Complex Signs Bad

post by Evenstar · 2023-07-03T13:09:18.695Z · LW · GW · 2 comments

Contents

  Restricted Vocabulary as Thinking Aid
  Reducing Disordered Speech
  Safe Haven
  Making Your Own
None
2 comments

Complex signs bad.

Silly bullshit complex.

Good sturdy think not complex.

Doing not complex think help (past tense) Evenstar anxiety and depression.

Not complex signs help not complex think.

Make and doing (past tense) not complex signs.

But complex think with not complex signs good too.

Complex signs not sturdy for anxiety and depression.

Clever creative signs help Evenstar feel good.

Evenstar signs "Evenstar good!" and "Evenstar clever!" and "Evenstar creative!"

But for bad signs, "silly."

Evenstar signs help Evenstar sturdy.

Evenstar signs fun for Evenstar too!

Maybe help you sturdy too?

And because I know you probably won't take the above seriously:

Restricted Vocabulary as Thinking Aid

I recently invested in a discord emoji set for nonverbal communication, stealing the idea of a commboard from a plural community server I was in. Originally this was so that a particular persona of mine who was nonverbal could speak at all; however, I discovered several benefits on top of that.

1. I was able to structure a restricted vocabulary to discourage disordered (anxious, depressive) speech.
2. Having a safe vocabulary made it easier to plan and execute on plans without tripping over anxious or depressive thoughts.
3. Having the ability to express simple concepts to others under stress without having to type allowed me to manage extreme stress better (by making the above plans)
4. There's a mindset this promotes that helps you fix the "obvious thing" without getting tied up in knots over longer term planning.
5. It was fun to make my own custom emoji set and give myself words I thought were important, such as "fuck" and "bullshit"
6. Learning a "language" together with my girlfriends brought us closer.

Simple english and conlangs both capture aspects of this experience, but my set of words was heavily restricted (less than 100 to fit in a discord server's emoji slots) and this made me have to make a lot of hard choices about what was really important to me to express. Careful selection and tailoring of the emoji helped me decide what was important to say and what was not.

Reducing Disordered Speech

Saying bad things about yourself hurts - but anxiety and depression promote thoughts such as "I'm useless", "I'm worthless", "I'm trash", "I'm an awful person", "I'm broken".

When I first built my emoji set, I included a sign for "broken" in it, but quickly came to realize that it was actively harmful to me to have that sign. As soon as I considered the ability to have the speech, I noticed that I never wanted to express that concept.

Going forwards from that, I was very careful about introducing negative adjectives into my system. When I eventually decided to introduce something to help me notice unhelpful thinking styles, I chose the very deliberately light "silly" rather than something more serious.

Not only does expressing disordered thoughts hurt, it provokes reactions in others around you that encourage you to try to explain or express the hurt inside you. This can be helpful in some situations - therapy, for example - but as an instinctive response it can lead to responding to your own bad emotions with worse ones, leading to a spiral of negative emotions that can be incapacitating. Ruminating on why you have an emotional problem can exacerbate it.

Safe Haven

Having a known-good vocabulary that does not express disordered or negative speech naturally allows you to make and execute simple plans without tripping over emotional pain. Over time, this produced an emotional bastion for me that I could retreat to when things got bad. The habit of thought of moving to an emergency mode when under heavy stress also helped me recognize and adapt to my moods in the moment.

The persona I associated with this system started becoming a shoulder advisor [LW · GW] for simple, obvious negative-emotion-reducing solutions, such as "go outside" or "have a cocoa". Applying her advice helped treat my symptoms, and then she would often follow up with "and now we can address the underlying (e.g.) poor sleep hygeine." Rather than worrying about the complex problem immediately, the simple treatment was applied first. This helped me significantly.

Making Your Own

Discord emoji are the style I'm familiar with here. If you google "Nonverbal Emoji" there's enough already out there to make a decent start on a set. If you want specific signs you can use a graphics program such as Paint.net or GIMP to type words and do a basic black outline around them. This is good enough for testing purposes. Once you refine your set down to something you like, you can borrow open-source emoji of representative objects (such as an abacus for "clever", or a crown for "best") and overlay your text on them in your choice of editing program.

Choice of words is important. Simple verbs such as "Do", "Make" and "Help" are very useful and flexible, as are relational words like "with" and "for". I found it useful to have a "Complex" sign to express that I wasn't capturing something well early on. Having profanity was important to me so that I could complain about things; having the simple word "Lewd" let me make a bunch of innuendos without having to compromise the rest of the emoji set very much. Overall it is important that you not try and make your emoji set too formal; being able to express the things that are important to you is the most important thing, within the constraints of only 100 symbols. Discord emoji caps will do the symbol management for you if you let them.

If you want to use my set, leave a comment below and we can PM about it. I strongly encourage making your own so that you weigh carefully what emotions are important for you to express.

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