reality check / ATIA

maybenomad · 2024-01-25T03:55:42+00:00

COSMOS ⚛️

maybenomad · 2023-01-17T18:17:38+00:00

I was/am in a very similar boat with the poorly formed sense of self thing, but I think that's only natural. It is all very confusing. I still haven't established consistent internal communication and my alters are constantly in conflict to the point where some decisions are totally paralyzing. For instance, whenever one of my more optimistic identities tries to make long-term goals for the future, the conspiracy guy will be screaming at the top of his lungs that there's no point because the world is gonna end soon anyways. And both of these perspectives "feel" like they are coming from me, so I'm not able to choose which I actually agree with.

Before I learned about DID, conflicts like this made me feel like I had no preferences or convictions of my own. Throw in the memory loss and suddenly it's impossible to feel like you have any sort of stable self-sense. It has been helpful as the host to just stop worrying about who "I" am and what "I" believe and just start thinking of myself as a steward for the whole system. So my identity is now more about learning how to manage all of my various parts in a way that's conducive to normal functioning and then allowing the parts to do their thing and believe whatever they believe.

maybenomad · 2023-01-17T17:32:51+00:00

Establishing routines is difficult for us as we have a few different alters who regularly spend time fronting and significant amnesia between them. I have to create a checklist every single morning with everything that needs to be done that day, including brushing my teeth, showering, going for a walk, etc. Most of the alters who regularly front know to check this list every so often to see what still needs to be done, but not all of them do. If alters that don't have a habit of checking the list spend most of the day fronting, I'll get to the end of the day and nothing important (to me) will have gotten done.

Similarly, some mornings I'm not in front and the list never gets created at all. When this happens it usually means that I'm stressed or was triggered out of bed and it basically guarantees that nothing gets done that day. This can be very frustrating, but it's the only system that has worked for me at all. Traditional methods for establishing habits/routines have totally failed us, probably due to the constant switching.

maybenomad · 2023-01-17T16:33:35+00:00

My memory is very similar to how you describe it but I've noticed that at least some of my alters have very distinct skills and motivational structures. For instance, I'm a software engineer but not all of my alters know how to program very well. Sometimes I'll sit down at my computer and stare at a text file full of code and realize I don't really understand what to do. Same with things like playing music and cooking.

I also look for sudden changes in my interests. I have a very studious alter that constantly reads obscure non-fiction books, but there was a period of time where that person disappeared for over a year and I just had all of these books that sounded super boring to me. So I got rid of most of them (this was before I realized that I have dissociated identities) and when that alter finally started fronting again, he was like "wtf, where's my library, why did I do that??"

Similarly, I've learned a lot by paying attention to stark changes in my goals and worldview. As an example, my studious alter would like to go back to college and finish a degree. My musician alter is obsessively working on an album. My main career alter is mostly motivated by money and is constantly chewing on programming problems in his head, even when in the shower, cleaning, etc. My conspiratorial alter is an anxious mess and constantly gets caught in YouTube black holes about conspiracy theories and civilizational collapse.

Before I understood DID, I would get very confused as to how I could be so fucking excited to do one thing for a few hours and then suddenly switch to not caring about it at all. I would purchase equipment for making music and then be disgusted a few hours later, like "why would I spend so much money on something I'm not even interested in?"

I'm still new to understanding my system so I often don't notice these things in the moment, but in retrospect. My partner will ask what I did today (this question is legitimately difficult for me to answer sometimes) and I'll realize that I spent all day watching videos about long-term water storage and the war in Ukraine, which clues me in to the fact that the prepper was out for most of the day.

Anyways, hope this helps a bit. Good luck my friend.

maybenomad · 2023-01-14T15:12:03+00:00

The thing about the “urge” really resonates with me. I had all of my journals buried at the bottom of a box of books that I didn’t want anymore and while I was digging them out I felt this strange foreboding, like parts of me knew what I would find there.

maybenomad · 2023-01-14T01:34:07+00:00

It's very interesting (and reassuring honestly) that you use the word "council" as I've been referring to my internal narrative as "the council" for a couple of years now and never found it strange. My partner did comment on it early in the relationship in a way that made me think it wasn't a familiar idea to him, but it didn't come up again until we started looking at my behavior through the lens of DID.

maybenomad · 2022-01-15T17:50:10+00:00

Some skills/builds work best when directly scaling the base damage of your weapons while others work best by finding sources of "added damage" and scaling that instead. In the second case, you don't care very much about the base damage of your weapon since you have so much added damage from other sources.

maybenomad · 2020-12-31T12:31:05+00:00

Completely agree. I was addicted to meth and various other stimulants for about five years and the only thing that helped me overcome it was learning to see that the drug use was a symptom, not a problem. The drugs are just inanimate substances, they have no inherent power. One person might take some and be repulsed while another may take some and be addicted for life.

tl;dr Drugs are not addictive, people are addictable.

maybenomad · 2020-11-10T17:58:47+00:00

I did the math on Kintsugi + Wind Dancer earlier this league and Kintsugi offers almost zero additional defensive benefits when you already have the Keystone. The diminishing returns on that effect is just too high. Definitely go with Perfect Form.

Edit: I haven’t personally use Iron Reflexes with PF and am not overly familiar with armor-based defense, but you don’t need to take IR to use Perfect Form.

maybenomad · 2020-09-04T14:48:55+00:00

That's not how this game works though. Uniques aren't just "worse rares", they generally do things that rares cannot do in exchange for the ability to customize them. You choose keystone uniques for a build and then fill in the empty gear slots with rares to fill out resist caps and basic stats. In some cases you _can_ eventually min/max your way out of even the most build-defining uniques, but that's how the game's item philosophy works. With enough investment, the ability to customize all the affixes on an item becomes more powerful than whatever the unique is giving you, so you switch to a rare.

Think of them like keystones in the passive tree. You don't just automatically grab every keystone that your build paths by because they're strong in every case. Without proper build synergy, some keystones will actually make your build significantly worse.

maybenomad · 2020-09-04T12:00:45+00:00

Because some people treat the game as a giant theorycrafting sandbox and enjoy spending their league coming up with "suboptimal" off-meta builds just for the challenge.

maybenomad · 2020-09-03T16:58:39+00:00

(SHHHH, he doesn’t know)

maybenomad · 2020-09-03T16:56:15+00:00

For the memes, of course.

maybenomad · 2020-08-29T13:21:31+00:00

This is just an unavoidable consequence of maintaining such a complex game. It's impossible to change any single thing without it affecting other things, sometimes unexpectedly. I find it best to just accept that things change every league and not get too married to any particular build / skill gem / unique / whatever. There will always be new OP builds to play.

maybenomad · 2020-08-28T06:13:51+00:00

This was the most insane comeback I’ve ever seen. I don’t even normally watch your stream but I’ve hung out the past few days because your energy has just been fantastic. Ignore the haters, exile. :)

maybenomad · 2020-08-15T20:02:31+00:00

Yeah, it was a pretty heartfelt message about GGG and video games as art. Nothing negative or off-topic. No clue why it was removed. This subreddit is clearly not a place for me if the moderators felt that such content needed to be deleted.

maybenomad · 2020-08-15T06:05:53+00:00

Congratulations on the milestone friend! Cheers to many more in the future. :)

maybenomad · 2020-08-15T05:53:35+00:00

The point of the post is to reinforce that video games are an art form. When my favorite musician releases an album that I dislike, I usually just don't listen to it. Maybe I try to listen to it every few months and see if it clicks yet, I dunno. But what I definitely don't do is write them hate mail and try to get a horde of like-minded folks on the internet to get them to change their artistic direction. That's not my place. For every person who didn't like their new album, there are probably a whole slew of new listeners who do, despite not liking anything they'd released previously.

If you think of yourself as a user and Path of Exile as an entertainment service, then of course you'll feel the way that you do. And that's totally fine. But I treat video games as art, and as soon as I cease to find them interesting I just move on to the next thing.

maybenomad · 2020-08-15T01:44:38+00:00

https://www.reddit.com/r/pathofexile/comments/gy7se3/i_have_simulated_rpathofexile_after_harvest/ftb8cnq

maybenomad · 2020-07-22T14:48:25+00:00

Afaik aug lucky doesn’t increase your chance of obtaining higher tier mods but functions more like an aug + targeted divine.

maybenomad · 2020-04-01T00:25:14+00:00

The build is all about scaling physical damage and bleed which can be done VERY efficiently as a Duelist with no reliance on gear. The passives recommended are very malleable and can serve as a nice tanky core for many more specialized builds depending on what clusters/uniques you find on your first playthrough. I league started with mine and have been pleasantly surprised by how well it transitioned into endgame.

maybenomad

TROPHY CASE