Checking In

Tomorrow I'm going to check myself into hospital. I need to, my chemical balance is all wrong and I'm a nervous wreck right now. I can't move confidently around my mind any more, I'm having to settle in one key and accept the restrictions and consequences imposed. I'm trying so hard to surrender and feel instead of think, but it's proving so hard. I don't want to become over-reliant on medication, but I have to do something because I just can't cope with it any more. I can't see beyond myself, and I hate that because I want to engage and contribute towards reality. But the fear is so bad that it's stopping me dead in my tracks.

Now normally I would continue the post by analyzing why I feel this way, but I simply haven't got the energy or the inclination to do that now. So I'm checking into hospital tomorrow, because after 5 years of social isolation I deserve a bit of rest and recuperation. I'll address the medication thing later, I just need to feel better first.

On Self-Consciousness

I went to see my doctor this evening as I have some referral forms I need her to sign. But the self-consciousness and anxiety are so bad, I had to turn back and head for home. There was a big queue and no place to sit, but that's an excuse and I know it. I left because I was too self-conscious, pulling in on myself and tensing myself up rigid. The doctor's surgery is a completely safe place to be, and my doctor is a completely safe person and a thorough professional. But still I felt unsafe, largely because I was aware of the fact that I felt unsafe. Why can't these double negatives cancel each other out, the way double negatives are supposed to?

In an earlier post I wrote about how it's the anxiety that's crippling me, since it's the anxiety that's stopping me from doing things I used to do with ease. But it's the self-consciousness that's driving the anxiety, so ultimately the self-consciousness is to blame. Yes I'm on my own for long periods of time, but so are many spiritual practitioners and they don't suffer from acute self-consciousness. Why am I so self-conscious?

I have 2 theories as to why this may be the case. (I'm aware that having 2 theories may be a part of the problem, but I'll proceed anyway). The first is to do with trying to develop my mind as an instrument, not to make music itself but to enable others to make music relative to my "position". It may well be that in doing this, I have inadvertently divided my mind into the bits that are the "player", and the bits that are "played". In other words, maybe it takes a heightened level of self-consciousness in order to make it work. Now I would argue against this, because when I'm in that zone I experience a sense of "oneness" that I do not feel anywhere or anytime else. But maybe that's the problem: maybe that sense of oneness is costing me any semblance of oneness elsewhere. Also there's the not inconsiderable fact that the rest of the world doesn't know what the hell I'm talking about when I say that I want to play my mind as an instrument. So when I step into the real world I'm effectively stepping into enemy territory, even though I do my best to convince myself that this is not the case.

The second theory is to do with infinity, or a sense and aspiration towards the infinite. My mind is inspired by the infinite and the universal, and wants to achieve things by tapping into that sense. Which is fine as far as it goes, but at the same time I'm perfectly well aware that infinity and reality are not always compatible, and that a "universal" approach to life isn't always the best thing when it comes to dealing with specifics and mudanities. In short, universalism is about potential and realism is about productivity. So what may be happening is that in "real" situations, particularly in confined spaces controlled by other people, the "real" part of me is manifesting itself as a hyper-selfconsciousness, in order to quell and eliminate the "universal" part of me which does not want to accept the limitations of the situation that I find myself in. Universalism and potentialism have always been my mind's defense against the world, and without them I get scared.

Now these are obviously weighty issues to address, and I'm still not convinced that potentialism and reality are fundamentally opposed to one another. But what matters now is that I find something to eliminate, or at the very least reduce, the chronic self-consciousness and anxiety I feel in public situations. I'm sure there are new techniques I could learn, but I'm tired of learning new techniques. I just want some peace!

Surrendering The Initiative

Hmmm, well...bit of a backward step compared with the previous 2 posts. I've still been adopting the surrender mentality, but it didn't work so well today. I walked into town as I couldn't face the bus, and once there I felt so lost and confused. Surrender is all very well and has many virtues, but it does leave one feeling ever so vulnerable and exposed. ANYONE could have picked me off today, and I would have lain down meekly and accepted it.

I believe I'm "surrendering" for the right reasons. "Surrender" to reality, surrender to feelings and think less. But the trouble is that when I reject my thoughts, they get all nasty and seek to punish me. I try to concentrate on something external, but they pull me back in towards them and pile the pressure on until I surrender, not to reality but to them. So reality wants me to surrender to it, and my thoughts want me to surrender to them. I want to surrender to become a better person, but the net result is that no actual surrendering is ever done, because the different modes of surrender contradict each other.

And it is against this backdrop that I'm seriously considering surrendering my liberty. It's not a conscious thing, just a gradual acceptance that I'm sliding towards residential care without really putting up much of a fight. Because that's what we surrender monkeys do: we don't fight. We kid ourselves it's for the right reasons, and cite notions such as "humility" and "humanity". But surrender is still surrender, and like the French we'll probably feel ashamed about it later.

So tomorrow when I go out, I'm going out in potentialista mode. I figure that if I'm going out, I might as well go out in style. Last time I did that I got seriously scared, and it triggered my current crisis with public transport. But if I'm prepared to surrender my liberty then what the fuck have I got to lose? The things that I valued have already gone.

Right, I'm signing off. Have a good night and enjoy this Wiki definition of a potentialist.

Witholding The Tears

Had a good talk with an advisor yesterday, who I initially went to see for advice on my housing and financial situation. The anxiety attacks got cripplingly bad, so much so that there were several occasions where I had to stop speaking, as the anxiety had taken over my mind and compelled me to focus on that instead. The woman advisor did a good job of reassuring me though. There were several times when I nearly walked out, but we ended up having a good chat for at least a couple of hours.

Well, I say "chat"...she did most of the talking, and all I could do was murmur acknowledgement every now and then. I'm not well and she could see that I'm not well, so I felt under no pressure to hold anything back or not let on about how bad I really feel. Although I did manage to hold the tears back...we talked mainly about my family and I kept feeling on the verge of crying, as it became apparent to me just how much I miss my family. But crying isn't going to help improve the situation. It might offer a short-term relief, but that is not enough. If I got into the crying mentality then I'd cry all the time, and it wouldn't change a damn thing.

It's good to talk though.

Repeating The Mantra

Now I've written about this before, but it's worth repeating so I'll write it again. It follows on from the previous post about anxiety, but is more geared towards those of us with actual personality disorders whose disorder and fragmentation becomes heightened and exaggerated in states of anxiety. Anyway, hope I'm not repeating myself too much.

My biggest source of anxiety is confined spaces; more specifically, confined spaces inhabited (and in some cases controlled) by other people. My abject fear and world-weariness means that I now suffer anxiety in pretty much any environment, but confined spaces are still pretty much the number one cause of alarm. I have a number of different ways of dealing with that anxiety, most of which work to a certain degree. But it is that process which exacerbates the problem. Because I have no definitive method of coping which works every time, what happens is that my brain becomes scrambled and I find myself jumping around between different mental states, trying desperately to settle in one until another scary thought pops up and forces me to switch again. Which, in a contained environment populated by other people, isn't exactly the most sensible thing to be doing.

Method Number One is the most reliable and the one that works the most often. The mantra for this method is simply "stop thinking". So I do. I simply imagine my thoughts as intertwined with the nervousness, and simply let go of it. I can literally feel the weight being lifted off my shoulders, and after a while it does tend to calm me down. I still have thoughts, but the thoughts seem to be at a much safer distance. "Well if this method works so well", I hear you say "then why don't you stick with it every time?" Because it doesn't seem like a long-term solution, that's why. Simply choosing to keep scary thoughts at a safe distance doesn't deal with the underlying causes of why I'm getting those thoughts in the first place. The problems come when I mentally "switch off", and a method such as this relies on never switching off. That said, since this method is able to pacify me on a train for 2 hours then it certainly has its merits.

Method Number Two tells me to stop thinking too, but in a different way. Rather than "letting go" of my fear and self-consciousness, I surrender to it and attempt to feel it rather than think it. I try to imagine a negative trade-off between feelings and thoughts...ie, the more I feel the less I think. This is the state of mind that I adopt for the visual meditations that I've started doing, because I feel compelled towards this state of mind by the images that I'm seeing. What I do with this method is to imagine that the nervousness represents bodily restraint and restriction, and assume that the fear I feel is in reality a fear of being contained within a body. So in this sense, the physical fear sensations can be seen as a kind of gravitational pull that is quite literally grounding me and holding me in place. The "fear" comes from thinking thoughts that attempt to transcend the limits of bodily restraint. Now when done correctly, this method can be very successful. It really relaxes me and enables me to sleep more deeply than I otherwise would. But the drawback is that it makes me feel very vulnerable and fragile, and as such is probably not the most suitable for crowded public places or transport. It does work, but it only works if I get myself in the correct place, and in public I find that very hard.

And so we come to Method Number Three. Method Number Three relies on good old-fashioned gumption, hard work and the art of Being A Man. The mantra here is simply "hold your nerve". Don't let go of it, don't surrender to it, just hold it and hold on tight. This method makes me feel stronger and more resilient than the other two, but I can always feel the fear bubbling under the surface. What tends to happen is that the fear becomes too much, and I end up "letting go" as per method number one. I never like doing this, but the object of the exercise is to feel the most calm and not to feel the most "manly". However it is in this state of mind that I feel the most like a responsible citizen, so there are always forces within me telling me that this is the right mentality to adopt. It's not that the other methods discourage responsibility; it's just that this method makes me the most aware of it. But as you've probably gathered by now, the awareness is a big part of the problem. There is no "good" and "bad" awareness...just a chronic self-consciousness that I need to get rid of.

In some ways I'm probably fortunate to have these coping strategies, as it's definitely better than having no coping strategies at all. But if only I could find a way of integrating them all into one universal strategy that didn't contradict itself then I'd be right as rain! I have to get the bus into town today, which I'm absolutely dreading as I haven't got the bus in weeks. But if all goes well then I'll feel much empowered by that.

EDIT: I started off with the first method and didn't get the bus into town, but switched to the second method and got the bus home. Guess that vindicates that then. I feel all empowered now!