#monkeysphere

Anthropologist Robin Dunbar studied societies like tribes and primate groups and learned that we can only have so many people close to us before things break down. Your Monkeysphere is the amount of people you have room to empathize for in your life. For humans, our Monkeyspheres are considered to be 150 people, and people outside of that number begin to turn into one-dimensional characters. It might explain why societies don't work as well as someone might think.

I have neurodivergency Issues that make me fixate intensely on a few people. It’s to the point that I wondered if I had BPD*. My Favourite People are the center of my world and if I lost any of them I don’t know what I’d do with myself. I would probably literally go mad. I feel like a Bad Person for this, because making one person the entire centre of your world is a Bad Thing and Objectifying and tl:dr I do not want to wind up becoming so obsessed with someone who doesn’t know I exist that I wind up shooting Ronald Reagan.

I also have a Save The World complex. It probably gets annoying to my friends, because if they come to me for sympathy, I try to troubleshoot.  I have been told I am competent and need to take care of myself so often that I feel like I have to personally fix all the problems that anyone is having at any given time, including myself, and if I don’t, I am a Bad Person.

On top of that, because of autism, PTSD, and working in a customer service industry, I’ve been trained to be hypersensitive to the people around me. I have to assume the best of people, make myself as small as possible, try not to get into anyone’s way, not annoy or frustrate anyone or I’m a Bad Person. If anyone gets frustrated around me, even if it’s something that has nothing to do with me whatsoever... well, you get the idea.

The problem with these three things combined with the concept of the monkeysphere- well, holy scrupulosity triggers, batman. The whole idea seems to be “you need to care about EVERYONE with the SAME INTENSITY that you care about your Favourite People. You need to fix the problems of ALL SIX BILLION PEOPLE IN THE WORLD, and you need to do it RIGHT NOW, without annoying or frustrating ANYONE or getting in ANYONE’S WAY, or you’re a morally impure terrible animal who shouldn’t exist.” 

Yeah, that train of thought is Lovecraftian levels of counterproductive, and I am completely justified in ignoring it, for my own damn sanity.