Poker is making me lose feeling.

[mosquito]

It's part of the growth process, you will learn to
seperate poker and non-emotion from the rest of
your life.

The first step was learning not to be emotional,
now you can learn to only have that in the cardroom.

Seriously. Work on it. I have gone through this,
and still am working on it. But the light is at
the end of the tunnel, you will see it.

[PairTheBoard]

What's that from A_C?

PairTheBoard

[Bodhi]

I am about to cry from laughing so much. That was the perfect text for the moment.

The first quote in this sub-thread was from American Psycho.

[A_C_Slater]

This morning I was standing by my desk in the living room on the phone with my lawyer, alternately keeping my eye on The Maury Povitch Show and the maid as she waxes the floor, wipes blood smears off the walls, throws away gore-soaked newspapers without a word. Faintly it hits me that she too is lost in a world of [censored], completely drowning in it, and this somehow sets off my remembering that the piano tuner will be stopping by this afternoon and that I should leave a note with the doorman to let him in.

Into the phone I'm saying, "I need more tax breaks." Maury Povitch is on the TV screen asking a child, eight or nine, "But isn't that just another term for an orgy?" The timer buzzes on the microwave. I'm heating up a souffle.

There's no use denying it: this has been a bad week. I've started drinking my own urine. I laugh spontaneously at nothing. Sometimes I sleep under my futon. I'm flossing my teeth constantly until my gums are aching and my mouth tastes like blood.

[mackthefork]

[ QUOTE ]
Ignorance is bliss [img]/images/graemlins/laugh.gif[/img] I havent been able to like girls ffs.


[/ QUOTE ]

Is it possible you're a bender?

Mack

[marklipp]

not 100% sure, but those passages sound like "American Psycho". He had a few issues related to feelings (or lack thereof).

[mostsmooth]

[ QUOTE ]
Your mind is a sponge. Just as water flowing into it, it swells with information and becomes hardened after its all settled in.

[/ QUOTE ]
actually, the sponge hardens when the water evaporates, no?

[The once and future king]

Ive had hang overs like that as well.

[Zygote]

I'm in the exact same boat as you. However, my loss of feeling wasn't caused by poker, but i can see why poker did this to you. Anywyas, i've been making some steps foward recently, but there is no simple answer. Bodhi actually said something really important; he said,

"What you're saying sounds like you've grasped objective reality, and now you want the illusion back. I think you can be strong enough for objective reality, don't you? "

This is essentially what happened to you. Bodhi also includes a vague solution.

So forth, I'm going to try elaborate on what i believe he was saying. Basicallly, once someone starts somewhat objectively analyzing life, they have new revelations with respect to life and these revelations are usually emotionally damaging. Now this is where the solution comes into play. Being emotionally damaged is essentially what we were trying to get away from in the first place. I must point out that the solution assumes that your ultimate goal is happiness. So under this assumption, you now dedicate your life to attaining complete control over your emotions. This is done by manipulating your emotions with sound theories. Often people say that very intellectual people can't be happy, but if they were truly intellectual, they would calculate a way to be happy.

My advice is to try and become the master of your emotions. Learn to manipulate them in ways that will improve your life and make you happy.

[Bodhi]

That was an excellent clarification! Thank you.