A Glossary of Redefined Terms
Let’s redefine some words we use, quite often. It’s badly needed. It can be life changing to simply look up terms we commonly use in the dictionary. This… ain’t that. ;-p Lack of a shared understanding of terms (or simply nor noticing that one is present) is one of the first things to go south in most any interaction/relationship of any kind. Ignoring how someone else understands a problem (however that might occur) creates and perpetuates many of the difficulties we see in the world. One last short thing, humans constantly mistake facts and interpretations (definition for our purposes below). Most of the times we give a name or a “summary” of someone’s behavior, it’s an interpretation, and not necessarily a fact. This is really important. Some examples of interpretations: selfishness/self-centeredness, narcissism, irresponsibility, “not caring”. It’s not to say these things are wrong, but in terms of being able to problem-solve them, treating them as facts first gets us in trouble. Just suggestions…
Addiction: an illness (see “illness” below) with four primary symptoms. These are, an unhealthy relationship with one’s emotional life, an egotist with an inferiority complex, using limited human self-will as the primary method of solving problems, continuing to do a behavior despite repeated consequences.
Anxiety: the physiological symptoms that arise when pushing down mad, sad, afraid, ashamed, and or hurt that is trying to come up.
Boredom: a form of anger.
Boundaries: where one stops and another begins mentally/emotionally/physically and “spiritually” (see below).
Codependency: the noise we make to summarize all of the unhealthy behaviors in relationships that are not otherwise accounted for by other conditions.
Compassion: Empathy across categories, over time.
Euthymia: the state of behavior and emotional experience being in context, and “right sized”, over time.
Facts: while there are wider definitions, for most of our purposes here, what someone said/did, or didn’t say/didn’t do, will suffice for a while.
Fundamental: Something we cannot do without.
Gaslighting: This is a term that should be used in circumstances where one is intentionally trying to make another think they are losing their grip on reality - not just someone that hurts anothers’ feelings intentionally, certainly not for someone that hurts another unintentionally.
Human: a mental, emotional, physical, and “spiritual” (see below) animal.
Intimacy: someone having feelings about another’s feelings about their life.
Loneliness: sadness and shame.
Love: verb – extending oneself toward one’s own or another’s “spiritual” (see below) growth.
Overwhelmed: Unless in a crisis we could neither postpone nor evade, the state of having poor limits/boundaries. See “codependency” above.
Relationships: as humans are menta/e-motional, physical, and “spiritual” animals (again, see below ), the depth and breadth of our related-ness in these domains.
Shame: any version of feeling less-than, right or wrong, real or imagined.
Spirit/spirituality (stealing from Aquinas): the depth of our relatedness to the totality of the universe.
Stress: A physiological response to being mad, sad, afraid, ashamed, and/or hurt. Might as well just use those.
Triggered: A euphemism for being mad, sad, afraid, ashamed, and or hurt. Might as well use those.
Trust: not to be confused with reliability/predictability, but giving one something they can hurt you with.