LEGO and Politics...
...in both cases, mine.
The first part of this essay (before the paywall) quotes from two of my previous posts about LEGO. Just an FYI that if some of this feels familiar, it’s because you are a longtime and careful reader, and you’re not imagining it.
I woke up this morning with the kind of paradoxical dilemma that I am exceptionally good at creating for myself.
For the first time in over a month, I really felt like writing. I had something on my mind that I could sit down and enjoy writing. Not the kind of white-knuckle-willpower-through-it-with-a-fake-smile stuff I’ve been doing since depression wrestled me to the ground, where I remain with its hands around my throat. Something I would actually enjoy writing about.
But…it was a political topic.
I’ve pulled far, far away from writing about politics since last summer, occasionally sticking a toe in that water and then running away again.
I miss it, though I still physically shudder when I remember the incident that caused me to stop — a story that is behind the paywall — because I could not bear going through it again.
And yet, I’m having real-life conversations about politics that are interesting and would make for good reading, I think.
So I’m going to write about politics again, but only behind the paywall.
This is either a moderate act of bravery or a monumental act of self-sabotage, and I really cannot tell which, which implies it might be the latter. You paid subscribers might be witness to a car wreck in slow motion, ha ha.
Before the paywall break — a word about LEGO.
I’ve been putting together a lot of LEGO lately. I just finished assembling the Hubble Telescope, which means a lot to me because Nancy Roman, the “Mother of Hubble,” is one of my favorite historical mathematical women.
And I’ve also assembled the White House, including with a model of President Trump I ordered specially. Some pictures here:
LEGO sets for adults might be the best therapy for complex trauma that I’m aware of. Yes, LEGO makes an enormous selection of sets for adults. They are typically beautiful, complicated, and challenging. Even if you follow the instructions as carefully as you can, you can make a mistake that quickly compounds and need to start over.
What does this have to do with helping oneself with complex trauma?
When children are very young, their parents’ emotional attunement sets the stage for their entire lives.
When an infant, baby, or very young child is in distress and their parents provide comfort and helpful attention, ending the distress, the child’s developing psyche, mind, and brain learn important lessons:
Distress is not permanent.
Fears are usually unfounded and don’t have to be immediately acted upon.
Suffering doesn’t last forever.
Things are sometimes bad, but they get better quickly, because the world is a fundamentally benevolent place.
Problems are temporary, and solvable.
It is safe to not panic. Terrible things don’t happen just because a situation feels terrible.
Children with caring parents develop the ability to tolerate frustration and work through problems. They do not have to convince themselves that problems are solvable or rationalize their way through not panicking. Their nervous systems are “programmed,” for lack of a better word, to deal with the realities of a problem, without the additional difficulty of a ton of emotional baggage attached.
As the child grows and becomes capable of reason, the parents teach the child how to solve their own problems. The child is able to learn these lessons from the parents in large part because the parents spent the first several years of the child’s life serving as a kind of reassurance dispenser—a secure base from which they can gradually wander farther away, without fear, knowing the base is always prepared to receive and protect them.
Why would you not trust those people to teach you how to be like them—safe, competent problem-solvers who can be relied upon?
When a child is neglected, they never learn these lessons.
When a child’s distress brings violent attention, or the parental reaction causes pain in other ways—such as verbal or emotional abuse—their nervous system goes in the opposite direction.
Frustration becomes a cue that something terrible is about to happen and it’s time for fight/flight/freeze/fawn mode.
Therapists call this “limited frustration tolerance.”
I have a couple of hypotheses about why LEGO is so therapeutic for limited frustration tolerance, complex trauma, and general well-being.
First, it feels creative, and it is in a sense. Obviously, there’s a sense in which it isn’t, especially these theme sets. They come with numbered bags and step-by-step instructions. But there is a sense in which it is absolutely a creative hobby. You start with raw materials and when you’re finished, you have a piece of something that’s arguably a piece of art. It’s something that’s colorful and interesting, brings joy, and provokes emotion—which makes it art-adjacent, at the very least. So I think it’s fair to say that putting together a LEGO set scratches a creative itch, of some sort.
This is PTSD-therapeutic because it’s life-affirming. Something exists, something pleasurable and enjoyable, that did not exist before. PTSD brains can always use some affirmation of life being worth living.
Second, it’s challenging. Not always, but often—as mentioned, some of the sets marketed at 18+ are in fact very challenging:
The typewriter has over 2,000 pieces — necessary to make the carriage move, the bell sound, and the rest of its wonderful little details. But it’s pretty small. Many sets have only 1,400 to 1,500 pieces that are three times bigger. It’s an incredibly challenging build.
The typewriter required me to start over from scratch several times, as I made small mistakes that quickly compounded. Meeting a challenge is always something I experience as life-affirming, in retrospect if not in the moment.
I’m looking forward to the challenge of the Van Gogh’s Sunflowers set, which I have ordered and will be shipped to me in early March:
LEGO is PTSD-therapeutic because it’s a type of challenge that helps increase frustration tolerance, and does so quickly. Starting over on a build after a mistake is starting over on something fun and that can be recovered fairly quickly, so it’s a type of instant gratification, in a very weird way.
Third, it requires basically zero maturity. There is no delayed gratification here, even on the sets that take thirty or forty hours. If I work on a build for an hour, when I walk away there is an hour’s worth of progress.
Things that are PTSD-therapeutic often require staggering amounts of trust—and in people, places, and things that can’t provide certainty. Something fun, challenging, and creative that gives an hour’s worth of progress for each hour’s worth of work provides benefits while requiring a minimal amount of trust, which is helpful. So much of PTSD-recovery is extremely hard work that finding one thing that helps me manage my disorder but is fun has been wonderful.
And that’s the final point for my argument that LEGO is a great PTSD-therapeutic hobby: it’s fun. Giving oneself permission to do something that’s purely and only fun is often hard for people, especially people who are troubled. It took me a long time to be able to give myself enthusiastic permission to do things that are just purely fun, but I can do it now. And I love it.
Onto the political stuff: what I think about DOGE and Trump 2.0’s first couple of weeks, as well as the most effective way of enlightening left-leaning-but-not-insane people about trans insanity that I’ve found.
Behind the paywall.