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!

Facing The Music

Ok so it's time I nailed this once and for all: I am a maker of MUSIC. So what if my method isn't conventional, and if to others it's barely comprehensible. It is what it is, and it's mine.

This came to a head tonight, and in a way I'm glad it did. I got very agitated about someone coming round tomorrow, as I don't get to see too many people too often. So I'm scampering around my head at my usual million miles an hour, fretting about how I'm going to handle the whole situation. Broadly speaking, I have 3 different techniques to try and reduce my anxiety. The first is to stay on top of it and "hold my nerve", so to speak. The second is to let go and try to keep the thoughts as dim and distant as possible. And the third is simply to surrender to it and accept it; the theory being that if I'm upset about it then I'm not scared. The comfort of being sad I suppose.

But what happens in heightened states of anxiety is that while my thoughts are racing, the 3 techniques are all contradicting each other and vying for supremacy inside my head. The net result is that none of the above can ever truly take hold, because there are always agitated forces within me compelling me to settle in a different frame of mind instead. And of course, the fatal flaw with all of the above is that while I'm using these techniques to try and control my anxiety, then I'm thinking about it all the time.

So tonight I was racking my brains, and it drove me to the edge of despair. Yes these techniques reduce my anxiety, but what will make it go away? And then it hit me: the music does. The music in my head makes it all go away. So then I started to listen, and it all came flooding back. When I listen to the music in my head, I'm not anxious anymore. When I listen to the music in my head, no-one...no anxiety, no people, no expectations, can touch me. Because when I'm listening to the music in my head, I'm not listening to the voices. I'm listening to the voice.

And armed with this not-so-new realisation, it suddenly occurred to me just what an immense privilege it is to hear music in my head. I'm almost ashamed to say that I'd never thought of it like that before. Because it's always been such a noose around my neck, I've always considered it more of a curse than a blessing. But think about it: I have a schizoid mind, yet that schizoid mind is prevented from becoming schizophrenic by music. Music is the glue that holds it all together, and without that glue I fall apart. And that's when it hit me, for the first time in years, just what an immensely powerful tool I have here. And I have to say that it re-ignited something within me that really should never have gone out.

It seems to me that fragmentative illnesses such as schizophrenia can only truly be cured by universals. That is to say, the stuff that addresses each of the fragments, while retaining the constancy of the core message. The idea being that although you're addressing the many, you're simultaneously addressing the one. And as far as I can see, there are three such universals in life. The first is love, but unfortunately universal love is something that many fragmented minds have little or no first-hand experience of. Maybe it has been offered to them, but for whatever reason they have felt unable or unwilling to accept. The second universal is math, and by that I mean math in it's purest and most mystical form. Now while there is no denying that such math holds a peculiar fascination for the fragmented mind, it can also be a bit too complicated for tired minds to get around.

And the third universal? That'll be music then.