This article makes me happy for several reasons.

First, it confirms to me that the world grasps that it’s fight, flight, or FREEZE. That means the world had caught up to me. I realized there was a third response when I was still a kid.

I call it the “hide” response, but that doesn’t alliterate, so I will defer to theirs.

Until I read the article, I had only ever heard it as “a fight or flight response”. But take it from me, when I isolate myself from the world and play video games all day, I am not fighting the world and any fleeing from it is already over.

I hide from the world and choose instead to live in the world inside my computer, which is much less loud and scary.

Anyhow, it’s the 4th response we are here to discuss today and according to the article, the 4th response is “fawn”.

Again, I would say “placate” instead, but that also does not alliterate.

I have to admit, “fight, flight, hide, or placate” doesn’t roll off the tongue.

Now I am not fully sold on “fawn” being a 4th adrenal response. It works great in a human context, but that’s because we’re a highly social species.

Other critters are more solitary and therefore “fawning” does not apply. Fawning inherently implies someone to fawn over, after all.

Still, it’s sensible enough in a human context, and in said context I think it adds very important insight to our understanding of human nature.

Prayer, for example, is fawning, as are all other forms of “sucking up”.

In my own life, I have had dark thoughts about my own super nice nature and whether or not it is, at its root, an attempt to control my world via placating it.

And there is some truth to that. I don’t think it’s the main reason I like being a nice person – the main reason is that I love doing it and get a lot of joy from the marvelous empathic loop of positive emotions projected and received that being nice can bring about when it is working.

But when you are the youngest of four kids and your closest sibling is four and a third years older than you, you have to develop your soft power.

And in my case, part of my soft power was being lovable and cute. And to this day, that’s a big part of my nature and the dominant force in my social instincts.

I want people to like me. Love me, even. This is often at odds with the crankier and more severe sides of my personality.

I suppose it might seem confusing to someone who meets me when I am being cute and funny to then encounter me when I am being passionately ideological or when I am being a logical purist or even when I am being your friendly neighborhood pervert.

All I can say is that I am all those things and many more, and to be perfectly honest, I don’t know how to make them all add up to one person either.

But I am working on it.

More after the break.

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Another eminently bloggable thing from Facebook :

This resembles me a lot.

Here’s my version :

You know what?

Sometimes I do seem like an alien to regular folk.

And that’s fine. It doesn’t disqualify me for entry in the human race like I have believed. People can deal with weird people as long as they aren’t weird about it – in other words, people can shrug off a strange comment or something they can’t relate to. What they can’t shrug off is my treating it like I just shit in their purse.

The people who love me know I am from outer space. And they still love me.

Wow, that felt good to write. I could probably write about ten more of them, each covering something else I need to hear from myself, but that’s the big one.

The OP made me realize that I don’t need to live in fear of those moments of alienation when I try to get along with normal folk and I am trying hard but they just do not get me and I fail to connect with them.

There are much worse things than failing to connect. And sure, those moments of failed connection are painful when they happen, especially considering how lonely and desperate for connection I am, but they are not the end of the world.

It’s even possible that if I just kept trying, I would connect with people eventually. And even if I didn’t, there’s no reason that has to be an indictment against who I am as a person and whether or not I am fit to be around people.

It’s true that I am not like other people. Can’t deny that. But who cares? Lots of people are not like other people. Most of the interesting ones aren’t, that’s for sure.

And yeah, I can be a bit too much for people sometimes, and come on too strong, or try too hard, or barge my way into conversations with all the grace of a pushy hippo, etc.

But nobody is perfect. I have a lot of good points too. I am sweet and funny and weird and a lot of fun to be around.

The most important thing is that none of my flaws are a secret to those who love me. They know all these things about me and they love me anyway.

Clearly, in their minds, the positives vastly outweigh the negatives and I know depression makes my own perspective on myself quite suspect, so I choose to defer to their judgment instead.

After all, they know better than me.

So that’s settled. I’m one heck of a guy. I have nothing to be ashamed of, there is no reason for me to beat myself up, and I can rest easy knowing I am one cool dude.

I’ll never hate myself again!

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.