Many of the messages we get as neurodivergents (NDs) living in an ableist society remind us that we’re different. And this difference, more often than not, is treated as a negative—at the cost of our self-esteem.
When confronted with the unique traits and behavior of NDs, many neurotypicals (NTs) typically respond with discomfort, annoyance, hostility, and even vilification.
Sometimes they do it out of ignorance—a knee-jerk reaction to something they don’t understand. They may also simply view autism and ADHD as a “deficit” or “fault” that needs to be corrected.
Acknowledging areas for growth
There is a tendency within the ND community to react defensively to the “neurodiversity-as-deficit” paradigm by casting being ND exclusively as a strength.
Given many of us feel that being ND is an intrinsic part of our identity, it makes sense that we should feel compelled to defend it.
Personally speaking, I would much sooner rather celebrate my strengths than look at myself through the lens of inferiority.
At the same time, I recognize that being ND can come with some downsides. For example, I find my various sensory sensitivities to be a nuisance. And I wish I could form and sustain relationships with the ease enjoyed by many NTs.
Should I treat these downsides as a reflection of my worth? Definitely not. That said, I do think there is value in recognizing our personal areas for growth. For me, this is developing stronger social skills.
Self-esteem starts withacknowledging strengths
Areas of growth aside, I think there is merit in focusing on strengths. Being autistic, for example, can convey quite a few. For example:
We enjoy peer relationships characterized by absolute loyalty and impeccable dependability
We are free of sexist, “age-ist”, or culturalist biases; able to regard others at “face value”
We are willing to share our mind, irrespective of social context or adherence to personal beliefs
We have an ability to pursue personal theory or perspective despite conflicting evidence
We seek an audience or friends capable of enthusiasm for unique interests and topics
We take consideration of details and spend time discussing a topic that may not be of primary interest
We listen without continual judgment or assumption
We are interested primarily in significant contributions to conversation, preferring to avoid “ritualistic small talk”, or socially trivial statements and superficial conversation.
We seek sincere, positive, genuine friends with an unassuming sense of humor
And as employees, we are also known to be: reliable, persistent, perfectionists, easily able to identify errors, technically able, and to have a sense of social justice and integrity.1
We are also willing to question protocols, can be highly accurate, attentive to detail, logical, conscientious, knowledgeable, original in problem-solving, honest, and likely to thrive on routine and clear expectations.
In a majority of situations, these qualities are quite beneficial. They also contradict the ND-as-deficit paradigm.
Are you ‘strengths blind’?
Strengths vary from individual to individual, and may manifest physically, mentally, emotionally, socially, or spiritually.2
We may not be aware of those strengths and how they may have helped us to cope with the challenges of day-to-day life. But they’re still there, regardless.
Firstly, there’s a lack of awareness of said strengths, resulting from not practicing self-awareness or feeling disconnected from our identity.
Secondly, we may not see our strengths as meaningful. Thirdly, we may downplay them as ordinary, rather than extraordinary.
And fourthly, we may overuse our strengths to the point that they create problems. One commonly overused autistic strength for instance is passion.
To elaborate: autistics can have something of a reputation for wanting to share knowledge about their areas of interest, even with the most casual of acquaintances.
If we’re not careful, we may end up talking at length and scarcely allow the other person to get a word in edge wise.
In fact, we can become so caught up in the act of sharing that we fail to take notice of the subtle—and not-so-subtle clues—that the other person is getting annoyed, or feeling frustrated and overwhelmed.
Yet in moderation, this character strength can be hugely advantageous. Passion for instance can enable us to become leading specialists in our chosen fields.
Putting our strengths into practice
So, how do we overcome strength blindness? By increasing awareness of our strengths. We can start doing this by reaching out to our closest friends and family members and asking them what they like most about us.
Some common strengths or qualities are creativity, curiosity, judgment, love of learning, perspective, bravery, perseverance, honesty, zeal, love, kindness, social intelligence, teamwork, and fairness.
Other qualities are leadership, forgiveness, humility, prudence, self-regulation, appreciation of beauty, and excellence, gratitude, hope, humor, and spirituality.
The great thing about character strengths is that most are not in any way shaped by our being ND.3 (Small caveat: many autistics may struggle with social intelligence and teamwork, and yet we also love to learn and are very curious.)
Once you’ve identified our strengths, select your topmost three. Now ask yourself, what activities do you do in service of those strengths?
Chances are when you do those activities, you’ll feel great about yourself. Why? Because they are impactful, and because they provide satisfaction.
Strengths-based habits improve self-esteem
If you’re struggling with self-esteem issues, make a conscious plan to do at least one of the three activities when you feel down or like you’re struggling. Not only will this affirm your strengths, but it will also improve your self-esteem.
If love is one of your strengths, perform a kind act for someone, such as buying a friend a gift. If appreciation of beauty is a strength, visit an art gallery or public garden.
If creativity is a strength, pick up a pen or paintbrush and start creating.
Of course, doing the occasional activity can only take you so far. If we really want to grow our self-esteem, we should make these activities into habits.
Set aside a regular time in which to do each of the activities you identified. Incorporate them into your daily or weekly schedule, until they become habitual.
Wrap up
Why is making activities into habits important? Because habits create a powerful snowball effect.
The more we exercise our strengths, the more they feel like a part of our character. The more we orient our character around our strengths, the more capable we feel.
The more capable we feel, the greater our sense of self-worth. The greater our sense of self-worth, the more likely we are to embrace our strengths. And so the cycle goes.
What are some of your strengths, and how do you express them?
And what’s one new habit you could commit to over the coming week to develop awareness of your strengths? Share your responses in the comments.
Essy Knopf is a therapist who likes to explore what it means to be neurodivergent and queer. Subscribe to get all new posts sent directly to your inbox.
Disrespectful people, pushy people, abusive people—chances are all of us have at one point in our lives encountered them.
Sometimes we skate by, unharmed. Other times, we’re left with a sour taste in our mouths, bruised feelings, and a sense of injustice.
We may start to think that we’re being actively targeted because of our being autistic and/or ADHD. And the sad truth is we might be entirely correct.
Underdeveloped social skills are a common neurodivergent (ND) trait. Not only does this mean many of us struggle to make and keep friends—but it also means we lose out on the many protections friendship can afford.
NDs may also struggle to understand when someone is or isn’t being their friend. For example, autistics have been found to have a more deliberative (and effortful) thinking style that impacts their ability to rapidly and automatically intuit others’ intentions.4
When we experience bullying and manipulation, we may not only fail to understand what’s going on until it’s too late—we may also struggle to stand up for ourselves.
Often, this is because we suffer from low self-esteem, which is a byproduct of living in an ableist society.
Low self-esteem: a recipe for exploitation
Society constantly sends NDs signals that we are defective, unworthy, and unloveable.
Many of us are criticized for thinking or behaving differently. We’re told we’re are too honest, too blunt, too insensitive, too difficult to follow, too spacey, too weird.
It’s dismissals and criticisms like this that leave us prone to self-doubt and undercuts our ability to be self-reliant.
Thus, when confronted with difficult situations, we second-guess our own feelings and thoughts, spiraling into helplessness. We struggle to find the courage to speak our feelings of pain and anger.
This is because we are fighting two battles. The first is the battle to validate and accept our perceptions of the situation at hand.
When we are taught by NTs that our very frame of reference is invalid, allowing ourselves to believe what we know and feel to be true can conjure guilt, shame, discomfort, and anxiety.
The second battle involves standing up and demanding respect. For NDs, that respect is often denied us. Neurotypicals (NTs) refuse to hear us out, thus creating and reinforcing our negative core belief of unworthiness.
There is also the concern that if we do advocate for ourselves, the other person may retaliate. The penalties can be especially severe if that person occupies a position of power, as is so often the case with bullies, abusers, and manipulators.
There is always the possibility that we will be heard. The person who has aggressed against us may listen and adjust their behavior.
Those who harbor ill intentions may decide that we aren’t worth the effort after all, and move on.
Should we fail to adequately set limits, these toxic individuals will likely linger. And if you’re dealing with someone with a taste for manipulation, they won’t surrender control so easily.
There’s always the possibility they may redouble their efforts, using deflection and personal attacks in the hopes of sapping your resistance.
In these instances, standing up for one’s self can feel possible. But keeping ourselves safe begins with knowing when and how to say “no”.
The seven ‘buttons’ used by bullies, abusers, and manipulators
In Who’s Pulling Your Strings?, Harriet B. Braiker describes seven behavioral “buttons” that difficult people routinely press to pressure and coerce their victims.
It is only by becoming aware of those buttons, Braiker argues, that we can resist manipulators’ control tactics.
1. The disease-to-please: People with this challenge have made their self-worth conditional upon others’ acceptance. Sound familiar?
People-pleasers typically say or do whatever they think is necessary to garner’s approval. How do we beat this habit? By flipping the script.
Start by saying and doing what is authentic and feels right to you.
2. Approval and acceptance addiction: Are you overly nice? It’s common for NDs to overcompensate in order to avoid rejection and abandonment.
Manipulators are known to leverage this fear, withdrawing approval and acceptance to force you into complying with their demands.
If this happens, roll with it. You can’t control whether or not someone decides to write your name in their “good books”.
3. Fear of negative emotions: As an ND, you may often experience anger and sadness and yet deny yourself full expression, so as to de-escalate, avoid conflict, and protect other people’s feelings.
But expressing negative emotions in many cases is justified. If someone punches you in the arm, you have a right to cry out in pain and anger.
You also have a right to tell them how they’ve hurt you and to demand an apology or restitution. If you don’t make it clear to the other person that their behavior is unacceptable, if you don’t clarify your expectations regarding their behavior going forward, it’ll likely continue.
Avoiding and burying your negative emotions means the limit won’t be set, and you’ll be left wide open to a second attack.
4. Lack of assertiveness: People-pleasing as I’ve noted can be a common trait among ND folks, and one often preyed upon by manipulative individuals.
If this is something you struggle with, flex your assertiveness muscles. State your needs and make clear requests. Make it a daily practice. Little by little, you’ll learn to stand up for yourself.
5. The vanishing self: ND folks may have an unclear sense of identity and core values. This is because everything they are and believe in is assaulted by ableist society and NTs on an almost daily basis.
Ableist society wants us to believe that our opinions don’t count and that invisibility is the only way we’ll ever be accepted.
We can start to push back on this by self-advocating. Prioritize your own needs and desires before a manipulator can convince you to prioritize theirs.
6. Low self-reliance: Ableist society tries to convince NDs that their entire way of being is inherently wrong. It teaches us that the only way to acceptance is through conformity.
This can lead to disorientation and dependency. But so long as we are relying wholly on the input and advice of others, rather than what we ourselves know to be true, we remain vulnerable to manipulation.
Recognize that the only perspective that ultimately matters is your own. The life you choose to design for yourself should not be according to someone else’s specifications. It should be according to your own.
7. External locus of control: Those with an external locus of control believe that forces outside of themselves are ultimately responsible for determining the course of their lives.
No surprise that many of us should feel this way, given how what is and isn’t acceptable is so often determined by NTs.
By reclaiming the right to decide for ourselves, we can recenter the locus of control within our own hearts and minds.
From low self-esteem to high self-esteem
Bullies, abusers, and manipulators as I’ve already discussed love to take advantage of folks with low self-esteem, which their victims in turn take as confirmation that they deserve this kind of treatment.
Self-esteem, you could say, is in some ways relational. Others can either damage it, or they can assist with its repair. Seeking a trusting, supportive relationship with a therapist or loved one is one way we can heal our sense of self-worth.
Regardless, the task of pushing back against manipulators will ultimately fall to us. Confrontation, however frightening, is sometimes necessary. And sometimes, it may be as simple as making explicit requests.
“I” statements are helpful here. For example, “I feel disrespected when you name-call. I’m asking that this behavior stop.”
Remember, you have a right to make reasonable requests and for them to be acknowledged. You are under no terms required to explain or defend yourself.
What you want when confronting a manipulator is a commitment to change. Make it a win-win proposition: “Respect me, and our interaction/relationship can continue.”
If, however, the other person won’t accept an outcome short of win-lose, lose-win, or lose-lose, be prepared to pivot.
Try these magic phrases
Some aggressors respond to feeling threatened by double-downing or escalating. This may take the form of deflecting, projecting, shaming, verbal abuse, and overly dramatic reactions.
Know these individuals may try to confuse the issue, gaslight you by playing the victim, and/or evade any responsibility. Many even feed off conflict, and anything you say or do that plays into this will count as a win in their books.
Be sure to name any attacks on your person the instant they happen. Send a clear message to the aggressor that you won’t stand for this treatment.
Hold fast to your conviction that no harm has been done by your speaking up. Your goal here is to protect yourself, not the manipulator’s feelings—which probably weren’t in jeopardy to begin with.
Do not be drawn into a point-for-point debate. Instead, assert yourself by saying: “That doesn’t work for me.” “That’s not fair.”
Resist any attempts by the manipulator to wrangle for control by delaying your response by asking for time. For example, “I need to think about it.”
If they try to force an argument, disengage: “This conversation is not productive. I’m leaving now.”
If you’re feeling thrown off balance by the manipulators’ tactics, it’s okay to break off the exchange completely. Tell them: “Actually now is not a good time.” A straight “no” will even suffice, followed by your departure.
And it’s perfectly acceptable to shut down the lines of communication until the other person agrees to follow rules of common courtesy.
If you’d like to try out some of these lines but are worried you might fumble the delivery, practice them by yourself or roleplay with a friend until you feel 100% comfortable saying them on cue.
Reappraising low self-esteem
These kinds of situations and encounters can inflame existing feelings of low self-worth. Address this head-on by checking in with yourself immediately afterward.
How are you feeling about what just went down? Were you fair in your conduct? Did you really behave unjustly, as the manipulator would have you believe?
Imagine for a moment it was your friend making the same request you just made. Would you have listened to them? Would you have been open to change? If your answer is “yes”, then it’s reasonable to assume that it was a fair request.
The bully may accuse you of being equally at fault, but what they are probably trying to do is shift the blame. Refuse to take on any of their accusations.
Also, consider conducting an inventory of your alleged character flaws and using humor to inflate them. Have you, for example, failed to be perfect enough? Are you insufficiently conscientious? Are you an extremely poor people-pleaser?
Now try to name some appropriate punishments for these crimes. If the ridiculousness of it all doesn’t stop you in your tracks, then take it as proof that it is you—above all—who deserves the break.
If these encounters leave you feeling stressed, consider practicing some of these self-care techniques, specifically devised for ND folks.
Essy Knopf is a therapist who likes to explore what it means to be neurodivergent and queer. Subscribe to get all new posts sent directly to your inbox.
Do you struggle with self-care as a neurodivergent (ND)? You may not be the only one.
Surviving in ableist societies can be taxing for many ND folks at the best of times. We may spend all our energy just trying to fit in—energy we may otherwise need for rest and recharging.
Added to this, many self-care techniques can feel like a chore, especially when we are pressed for time.
Trying to squeeze one more thing into an already overburdened schedule when we’re already feeling overloaded can be particularly anxiety-provoking.
I remember once upon a time, the very idea of pausing to do meditation or a yoga class was enough to send me into a tailspin.
“That’s 20-30 minutes I’ll be losing from my schedule,” I would think. “20-30 minutes I don’t have!”
Given much of my workload was self-generated as a result of ADHD workaholism, my sense of urgency around time in retrospect didn’t make a whole lot of sense.
No one after all was demanding I submit a script in time for three different competitions. The deadline I had set for finishing my feature documentary was of my own devising.
The pressure of being a multi-passionate autistic
The issue in my case had to do with my fixating on the gap between where I was and where I wanted to be. I was a multi-passionate autistic and ADHDer with an array of interests I knew I could excel at…if only I knocked on the right doors and made the wrong connections.
This unsurprisingly is where I struggled most. NDs face very real obstacles with social communication and interpersonal relationships. And yet I told myself that I could ignore these obstacles. Sooner or later, my labors would yield fruit.
And so I continued to work in isolation, in the service of various passions that I hope to turn into viable careers.
After years of this, I began to feel rather hopeless about it. What, after all, did I have to show for all my effort, save a few life experiences and college degrees?
My dissatisfaction drove me only further in my pursuit of achievement, which in turn made my self-worth dependent upon that pursuit.
The time pressure I thus experienced was not the result of external circumstances but toxic self-perceptions. I didn’t believe myself to be “good enough” or deserving of self-care until I had first “made it”. Yet failing to care for my own needs only increased my anxiety and this sense of time pressure.
For other NDs, external circumstances may indeed pose a very real obstacle to self-care. When we are strung out between the pressures of operating in a neurotypical (NT) world, alongside commitments such as work, school, family, and social lives, self-care activities certainly start to seem onerous, if not out of the question.
Yet no matter how strong the impulse might be to put downtime on the back burner, without adequate rest and rejuvenation, our ability to fulfill these commitments and pursue our passions will suffer.
Should self-care techniques such as getting a massage or drinking water fail to appeal to you, consider exploring the following seven simple and unorthodox methods.
1. Shower mindfully – an unexpected NT self-care activity
Don’t have time to recline in a bath? Not a fan of bubbles and scented soap? That’s okay.
If being pummeled by hot water is more your jam, follow this quick 5-minute guide to increasing your shower pressure.
Next, shake up your mindfulness routine by trying this exercise while standing under your showerhead.
Visit a discount store with low-priced items. Hunt down little items you might not otherwise have budgeted for, but which you know will add some value or comfort to your life.
For example, a shower caddy, plastic storage tubs, or a new drink bottle.
Whatever you end up buying, know that it is the act of spending money that generates the “feel good” feelings typically associated with retail therapy.
This way you’ll get all the benefits with none of the financial strain—or buyer’s remorse.
3. Have a lie-in
Pick a morning when there are no pressing matters to attend to and simply stay in bed.
Alternatively, use your morning to complete errands and spend the remainder of your day under the covers.
Make whatever adjustments are necessary to maximize comfort. Turn on your air conditioner, close the blinds, put your phone into airplane mode, make a cup of tea, light a scented candle, or switch on an essential oil diffuser.
If relaxing still proves difficult, and you find yourself battling anxiety, consider donning a weighted blanket or a compression vest.
These use deep pressure to help ease anxiety and are available to purchase online.
4. Ritualize a mini-hobby
Many hobbies require time and energy we aren’t always able to spare. If this is your experience, consider expanding your definition of the word “hobby”.
For instance, I was never much one for comedy, save for watching the odd opening monologue from a late-night talk show, schedule allowing.
When I discovered that these shows made a perfect accompaniment to my breakfast routine, I understood that maybe time wasn’t an issue after all.
By incorporating a mini-hobby like this into your day, we will stand a better chance of making it a habit, ensuring it survives peak periods of busyness.
In order to create a habit, we not only have to do it regularly—we also have to follow the four laws of behavioral change, as described by Atomic Habits author James Clear:
#1 Make it obvious. #2 Make it attractive. #3 Make it easy. #4 Make it satisfying.
In my case, the enjoyment provided by watching these videos fulfilled law #4 (“make it satisfying”).
In order to “make it obvious”, I subscribed to each comedian’s dedicated YouTube channels so that their most recent videos appeared on my homepage.
By keeping my YouTube homepage always open in a browser tab, I enhanced the attractiveness of these videos (“make it attractive”).
And by waking up early, I was able to eat and perform my new ritual at my own pace (“make it easy”).
5. Take a power nap
Napping isn’t just the favored activity of layabouts—it’s also a super effective way to give your flagging energy levels a boost!
If your workplace doesn’t look favorably about employees taking catnaps, a quick lie down after a taxing day can help restore you.
The emerging discipline of green therapy—also known as ecopsychology—is concerned with using nature to help us recharge our internal batteries. Multiple studies have demonstrated that the presence of nature can have a plethora of health benefits.
Venturing into the wilds may not always be possible, but you can reap the same benefits from visiting your local park. Twenty minutes as it turns out can be enough to relieve stress.
You reap similar effects using simulated green spaces. For instance, by placing fake plants around your home or workspace.
Another method involves slipping on a pair of headphones and listening to natural sounds, such as wind through trees or running water.
7. Try audio bibliotherapy
The act of sitting down to read a book in today’s helter-skelter world is becoming increasingly uncommon. But if you lack the patience to read the conventional way, you can always try listening to an audiobook instead.
Having your books read aloud to you can be an effective way to consume content without having to add to your already overburdened schedule.
Furthermore, if you’re suffering work-related stress or battling anxiety and depression linked to your busy lifestyle, reading books about these challenges can go some way to lighten your load and help you apply self-care techniques.
Healing through reading is known as “bibliotherapy”, and it can serve as a wonderful resource for those among us struggling to access support networks or the sympathetic ear of a therapist.
Books that teach self-care techniques
There is no one-size-fits-all solution to the challenges mentioned above. But if you aren’t able to invest the time to seek out personally appropriate guidance, consider exploring the following recommendations:
8. Start a self-compassion practice to round off your self-care
Build a deliberate self-compassion practice with the support of the many free, downloadable resources on the Self-Compassion website.
Author Kristin Neff has prepared brief guided practices, a list of exercises, and tips for those new to the concept.
Finally, if you have a habit of going too hard on yourself and zeroing in on your supposed deficits as an ND, try adopting a strengths-based perspective.
Instead of looking at yourself as somehow flawed, acknowledge the many strengths that come with being ND, which I explore in another blog post.
Essy Knopf is a therapist who likes to explore what it means to be neurodivergent and queer. Subscribe to get all new posts sent directly to your inbox.
The first proof of my trauma recovery was the return of memories once thought lost.
In the years after I started my therapy journey, I would find myself going about my business—walking my dog, showering, or driving to an appointment—only to be suddenly ambushed by recollection.
Usually, these memories came to me in fragments: an odor, a feeling, a face, or a conversation.
I’d remember my excitement playing Link’s Awakening for the first time on my Gameboy Color. Or maybe I’d recall my late aunt’s tuxedo cat, Sylvester; the mockery of a snub-nosed boy in sixth grade.
Sometimes, I’d hark back to my first glimpse of the technicolor shells of iMac G3 in a school computer lab; the fantasies of collecting one of each “flavor”: Bondi Blue, Strawberry, Lime, and Tangerine.
Other times, I’d wax nostalgic about the rain rattling the tin roof of the family home or the particular smell of the department stores my mother would like to spend hours wandering in search of sales.
Now and then, I’d think fondly of the moments spent loitering at the local newsagent, thumbing through copies of PC Powerplay and Nintendo Power magazines, dreaming about one day owning all the latest gaming consoles.
With each of these memories came emotions, often in a big jumble: longing and regret, as if for something lost, bittersweet joy, and sadness.
A past rediscovered: the start of trauma recovery
When I think of time, I think of years, represented as a series of three-dimensional bar charts. Each bar represented a different month, arranged in a stair-like formation.
At the end of the month, I would imagine myself ascending a new bar, continuing until I had arrived in December, before moving on to the next chart behind it.
After my traumatic experiences, when I tried to peer back to the charts that had come before, my recall became hazy and my brain seemed to actively resist the effort.
If memories are like snapshots, all that was left to me were the countless throwaways that were returned to us when my family got our photos developed.
Always there were four or five shots that were to be out of focus. Sometimes a thumb was blocking the lens, or the flash of our disposable camera had blown out the image.
But the snapshots that now came to me, sealed for over 25 years inside some protective, internal vault, had all the vivid clarity of the present moment.
Puzzling as I was by this return, I was equally puzzled by the timing. The fragments were random and unconnected to my current circumstance. Just what was going on?
A sign of healing
For decades, trauma had strip-mined my consciousness of all evidence of my past; of memories both pleasant and painful.
Now, I was starting to amass a sizable collection. But having no idea what to do with them, I consigned them to a mental storehouse for later review.
Then, during one particularly humid summer—a summer that reminded me far too much of those of a childhood spent in the tropics—I was inundated by a wave of these memories, leaving me both bewildered and melancholic.
“It sounds like you’re healing,” my therapist replied, trying to normalize what to me felt painfully abnormal.
“But why? What function does this serve?” I asked through my tears. “Why now? I just want to understand.”
What I wanted was a cut-and-dry explanation for what is, for everyone, a messy and unpredictable recovery process.
Therapists liked to call this behavior “intellectualizing”. In my case, I was trying to bypass an emotional experience by using my intellect.
This “ego defense” was one I had depended upon for years to cope with my trauma. It was also one of the key obstacles to my healing.
Reintegration: the beginning of trauma recovery
So rather than resisting the wave, I rode it, allowing the memories and emotions they conjured to come and go.
Soon after, I embarked upon a single-minded hunt for various articles from my childhood.
This involved preparing a playlist containing every memorable song of the 90s and the early aughts. Next, I put together a book list containing every title my teen self had read.
After this task had been completed, I hunted down scans of the magazines I’d once flipped through and the illustrated video game guides and manuals I’d once savored during long car trips.
Often, my searches did not culminate in any action; I didn’t always listen to the music or consume this reading material.
Instead, I found a strange comfort in the fact I once more had possession of these formerly lost relics from my past.
This obsessive collecting on my part I realized was an outward expression of an internal process: reintegration.
The part of myself I had once cut off was returning piece by piece, and I was searching for props to help facilitate its assembly.
I was working, in my own way, towards a whole, coherent narrative of self and past.
“The goal of recounting the trauma story is integration, not exorcism.”5
Herman goes on to explain:
Remembering and telling the truth about terrible events are prerequisites…for the healing of individual victims. The conflict between the will to deny horrible events and the will to proclaim them aloud is the central dialectic of psychological trauma. But far too often secrecy prevails, and the story of the traumatic event surfaces not as a verbal narrative but as a symptom. Denial, repression, and dissociation operate on a social as well as an individual level.
Undertaking therapy allowed me to finally release the taut knot of my trauma survivor psyche. And with that release had come recollection—not just of traumatic events, but everything in between.
Memories in turn triggered “floods of intense, overwhelming feeling”, which proved wholly alien to me after years spent dwelling in the “extremes of amnesia…and arid states of no feeling at all”.
I was not in crisis; I was in a state of trauma recovery. And in order to complete that recovery, I would have to let go of the three skills that had permitted my survival through alienation from my own self—denial, repression, and dissociation.
When one cannot escape a reality in which one feels threatened and powerless, one finds ways of adapting.
I too had once acted as if nothing had happened, ignoring my emotions, burying memories, and mentally checking out when confronted by a frightening reality.
They had served an adaptive function. But maintained over time, they had caused the margins of my life to contract to a pinprick in which only survival is the only possibility, and never true flourishing.
This is a kind of living death; imprisonment in a psychological internment camp.
And now, finally, after years spent walking through a dim, gray limbo, I could see the possibility of a death revoked, and life renewed.
Essy Knopf is a therapist who likes to explore what it means to be neurodivergent and queer. Subscribe to get all new posts sent directly to your inbox.
It would be easy to assume that the many advantages enjoyed by males serve as a buffer against poorer health outcomes, and yet this isn’t always the case.
And these early deaths aren’t so much the result of lifestyle choices, some argue, as they are the profound loneliness lingering just below the surface.
The connection between male privilege and loneliness
In I Don’t Want to Talk About It, Terrence Real makes a compelling case for socialization’s role in contributing to the all-too-common experience of loneliness among older men.
He notes that boys compared to girls are typically less spoken to, comforted, and nurtured by their caregivers, leaving them prone to passive trauma, for example in the form of neglect.
Real notes they are also socialized to cut themselves off from their own feelings, their mothers, and from social support.
That is, socialization teaches boys and men that entry to the club of masculinity is dependent upon their continued spurning of “dependency, expressiveness, and affiliation”.
Males are asked to uphold an impossible gender norm closely tied to the notion of rugged individualism.
Real says the cost of passive trauma and disconnection from self and others is that males suffer an unstable sense of self-esteem—and even shame—over their own emotions.
Forbidden the right of vulnerability, males have no choice but to emotionally numb themselves, internalizing rather than externalizing their distress. The result is covert depression.
Having been trained to avoid others’ support, men inevitably turn to “defensive compensations” for this depression, such as drinking, gambling, or sex.
The difficulty, however, lies in the fact that the resulting “addictions do to shame what saltwater does to thirst”.
Similarly, men may also seek an escape through grandiosity, or what Real calls the “illusion of dominance”.
The terrible loneliness of being at the top
What Terrence Real calls grandiosity, Lonely at the Top author Thomas Joiner describes as a fixation on earning money and building status.
Men in their 20s and 30s, he argues, are usually more self-focused than women. They assume an “either/or attitude toward wealth and status on the one hand and social connection on the other hand”.
Joiner however diverges from Real’s thesis here by describing factors other than socialization as contributing to the male inability to form and maintain interpersonal connections later in life.
For example, he cites the “people versus things” gender dichotomy. Namely that from a very young age, boys are more interested in things, while girls are more interested in people.
Males are by nature more inclined towards an instrumentality mindset, grounded in “assertiveness, self-confidence, competitiveness, and aggression”.
This is opposed to the typically female, people-oriented mindset, which celebrates expressive traits such as “affection, cooperation, and flexibility”.
Joiner notes other differences, such as the fact that boys get less social coaching from each other and from men when compared to their female counterparts.
Girls also have more gender- and age-diverse friendship networks. This contributes to females as a group enjoying greater interpersonal hardiness.
Having been spoiled with the “institutionalized, ready-made friendships of childhood”, men may fail to develop an appreciation for the “worked-for friendships of adulthood”.
Joiner claims that an instrumentality mindset can also lead to males developing a “don’t tread on me” attitude, best described as a “dogged self-sufficiency in the absence of healthy interdependence”. The links again to rugged individualism are, again, clear.
Joiner adds that “don’t tread on me” carries the tacit message of “don’t connect with me”. As argued by Real, men believe this attitude is necessary to preserving their conferred status as males.
“Don’t tread on me” combined with the single-minded pursuit of money and status normalized by our materialist culture can result in a more passive approach towards relationships.
Men as a result may be less likely to undertake the work necessary to maintain them.
In failing to feed or renew relationships, or to seek out new ones as they age, men may be setting themselves up for significant loneliness down the road.
The fact that men’s internal’s sensors are not fully attuned to their own emotional or social loneliness, Joiner agrees, further compels them to pursue said compensations. And rather than resolving loneliness, they only have the effect of compounding.
The health impact of engaging in addictive behaviors aside, loneliness itself can contribute to poorer health outcomes in later life while corroding one’s resilience and ability to cope with failures, disappointments, and losses.
When compared to seeking professional mental health, compensations are a more likely outcome among males, given that doing the former can threaten the male image of self-sufficiency.
Intersectionality argues that it is possible to simultaneously enjoy power and/or privilege in one situation, arena, or aspect of life, and oppression and/or disadvantage in others.
So while being male broadly conveys power and privilege, being an older male in Western society can have serious implications for one’s health and wellbeing.
If one happens to be an older male and have a minority identity such as “homosexual”, the impact can be exacerbated, for example through minority stress caused by stigmatization, discrimination, and prejudice.
This impact grows when one is also a person of color, a trait which brings many disadvantages in a White-dominated culture such as North America.89
The minority status of being gay male alone contributes to arguably higher levels of loneliness. And there is also the fact that gay men as a population have to work harder to gain entry to the “male club”.
Hostile attitudes towards homosexuals are often grounded in perceptions of their abnormality, i.e. “Too feminine”.
According to author Simon LeVay, gay men as a population are indeed different, exhibiting a “patchwork of gendered traits—some indistinguishable from those of same-sex peers, some shifted part way [sic] toward the other sex, and others typical of the other sex”.
Having gender-shifted traits in a culture that defines masculinity by limited expressiveness can thus double the pressure felt by gay men to conform to the stereotype.
It also means they are more likely to experience the disapproval of, and rejection by, others who subscribe to the standard (toxic) definitions of masculinity.
To summarize, masculinity is coded in Western society in ways that are emotionally oppressive to males, hence the term “toxic masculinity”.
This oppression is intensified especially the case if you also share minority identities, such as being gay and a person of color.
When combined with a biological inclination towards instrumentality and a cultural bias towards rugged individualism, this can wreak great harm to our mental wellbeing and our relational world.
From this comes disproportionately adverse health outcomes, which as mentioned run in the face of the perceived advantages of being a member of an empowered and privileged gender.
Unfortunately, gender coding and social conditioning have been in existence for thousands of years. The intricate tapestry of our gendered lives cannot be unpicked overnight.
All the same, there are actions we can take as males to address the hidden costs of our gendered identity.
Such connections can be forged, Joiner says, by engaging in shared rituals that create a sense of belonging, togetherness, or harmony, such as sharing a meal with loved ones.
Here are some other suggestions:
Connecting to nature: As men, we stand to benefit by interacting more regularly with nature.
This experience can reduce loneliness, especially when it provides opportunities to interact with others. For example, through hiking or gardening groups.
Daily phone calls: However awkward as calling people up out of the blue may seem today, relying too heavily on text messages can have some serious downsides.
Instead, Joiner suggests calling one person daily, if only for a few minutes.
Whether you have something pressing to talk about is not important. The goal here is to create connection.
Reunions: Organize a reunion with best friends from one’s younger days can be a great way to renews existing connections.
Given the male tendency to lose touch with friendships as we advance towards middle age, this is essential.
Sleep regularization: None of the above is possible if our sleep schedule is out of sync with those of others.
If this is the case, we should consider shifting our life patterns to promote social interactions.
We can this by maintaining a regular sleep schedule and seeking out opportunities to interact with others, such as through a shared physical activity like a sport.
Essy Knopf is a therapist who likes to explore what it means to be neurodivergent and queer. Subscribe to get all new posts sent directly to your inbox.
Gay dating and hookup apps dangle the promise of in-person interactions, yet no one wants to meet—because of distraction capitalism.
What I’m referring to here is an entire industry dedicated to keeping consumers distracted in the name of profit.
Those responsible for pulling our strings are called “the attention merchants”. And the bad news is, every time you and I get taken in, we lose. Here’s how.
The allure of distraction capitalism
Countless battles are waged daily for our attention by the attention merchants, and one of the first staging grounds is the living room.
As a child, Saturday morning cartoons were my ambrosia, the accompanying advertisements always managing to instill in me a hunger for the latest tawdry Happy Meal toy.
Eventually, I outgrew these shows, graduating to watching soap operas instead. Specifically, the NBC series Passions.
Checking in with the slow-churning serial every day after school, I’d reassure myself that I wasn’t there for the melodrama. No—I was watching ironically.
“Hate-watching” wasn’t common parlance at the time, but in hindsight, it describes this ritual perfectly.
Trysts with current affairs programs followed. Many of these shows trafficked shameless in scandal and outrage.
Part of me lived for the exposés of crooks and ne’er-do-wells, as much as another part lived to denounce them.
I would watch victims tearfully recount how they had been mistreated, exploited, or abused. The viewers’ sympathy having been solicited, the reporter would then embark on a crusade for justice.
Clad in business attire and sporting a wireless microphone, this feisty individual would pursue the accused across parking lots, reciting laundry lists of misdemeanors while demanding answers and apologies.
The alleged perpetrator would dart into a doorway or duck into a car, trying to make a quick escape. If we were lucky, the encounter would lead to a scuffle with the camera crew and maybe even an accidental injury.
These confrontations of course designed to appeal to the viewer’s emotions, and it was the contrived drama of it all that made watching them such a guilty pleasure.
Yet my high school English curriculum had brought with it a certain awareness of the media’s manipulations.
And so my adolescent self usually came away from these shows feeling glutted, maybe even a touch queasy, like I’d just eaten a whole bag of caramel popcorn in one sitting.
The effect was similar to that evoked by the gossip magazines I’d glimpse in racks while waiting in supermarket lines with my mother.
What drew my attention weren’t just the unflattering, doctored shots of celebrities looking either livid, sick, or sleep-deprived. Nor was it the chance to get a glimpse behind the showbiz curtain.
In my hard-nosed way, I was hoping to interrogate these publications’ very slippery relationship with the truth. The fact I engaged with them at all meant the victory, by default, went to said publications.
In the early ‘00s, the object of my fascinated disgust became reality TV, a medium that shamelessly massaged both the truth and viewer’s emotions for maximum effect.
No surprise that when I finally moved out of my family’s home, I refused to buy a TV set. Who were these broadcasters to think they could determine what I watched and when?
What right did they think they had to expose me to shouty calls to action and appeals to open my wallet?
Often, walking into a room in which a TV was blaring, I’d catch myself shouting right back, offering a snarky retort for the benefit of those present.
Yet just as often as not, I’d surrender, plonking down on a couch, only to stir minutes—sometimes hours—later from a fugue state, stricken by the realization that for all my cynicism, I had succumbed.
Distraction capitalism at work
TV shows and advertisements, gossip magazines, and reality TV are just some of the cultural phenomena designed to capture our attention through constant intrusion, often without our consent.
the competition is fierce that the race will naturally run to the bottom; attention will almost invariably gravitate to the more garish, lurid, outrageous alternative, whatever stimulus may more likely engage what cognitive scientists call our “automatic” attention as opposed to our “controlled” attention, the kind we direct with intent.
This is probably why, for all my skepticism about Passions and current affair programs, I still found myself watching them, primal emotions somehow managing to bypass my intellectual defenses.
The attention industry is an almost omnipresent fact of daily life. Yet its merchants are constantly trying to outpace what Wu calls the “disenchantment effect”—that is, our becoming desensitized to their methods.
Merchants respond to our adaptation with adaptations of their own. They either “up the dosage”, going to even greater extremes, or they introduce a novel stimulus, “a distortion for the sake of spectacle, calibrated to harvest the most attention”.
Hence the soap opera’s endless stream of dramatic turns, the trotting out of fresh scandals, or social media’s endless stream of dopamine-triggering notifications.
How distraction capitalism adapts
The shift towards an online world has seen viewers faced with more choices than ever, resulting in a mad scramble by attention merchants not just to find new revenue streams, but to keep us transfixed.
Many news publications for example now require paid subscriptions. And, in a bid to draw viewers, some have shifted away from traditional broadsheet style towards the kind of “gossipy, superficial, and click-driven” tone one might expect from a tabloid.
Working in digital news, I have glimpsed firsthand a kind of desperation that can sometimes indeed result in Wu’s deplored “race to the bottom”.
Sometimes this may take the obvious form of clickbait. Other times it’s gratuitous “breaking” coverage that spills over into multiple news cycles, producing more anxiety-provoking commentary and speculation than concrete information.
This desperation is by no means new; as the old journalism expression goes, “if it bleeds, it leads”. The media attention merchants have long known that reportage on scandal, catastrophe, death, and disaster is sure to secure an audience.
But the shift away from traditional media has certainly led to an intensification in tactics, such as the adoption of more intrusive methods like news apps using push notifications.
Under such conditions, public interest—traditionally the driving factor behind reportage—can become eclipsed by a desire for private profit.
Netflix: a case study in distraction capitalism
Where commercial broadcast television previously employed advertising, “over-the-top” media providers like Netflix have, as in the case of some news outlets, relied upon subscription services.
But Netflix has also adjusted to changing viewing habits by employing “bingeable” programming. They do this by releasing new seasons of TV shows all at once or acquiring old series en masse.
Where traditional TV may shape stories around ad breaks, streaming programming may eschew this structure in favor of one geared towards binge viewing, with one episode often bleeding seamlessly into another.
All of this seems designed to produce an effect New York Times journalist James Poniewozik calls “The Suck”, “that narcotic, tidal feeling of getting drawn into a show and letting it wash over you for hours”.
Operating behind a one-way mirror, the company’s data scientists observe trends and gather insights. This knowledge is then used to inform their programming model, and to keep viewers hooked.
This is not a development exclusive to Netflix, but one broadly employed by modern attention merchants in what Shoshana Zuboff has called The Age of Surveillance Capitalism. (My take on the risk surveillance capitalism poses in the context of dating apps here).
When distraction becomes the ultimate goal
Author Tim Wu warns that for all the means now at the attention merchants’ disposal, it can still be an imprecise game.
Technologies that enable more control over our choices than ever also “open us up to a stream of instinctive selections, and tiny rewards, the sum of which may be no reward at all”, resulting in a state of “distracted wandering”.
Dating apps are just one example of this. As with social media, we may find ourselves regularly checking in with no express goal beyond securing the reward of a notification, a “like”, or a message.
In some cases, this reward-seeking behavior can even spill over into addiction (I’m thinking here of operant conditioning).
The allure is intensified in the case of platforms like Instagram, which democratize fame and promote self-aggrandizement. The result? “A chaotic mutual admiration society, full of enterprising Narcissi” who reward and reinforce each other’s behavior.
However purposeless our use of the attention merchant’s platforms might be, our very presence there is nevertheless regarded as a victory. Our continued reliance is, after all, “far better than being ignored”.
Any usage after all results in surplus behavioral data that can be used by the service provider, or sold to third parties in what Zuboff calls the behavioral futures market.
None of this would be possible of course were it not for our always-connected culture, itself the product of technologies such as the smartphone, which renders social media check-ins, sharing, and selfies a mere reflex.
The attention economies as a result are now deeply embedded in daily life; normalized to the point that we often aren’t aware when merchants “nudge, coax, tune, and herd” us, to use Zuboff’s terms.
It is in the absence of such self-awareness, Wu says, that we inevitably find ourselves “in thrall to our various media and devices”.
Reclaiming peace of mind
Attention merchants profit from our involuntary behavior; from distraction and addiction, from funneling our desire for connection, validation, and information, into hypervigilant checking, comparing, competing, and performing for a horde of fellow digital voyeurs.
Yet the media and technologies described here as noted are an inescapable part of modern life.
Extricating ourselves from their hold requires fighting years worth of conditioning by the ever-hungry attention merchants, which more often than not feels like a fool’s errand.
We can begin by regularly “unplugging” and holding a “digital Sabbath”: a window of time such as a weekend in which to put down our devices and resist the urge to engage in checking emails, social media, Netflix, and the news.
It is only through such abstinence from the stimulation to which we have become so accustomed that we can achieve self-awareness about unhealthy attentional habits.
We don’t need to suffer “fragmentary awareness” and the incessant interruptions of attention merchants.
Essy Knopf is a therapist who likes to explore what it means to be neurodivergent and queer. Subscribe to get all new posts sent directly to your inbox.
If you’ve ever used a gay dating app before, you’ve likely experienced “flash in the pan” conversations that start and end abruptly, usually without explanation.
Prior to learning this term, I liked to refer to my experiences using a phrase of my own invention, the “sushi train effect”.
If you’ve ever attended a sushi train restaurant, you can probably already see the comparison I’m making. For those of you who haven’t, allow me to explain.
The sushi train effect explained
At sushi train restaurants, fresh-made dishes are presented on small plates delivered using a circular conveyor belt, or the back of a toy train that follows a loop.
Many usual favorites can be obtained via this method—everything from tempura to nigiri and uramaki rolls, dumplings, and more.
Diners choose the dishes they want to eat then remove them from the belt/train. As they do, sushi chefs prepare new dishes to replenish the train’s stock with.
The effect is like sitting before a buffet—or rather, a never-ending supply of snack-sized meals.
When one logs onto a gay dating app, one’s profile is immediately presented for review by other users, much like a new dish appearing on a sushi train.
On apps like Grindr or Scruff, that image appears in a grid of other profile images, organized according to current proximity.
If it’s your first time using the app, or simply your first time using that particular image, your profile will exude an aura of novelty. A feeding frenzy will ensue, with other users flooding your account with messages.
These users may express keen interest in, and admiration for, your person, replying to you with an urgency that demands immediate engagement.
‘Boom and bust’ on the gay dating app
If you reply, many of these interactions may end then and there, with the other user mysteriously withdrawing the instant they’ve obtained your attention.
But if you delay your reply, you can often expect the other user—who has subsequently logged off—to reappear sometime later, offering what usually amounts to a lukewarm response.
Their interest, as it turns out, was only temporary, even opportunistic. A brief window opened, offering a tantalizing glimpse of a world of possibility, then swiftly closed.
One is thus given the impression that others’ availability is time-limited, and even then when you do manage to catch them on the app, there is often no tangible outcome.
Recipients of this sudden influx of attention may be left wondering if what they have experienced is not admiration, but a Pavlovian response—like the salivating of dogs at the sound of the bell.
This is the first part of the “sushi train effect”: idolization by total strangers. The second part is devaluation.
As the aura of novelty fades, what begins as a flood will inevitably slow to a trickle. This can happen over the course of a day, or even a few hours.
Before one was treated as “hot property”, but now one is regarded as a bottom-of-the-barrel fixer-upper. One’s face or torso, once distinguishable from countless others, becomes just another brick in the wall.
Like any dish glimpsed by diners circling the sushi train one too many times, one’s profile loses appeal through sheer familiarity.
This meteoric rise, followed by a precipitous decline, creates an impression of “boom and bust” that can leave most app users feeling rather disoriented.
One moment, one feels seen and valued, and the next, it’s as if one has been discarded; reduced to yet another piece of flotsam floating in the modern dating and hookup sea.
‘The sushi train effect’ as a form of ‘breadcrumbing’
The third part of the sushi train effect is delayed revaluation.
Take for example the user who declares their interest in you and agrees to meet in person, but who—when pressed for specifics—fails to follow through.
Sometimes, they turn on a dime, it feels like you’re chatting with a completely different person, one who now believes you are completely unworthy of the effort.
Other times, they may agree, only to cancel the meetup, citing some unforeseen event or complication. They may also indefinitely “bench” it, but without proposing a suitable date or time. Or they may block your account outright.
Then, days, weeks, months, or even years later, this individual will reach out again—prompted, it seems, by your convenient reappearance in their dating or hookup app grid.
They may offer an explanation for their disappearance, maybe even an apology for having flaked on you. Or they may simply pretend it never happened.
What’s most confusing is when this person expresses the same level of interest they did on the first occasion.
If you remember their sending mixed messages, you may feel tempted to address this directly. The alternative after all is silence, and merely contenting yourself with this sudden attention.
Should you do this, you may become caught up in an amnesiac dance, make-believing it was circumstance and not a conscious choice that prevented your meeting the first time around.
The hardened skeptics among us however will throw the stranger’s sincerity into doubt, concluding that they’re messaging again out of pure boredom.
To return to the sushi train analogy: dishes once declared ho-hum are often reappraised by diners after a long absence, and may thus regain some of their former appeal.
Turns out this behavior isn’t exclusive to gay dating and hookup apps but is rampant in the wider dating world.
‘Breadcrumbing’ explained
“Breadcrumbing” is when a dater uses small amounts of attention or validation to keep you interested in them. Basically, what it usually boils down to is fishing for attention.
Daters typically leave “breadcrumbs” when they aren’t seriously interested in meeting. What does “breadcrumbing” commonly look like on a gay dating app?
Microcommunication is a common example: users who repeatedly check in (“Hey”/”How are you?”/”What you up to?”), exchange brief pleasantries, but make no serious effort to sustain a mutual conversation.
Sudden disappearances, followed by sudden reappearances—much in the same fashion I’ve described above.
Small talk that goes nowhere. Breadcrumbers use small talk to sustain the interaction, even when they have no intention to take that interaction offline.
Refusing to schedule dates. Breadcrumbers are usually reluctant to make any kind of commitment, as their main purpose in messaging is to secure attention or validation.
Trying to set up a date is the quickest way to suss out a breadcrumber’s intention, as they will usually evade, make an excuse, or bail beforehand.
Refusing to follow through with plans. As noted, breadcrumbers refuse to meet in person, preferring instead the minimal effort involved in a text exchange.
In short, breadcrumbers like to talk a big game but will always balk, for various reasons.
Some may feel lonely, bored, and/or insecure and are seeking a quick boost to their self-esteem. In such instances, breadcrumbers receive your responses as proof of their attractiveness or worth.
Alternatively, the breadcrumber may want contact with other gay men, but see face-to-face meetings as carrying risks or responsibilities they aren’t prepared to deal with.
There are also breadcrumbers who are driven by a narcissistic desire they know they can meet by sustaining text banter with multiple suitors, often at the same time.
Whatever their motives, know that unless you yourself are using dating and hookup apps to breadcrumb, you’re likely to find these kinds of interactions to be unsatisfying and, ultimately, a waste of time.
Breadcrumbers are enabled by gay dating app design
Breadcrumbing is enabled by app design that reinforces this behavior while failing to hold those accountable responsible.
It follows therefore that these makers are willing to use all manner of tactics to guarantee this outcome. This includes refusing to set specific parameters for accessing and using the app.
The problem with parameters—in the eyes of app makers’, anyways—is that they automatically screen out a significant segment of the user base. Monitoring problematic user behavior also requires hiring dedicated staff and thus comes with undesirable overhead.
So like many other apps or web-based services, the designers opt instead for a more hands-off, almost-anything-goes kind of approach.
Another tactic used by app makers is gamification. I’ve talked about it before, but I’ll provide a quick recap here.
Gamification involves using positive reinforcement to reinforce users’ continued use, for example, through instant notifications, chimes, and flashy animations.
Taken to the extreme, this results in some users treating their fellows like human PEZ dispensers, whose only purpose is to disgorge attention upon demand.
Thus, when app makers prioritize the bottom line, they are willfully facilitating this kind of attentional exploitation. They are enabling breadcrumbing.
Users may thus find themselves caught in a perpetual loop of short-lived banter that never deepens into a lasting connection.
Interactions come to resemble busywork, leaving those seeking something more substantive out in the cold.
Until app makers start using design to create a culture that promotes healthy interactions, those of us pursuing meaningful interactions would be better off spending our time elsewhere.
If you’re seeking some tips on how you can step away from gay dating apps, I’ve got you covered.
Essy Knopf is a therapist who likes to explore what it means to be neurodivergent and queer. Subscribe to get all new posts sent directly to your inbox.
To what does the gay geosocial app Grindr owe its success? Is it the fact that it was one of the first, or that its design employs highly manipulative “dark patterns”?
To understand Grindr’s extraordinary success—one that allowed it to achieve ubiquity in the gay community, and to become a fixture of popular culture—we have to go back to its launch.
On March 25, 2009, Grindr was officially founded by San Vicente Acquisition LLC. The app’s arrival came less than a year after Apple launched its App Store.
Certainly, the absence of direct competition boosted Grindr’s popularity. That said, the app didn’t represent a reinvention of the online dating wheel, so much as a refinement.
The app’s designers implemented existing features already present in existing web-based services, such as Gaydar and Manhunt, combining these with the ability to see other users based on proximity.
The geosocial aspect didn’t just endow all interactions with an exciting sense of immediacy—it accelerated them.
No longer tethered to web-based services only accessible via computer, gay men were suddenly able to respond and arrange meetups on the go.
The excitement, speed, and convenience enabled by Grindr were so attractive that a raft of other dating apps soon emerged to challenge its dominance.
The enduring popularity of dark patterns
Tinder, OkCupid, Scruff, Hornet, Hinge, Bumble—all of these apps represent iterations of a winning formula. New look, same great taste.
The more successful apps such as Scruff simply lifted features wholesale from Grindr, while others like Tinder introduced new mechanics, such as the ability to swipe to like or decline users’ profiles.
Not all geosocial dating apps flourished or even survived the mobile app development boom, one which, of course, was closely tied to the rise of smartphones.
Those that did however hadn’t so much caught the wave of a trend or were simply meeting an unmet need. They endured because they used manipulative tactics user experience specialist Harry Brignull calls “dark patterns”.
Dark patterns in action in gay geosocial apps
On Brignull’s “Dark Patterns” website (now referred to as “Deceptive Design”, he lists a number of strategies typically used by websites to control user behaviors.
Brignull offers creative analogies (e.g. “roach motel”) and compound words of his own invention (“confirmshaming”), detailing the extent to which website designers are willing to go in the name of profit.
In a 2020 interview with Wired, he summarized one of the major outcomes of dark pattern strategies: maximized retention of the user base.
“Lots of companies will make it hard for people to leave,” Brignull noted. “They are going to get around to it eventually, but if they might stay for an extra 10 percent of the time, or 20 percent, the accounts might live just a little bit longer.”
“And if you’re doing that en masse for hundreds of thousands of people, that translates to enormous amounts of money.”
Many of these dark patterns Brignull describes don’t pertain to geosocial dating apps, but those outlined on a sister website do.
Dark Pattern Games runs a registry that names and shames video games it says use dark pattern strategies. (Note: The site does not appear to be directly associated with Brignull, and its provenance is unclear.)
These strategies I would argue are present in many gay dating and hookup apps, given most of them incorporate gamification in their designs.
While Grindr is hardly an exception to the norm, it receives credit for being the first gay geosocial app to succeed in mainstreaming dark patterns.
For this reason, I will use this particular app as a case study, exploring the presence of temporal and psychological dark patterns and their impact on the user experience.
Temporal dark patterns in gay geosocial apps
Daily rewards: Logging into Grindr usually provides users an opportunity to collect messages sent from chat partners following their previous login.
User profiles appear in Grindr’s grid-based layout based on both proximity and how recently they have logged into the app.
Logging in therefore increases the chances of one’s profile being seen by those currently browsing the app.
This may thus trigger an influx of fresh messages, increasing the daily reward output and thus incentivizing users to return.
Grinding: Not to be confused with the popular verb for using Grindr, “grindring” (though the similarity here is ironic), this term refers to when apps force users to perform repetitive busywork to achieve a sense of advancement.
In the case of Grindr, this involves screening countless profiles to see if they meet certain attractiveness and compatibility criteria.
This involves fielding cascades of unsolicited messages and photos, as well as chatting with an endless procession of old and new users.
Advertisements: Grindr forces users to watch ads before they can read or respond to messages from other users.
Besides buying a subscription membership, there is no way to bypass these ads.
Infinite Treadmill: This term refers to when an app renders success or completion of a task impossible.
Grindr’s old motto was “get on to get off”, with the app presenting itself as a kind of matchmaker between two people (or more) who were presumably seeking an in-person interaction.
But meeting someone, whether it be for friendship or a sexual and/or romantic liaison, Grindr renders this almost impossible due to its gamified design.
To explain: in order to secure maximum responses, users have to continually engage with the app. For example, by logging in frequently, and tailoring profiles, messages, and photos to solicit responses from as many other users as possible.
When one receives such responses, which represent attention and validation, they positively reinforce our continued use.
These responses also motivate us to continue tailoring our profiles, messages, and photos to maintain or increase these responses, rather than in service of a physical goal, like meeting another user.
The effect is an experience that can be likened to an endless cycle…or an Infinite Treadmill.
Can’t Pause or Save: Exchanging messages on Grindr is inherently fun and rewarding, and so we may find ourselves keeping at it well beyond what we might have initially planned.
Even after we close the app, we continue to receive push notifications from other users when they message us. These notifications serve to summon us back to the app to continue our conversations.
But given other users also don’t linger on the app indefinitely, with many logging off—often without notice—this creates an impression that all exchanges are fleeting.
The possibility of missing out on said exchanges (and the possibility of a friendship, sexual, or romantic encounter) creates tension within the user.
Fear of missing out (“FOMO”) thus drives many to routinely log back into the app and respond to any outstanding messages.
Due to the proximity/recency factor I mentioned above, logging back in pushes our profile back into prominence, drawing attention from still more users.
This inability to “pause” means our Grindr interactions continue indefinitely, intruding into our daily life.
Psychological dark patterns in gay geosocial apps
Illusion of Control: When scanning the Grindr user profile grid, new or unfamiliar profiles are more likely to stick out and inspire curiosity.
The app does this by refreshing display grids periodically, revealing users who have recently arrived in one’s area, or who have updated their profile.
By doing so, the app directs the flow of attentional traffic towards these individuals, which can trigger a virtual “love bombing” by multiple users.
To the recipient, being love-bombed may lead them to believe they are a highly desirable commodity.
To the sender, being able to love bomb comes with the expectation that one will receive a response. Both recipient and sender are led to entertain an illusion of control.
Variable Rewards: Messages (read: rewards) are received entirely at random on Grindr, and even when one is not on the platform through push notifications.
The lack of a predictable schedule by which rewards arrive is a form of intermittent reinforcement.
Intermittent reinforcement is commonly used by the gambling industry to manipulate clients into continually “playing the game”, even when doing so might spell financial ruin.
This has been demonstrated using Skinner boxes, an experimental device that uses intermittent reinforcement to create addiction even among pigeons and rats.
Intermittent reinforcement is successful because it does not encourage scrutiny or self-reflection. In the case of Grindr, it promotes a kind of minimalist, reflexive communication style that characterizes social media: swiping, liking, and commenting.
Grindr users thus respond to the existence of others in the same casual, noncommittal fashion they would a social media post, knowing this is all that is required to obtain a response and therefore validation.
Aesthetic Manipulations: Grindr’s gamified design promotes interaction as a free-for-all, rather than a deliberate and purposeful pursuit of individuals for a concrete, in-person outcome.
The design doesn’t nudge users towards meeting in person, something that could easily be achieved by imposing limitations such as capping the total number of messages exchanged between two users.
To do so, of course, would result in a drop in the user base, and total time spent on the app, thereby reducing opportunities to monetize users’ continued use.
App makers, as discussed in a previous blog post, do this not only through advertisements and subscription services but the sale of user behavioral data.
One way in which Grindr is able to keep people on the platform is the spotlight effect that funnels collective attention towards specific users based on their salience and novelty.
Being spotlit can leave one with a conviction in one’s own appeal, even if this effect ultimately is temporary and likely to be withdrawn after the app ceases to spotlight one’s profile.
The one-way flow of messages may be replaced by complete silence—often within hours of an initial login or photo update. The validation feast offered by Grindr thus leads to virtual famine.
The app promises the fulfillment of our subconscious desire to be seen as attractive, desirable, and worthy, before withdrawing it rather suddenly, and dangling it again when one receives attention again subsequently.
You see, famine on Grindr is rarely total. Because the app has a large user base, and because users frequently change their locations, one’s profile is routinely discovered by a new batch of users.
This intermittent reinforcement leads us to interpret these crumbs as evidence of a forthcoming meal. So we optimistically make do with what we can get, holding out for the possibility of future successes.
We tell ourselves that just over the horizon, our next lover or partner is waiting and that the only way to secure their affection is by continuing to login into the app and play the “game”.
Optimism and Frequency Biases: Being love-bombed on Grindr is inherently memorable, given there are few instances outside of using the app where this will happen.
The experience may cause us to lean into blind optimism. After all, if one enjoys such success at first blush, surely one will never struggle to garner interest from others?
And so we come to believe that our prospects on the app are not a product of its design, but rather us having a fixed amount of desirability.
Yet when one considers the hundreds of conversations they have had with other users, one realizes that only a tiny fraction of those conversations lead to in-person meetings.
Such meetings are, at least in my estimation, a far more concrete reflection of one’s prospects.
The app however coaches us to focus instead on what is referred to in social media as “vanity metrics”.
This jargon refers to metrics that make us feel good but don’t translate to any meaningful results, such as the total amount of messages received, especially during the love-bombing phase.
Wrap up
Gay geosocial app makers have the advantage: they know our weaknesses and are willing to exploit them using all manner of clandestine dark patterns.
These apps may provide what we consider to be an essential service often for free, but they come with a hidden price tag.
Monitoring our behavior on their platforms from behind a one-way mirror, app makers continually tweak and finetune these patterns so as to further entrap us.
We users accept these manipulations because they wear the fun guise of gamification, and cultivate satisfaction through intermittent reinforcement.
But constant exposure to this kind of reinforcement can lead many of us to develop process addictions.
Much in the same way we log in to social media to check for “likes”, we may find ourselves compulsively logging into gay geosocial apps like Grindr to collect messages and a quick hit of dopamine.
If you happen to recognize the role dark patterns take in your regular app interactions and are alarmed, know that there are far healthier alternative methods available for meeting other gay men
Essy Knopf is a therapist who likes to explore what it means to be neurodivergent and queer. Subscribe to get all new posts sent directly to your inbox.
Cocktail: The Joykiller. Description: The perfect cocktail for the aspiring wet blanket. Ingredients: Four ounces of perfectionism, a dollop of workaholism, a splash of stubbornness. Method: Mix, shake well, strain into a glass of rigid thinking. Serve with a twist of stinginess.
Confessions of a Control Freak is a memoir blog series exploring the impact of Obsessive Compulsive Personality Disorder, its origins, and the rocky path to recovery. Names and identifying details have been changed to protect the privacy of all featured individuals. Subscribe to receive all future posts. More about OCPD here.
I
Exploring India for most people may sound like a great way to spend a vacation, but for someone with undiagnosed Obsessive Compulsive Personality Disorder (OCPD), it was an unmitigated disaster.
Days before my trip, I completed a web series and the first draft of an alternate history fantasy novel—one of several creative projects on a never-ending, self-perpetuating carousel of work.
Having accrued more than a month’s worth of leave, I decided that the best way to spend my time “off”, naturally, would be to start yet another project.
Me, outside Dehli’s historic Parliament House.
No, I was not going to be going on an adventure and collecting photos for a post-trip slideshow with family and friends.
Instead, I was going to conduct research for a novel—a sequel to another book I technically hadn’t even finished yet. Talk about getting ahead of myself!
I booked a ten-day guided tour around the arid northern Indian state of Rajasthan, once a patchwork of princely states under the British Raj.
This I figured was the very least amount of time I would need to document every inch of my surroundings. I couldn’t afford to miss a single thing.
Printing a copy of my novel draft, I packed my camera and boarded my flight. First stop: Mumbai, where I spent a few days visiting a friend, before striking out on my own to New Delhi.
The next ten days passed in a frantic blur. When I wasn’t snapping photos at some site of historical significance, I was ensconced in my hotel room bed, eating from room service trays as I scrawled notes on my already-dog-eared manuscript.
Room service would knock and I would bark a reply. My sheets and towels didn’t need changing, thank you very much. I could manage just fine with the ones I had.
If I had hoped to soak up the ambiance of my surroundings, I found myself too preoccupied to do even that.
Instead, I found myself staring down, first in confusion, then horror at the metal nozzle projecting on from the toilet seat, not quite ready for the culture shock presaged by a bidet.
When I was outdoors, I distracted myself with a packed schedule. This meant that I was, more or less, constantly moving at a sprint, checking off sightseeing to-do lists in advance of my departure for Rajasthan.
Relaxing, I told myself, would be a waste of my hard-earned leave time, and a plane ticket to boot. Ever the master of delaying gratification, I told myself I could take a proper vacation later, some other time, but only after I had truly earned it.
The Amber Fort in Jaipur.
II
This unwillingness to relax took its toll, however, and by the time the touring car finally arrived to whisk me away to Rajasthan, I was practically manic.
I may have already conducted a ton of research, and yet I still hadn’t completed the second draft of my novel.
Then there was the irksome fact I’d had to sacrifice a crucial train trip to several UNESCO World Heritage sites due to last-minute itinerary changes.
Having planned my visit with the goal of literally seeing everything possible, the completionist in me ached with the idea that I might miss a single thing.
And given my life was already bursting with other commitments, I couldn’t reasonably expect I’d be making a return trip anytime soon.
For the remainder of the ride to Rajasthan, I sat in the back of the car, earphones in, head bowed, reviewing page after page of my manuscript.
If I’d hoped to take satisfaction in my progress so far, I instead found the novel to be sorely wanting. The dialogue was clumsy, and the characterizations paper-thin.
Desert vistas crawled past my car window, and crumbling stonework ruins whizzed by, but I didn’t see them.
Not considering myself to be a “true” tourist, I was opposed to the camel and elephant rides that came as part of my tour package and reluctantly agreed to take them.
My driver slowed the car, pointing out to me grazing antelope. I looked up only long enough to feign wonderment, before resuming striking out text and scribbling corrections.
At the end of each day, I would lock myself in my hotel room and refuse to come out. There was still too much work to be done.
When people dragged their chairs in the restaurant one floor above, generating what sounded like thunder in my room directly below, I complained about the noise to the hotel receptionist.
Didn’t these people realize I was engaged in serious work, churning the next cross-genre literary masterpiece?
How lucky they must be, these carefree vacationers. They didn’t carry with them multiple internal timepieces that were forever ticking over. They didn’t have to fear ceaseless deadlines.
When one hostel I was staying in notified me that hot water was only available one hour of the day, I barked at the receptionist.
Didn’t he understand I ran on my own schedule? That I had places to be and things to do?
Walking among the tide pools in Mumbai.
III
My anger was proportional only to my dissatisfaction with myself. Forever hovering over me was the dreaded realization that there would need to be many more rewrites before my novel would be fit to show to the world.
And even then, when I finally did, time and distance would reveal to me a dozen blindspots that had gone unseen and undermined all my carefully planned and meticulously researched story sequences.
This was a position I had more or less already arrived at the minute I’d wrapped work on the first draft.
If there wasn’t a problem, I would be sure to find one. My reasoning? It was better to preempt criticism and get the jump on disappointment than suffer a sucker punch from a stranger.
With each leg of the journey, my tour driver grew increasingly agitated, hunching over the wheel like someone with chronic road rage, intent on mowing down whoever might cross his path.
He stopped offering me free bottles of water and stopped calling my name. I was no longer “Mr. Ehsan”, but someone to be addressed strictly out of necessity—and only then in a clipped voice.
Colorful saris in Jodhpur.
When, finally, I asked him what the matter was, he revealed he had been expecting to receive a daily tip from me.
In the years of chaperoning foreign vacationers during the height of the tourist season, my driver had apparently never met someone who clung as stingily to my purse strings as I had.
In my defense, however, I had already paid a princely sum to the tour company.
And then there was the fact that in my home country—Australia—we simply didn’t tip. Never mind my driver was expecting only a nominal amount. Not tipping him was, I told myself, a matter of principle.
Besides, I’d practically spent all the money I had getting here. And let’s remember, this wasn’t a true vacation, but a research trip.
I wasn’t some privileged Westerner with deep pockets, but a reluctant martyr for my own ambitions.
This approach did not go down very well with one of my tour guides. When I failed to tip him at the end of our two-hour-long walk, he stood over me, glowering. I pretended not to notice.
As far as I was concerned, he was the one who had breached social norms by expecting payment on top of the fee he’d already received from our tour company.
Inside the Red Fort in Delhi.
IV
The rest of the trip slipped by like an afternoon dream: majestic hill forts of gold sandstone, soaring pink city walls, a shimmering sprawl of blue buildings at the edge of the Thar desert.
Towards the end, I climbed a hill to a viewpoint frequented by tourists. Local kids had gathered to fly kites or beg politely for pencils.
One of them was singing, accompanied by a wizened man on the harmonium.
As I watched the sun dip toward the horizon, I was struck by the realization that for all the beauty that surrounded me, I was not moved. I felt in some ways cut off, my feelings trapped behind a rigid, impenetrable shell.
Since my late teens, all I’d was a steely determination to survive in the face of whatever hardships might be thrown in my path.
The skies turned from gold to amber to umber. The young singer crooned a final, wistful tune. A crack appear in the shell, and suddenly I was crying.
I felt like a jack-o-lantern that had its insides scraped out. Empty, and exhausted.
Then came the profound sense of loneliness—a stalwart companion from earlier days.
A stranger flying a kite on a hill overlooking Jaisalmer.
Rigidity as a survival mechanism
This same loneliness I credited for launching my never-ending crusade of workaholic perfectionism.
Since my late teen years, I felt perpetually harried by a need to be productive. I’d create lists of things I wanted to achieve and, one by one, ticked them off with machine-like efficiency.
My default was “bustling”. When I wasn’t running to catch buses or bolting from commitment to commitment, I was writing a new story, shooting a new film, and undertaking a new degree.
My home was not a sanctuary—it was a workplace. I spent most of my time in front of my computer, taking the occasional break to tidy, clean, cook, and work out. When I wasn’t running on a physical treadmill, I was always running on a figurative one.
Nothing I did was ever good enough; I could always do better. Everything was a problem to be fixed. There was forever room for improvement.
This philosophy extended to not just my life, but that of others as well. If all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail, and I hammered away to the detriment of my relationships.
In my mind, this behavior had the perfect rationale. I was someone with big dreams, the job I was doing wasn’t my true passion, and I lacked any sense of financial security.
The only way I was going to rise above these obstacles was by applying myself.
These standards I had set for myself, however exacting they might seem to others, were in my estimation fair.
If I could learn to follow them with religious zeal—so why couldn’t they?
As righteous as I felt on this path, what I failed to acknowledge was that this work I endlessly generated for myself was really just a kind of coping mechanism.
For too long, I had been troubled by the sense that something fundamental was wrong in the world; something that threatened my sense of wholeness, worthiness, and safety.
But so long as I stayed in the saddle of workaholism, I could avert the many impending crises I imagined loomed large over my life.
Grandiosity, or Obsessive Compulsive Personality Disorder?
My behavior, I would later learn, had all the hallmarks of Obsessive-Compulsive Personality Disorder (OCPD).
OCPD, according to the DSM-5, involves a more “a pervasive pattern of preoccupation with orderliness, perfectionism, and mental and interpersonal control, at the expense of flexibility, openness, and efficiency”.
Key traits of OCPD include:
Preoccupation with details, rules, lists, order, organization, or schedules
Perfectionism that interferes with task completion
Excessive devotion to work and productivity
Being overly conscientious, scrupulous, and inflexible about matters of morality, ethics, or values
Being unable to discard worn-out or worthless objects without sentimental value
Reluctance to delegate tasks or to work with others unless they follow your precise way of doing things
People with OCD experience uncontrollable, persistent thoughts (obsessions) and behaviors (compulsions), which they often have some degree of insight about.
People with OCPD on the other hand cling to their way of doing things and seem comfortable with their self-imposed systems of rules, believing nothing is inherently wrong with their style of thinking.
A positive diagnosis
My trip to India represented a crisis point in my life. The rigid habits, rules, and structure by which I’d lived my life had been challenged, and the control I was forever grasping was slipping from my grasp.
When presented with demands to change, rather than making the necessary concessions, I dug in. Unstoppable force, meet immovable object.
The misunderstanding and misery that had resulted could, in hindsight, have easily been averted.
I could, for example, have surrendered my constant need for productivity and been more mentally present, and actually enjoyed this once-in-a-lifetime experience.
I could have also smoothed ruffled feathers by tipping my driver and guides, rather than stingily withholding.
It would take some years—and many more immovable objects—however, before I would achieve true insight into my behavior.
And even then, surrendering my self-appointed moral high ground would prove no easy task.
Essy Knopf is a therapist who likes to explore what it means to be neurodivergent and queer. Subscribe to get all new posts sent directly to your inbox.
Confessions of a Control Freak is a memoir blog series exploring the impact of Obsessive Compulsive Personality Disorder, its origins, and the rocky path to recovery. Names and identifying details have been changed to protect the privacy of all featured individuals. Subscribe to receive all future posts. More about OCPD here.
I
“Police car!” I murmured.
At the far end of the alley, a police van had crawled into view. No sooner was it glimpsed, however, did the vehicle reverse back the way it had come.
My filming companion Nia looked up from the camera viewfinder.
“I can’t see anyone?” she said. “I think we’re good.”
At that very instant, we were standing a few feet from the McDonald’s parking lot, recording a scene for one of my college film assignments.
A still from our rather daring shoot.
By scene, I am referring to a few shaky shots of me approaching the storefront, toy handgun in hand.
It was meant to be a cinematic allusion to a shooting that had occurred in the 80s. Minus, of course, the shooting part.
Nia and I had spent the past 15 minutes filming me doing multiple takes of me walking up an alley in a hoodie and taking a few bold strides across the lot.
After each take, we’d return to the alley to review the footage, whereupon I would identify some fault. Either I was walking too fast, the shot was too shaky, or the framing was somehow off.
I’d asked Nia if she didn’t mind “getting one more in the can”. A freshman keen for more filming experience, she’d obliged.
Soon, what had started as a quick-and-dirty exercise had ballooned out to become my own private Ben Hur.
“I’m pretty sure I just saw a paddy wagon,” I said, after a moment.
“Well, they’re gone now,” Nia said, raising the camera for another take.
“OK,” I said warily, “but this is the last take.”
Certainly, this wasn’t the first time today I’d said it, but this time I meant it.
I was part way across the McDonald’s parking lot when I heard a shout.
“Drop the weapon!”
Officers burst from cover, surrounding me like in some scene from a cop show, guns pointed in readiness to shoot.
Instinct took over and I squatted, placing the toy gun on the ground.
“On your knees,” one of the officers shouted. “Hands behind your head.”
Next thing I was being cuffed and forced onto my face. Somewhere nearby I heard Nia’s voice.
“We’re making a student film,” she cried, playing the part. “The gun isn’t real! The gun isn’t real!”
“Shut up!” someone barked. My pockets were searched and a barrage of questions followed.
Me in one of many roles I would play over the years.
Did I have anything on me I shouldn’t have? Did I not realize that from a distance my gun had looked real? That I had been this close to being shot?
“Not that I’m aware”, “apparently not”, “it never entered my mind”, went my responses.
Little did the officer questioning me know that a few hours prior, I had considered painting over the toy gun’s fluorescent orange tip “for the sake of realism”, only to change my mind at the last minute.
This reflexive decision may have been what ultimately saved my life.
I tried, lamely, to explain myself, while the officer chastised me for my recklessness. It was revealed that just before Nia and I had shown up, a McDonald’s patron had called the police to report her child missing.
This patron had been sitting in her four-wheel drive, parked in the McDonald’s lot when I’d rolled up, toy gun in hand. Our eyes had even met on the first take.
By the second take, however, the woman had vanished. It was only now I realized that she in her panic had somehow connected her child’s disappearance with my appearance and called the cops on me.
II
I was 19. Just a kid, really. And I was about to be arrested and charged. My fledgling film career—if that was what you wanted to call it—was, as of that moment, over.
But after a few minutes, the police officers realized the extent of my naivety, and Nia and I were let go with only a warning.
We drifted back to the college campus, shell-shocked, trying to process what had just happened.
I eventually made my way home, vowing to never do something so stupid again. A few hours after my brush with death, I worked up the will to look through the footage on my desktop.
The resulting footage proved rather dramatic. Applying a black-and-white filter conveyed a certain impression of documentary realism. Our little gambit, it seemed, had paid off.
But there was one problem. We had plenty of takes of me approaching the McDonalds, but none of me firing the gun. We hadn’t, in short, got the money shot…pun not intended.
And given the gun was barely visible in my low-res MiniDV footage, how would viewers ever realize what I was trying to depict?
The “money shot”.
The solution was obvious, if unpalatable, but I summoned my courage all the same. I was a serious filmmaker, and no serious filmmaker should be stopped by some fear of being arrested. Or say, killed.
Having honored my resolution not to take my life into my own hands again for a total of three hours, I collected my filming kit and went out to the front lawn of my apartment complex.
Mounting the camera on a tripod, I pointed it towards the sky. Then, checking that the coast was clear, I hit record, extended the toy gun into view, and proceeded to hammer the trigger.
I played back the shot on the camera’s built-in LCD. The result was gloriously realistic, the toy pistol’s slider flicking backward with each pull of the trigger.
Tucking the toy gun out of view, I packed up my gear and returned indoors to begin work editing my masterpiece.
III
A few days later, the assignment was complete. It wasn’t due for a few more weeks yet however, which left me with time—time should be spent sharpening the filmmaking saw.
When the due date rolled around, I had not one but three films to submit from. I showed my classmates what I had accomplished and their only response was to stare.
What person in their right mind would do a school assignment three times?
But this was, I told myself, what was required if I wanted to become a capital P Professional.
So I continued to film, adding new techniques bit by bit to my repertoire. Spooling through the raw footage, I would marvel at what I’d accomplished.
But I also wavered between a celebration of my artistic ability and insecurity.
More often than not, I was the (grudging) star of my own show.
Would my stilted acting pass for naturalistic? Would viewers appreciate that my choice to weave the camera around subjects was inspired by the rich tradition of cinéma vérité?
What I ultimately ended up with would be either worthy homages to my favorite films or confused pastiches: a little bit of everyday Italian neorealism here, a little bit of classic horror tension-building there.
As my skills improved, the bar rose. Determined to rise with it, I agonized over the little details: the choice of camera angle, the position of a prop, the lilt of an actress’s voice.
My growing competency meant that while my classmates were mastering basic editing in iMovie, I was trying to recreate Apple’s classic “silhouetted dancer” ad.
My strategy was something that may best be described as…unique.
One attempt at creating a chroma key effect involved assembling a green screen on my tiny balcony (because it offered the best lighting).
Recording myself singing the backing track required that I crouch beneath a tented mattress (because it dampened reverb).
This still was a part of a swooping camera rise, complete with racked focus, over some composite images. It took days to perfect.
Then, finally, performing the actual dancing required I shimmy and pirouette in my underwear for all my neighbors to see (because wearing clothes interfered with pulling a key).
As time went by, my experiments grew bolder. I taught myself how to operate a soundboard and assemble a 5.1 surround soundtrack, tasks which involved spending days locked in the sound-dampened gloom of a mixing studio.
I taught myself to composite live footage with special effects, creating complex tracking shots across Photoshopped fantasy landscapes.
The plastic shell of my Macbook laptop was literally going to pieces, and yet still I would sit patiently as it rendered its shot, sometimes for hours, sometimes days, leaving the entry-level computer basically inoperable.
For a final project, I directed a short film set in both modern and 1980s East Germany (despite being in Sydney, Australia), with dialogue written exclusively in German (which I didn’t speak fluently), using native Germans (who weren’t actors).
The only limits, I told myself, would be those set by my own imagination.
There was no length I wouldn’t go to for my craft.
IV
These various projects were so time-consuming that I was barely able to hold down a job.
On one hand, I was content to live on the smell of an oily rag, but on the other, the absence of funds meant I had to serve multiple roles on any given project: storyboarder, scriptwriter, sound recordist, mixer, composer, producer, director, and editor.
And when there were no actors, I would hit “record’ and insert myself in front of the camera instead.
I cast myself in a variety of roles: cosmic fetus, creepy Hollywood executive, political terrorist, medieval village boy, zombie, time traveler, and barbarian warrior. Limits of my imagination, indeed.
When one role called for me to shave my head and don a monk’s habit, I didn’t hesitate. I was a card-carrying anything-for-art-ist.
As for having no funds or actors, there were always friends I could beg to shoot, star, or be interviewed.
None of them proved immune to my approach, which could perhaps be best described as “exacting”.
I’d dominate group meetings, interrogate doubters and argue detractors into silence. If someone gave me an inch, I’d take 10 miles.
One of my less elaborate special effects composite shots, complete with grade, smoke effect, and screen shake.
Some may have dared crack a whip or brandish a chair against this onslaught, but fewer still would be able to back me in a corner.
During a shoot, I’d niggle and micromanage. Inevitably I would learn that my volunteer crew members either weren’t up to snuff or didn’t share my level of dedication, I’d shoulder them aside and take the camera or boom.
When an actor didn’t hit their mark, I’d overcorrect with detailed instructions. A dozen takes were, as a general rule, mandatory.
My “leadership”—and to call it that would be generous—was met with hostile silence and exchanged looks.
“Can you believe this guy?” my collaborators seemed to be saying to one another.
I was unrelenting; exhaustive in my film-from-every-angle approach and exhausting with my endless stream of instructions.
There was one person, Nia—poor, indefatigable Nia—however, who weathered it all, always with a bounce in her step and nary a broadside.
From her very first on-camera debut as a victim of spousal abuse, Nia carried herself with total aplomb.
When confronted with a vacant role, what did I do? I shaved my head and pulled on a monk’s habit.
When asked if she would be willing to smear her face with fake blood, she didn’t so much as blink and even offered to do it herself.
When handed a frying pan and instructed to wail on a phonebook in lieu of her onscreen abuser, Nia summoned rage with the ease of a seasoned pro.
When her role called for an emotional breakdown, Nia melted into hysterics so electrifying I almost didn’t dare to yell “cut”. And all of this on the first take.
After the incident outside McDonald’s, I wouldn’t have blamed Nia if she’d decided to back out of future projects.
Yet time and time again, Nia would turn up, eager to do anything that was asked of her.
V
There were many things Nia was prepared to tolerate in the name of my cinematic vision, but hectoring was not one of them.
Some months later, Nia turned up on a set we were both volunteering on, waving a script I had sent her several days late.
Fearing that her little flourishes might somehow signal to the crew we were amateurs, I asked if she wouldn’t mind putting it away.
“Stop bossing me around,” Nia snapped and walked away.
This show of defiance was not only out of character—it was also just plain confusing. Couldn’t Nia see I was trying to save her—and by extension, me?
Despite our little row, Nia agreed to feature in another film of mine. She was to star as a wood nymph: a malevolent, shape-shifting seductress.
Not only did Nia agree to brave the cold, sludge-filled waters of a public lake—she also did it topless.
While Nia was her usual no-questions-asked self, I sensed for the first time some reluctance. This proved our last collaboration together, and we soon fell out of touch.
Then, some years later, by pure accident, I happened to spot her crossing the campus.
“Hey, Nia!” I called. Nia turned and saw me.
“Oh, hi Essy,” she said, without so much as breaking her stride.
“How have you been?” I asked, catching up to her.
“Sorry, can’t talk—late for class!” Nia explained and left me in the dust.
This was, I understood, a dismissal…and possibly a deserved one at that.
The loss of my chief collaborator proved a blow to my filmmaking ambitions. It also left my conscience burdened more than ever by the realization that maybe—just maybe—it was my obsessiveness and not others’ lack of staying power that was driving them away.
My drive to reach some always-out-of-reach destination had meant not only that I had failed to truly make the journey, but that I also made it hospitable for my travel companions.
If people like Nia had been the cement foundations of my aspirations, I was like the workman with the earmuffs and jackhammer.
The problem wasn’t so much that I was a workaholic as that I—barring all obstacles save complete physical incapacitation—refused to settle for anything less than absolute perfection. And absolute perfection, for anybody, is a pretty tall order.
When I couldn’t get access to a location for filming, I green-screened my way into a photo instead.
I convinced myself all the same that it was one I absolutely had to meet. That road to success was not paved by half-measures, after all.
But very quickly the pursuit of perfection would bleed into other aspects of my life, sometimes quite literally. I brushed my gums so hard that they bled, then eventually started to recede.
While trying to meet one of my many perpetual deadlines, I sat at my desk, absently cramming the contents of a salad bowl into my mouth.
Thinking I was biting into a piece of capsicum, I chomped down on the tine of a metal fork instead.
Later that week, while surveying my normally perfect pearly whites in the mirror, I saw that the bottom part of one front tooth had broken off.
Most people I expect chip their teeth through genuine misadventure: a drunken faceplant or a brawl.
But not me. I had managed such a feat with nothing less dramatic than an eating implement.
This was, I realized, a case in point. My perfectionism and untiring ambition meant I was also forcing outcomes and rushing processes. Processes as basic as eating.
My little accident not only landed me in a dentist’s chair with a hefty bill—it also led me to a troubling realization.
Sooner or later, there would be another accident just like this. And the results, potentially, could prove far, far worse.
Essy Knopf is a therapist who likes to explore what it means to be neurodivergent and queer. Subscribe to get all new posts sent directly to your inbox.
