or two, so I make more regularly. I put it in a mister bottle and spray it on my face multiple times a day. It's refreshing and doesn't seem to cause any irritation, even when I use it a lot.

Whether or not sunscreen is needed indoors is kinda complicated. Here's a good blog post breaking down the science about it

As a teen my acne would clear up immediately for weeks after getting a bit sunburnt on my face. Very much regret not sunscreening sufficiently now because of the increased skin cancer risk I took on. But I was told this happened because the sunlight killed off the bacteria on my face. I figured out recently that homemade hypochlorous acid does the same thing and is completely safe, and indeed, it is extremely effective at controlling my adult acne. .

My personal method is based on my experience with IFS therapy/parts work, but truthfully I don't know if this will work for anyone but me. Still, I've had success with the following:

I envision the younger version of me that did the embarrassing thing. In my head, I see the current, adult version of myself talking to the younger one. I explain to my younger self that I don't find them shameful, that I understand why they acted the way they did, and that I forgive them for everything. I listen as the younger version brings up any additional concerns and offer any further reassurance/comfort/love that I wish to. It's important to take time with this and really sit with the uncomfortable feelings.

For me, this can resolve the acute shame feeling, and also prevent the memory from coming up again suddenly, or at least from hurting as much when it does.

Assertiveness isn't something that exists in a vacuum. "How do you know when you are being assertive enough" - is like asking, "How do you know if you're running fast enough" - well, what are you running from, and is it catching up to you yet? Your level of assertiveness is enough when it's sufficient to protect you from others and get what you want/need from them.

You say you tone down your assertiveness because you're concerned about hurting others. But by not asserting yourself, you are hurting yourself. You compromise on things you want/need and disrespect yourself. You are also a person and so if you hurt yourself in this way it's also a really bad thing! But you might be so sensitive to the potential pain of others that you have become numb to the sensation of your own present pain.

Or, to put it another way, you may have learned to devalue yourself relative to others to such an extent that their discomfort is "real" or "valid", but yours is "fake," "exaggerated," something you need to manage or get over. This is a message we get societally when we're neurodivergent.

I believe the holistic direction out of this place is to become alive to the pain you are currently accepting for yourself. You are sensitive to the needs of others. You are afraid of hurting them. But that hurt is already happening, to you, in your body. Can you stop it?