I have a twisted, calculating, strategic mind and a heart of gold, but I have a switch I can pull at any time to disconnect the two. When I’m unhealthy, under high stress, or in danger, sometimes the switch gets pulled on accident automatically. I feel like my experience of being like this is highly abnormal. Primarily I feel like it’s extremely abnormal that I’ve learned how to create a 5s meditative practice to intentionally disconnect the two. I can trigger my own emotional dissociation when I decide I need to pull it together immediately. I once did this in front of someone because we were out in public trying to have a fun time and the conversation had turned to something that brought up upsetting memories and emotions for me, resulting in me starting to tear up a bit. I didn’t even think about how they might react, but I did this meditative practice to pull it together so we could go back to having a fun night out, compartmentalizing the emotions, then immediately realized this probably looked extremely psycho and explained what I did and apologized expecting them to be freaked out… but instead they were kinda shockingly impressed and just asked me if I could teach them how to do it?? Lol. It’s crazy the ways you can learn how to program your own mind and body. I still don’t know whether to judge this from a perspective of concern about pathology or from a perspective of mastery self-control through meditative practices, understanding psychology, understanding my own psychological idiosyncrasies, and learning how to hack them.