Allusive thinking, as the name suggests, is not quite conceptual thinking, but a type of tacit thinking which engenders a particular state of consciousness. It'll be easier to explain what I mean by this idea by showing what it is NOT. Devising theories, or explicit techniques to handle my obsession, is the opposite of allusive thinking. For example, I have emphasized the importance of energy dynamics, positivity, self-interpretation, bass, self transcendence, and a plethora of other ideas as cues to put me into a desired state of mind. While these ideas can work sometimes, they often exhaust themselves, possibly reifying into mental structures which hyper-emphasize the underlying problem. Thus, the more I 'rely' upon such ideas, the more the underlying idea which those techniques seek to upend become emphasized. Research by David A Clark and Christine Purdon in their book 'overcoming obsessive thoughts' has shown that the most effective treatment for OCD (without recourse to drugs) is to lessen the importance of the obsession. In short, explicit mental techniques dont seem to be very helpful.
The trick with allusive thinking is its calm and non-reactive approach. Instead of scurrying through my mind searching for that mental panacea, allusive thinking concentrates on that state of mind amenable to recovery. I call this approach allusive because its far more quiet and unassuming than the other approach. Here, the mind decides to remain calm, eschews avoidance tactics, and with an iron will insists on a particular viewpoint, all it seems with the power of a whisper.
The allusive thinking technique exercises an attention that recedes to the subconscious level while the conscious mind actively engages other thoughts. But if a deviation might occur, instinctively the unconscious precursor quietly slides to the conscious forefront and adjusts perspective.
The magic of this technique is its prowess in allowing my mind to be occupied with an external thought without the prying insecurity of "how I sound" while monitoring my progress. In general, whenever I act the same neural process is repeated: I speak in a state of self observation, cued to the sound of my voice, and my voice is 'stressed', which is to say, being tensed by the larynx, causing the sound which emerges to lack the bass and naturalness of confidence. This process is a feedback loop. The poor self esteem engenders the same conscious experience during speech, which in turn reenforces low self esteem. In essence, we are we imagine ourselves to be; we are continuously influenced by our own self observations.
This technique seems to momentarily extricate myself from the tense or "traumatized" state of watching myself as I speak. Whenever I speak, I am "intercepted", it seems, by the inveterate urge to 'prepare' myself for speech. This is the initial urge to watch myself - to monitor how I will do. Instead of taking speech as a matter of fact thing, something which necessarily follows an idea which entrances the mind and results in speech, I have become inured to speaking with the intention to hear myself, with the corollary, attending to the act of speech itself. You can only imagine the degree of frustration this can cause, since it upsets the single most enjoyable aspect of human experience: communication. My ability to make friends, meet a woman, have a social life, all of this has been decimated by the presence of this insecurity. I am haunted by the thought. My fear is no longer of social situations per se, as it is my fear of my lack of control over my fear.
Two things need to be worked upon: my sense of self i.e. my sense of self worth, and the tendency to self observation during speech, in effect diffusing my attention from the thing spoken about to an insecurity about my ability to discuss the thing spoken about. This is the personal and impersonal dimensions of my problem. In order for me to sustain a state of self awareness (or transcendence of self during speech) I need to be aware that I am worthy and deserving of this experience, and the concomitant impression it may have on others.. At the same time, I need to retrain my mind to speaking without watching myself as I speak. This is what I am attempting to do with this allusive thinking approach.
With allusive thinking, I emphasize a state of self transcendence without being too adamant about it. Guiding myself through little pokes here and there, but remaining sufficiently quiet enough for my conscious mind not to get caught up in self observation.
Wednesday, 17 April 2013
Monday, 15 April 2013
My Mantra for Living
The door to happiness opens outward.
Kierkegaard is the man who made this statement, but Viktor Frankl built an entire school of psychology upon it.
The key to overcoming my problem is through this. While I am distracted by my anxiety - by my obsession - and with it, a relentless sense of self observation, somehow, repeating this mantra, encouraging myself to pursue other thoughts, by some magical power, my mind calmly engages different ideas. This in itself is liberating. But the wicked perk of it all is that when I reflect on how I look, I dont have any sense of 'embarassment' or discomfort. I feel natural simply because, as Frankl once said: "for the true man, however, is not concerned about some condition in his soul but about objects in the world; he is primarily ordered and directed to them, and it is only the neurotic man who is no longer, as is the normal man, objectively oriented; rather he, the neurotic, is primarily interested in His own subjective condition."
Kierkegaard is the man who made this statement, but Viktor Frankl built an entire school of psychology upon it.
The key to overcoming my problem is through this. While I am distracted by my anxiety - by my obsession - and with it, a relentless sense of self observation, somehow, repeating this mantra, encouraging myself to pursue other thoughts, by some magical power, my mind calmly engages different ideas. This in itself is liberating. But the wicked perk of it all is that when I reflect on how I look, I dont have any sense of 'embarassment' or discomfort. I feel natural simply because, as Frankl once said: "for the true man, however, is not concerned about some condition in his soul but about objects in the world; he is primarily ordered and directed to them, and it is only the neurotic man who is no longer, as is the normal man, objectively oriented; rather he, the neurotic, is primarily interested in His own subjective condition."
Sunday, 14 April 2013
Facillitating Change
The hardest thing for me to make sense of is how to think differently. In the state I'm in now, I seemingly can't think of anything else other than "my" insecurity. I'm currently in the computer lab at the library. For some reason, I can hardly make a move without feeling inhibited by an oppressive sense of self consciousness. What is this self consciousness? How does it feel like in action? If I move my head to look at someone, at the forefront of my mind is "how I look"; as mentioned, in an earlier post, I am cued to the externalities of behavior - to how I look when I act, or how I sound when I speak, and intertwined with these experiences is a gnawing sense of anxiety, or insecurity, varying in degree from a simple awareness of discomfort (in my self consciousness) to an anxious fidgetiness.
It's not exactly easy to move from a state of anxious self consciousness to a relaxed self awareness, in which ones own thoughts and feelings directly incite action, and not a preconceived idea which tinges incoming ideas with its emotional complexity.
The key is dereflection. Dereflection entails moving your mind away from thoughts it's usually cued to. This can't be done in a vacuum state. Another thought replaces the neurotic thought in dereflection. Neurologically speaking, the other thought stimulates new circuitry, thus initiating a different 'experience'. But dereflecting away from an emotional content which has been hammered in hundreds of thousands of times through repetition without the aid of antidepressants is by no means a cinch. When you enter an environment where triggers abound, you have to ceaselessly redirect yourself back to the dereflecting thought. It's especially difficult when in such situations to maintain a contrary focus when the emotional triggers surreptitiously implant ideas that usually accompany the feelings themselves. For example. I'm feeling good, I make eye contact with someone. Prior to making eye contact I may have been completely "in myself", completely absorbed in something else. But in that split second experience I seemingly bounce back out of myself. I become sidetracked with another thought, an image of how I may look at that moment. This image is packed with emotional memory - stirring feelings of inferiority, weakness, a childlike appearance, vulnerability. At other times, I might be doing so well that someone else may be looking at me - maybe they find me attractive? In all likelihood, this is what is probably happening. But once I see another person watching me, I bounce back out of myself. The sheer thought of myself being "objectified" by another person - seeing me as attractive, handsome, likeable, etc - I feel temped to go outside myself again. I realize that these are feelings spurred on by an inferiority complex - vestiges of experiences I had from my high school days. Despite my tremendous intellectual and spiritual growth in the intervening years, I'm still carrying around Michael the 15 year old. The Michael who hasn't yet grown up - who doesn't quite yet feel like a man.
One cannot do justice describing the existential frustration I feel with this situation. I have such profound belief in myself and the abilities of the human mind, but as of now, I'm still stymied by echoes from the past.
I hope and believe that dereflection will train my brain to respond differently to these social situations. The amygdala is what triggers these negative stress responses. Dereflection moves my mind away from amygdala stress circuits, allowing my mind to experience these situations differently. When my body loosens further, I find my external behavior to be an afterthought to the moment of acting, following my internal wishes, rather than anticipating them. In short, keeping my mind from the stress center - from the stress response triggered by the amygdala - allows me to 'shift' (which is handled by the caudate nucleus in the basal ganglia) unconsciously. Repetition of this behavior will produce results similar to the mind I currently have. Although 'planning' occurs before I act, eventually the emotional resonance will be all that will remain. I will casually - and with ease - act without consulting my voice, the externalities, and hopefully, I will good enough about myself to not question my inherent worth as a human being.
It's not exactly easy to move from a state of anxious self consciousness to a relaxed self awareness, in which ones own thoughts and feelings directly incite action, and not a preconceived idea which tinges incoming ideas with its emotional complexity.
The key is dereflection. Dereflection entails moving your mind away from thoughts it's usually cued to. This can't be done in a vacuum state. Another thought replaces the neurotic thought in dereflection. Neurologically speaking, the other thought stimulates new circuitry, thus initiating a different 'experience'. But dereflecting away from an emotional content which has been hammered in hundreds of thousands of times through repetition without the aid of antidepressants is by no means a cinch. When you enter an environment where triggers abound, you have to ceaselessly redirect yourself back to the dereflecting thought. It's especially difficult when in such situations to maintain a contrary focus when the emotional triggers surreptitiously implant ideas that usually accompany the feelings themselves. For example. I'm feeling good, I make eye contact with someone. Prior to making eye contact I may have been completely "in myself", completely absorbed in something else. But in that split second experience I seemingly bounce back out of myself. I become sidetracked with another thought, an image of how I may look at that moment. This image is packed with emotional memory - stirring feelings of inferiority, weakness, a childlike appearance, vulnerability. At other times, I might be doing so well that someone else may be looking at me - maybe they find me attractive? In all likelihood, this is what is probably happening. But once I see another person watching me, I bounce back out of myself. The sheer thought of myself being "objectified" by another person - seeing me as attractive, handsome, likeable, etc - I feel temped to go outside myself again. I realize that these are feelings spurred on by an inferiority complex - vestiges of experiences I had from my high school days. Despite my tremendous intellectual and spiritual growth in the intervening years, I'm still carrying around Michael the 15 year old. The Michael who hasn't yet grown up - who doesn't quite yet feel like a man.
One cannot do justice describing the existential frustration I feel with this situation. I have such profound belief in myself and the abilities of the human mind, but as of now, I'm still stymied by echoes from the past.
I hope and believe that dereflection will train my brain to respond differently to these social situations. The amygdala is what triggers these negative stress responses. Dereflection moves my mind away from amygdala stress circuits, allowing my mind to experience these situations differently. When my body loosens further, I find my external behavior to be an afterthought to the moment of acting, following my internal wishes, rather than anticipating them. In short, keeping my mind from the stress center - from the stress response triggered by the amygdala - allows me to 'shift' (which is handled by the caudate nucleus in the basal ganglia) unconsciously. Repetition of this behavior will produce results similar to the mind I currently have. Although 'planning' occurs before I act, eventually the emotional resonance will be all that will remain. I will casually - and with ease - act without consulting my voice, the externalities, and hopefully, I will good enough about myself to not question my inherent worth as a human being.
Wednesday, 10 April 2013
A Self Analysis
I recently read Dr. Jeffrey Schwartz book "The Mind and the Brain" which concentrates chiefly on OCD and it's ability to demonstrate self willed neuroplasticity.
After reading it, I feel compelled to make a distinction between the OCD which involves an outward behavior, and an obsession in thought intimately entangled with one's self esteem.
In my case, there is no action which I feel compelled to compulsively engage in, besides the fact that my obsession with my voice involves an unconscious tension during speech. When the obsession is outward action-oriented, there's a certain freedom, insomuch as action is easier to control than thought. In any case, there's a more stringent type of mindfulness needed to program thinking in a certain direction than there is with action..
However, I did find Dr. Schwartz 4 steps to be edifying, specifically the topic of questioning. A question is a cue; when I ordinarily ask a question, I am highlighting some reality which I expect a certain answer from. Likewise, in our daily living, we all unconsciously pose questions to our environments, such as inquiring thoughts "where will I sit". Or, If I'm looking for a book, my mind all of a sudden becomes cued to the titles on the spines on the book shelf. Even if were not actively posing questions in the form of thoughts, we radiate an unconscious question in some tacit feeling that pops up involuntarily, following a course based upon previous behavior patterns.
As said, my problem isn't your usual OCD thought-behavior; there is a thought "I look insecure" or "I wont speak right" which is fed into my overall self perception - "I am a person who acts insecurely" or "I am a person who doesn't speak with confidence". The ego would be a pointless mental appendage outside of human-to-human interaction, and since the ability to interact relies on the ability to effectively communicate, if your obsession happens to be with the sound of your voice, concomitantly, you will be dealing with poor self esteem. And as we all know, the ego is unstable: it constantly seeks validation, security, power. I'm not saying other types of OCD cant ultimately be linked to underlying self esteem issues, I'm merely saying my problem feeds into a poor sense of self by inhibiting my ability to effectively communicate - the very mechanism we use to build self esteem and self transcend.
An example from the current moment might help explain what I mean.. I am in the computer lab in the library, with a kid to my left, and two girls directly in front of me. My thinking mind feels inclined to think along ordinarily well established lines: I feel like it is very easy for me to become uncomfortable in this situation, which manifests in thoughts such as a gnawing awareness of my activity and a tendency to criticize myself after any specific action that appeared in my minds eye as "wrong". Being so attuned or "cued" to my behavior in such an environment creates frameworks of cognition which constellate around a general negative emotion or feeling: If I feel "insecure", thoughts will emerge which assess my behavior vis a vis other individuals in my immediate vicinity, in a negative light. If someone happens to look at me, I'll self consciously look back - and it is this "self conscious" part which occurs unconsciously, paradoxically. I'm self conscious out of habit, not out of will. The self consciousness seems to butt into consciousness due to an overall state of bodily tension, a feeling unconsciously cultivated whenever I enter a situation that usually triggers discomfort. Out of this tension arises the medley of thought forms which daily obsess me.
This predicament elicits the question: am I cued to my insecurity because I feel a bodily tension? or am I feeling bodily tension because of an attitude which cues me to the insecurity? It's the proverbial chicken and the egg issue. Jeffrey Schwartz and other researchers maintain that a certain part of the individual (in the dorsolateral cortex) remains apart from the circuitry (the orbitofrontal cortex) involved during obsessing. As such, this part could "commandeer" control of the mind by choosing to focus on something other than what the mind is usually cued to. The tricky part is, how? How do I get myself to attend to thoughts other than the usual insecurity when I feel so insecure? How do I shake off the insistence of the feeling? Especially when the feeling itself conceals the even greater question of Michael the individual? The self esteem question subtends the obsession itself. At times, I can be so excited about the power of effective thinking that the anticipation itself creates a "mental jam", precluding me from moving my mind to a place that will stand apart from the usual grooves hedged out by years of daily thinking.
The answer might lie in the word "feel". Unlike with the obsessive action-oriented thoughts, someone with my particular issue needs to emphasize wholesome, good circuitry. He specifically needs to concentrate on uplifting emotions, which helps to orient him to a whole new realm of thought forms.
When the negative emotion arises, I need to isolate it in thought. I have to recognize it, and by doing so, prevent it's ability to evolve into dysfunctional thought forms. While doing this, I allow myself to relaxingly engage in whatever activity I'm intending to do. If I want to type, as I'm doing right now, I do so without monitoring my physical appearanc - a morbid thought arising from a state of tension. Instead, I almost "unconsciously" act without monitoring myself as I act. I become the actor, the player, the participant and sole creator of my own actions. I am cued to a different world - my thought is "clinging" to something other than what it is usually drawn to Because this is such a fresh feeling, I can sometimes wonder to myself how unusual it is, or rather, how unusual I am in my current mental state.
It's both remarkable and horrifying to see things so clearly from below. I am still experiencing the emotion, and still suffering the reality, of being so inured to an existence which, vibrationally speaking, is depressive. If it weren't for the obsessive routine of my thinking - the fact that I am distracted by an emotional content - I would be far more conscious of the presence of a depression.
Dr. Schwartz rightly emphasizes the need for positive thinking. Viktor Frankl emphatically professed that only a neurotic is preoccupied with the state of his soul rather than something "out there" in the field of reality. I've taken up this motto for living, actually considering of getting a tattoo on my forearm of Kierkagaards aphorism "the door to happiness opens outward".
In my case, there is no action which I feel compelled to compulsively engage in, besides the fact that my obsession with my voice involves an unconscious tension during speech. When the obsession is outward action-oriented, there's a certain freedom, insomuch as action is easier to control than thought. In any case, there's a more stringent type of mindfulness needed to program thinking in a certain direction than there is with action..
However, I did find Dr. Schwartz 4 steps to be edifying, specifically the topic of questioning. A question is a cue; when I ordinarily ask a question, I am highlighting some reality which I expect a certain answer from. Likewise, in our daily living, we all unconsciously pose questions to our environments, such as inquiring thoughts "where will I sit". Or, If I'm looking for a book, my mind all of a sudden becomes cued to the titles on the spines on the book shelf. Even if were not actively posing questions in the form of thoughts, we radiate an unconscious question in some tacit feeling that pops up involuntarily, following a course based upon previous behavior patterns.
As said, my problem isn't your usual OCD thought-behavior; there is a thought "I look insecure" or "I wont speak right" which is fed into my overall self perception - "I am a person who acts insecurely" or "I am a person who doesn't speak with confidence". The ego would be a pointless mental appendage outside of human-to-human interaction, and since the ability to interact relies on the ability to effectively communicate, if your obsession happens to be with the sound of your voice, concomitantly, you will be dealing with poor self esteem. And as we all know, the ego is unstable: it constantly seeks validation, security, power. I'm not saying other types of OCD cant ultimately be linked to underlying self esteem issues, I'm merely saying my problem feeds into a poor sense of self by inhibiting my ability to effectively communicate - the very mechanism we use to build self esteem and self transcend.
An example from the current moment might help explain what I mean.. I am in the computer lab in the library, with a kid to my left, and two girls directly in front of me. My thinking mind feels inclined to think along ordinarily well established lines: I feel like it is very easy for me to become uncomfortable in this situation, which manifests in thoughts such as a gnawing awareness of my activity and a tendency to criticize myself after any specific action that appeared in my minds eye as "wrong". Being so attuned or "cued" to my behavior in such an environment creates frameworks of cognition which constellate around a general negative emotion or feeling: If I feel "insecure", thoughts will emerge which assess my behavior vis a vis other individuals in my immediate vicinity, in a negative light. If someone happens to look at me, I'll self consciously look back - and it is this "self conscious" part which occurs unconsciously, paradoxically. I'm self conscious out of habit, not out of will. The self consciousness seems to butt into consciousness due to an overall state of bodily tension, a feeling unconsciously cultivated whenever I enter a situation that usually triggers discomfort. Out of this tension arises the medley of thought forms which daily obsess me.
This predicament elicits the question: am I cued to my insecurity because I feel a bodily tension? or am I feeling bodily tension because of an attitude which cues me to the insecurity? It's the proverbial chicken and the egg issue. Jeffrey Schwartz and other researchers maintain that a certain part of the individual (in the dorsolateral cortex) remains apart from the circuitry (the orbitofrontal cortex) involved during obsessing. As such, this part could "commandeer" control of the mind by choosing to focus on something other than what the mind is usually cued to. The tricky part is, how? How do I get myself to attend to thoughts other than the usual insecurity when I feel so insecure? How do I shake off the insistence of the feeling? Especially when the feeling itself conceals the even greater question of Michael the individual? The self esteem question subtends the obsession itself. At times, I can be so excited about the power of effective thinking that the anticipation itself creates a "mental jam", precluding me from moving my mind to a place that will stand apart from the usual grooves hedged out by years of daily thinking.
The answer might lie in the word "feel". Unlike with the obsessive action-oriented thoughts, someone with my particular issue needs to emphasize wholesome, good circuitry. He specifically needs to concentrate on uplifting emotions, which helps to orient him to a whole new realm of thought forms.
When the negative emotion arises, I need to isolate it in thought. I have to recognize it, and by doing so, prevent it's ability to evolve into dysfunctional thought forms. While doing this, I allow myself to relaxingly engage in whatever activity I'm intending to do. If I want to type, as I'm doing right now, I do so without monitoring my physical appearanc - a morbid thought arising from a state of tension. Instead, I almost "unconsciously" act without monitoring myself as I act. I become the actor, the player, the participant and sole creator of my own actions. I am cued to a different world - my thought is "clinging" to something other than what it is usually drawn to Because this is such a fresh feeling, I can sometimes wonder to myself how unusual it is, or rather, how unusual I am in my current mental state.
It's both remarkable and horrifying to see things so clearly from below. I am still experiencing the emotion, and still suffering the reality, of being so inured to an existence which, vibrationally speaking, is depressive. If it weren't for the obsessive routine of my thinking - the fact that I am distracted by an emotional content - I would be far more conscious of the presence of a depression.
Dr. Schwartz rightly emphasizes the need for positive thinking. Viktor Frankl emphatically professed that only a neurotic is preoccupied with the state of his soul rather than something "out there" in the field of reality. I've taken up this motto for living, actually considering of getting a tattoo on my forearm of Kierkagaards aphorism "the door to happiness opens outward".
Monday, 8 April 2013
Background History: It all started with Bullying
I sometimes find it surprising when I find myself understating the significance of bullying in schools. It's not that I don't care, but for some reason, I don't seem to show much interest in it. Yet the irony is, my story begins here.
I was never bullied - so far as I can remember - before grade 7, age 12. During this period in my life, my mom was beginning to go through a 3 year long major depression. I didn't know it at the time, but the depression, strife and emotional havoc in my home life exerted an unconscious power while I was at school. For some reason, I began feeling more depressed, which in my case, manifested as a shyness, insecurity and overall resistance towards socializing. I didn't understand why I understood this way, it was odd. The year before, I spent my summer playing sports with the guys I hung out with at school; tennis at the courts, or soccer, or basketball. I was short, probably the shortest person in my grade, but I made do with it. I got along with my oftentimes self deprecating humour. In short, I was short, and instead of concentrating on that, I pretended that I didn't care. It worked when I was more or less happy, and my home life was functional.
The next year, grade 8, was completely different. While I experienced more bullying towards the end of grade 7, and especially in the summer before grade 8, it hadn't metastasized into anything significant. I just more or less processed the jabs about my height or my hair (I had a "fro", although I wasn't black, I was the closest thing at the time in the very white school I attended) in a different way. This was obviously connected to the disarray at home. In Grade 8, a new kid entered our school. I was in a split grade 7-8 class, I was in the 8th grade, while the new kid, Adam Mcdennis, was in this 7th grade. Despite this fact, Adam entered school with a certain reputation of unruliness and unconformity. At age 12, he was around 5'10, lanky, wore a looped nose ring, bleached blonde hair, and the whole skater look. I sensed in Adam an aura of indifference about whether people liked him, about school, about rules. I found this quality intimidating. He was taller than me by over a foot, and when he spoke, he had such a nonchalance about manner or decency, that I had every reason to feel a little trepidation about socializing with him.
Why was Adam interested in me? I don't know, but I like to speculate as to why. First, I do know that Adam didn't have a stable home life; I knew he had moved from Vancouver where his dad lived to come to the GTA. My first impression on him probably influenced his subsequent designs against me. I was shy - always was. But that year I simply felt less oomph. It had started in the summer prior - at the same time that my mom was exhibiting mental instability at home. Adam probably saw in me something he seemed to particularly hate: weakness. I was feeling week, overwhelmed by the emotions of a tattered home life, the stress of school and socializing, and Adam, in his predatorial way, took advantage.
The school year began in September. I didn't have the endurance to finish in June. I left school in late April or early May because of the stress, anxiety and trauma caused from the bullying. I went to school depressed, experienced the heat, shame and anxiety for hours on end until the bell rang, and went home ashamed of my weakness and my fallen social status. At this same time, I had been badly bullying my younger brother, and was abusing my dog. It was all occurring unconsciously. I was hiding it all from others - I managed to convince my mom, despite my complaints about bullying, that it was really my "muscles" that were hurting. The illusion wore on long enough for my mom to claim to my teacher and principle that I had some undisclosed neurological disorder. I was later told by classmates that rumour had it that I had multiple sclerosis.
The bullying was horrendous. Till this day, its still somewhat muffled, as I did a very thorough job trying to suppress the memory of it. But plenty of details persist. I remember having to do group projects - and the anxiety I would experience figuring out who I would work with. Alas, I would be paired up with someone who also had social difficulties (and who also may have been autistic). This was completely unlike my earlier experiences at school. Again, I was shy, but I hadn't been disabled by anxiety from acting despite my fear. But now, the sheer presence of Adam Mcdennis imposed a burden on me. The bullying began with him; in others, it was more or less 'teasing' rather than malicious bullying. In him, the teasing of the earlier year had transitioned into emotional abuse. And with his lead, others began to follow, although to a lesser extent.
Especially humiliating was the effect it had on my friend Ross. In grade 7, I had built a pretty close friendship with a guy named Ross. Ross was the typical mischief maker, but at the same time, he seemed to have a goodness about him - an honesty, or simplicity, that made being with him easy. But in grade 8, all of a sudden things changed. In the new social context, Mike wasn't as popular as he had been before; his social status had more or less deteriorated into nothingness. It would be a social faux pas to hang around with him. Understandable, I suppose. However, Ross didn't play a passive role, but rather, became an active player. Easily girded on by others, Ross contributed to the pain of the bullying. Of course, the chief architect of it all was the sociopathic Adam Mcdennis. Not only was he malicious, lacking even the semblance of empathy, but he was also popular, allowing him to recruit others into bullying me.
The net affect of grade 8 and age 13 on my life is impossible to understate. For the last 12 years, since age 16, I have been dealing with PTSD, OCD, all revolving around social anxiety. What happened between age 13 and age 16? I had managed to rehabilitate myself the next year in high school. I had "made" a new Mike. But alas, as fortune would have it, Adam Mcdennis entered the same high school that I attended the following year. In the summer before grade 10, Adam had coincidentally entered the same social network that I was apart of. And to make things weirder, my best friend in grade 9, John, his brothers best friend was Adams older brother, Sean. The connections couldn't have been worse for me. Throughout that summer, my name and my reputation fell in peoples eyes, no doubt due to the slanderous words of Adam Mcdennis. By the end of grade 9, my PTSD had returned, the anxiety I first experienced in grade 8 forced me to leave school in the first semester, forcing me to finish the semester in a special program at the board of education across the street. That summer, age 15, I began showing a fanatic interest in basketball, and midway through summer my moms cousin graciously recommended a youth basketball camp that was associated with the Toronto Raptors basketball team. I decided to go. Unbeknownst to me at the time, pretty much the entire group of people I was encountering were black. After a summer of playing basketball with the coolest people I could think of, I decided to enrol back at my old school, once again, reinvented, this time with a fake Carribbean accent, as spoken by Toronto's black youth. This time was the last time. The pressures were too great, my memory to resilient. I had never properly recovered or addressed the bullying that started it all. By the end of grade 11, I had a complete mental breakdown. I never spoke to anyone at school; I hardly spoke to anyone at home. And when I did speak, to my frustration, all I heard was anxiety, tension, unconfidence. It was as if the trauma had become "locked in", burned into my neural pathways. At that time, I didn't know what was wrong with me, but again, I had too much pride to acknowledge that there was anything wrong.
Fast forward 12 years.
I am a 27 year old man. Since age 20 I have been educating myself daily, searching for ways to help myself. I have grown and matured a great deal in that time period. I am but a faint echo of the Michael that I once was. I know myself inside and out. I am philosophical, scientific, and religious. The point of this blog is to combine two very important subjects: the real life effects of bullying on human beings after they leave school, and the amazing power of the human mind to affect change in the human brain.
As of this moment, I am still in the grips of my obsession. To explain my pathology quickly: I have PTSD brought on by bullying. My PTSD eventually evolved into an OCD - an obsessive monitoring of my voice as a I speak. Because I had begun imitating the black Carribean accented youth I admired at the basketball camp, I had made myself particularly cued to the externalities of speech. Because it was coming from without - that I was manufacturing the sound, based not on real feeling, but on a conscious belief that I was superior because of my connection to 'cool' black people, eventually, over time, this attitude combined with the resurgent trauma creating an obsession pathologically akin to body dysmorphia: instead of finding faults with my body, I found them in my voice. Because I didn't realize that the trauma was the source of the anxiety I was hearing in my voice, I began to "try" harder to make it sound normal. The harder I thought about it, the more entangled in it I became. The sheer fact of my inability to properly communicate with others made the prospect of socializing beyond my immediate family mortifying. As such, I have mostly broken most of my connections with cousins.
Nevertheless, I believe in the power of the human mind to engraft physical change on the human brain. Many PET scans show this; plenty of people, from sufferers of OCD, PTSD, Depression, Tourettes, and other commorbidities, have shown an ability to affect change through sheer will power.
Please join me in my journey. I am 12 years into this. I desperately want to get out of it. I believe I have the power to do it, as I believe all people have the power to shape the kind of minds they want to have, and the types of lives they want to live.
I was never bullied - so far as I can remember - before grade 7, age 12. During this period in my life, my mom was beginning to go through a 3 year long major depression. I didn't know it at the time, but the depression, strife and emotional havoc in my home life exerted an unconscious power while I was at school. For some reason, I began feeling more depressed, which in my case, manifested as a shyness, insecurity and overall resistance towards socializing. I didn't understand why I understood this way, it was odd. The year before, I spent my summer playing sports with the guys I hung out with at school; tennis at the courts, or soccer, or basketball. I was short, probably the shortest person in my grade, but I made do with it. I got along with my oftentimes self deprecating humour. In short, I was short, and instead of concentrating on that, I pretended that I didn't care. It worked when I was more or less happy, and my home life was functional.
The next year, grade 8, was completely different. While I experienced more bullying towards the end of grade 7, and especially in the summer before grade 8, it hadn't metastasized into anything significant. I just more or less processed the jabs about my height or my hair (I had a "fro", although I wasn't black, I was the closest thing at the time in the very white school I attended) in a different way. This was obviously connected to the disarray at home. In Grade 8, a new kid entered our school. I was in a split grade 7-8 class, I was in the 8th grade, while the new kid, Adam Mcdennis, was in this 7th grade. Despite this fact, Adam entered school with a certain reputation of unruliness and unconformity. At age 12, he was around 5'10, lanky, wore a looped nose ring, bleached blonde hair, and the whole skater look. I sensed in Adam an aura of indifference about whether people liked him, about school, about rules. I found this quality intimidating. He was taller than me by over a foot, and when he spoke, he had such a nonchalance about manner or decency, that I had every reason to feel a little trepidation about socializing with him.
Why was Adam interested in me? I don't know, but I like to speculate as to why. First, I do know that Adam didn't have a stable home life; I knew he had moved from Vancouver where his dad lived to come to the GTA. My first impression on him probably influenced his subsequent designs against me. I was shy - always was. But that year I simply felt less oomph. It had started in the summer prior - at the same time that my mom was exhibiting mental instability at home. Adam probably saw in me something he seemed to particularly hate: weakness. I was feeling week, overwhelmed by the emotions of a tattered home life, the stress of school and socializing, and Adam, in his predatorial way, took advantage.
The school year began in September. I didn't have the endurance to finish in June. I left school in late April or early May because of the stress, anxiety and trauma caused from the bullying. I went to school depressed, experienced the heat, shame and anxiety for hours on end until the bell rang, and went home ashamed of my weakness and my fallen social status. At this same time, I had been badly bullying my younger brother, and was abusing my dog. It was all occurring unconsciously. I was hiding it all from others - I managed to convince my mom, despite my complaints about bullying, that it was really my "muscles" that were hurting. The illusion wore on long enough for my mom to claim to my teacher and principle that I had some undisclosed neurological disorder. I was later told by classmates that rumour had it that I had multiple sclerosis.
The bullying was horrendous. Till this day, its still somewhat muffled, as I did a very thorough job trying to suppress the memory of it. But plenty of details persist. I remember having to do group projects - and the anxiety I would experience figuring out who I would work with. Alas, I would be paired up with someone who also had social difficulties (and who also may have been autistic). This was completely unlike my earlier experiences at school. Again, I was shy, but I hadn't been disabled by anxiety from acting despite my fear. But now, the sheer presence of Adam Mcdennis imposed a burden on me. The bullying began with him; in others, it was more or less 'teasing' rather than malicious bullying. In him, the teasing of the earlier year had transitioned into emotional abuse. And with his lead, others began to follow, although to a lesser extent.
Especially humiliating was the effect it had on my friend Ross. In grade 7, I had built a pretty close friendship with a guy named Ross. Ross was the typical mischief maker, but at the same time, he seemed to have a goodness about him - an honesty, or simplicity, that made being with him easy. But in grade 8, all of a sudden things changed. In the new social context, Mike wasn't as popular as he had been before; his social status had more or less deteriorated into nothingness. It would be a social faux pas to hang around with him. Understandable, I suppose. However, Ross didn't play a passive role, but rather, became an active player. Easily girded on by others, Ross contributed to the pain of the bullying. Of course, the chief architect of it all was the sociopathic Adam Mcdennis. Not only was he malicious, lacking even the semblance of empathy, but he was also popular, allowing him to recruit others into bullying me.
The net affect of grade 8 and age 13 on my life is impossible to understate. For the last 12 years, since age 16, I have been dealing with PTSD, OCD, all revolving around social anxiety. What happened between age 13 and age 16? I had managed to rehabilitate myself the next year in high school. I had "made" a new Mike. But alas, as fortune would have it, Adam Mcdennis entered the same high school that I attended the following year. In the summer before grade 10, Adam had coincidentally entered the same social network that I was apart of. And to make things weirder, my best friend in grade 9, John, his brothers best friend was Adams older brother, Sean. The connections couldn't have been worse for me. Throughout that summer, my name and my reputation fell in peoples eyes, no doubt due to the slanderous words of Adam Mcdennis. By the end of grade 9, my PTSD had returned, the anxiety I first experienced in grade 8 forced me to leave school in the first semester, forcing me to finish the semester in a special program at the board of education across the street. That summer, age 15, I began showing a fanatic interest in basketball, and midway through summer my moms cousin graciously recommended a youth basketball camp that was associated with the Toronto Raptors basketball team. I decided to go. Unbeknownst to me at the time, pretty much the entire group of people I was encountering were black. After a summer of playing basketball with the coolest people I could think of, I decided to enrol back at my old school, once again, reinvented, this time with a fake Carribbean accent, as spoken by Toronto's black youth. This time was the last time. The pressures were too great, my memory to resilient. I had never properly recovered or addressed the bullying that started it all. By the end of grade 11, I had a complete mental breakdown. I never spoke to anyone at school; I hardly spoke to anyone at home. And when I did speak, to my frustration, all I heard was anxiety, tension, unconfidence. It was as if the trauma had become "locked in", burned into my neural pathways. At that time, I didn't know what was wrong with me, but again, I had too much pride to acknowledge that there was anything wrong.
Fast forward 12 years.
I am a 27 year old man. Since age 20 I have been educating myself daily, searching for ways to help myself. I have grown and matured a great deal in that time period. I am but a faint echo of the Michael that I once was. I know myself inside and out. I am philosophical, scientific, and religious. The point of this blog is to combine two very important subjects: the real life effects of bullying on human beings after they leave school, and the amazing power of the human mind to affect change in the human brain.
As of this moment, I am still in the grips of my obsession. To explain my pathology quickly: I have PTSD brought on by bullying. My PTSD eventually evolved into an OCD - an obsessive monitoring of my voice as a I speak. Because I had begun imitating the black Carribean accented youth I admired at the basketball camp, I had made myself particularly cued to the externalities of speech. Because it was coming from without - that I was manufacturing the sound, based not on real feeling, but on a conscious belief that I was superior because of my connection to 'cool' black people, eventually, over time, this attitude combined with the resurgent trauma creating an obsession pathologically akin to body dysmorphia: instead of finding faults with my body, I found them in my voice. Because I didn't realize that the trauma was the source of the anxiety I was hearing in my voice, I began to "try" harder to make it sound normal. The harder I thought about it, the more entangled in it I became. The sheer fact of my inability to properly communicate with others made the prospect of socializing beyond my immediate family mortifying. As such, I have mostly broken most of my connections with cousins.
Nevertheless, I believe in the power of the human mind to engraft physical change on the human brain. Many PET scans show this; plenty of people, from sufferers of OCD, PTSD, Depression, Tourettes, and other commorbidities, have shown an ability to affect change through sheer will power.
Please join me in my journey. I am 12 years into this. I desperately want to get out of it. I believe I have the power to do it, as I believe all people have the power to shape the kind of minds they want to have, and the types of lives they want to live.
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