That's really interesting! I'm autistic and a horticulturalist... I don't think I've ever had fantasies where I myself, my body, takes on plant characteristics, but I very often personify plants alongside my study of them. E.g. researching a plant that doesn't grow well with high rainfall or poor water drainage, I'll say "they don't like having wet feet" (as in, their roots cannot handle a lot of water). I'll also use images/stories that involve plants to describe to myself and others how I'm feeling.
Thank you for sharing! Your lived experience is very interesting and provides a deepening of what was presented in the video as identification can both direct and indirect and humanising Plants fits in brilliantly with the video so thank you !
@@keylanoslokj1806 I am sorry that you understood the video in such a way it was more in my eyes about the study of subjectivity rather than an mental illness.
@@talkingpsychology i mean and normies most usually use their peers and partners as emotionally masturbatory tools to cope with daily survival. But i don't see anyone sweating about it. Yet when autists dare have a niche interest "boohoo!, see what those weirdos are up to again, bunch of tree hugging plant whisperers!"
I understand your perspective but for me everyone has a subjective experience and it is bizarre for everybody it isn't about one being 'pathological' and other one 'normal' it is more about investigating the phenomenology of humanity. That being said I understand that Autistic people are more likely to be labelled than others even if the nature of phantasy might be more extreme for others than autistic. Anyway take care and if there is anything else please feel free to ask.
This is fascinating information and I like your presentation. Subscribed for more. I'm autistic, a horticulturist and a forest technician. I’ve always felt deeply connected with nature. Growing up, I had favorite trees I spoke with and would spend entire days exploring the forest. Trees are wise, sentient, interconnected beings, and I’ve always felt a sense of mutual trust between us. I’ve never had any specific plant-based fantasies, but I do envy them. I’ve always wished I could photosynthesize.
Thanks for your subscription! I hope my future content will interest you. Also a desire to photosynthesis could seen be a sign of unconscious identification ( at least on a psychoanalytic level) but please feel free to disagree if it doesn't fit your lived experience. Anyway thanks for sharing and have a great day/night!
i relate to this so much! i love biology but i could never figure out why i just don’t connect with animals the way i do with plants. if i had to choose between a person and animal, i’d go with animals, but between an animal and plant, plants just feel more correct. i’ve this deep fascination with the way roots wrap everything up and how soil is everything and nothing at the same time. the idea of laying down in the grass and watching it grow around me is something i imagine constantly.
I'm a hypnotherapist and do a type of deep hypnosis where people take an inner healing journey. These journeys are a bit like conscious dreams, but generally much more clear and detailed. These journeys embody experiences that help the person understand more about themselves. A few times people identified as plants and trees in sessions, and interestingly at least one of those people was autistic. One session comes to mind.... the person started crying and when I asked if she was ok, she said she was crying tears of joy. She said she felt so stable, and free. She described the feeling of sun on her leaves and feeling every tiny root filament reaching toward water molecules. She explained that the sense of freedom came from total acceptance. She said there was no judgement of self ... if a branch died and fell off, it was not judged as a failing, just part of the process of being a tree.
As an autistic person this is super fascinating. I frequently say I wish I was a plant, more specifically lately moss but that may just be because I like the way it feels and I like the things it tends to live on (rocks, trees, etc.) The reasoning for me is similar to what you referenced at 5:26 (the hustle and bustle) when I feel overwhelmed and like I wasn't made to live this way, I find myself wishing I was a plant. No capitalism, no war, no existential dread, no sensory overload, no conflict, no worrying about purpose or meaning or time, no ableism, no guilt, no grief, no need to prepare food every single day of our freaking life, I could go on for hours.. just photosynthesize and chill. It's in a way the most pure form of life. Living purely for the sake of being alive. Absorbing what it needs from the world and releasing what the world needs in return, resulting in an ecosystem. Plants of course have their own challenges, they can get sick, burned, eaten, dehydrated, etc. but from what we know of plants it doesn't hurt the same way. If a human lives life with simply the purpose of living a life, they're deemed lazy, worthless, a burden on others, unmotivated, unambitious, etc. I just think the plants have the right idea, y'know? I find the ideas you shared here interesting (stability, freezing, predictability, relatability, etc.) because I have wondered why we're relating plants specifically? (I've seen other autistic people online talking about the whole plant thing too) when something such as bacteria for example works similarly (no feelings, capitalism, trauma, etc.) but we always go to plants. I feel like I could write an essay on this so I'll stop here. Thank you for the very thought provoking video! Glad to know I'm not the only one who feels this way and finds it an interesting phenomenon.
Thank you for your feedback and your kind words. In my Clinical experience ( ie work with autistic patients) I can guarantee you that this mental phenomenon is shared by many autistic individuals. Also if I were to guest on why it is plants rather than bacteria or cells. I would say it is because the process of identification to the external environment starts during early childhood ( 2-3 years old) and at that age plants are the only 'observable' quiet life thus the autistic child can relate to the calmness and stability ( in both time and posture) of the plants. Whereas bacteria and micro organisms much be understood on a intellectual level which isn't directly observable for a young child. But this is only a guess so I might be off. Anyway thank you for sharing and have a wonderful day/night.
I like to imagine what it would be like to be a tree quite often. I've always just thought they were super cool being just as alive as me but with such a completely different sensory network. What's it like to be alive and largely unable to move except to grow or angle your leaves? Does the sun feel nice? Is pain felt when a branch breaks? Can the tree feel themselves grow or do they wake up one day and realize they're taller than when they last took inventory; Like a child realizing their old shoes don't fit anymore? If their roots touch other tree roots, can they talk together? Do they have friends and family? Is stress easier to handle when there's no brain to have to think about the stress? Do they know that there are other creatures that move around them? So many questions I love to think about.
This was fascinating. One thing that it's left me wondering is can autism change with therapy? Or instead is it about greater awareness and possibly coping better? Again, I come back to my own experience. In childhood I spent inordinate amounts of time in forests and came to develop an intense interest in trees: I could name lots of different species and had an interest in lanscapes, scenery and so on. This even extended to things made of wood. However, after two bouts of therapy - in which these interests weren't the focus and never arose - I have lost all interest in trees, forests, landscapes or things made from wood. They say the past is a foreign country but looking back I can barely recognise the person I was. Nowadays, when I have the desire to go out into the world, I want to be surrounded by people in a cafe or a public place. The forest and the trees seem to have been replaced by people and crowds in my seeking of experience. In some ways my processing of emotion has become less wooden, if you excuse the pun. You mentioned in another video that autistic people often have a problem with their experience of aggression. However, say in a successful engagement with therapy - and of course it doesn't work for many people - the person becomes better able to stay with aggressive feelings (either in the self or the other) does that greater emotional depth in the ego mean they've become a bit less autistic?
Thank you for your comments and for sharing your lived experience. So to answer your question in my experience autism itself isn't the issue but the over adaptations or the under adaptations autistic people make with the environment. In this sense therapy can help them make more meaningful and less hurtful adaptations. And Agression is a important emotion to get others to respect one's boundaries. As such therapy helps them navigate both the external and internal worlds ( Mitwelt and Eigenwelt).
Yes, I think you're right. Healthy aggression is essential to navigate the relationships and interactions in life. I think when there is some form of psychopathology or maladption a deep feeling and expression of this emotion is lost to the personality. Would this be described as an inhibition? It gets projected out and the person reacts - aggresively but not conciously - or avoids the object of the projection. I suspect this also sets off fears of retaliation and then excessive guilt if any of this 'bad' emotion is actually felt within the person. Is this the consequence of Klein's postulation that a healthy adult can only emerge if the child has been able to work through persecutory and depressive anxiety?
@curieux1789 yes I do feel being unable to express Agression and make it manifest leads to inhibition both emotional and intellectual and stunts the growth of the ego. And I do believe that a more mentally balanced individual is one that was able to experience and integrate tge Kleinian Paranoid-Schizoid position and the depressive even if I believe that we never fully overcome them and life events reactivates them. Anyway thank you and have great day!
This still hits home. On deeper reflection it can also explain attraction towards Taoism and/or other Earth-based religions. Taoism with their views of "being like water" is synonymous with plant life. The Tao (God) is described as a "non-entity". They also have the Nei Jing Tu diagram that describes internal alchemical energies of the body to mimic that of processes found in nature. Small flowers crack concrete. A creek can turn into a river and wash away villages and mountains, over time. There is great strength in being gentle and soft.
@@talkingpsychology I'm resisting the urge to info-dump too much here. But that's all it's about. The root of Taoist virtues revolves around softness. A quietening and softening the breath, softening your mental activity, and softening your presence to such a degree that one becomes "invisible" such that one blends into the void of the Tao.
@plantstho6599 thanks for the info the only taoist book I read was the Tao Te Ching by Laozi over 15 years ago I liked how the way is a set of apparent contradictions but that the art is to unify the opposites ( at least that is what I took from it when I was 18) thanks again and have a great day!
The plants were here first, they made the oxygen so other life could develop. I’ve read a spiritual tract about how we all came from plants; and a scientific work about how ancient the brain structures and genes are which connect to autism and how the Autistic brain is nothing new, it goes back as far as prehistoric fish. Perhaps the connection to plants in dreams etc is deep in the genes of all of us.
though it was going to be a video about plant based diet, or people who leave the carnist ideology for a more ethical one, and if there's a link between autism and ethics/acceptance of harmful dogma. but this seems more interesting. cool!
@@keylanoslokj1806 i thought it would be more the other way around that someone with NPD (sorry if i pontificate) but as far as i know they tend to lack empathy, so i though they would more likely be in to the norm that is carnism or the far end of stuff like carnivore stuff, but i guess people with npd who have learned cognitive empathy may be more inclined towards ethical veganism as it is fairly logical if you want to minimise harm done. just my assumptions so may be very very wrong here. but it would be a interesting video to see! when it comes to veganism i think it's also important to not forget that animal oppression is intersectional with human oppression, carnism is a ideology that perpetuates harm not only to animals but also humans, a great book that goes in to this is undoing human supremacy. have a fantastic time!
That's really interesting! I'm autistic and a horticulturalist... I don't think I've ever had fantasies where I myself, my body, takes on plant characteristics, but I very often personify plants alongside my study of them. E.g. researching a plant that doesn't grow well with high rainfall or poor water drainage, I'll say "they don't like having wet feet" (as in, their roots cannot handle a lot of water). I'll also use images/stories that involve plants to describe to myself and others how I'm feeling.
Thank you for sharing! Your lived experience is very interesting and provides a deepening of what was presented in the video as identification can both direct and indirect and humanising Plants fits in brilliantly with the video so thank you !
@@talkingpsychologyyou guys just try to label and pathologise everything
@@keylanoslokj1806 I am sorry that you understood the video in such a way it was more in my eyes about the study of subjectivity rather than an mental illness.
@@talkingpsychology i mean and normies most usually use their peers and partners as emotionally masturbatory tools to cope with daily survival. But i don't see anyone sweating about it. Yet when autists dare have a niche interest "boohoo!, see what those weirdos are up to again, bunch of tree hugging plant whisperers!"
I understand your perspective but for me everyone has a subjective experience and it is bizarre for everybody it isn't about one being 'pathological' and other one 'normal' it is more about investigating the phenomenology of humanity. That being said I understand that Autistic people are more likely to be labelled than others even if the nature of phantasy might be more extreme for others than autistic. Anyway take care and if there is anything else please feel free to ask.
This is fascinating information and I like your presentation. Subscribed for more.
I'm autistic, a horticulturist and a forest technician. I’ve always felt deeply connected with nature. Growing up, I had favorite trees I spoke with and would spend entire days exploring the forest. Trees are wise, sentient, interconnected beings, and I’ve always felt a sense of mutual trust between us. I’ve never had any specific plant-based fantasies, but I do envy them. I’ve always wished I could photosynthesize.
Thanks for your subscription! I hope my future content will interest you. Also a desire to photosynthesis could seen be a sign of unconscious identification ( at least on a psychoanalytic level) but please feel free to disagree if it doesn't fit your lived experience. Anyway thanks for sharing and have a great day/night!
i relate to this so much! i love biology but i could never figure out why i just don’t connect with animals the way i do with plants. if i had to choose between a person and animal, i’d go with animals, but between an animal and plant, plants just feel more correct. i’ve this deep fascination with the way roots wrap everything up and how soil is everything and nothing at the same time. the idea of laying down in the grass and watching it grow around me is something i imagine constantly.
Thank you for sharing your lived experience!
I'm a hypnotherapist and do a type of deep hypnosis where people take an inner healing journey. These journeys are a bit like conscious dreams, but generally much more clear and detailed. These journeys embody experiences that help the person understand more about themselves. A few times people identified as plants and trees in sessions, and interestingly at least one of those people was autistic. One session comes to mind.... the person started crying and when I asked if she was ok, she said she was crying tears of joy. She said she felt so stable, and free. She described the feeling of sun on her leaves and feeling every tiny root filament reaching toward water molecules. She explained that the sense of freedom came from total acceptance. She said there was no judgement of self ... if a branch died and fell off, it was not judged as a failing, just part of the process of being a tree.
@@clovers72 thanks for sharing your clinical work!
........ it all makes sense now.
I am glad that this video was though provoking for you!
As an autistic person this is super fascinating. I frequently say I wish I was a plant, more specifically lately moss but that may just be because I like the way it feels and I like the things it tends to live on (rocks, trees, etc.) The reasoning for me is similar to what you referenced at 5:26 (the hustle and bustle) when I feel overwhelmed and like I wasn't made to live this way, I find myself wishing I was a plant. No capitalism, no war, no existential dread, no sensory overload, no conflict, no worrying about purpose or meaning or time, no ableism, no guilt, no grief, no need to prepare food every single day of our freaking life, I could go on for hours.. just photosynthesize and chill. It's in a way the most pure form of life. Living purely for the sake of being alive. Absorbing what it needs from the world and releasing what the world needs in return, resulting in an ecosystem. Plants of course have their own challenges, they can get sick, burned, eaten, dehydrated, etc. but from what we know of plants it doesn't hurt the same way. If a human lives life with simply the purpose of living a life, they're deemed lazy, worthless, a burden on others, unmotivated, unambitious, etc. I just think the plants have the right idea, y'know?
I find the ideas you shared here interesting (stability, freezing, predictability, relatability, etc.) because I have wondered why we're relating plants specifically? (I've seen other autistic people online talking about the whole plant thing too) when something such as bacteria for example works similarly (no feelings, capitalism, trauma, etc.) but we always go to plants.
I feel like I could write an essay on this so I'll stop here. Thank you for the very thought provoking video! Glad to know I'm not the only one who feels this way and finds it an interesting phenomenon.
Thank you for your feedback and your kind words. In my Clinical experience ( ie work with autistic patients) I can guarantee you that this mental phenomenon is shared by many autistic individuals. Also if I were to guest on why it is plants rather than bacteria or cells. I would say it is because the process of identification to the external environment starts during early childhood ( 2-3 years old) and at that age plants are the only 'observable' quiet life thus the autistic child can relate to the calmness and stability ( in both time and posture) of the plants. Whereas bacteria and micro organisms much be understood on a intellectual level which isn't directly observable for a young child. But this is only a guess so I might be off. Anyway thank you for sharing and have a wonderful day/night.
What are you on about mate
Everything :D
I like to imagine what it would be like to be a tree quite often. I've always just thought they were super cool being just as alive as me but with such a completely different sensory network. What's it like to be alive and largely unable to move except to grow or angle your leaves? Does the sun feel nice? Is pain felt when a branch breaks? Can the tree feel themselves grow or do they wake up one day and realize they're taller than when they last took inventory; Like a child realizing their old shoes don't fit anymore? If their roots touch other tree roots, can they talk together? Do they have friends and family? Is stress easier to handle when there's no brain to have to think about the stress? Do they know that there are other creatures that move around them? So many questions I love to think about.
So many interesting questions on the phenomenology of plants! Thanks for sharing and take good care!
This is so interesting because I started imagining people and how they function or how their brains function as trees! I think it makes alot of sense
Thank you for your comment and for sharing your experience it is much appreciated!
This was fascinating. One thing that it's left me wondering is can autism change with therapy? Or instead is it about greater awareness and possibly coping better? Again, I come back to my own experience. In childhood I spent inordinate amounts of time in forests and came to develop an intense interest in trees: I could name lots of different species and had an interest in lanscapes, scenery and so on. This even extended to things made of wood. However, after two bouts of therapy - in which these interests weren't the focus and never arose - I have lost all interest in trees, forests, landscapes or things made from wood. They say the past is a foreign country but looking back I can barely recognise the person I was. Nowadays, when I have the desire to go out into the world, I want to be surrounded by people in a cafe or a public place. The forest and the trees seem to have been replaced by people and crowds in my seeking of experience. In some ways my processing of emotion has become less wooden, if you excuse the pun. You mentioned in another video that autistic people often have a problem with their experience of aggression. However, say in a successful engagement with therapy - and of course it doesn't work for many people - the person becomes better able to stay with aggressive feelings (either in the self or the other) does that greater emotional depth in the ego mean they've become a bit less autistic?
Thank you for your comments and for sharing your lived experience. So to answer your question in my experience autism itself isn't the issue but the over adaptations or the under adaptations autistic people make with the environment. In this sense therapy can help them make more meaningful and less hurtful adaptations. And Agression is a important emotion to get others to respect one's boundaries. As such therapy helps them navigate both the external and internal worlds ( Mitwelt and Eigenwelt).
Yes, I think you're right. Healthy aggression is essential to navigate the relationships and interactions in life. I think when there is some form of psychopathology or maladption a deep feeling and expression of this emotion is lost to the personality. Would this be described as an inhibition? It gets projected out and the person reacts - aggresively but not conciously - or avoids the object of the projection. I suspect this also sets off fears of retaliation and then excessive guilt if any of this 'bad' emotion is actually felt within the person. Is this the consequence of Klein's postulation that a healthy adult can only emerge if the child has been able to work through persecutory and depressive anxiety?
@curieux1789 yes I do feel being unable to express Agression and make it manifest leads to inhibition both emotional and intellectual and stunts the growth of the ego. And I do believe that a more mentally balanced individual is one that was able to experience and integrate tge Kleinian Paranoid-Schizoid position and the depressive even if I believe that we never fully overcome them and life events reactivates them. Anyway thank you and have great day!
This still hits home. On deeper reflection it can also explain attraction towards Taoism and/or other Earth-based religions. Taoism with their views of "being like water" is synonymous with plant life. The Tao (God) is described as a "non-entity". They also have the Nei Jing Tu diagram that describes internal alchemical energies of the body to mimic that of processes found in nature. Small flowers crack concrete. A creek can turn into a river and wash away villages and mountains, over time. There is great strength in being gentle and soft.
I can't say that I know Taoism that well but I like the idea of strength being found in gentleness and softness.
@@talkingpsychology I'm resisting the urge to info-dump too much here. But that's all it's about. The root of Taoist virtues revolves around softness. A quietening and softening the breath, softening your mental activity, and softening your presence to such a degree that one becomes "invisible" such that one blends into the void of the Tao.
@plantstho6599 thanks for the info the only taoist book I read was the Tao Te Ching by Laozi over 15 years ago I liked how the way is a set of apparent contradictions but that the art is to unify the opposites ( at least that is what I took from it when I was 18) thanks again and have a great day!
Great topic!
@@lapislazulis2378 thank you for your ongoing engagement and support!
@@talkingpsychology You're welcome! You have great insight and it's a pleasure earing what you have to share with us on numerous topics 😀
@@lapislazulis2378 thanks for your kind words Lapislazulis
The plants were here first, they made the oxygen so other life could develop. I’ve read a spiritual tract about how we all came from plants; and a scientific work about how ancient the brain structures and genes are which connect to autism and how the Autistic brain is nothing new, it goes back as far as prehistoric fish. Perhaps the connection to plants in dreams etc is deep in the genes of all of us.
@@tracik1277 a very interesting link indeed!
though it was going to be a video about plant based diet, or people who leave the carnist ideology for a more ethical one, and if there's a link between autism and ethics/acceptance of harmful dogma. but this seems more interesting. cool!
Thanks! Hope you enjoyed the video!
@@talkingpsychology yes!
Yeah i thought he was gonna talk about why divergents (mostly NPD folks), are attracted to "ethical veganism).
@@keylanoslokj1806 i thought it would be more the other way around that someone with NPD (sorry if i pontificate) but as far as i know they tend to lack empathy, so i though they would more likely be in to the norm that is carnism or the far end of stuff like carnivore stuff, but i guess people with npd who have learned cognitive empathy may be more inclined towards ethical veganism as it is fairly logical if you want to minimise harm done. just my assumptions so may be very very wrong here. but it would be a interesting video to see!
when it comes to veganism i think it's also important to not forget that animal oppression is intersectional with human oppression, carnism is a ideology that perpetuates harm not only to animals but also humans, a great book that goes in to this is undoing human supremacy. have a fantastic time!
@@asfasfasfasf124 no the narcissists do it to be "congratulated" as ecologists and philanthropists. That's their motive