-Amplitude of physiological rhythms (indicated by RSA indexes) reveals ANS stress activity. If amplitude is great, the organism experiences homeostasis. If amplitude is small and restricted, organism is having trouble experiencing homeostasis and is chronically stressed
- Ways to Combat Stress: Seek to experience i.e. emotionally integrate positive external events. Such stimuli heal the body. Physiological dysregulation is marked by low amplitude in physiological rhythms. This means poor responsivity to outside events. Any SNS activation is healing; it takes the body out of its shock/dissociation by releasing undischarged energy. SNS activation subserves homeostasis. Following emotional arousal, PNS tone is normalized.
Quotes from The Polyvagal Theory:
pg. 115
"The two tiered model is hierarchical with priority given to the demands of the second tier. However, without the first tier functioning adequately and regulating homeostasis to maximize life support processes such as digestion, oxygenation, thermoregulation, and perfusion, there would be no "energy" resources available for second tier functions."
pg. 115-116
"Behavior is metabolically costly. For example, behaviors such as fight or flight responses often require massive and instantaneous increases in metabolic output.To successfully accomplish tasks of engagement and disengagement with the environment, the nervous system must divert energy resources from visceral homeostasis (e.g. smooth muscle) to observable behaviors (e.g striate muscle) that deal directly with the environment. The regulation of the vagal brake provides an index of this shift in resources. By instantaneously releasing the vagal brake, cardiac output increases to support the metabolic demands required by the behavior. Thus, the priority of the two tiered system subjugates the homeostatic needs in favor of the immediate environmental demands."
pg. 149
"Excessive sympathetic activity reflects a deviation from normal homeostatic autonomic function, which then elicits vagal activity to self-regulate and return the autonomic state to homeostasis. In individuals with high vagal tone and appropriate vagal regulation capacities, the autonomic nervous system has the capacity to react (i.e appropriate reactivity and expressivity) and to return rapidly to homeostasis (i.e. self regulation and self soothing)"
pg. 171
"Thus cortical regulation of the VVC [ventral vagal complex] requires the setting to be perceived as safe. The perception of safety, or at least, the lack of fight or flight responses, would provide a neurophysiological state in which cortical regulation of medullary nuclei could promote proximity and increase the probability of reproductive behaviors."
pg. 244
"It has been speculated that PTSD may be a consequence of triggering the unmyelinated vagus as a primitive defense system, often in inescapable contexts, when mobilization defensive strategies cannot be employed. In this state a lower brainstem system, more frequently employed by reptiles, is regulated peripheral physiology. This system reduces oxygenated blood flow to the brain and leads to fainting and experiences of dissociation. It is possible that a lower threshold to mobilize and a hypervigilance for danger might have potential survival consequences in this situation. Thus, from an adaptive perspective, the lower threshold to mobilize would protect the individual from recruiting this primitive shutdown circuit."
pg. 260
"In contrast, in a physiological state characterized by an engaged myelinated vagus, sympathetic and hypthalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis activity are dampened, and that physiological state is experienced as calm. Intrusive stimuli that previously would have triggered aggressive behaviors when the vagal activity is withdrawn will now result in a dampened reaction. Accompanying this change in physiological state are options to further dampen reactivity through social interactions."
pg. 267
"For example, pro-social behaviors cue others that the environment is safe. Safe environments signal the individual to dispense with the hyper-vigilance required to detect danger and allows this precautionary strategy to be replaced with social interactions that further calm and lead to close proximity and physical contact."
Quotes from "The Healing power of Emotion"
pg. 116
"The developmental achievement of a sense of self that is simultaneously fluid and robust depends on how well the capacity for affect regulation and affect competency hs been achieved. When these early patterns of interpersonal interaction are relatively successful, they create a stable foundation for relational affect regulation that is intonalized as nonverbal and unconscious. Thus, successful negotiation of interpersonal transactions at increasingly higher levels of self development and interpersonal maturity is made possible. (Bromberg, 2006, pg. 32)
pg.127
"In terms of regulation theory, defense mechanisms are forms of emotional regulation strategies for avoiding, minimizing, or converting affects that are too difficult to tolerate. treatment, especially of early forming secure psychopathologies, must attend not only to conscious dysregulated affects but also to the early forming defense that protects patients from consciously experiencing overwhelming painful negative affects - dissociation. This bottom-line defense thus represents the major counter-force to the emotional - motivational aspects of the change process in psychotherapy."
Wednesday, 23 October 2013
Wednesday, 4 September 2013
Useful Quotes
Studies have shown that throughout our lives, repeated new stimuli trigger genes to transcribe and translate new proteins that stimulate the growth of new synapses - pg 106, healing developmental trauma
Monday, 26 August 2013
Coming To
A part of me feels like I've just woken up from being dead for the past 12 years.
I know sometimes we might "say" something like this, but we may not actually be experiencing that statement in a factual way; there is nothing existentially profound about the experience. I have been guilty of this in the past; language, in its very nature, is very easy to distort. But here, I do not exaggerate. Something trenchantly episodic is happening to me. Two things have happened, and they occurred almost simultaneously.
First, I went on a different drug. I began the new regiment a month ago, went down 75mg of Effexorto 37.5 mg, and have just recently come off the drug altogether. I also have gone on 10 mgs of Cipralex . And second, I have recently begun reading "Healing Developmental Trauma: how early trauma affects self-regulation, self image, and the capacity for relationship" which offers frankly astonishing clarity into the experiences of someone who has suffered developmental trauma. From the very beginning, the book captures the essence of developmental trauma by reflecting on its opposite: "This is a book about restoring connection. It is the experience of being in connection that fulfills the longing we have to feel fully alive". Fully Alive. Those two words feel like a distant memory to me. There was a time where every time I acted, I was fueled by some nebulous impulse to feel alive. Its a basic spark. And this spark facilitates connection. It is the docking bay for embodied experience.
I have begun to feel myself more fully - more intently - and it is a blend of the blissfully nostalgic, on the good side, and a slight terror, on the bad side. When I say terror, I mean it; It's a little astonishing - in a terrible way - to realize how far you are from normal human experiencing. I remember it. I have not forgotten it, thank God. But being back there, being able to maintain it for a few good days straight, it felt both liberating, and scary.
I have woken up to myself because I didn't even realize I was asleep. How many years did I spend wasting away, masturbating in front of a computer, playing video games, watching TV, or going to play Basketball. And how many times was this experienced with strain? With some baseline anxiety, always revolving around the FEAR of not being able to connect; not even realizing that the sense of inability derived from a serious emotional trauma, which had veritably stunned me from experiencing my own reality in an expansive and exciting way. HOW MANY YEARS!!!
I am angry about that loss. I am angry that I have experienced this. And yet, I am felicitously aware of my ability to transcend this problem. I don't know how else to describe it. A few strange things have happened in the past that may have primed me to this perspective, but skepticism aside, this awareness I have that awareness itself transcends all semantics, all emotions - that I can govern myself the way a King would his kingdom, it is a powerful sense; it doesn't seem to be affected by good or bad emotions, which is to say, even if I've had a few disheartening experiences, the "King" is there to offer comfort to his counselors (my mind...) keeping them from further hurting themselves by brooding over destructive matters.
When I think what I've had to go through to get to this moment, to get to an awareness that I have right now. It makes realize how much I have to be proud of. I always had this awareness in me. It was just concealed, clouded by the severities of external experiences; bullying, straining to speak, the myriad anxieties, fears, phobias...the 3 weeks where I didn't sleep and the horror that that brought into my life.
This awareness is the product of experience, but is also aided by the thousands of hours of reading I have done, consuming books in religion, philosophy, history, sciences, and psychology. I have a sophisticated worldview - and I try to say this with all modesty. I say it only with a sense of amazement at my own personal growth; and what I feel is intense compassion for myself - for what I have had to suffer for a dozen years.
I can barely speak of this without contemplating philosophical and theological questions. I wouldn't even be asking such questions - living in such a refined zone of mind - if it weren't for this life circumstance..... Is my compassion for my self sufficient? Or should I proceed further, and assume some ontological predicate for my experience of compassion for myself. Not all people go this deeply, but I can't quite help it. I feel gratitude. And because I feel it, I want to ask WHY I EXPERIENCE it. Of course, asking why does not mean why is begging to be asked. You either feel it is important, or you don't. And if you do, it does not necessarily add anything "more" to your spiritual status. It's a personal decision without moral urgency.
My philosophy has moved over the years from ultra Orthodox conservative, to a middle of the road attitude. It's been influenced partly by my readings of Friedrich Hayek, Milton Friedman, Steven Pinkers "The Better Angels of our Nature" and other books I can't now recall. My earlier belief that homosexuality was abominable and deserved to be outlawed became replaced by a more liberal understanding, albeit, one sprinkled with subtly. Politically, and emotionally, I feel for homosexuals. My cousin is gay, and he is probably one of the kindest people that I know. However, I have this ongoing fascination with a metaphysics which posits physical reality as indicating ontological laws about reality. For example: man and woman represent cosmic opposites, counterpoles. Yin and Yang; God and earth; philosophically, we could reduce it to the non-deterministic and the deterministic. The semen of potentiality becoming a fixed reality. In any case, my view is closely related to Hal Harzogs concept of the "troubled middle". One part of me wants to entertain the option that God may exist and may indicate proper sexual behavior through patterns he projects into nature; while another, more practical part, can't allow that perspective to distract me from the real human harms that can come from holding so tightly to a perspective, which, in practicable historical terms, is no more viable to implement than Islamic Sharia law in the 2nd decade of the 21st century.
I know sometimes we might "say" something like this, but we may not actually be experiencing that statement in a factual way; there is nothing existentially profound about the experience. I have been guilty of this in the past; language, in its very nature, is very easy to distort. But here, I do not exaggerate. Something trenchantly episodic is happening to me. Two things have happened, and they occurred almost simultaneously.
First, I went on a different drug. I began the new regiment a month ago, went down 75mg of Effexorto 37.5 mg, and have just recently come off the drug altogether. I also have gone on 10 mgs of Cipralex . And second, I have recently begun reading "Healing Developmental Trauma: how early trauma affects self-regulation, self image, and the capacity for relationship" which offers frankly astonishing clarity into the experiences of someone who has suffered developmental trauma. From the very beginning, the book captures the essence of developmental trauma by reflecting on its opposite: "This is a book about restoring connection. It is the experience of being in connection that fulfills the longing we have to feel fully alive". Fully Alive. Those two words feel like a distant memory to me. There was a time where every time I acted, I was fueled by some nebulous impulse to feel alive. Its a basic spark. And this spark facilitates connection. It is the docking bay for embodied experience.
I have begun to feel myself more fully - more intently - and it is a blend of the blissfully nostalgic, on the good side, and a slight terror, on the bad side. When I say terror, I mean it; It's a little astonishing - in a terrible way - to realize how far you are from normal human experiencing. I remember it. I have not forgotten it, thank God. But being back there, being able to maintain it for a few good days straight, it felt both liberating, and scary.
I have woken up to myself because I didn't even realize I was asleep. How many years did I spend wasting away, masturbating in front of a computer, playing video games, watching TV, or going to play Basketball. And how many times was this experienced with strain? With some baseline anxiety, always revolving around the FEAR of not being able to connect; not even realizing that the sense of inability derived from a serious emotional trauma, which had veritably stunned me from experiencing my own reality in an expansive and exciting way. HOW MANY YEARS!!!
I am angry about that loss. I am angry that I have experienced this. And yet, I am felicitously aware of my ability to transcend this problem. I don't know how else to describe it. A few strange things have happened in the past that may have primed me to this perspective, but skepticism aside, this awareness I have that awareness itself transcends all semantics, all emotions - that I can govern myself the way a King would his kingdom, it is a powerful sense; it doesn't seem to be affected by good or bad emotions, which is to say, even if I've had a few disheartening experiences, the "King" is there to offer comfort to his counselors (my mind...) keeping them from further hurting themselves by brooding over destructive matters.
When I think what I've had to go through to get to this moment, to get to an awareness that I have right now. It makes realize how much I have to be proud of. I always had this awareness in me. It was just concealed, clouded by the severities of external experiences; bullying, straining to speak, the myriad anxieties, fears, phobias...the 3 weeks where I didn't sleep and the horror that that brought into my life.
This awareness is the product of experience, but is also aided by the thousands of hours of reading I have done, consuming books in religion, philosophy, history, sciences, and psychology. I have a sophisticated worldview - and I try to say this with all modesty. I say it only with a sense of amazement at my own personal growth; and what I feel is intense compassion for myself - for what I have had to suffer for a dozen years.
I can barely speak of this without contemplating philosophical and theological questions. I wouldn't even be asking such questions - living in such a refined zone of mind - if it weren't for this life circumstance..... Is my compassion for my self sufficient? Or should I proceed further, and assume some ontological predicate for my experience of compassion for myself. Not all people go this deeply, but I can't quite help it. I feel gratitude. And because I feel it, I want to ask WHY I EXPERIENCE it. Of course, asking why does not mean why is begging to be asked. You either feel it is important, or you don't. And if you do, it does not necessarily add anything "more" to your spiritual status. It's a personal decision without moral urgency.
My philosophy has moved over the years from ultra Orthodox conservative, to a middle of the road attitude. It's been influenced partly by my readings of Friedrich Hayek, Milton Friedman, Steven Pinkers "The Better Angels of our Nature" and other books I can't now recall. My earlier belief that homosexuality was abominable and deserved to be outlawed became replaced by a more liberal understanding, albeit, one sprinkled with subtly. Politically, and emotionally, I feel for homosexuals. My cousin is gay, and he is probably one of the kindest people that I know. However, I have this ongoing fascination with a metaphysics which posits physical reality as indicating ontological laws about reality. For example: man and woman represent cosmic opposites, counterpoles. Yin and Yang; God and earth; philosophically, we could reduce it to the non-deterministic and the deterministic. The semen of potentiality becoming a fixed reality. In any case, my view is closely related to Hal Harzogs concept of the "troubled middle". One part of me wants to entertain the option that God may exist and may indicate proper sexual behavior through patterns he projects into nature; while another, more practical part, can't allow that perspective to distract me from the real human harms that can come from holding so tightly to a perspective, which, in practicable historical terms, is no more viable to implement than Islamic Sharia law in the 2nd decade of the 21st century.
Sunday, 28 July 2013
Relinquishing Control
Watching and listening to myself as I speak obscures the fact that I am strenuously "trying" to "control" the act itself.
My brother came home. I began speaking with him; I found myself letting myself 'follow' the initiating thought that then became voice; it felt embodied; it felt "fast", it felt enjoyable, but most of all, it felt liberating. It's as if I let the dog off it's leash - the prying and obsessive mind took a break from torturing itself with the thought of tension; it took a backseat. It calmed down, and said "you take the reign".
But what is the reign? What, or who, am I referring to? It's bizarre. Both are me. The side that anxiously intends and attends while speaking and the part that pursues it's thoughts without restraint. It's difficult to put it into words what the difference is, but Ill try. The former, aberrant state ruminates about the subject I want to talk about. I put myself in opposition to it, and in that opposition, I build tension. This tension conflates conscious awareness, causing my self to "intend" to speak, and then to "attend" to my speech, all the while anxiously flexing my vocal chords while I'm listening. The healthy and normal self simply avoids all this; I empty my mind - I try to keep it as free from those types of thoughts as possible. When I do speak, I deliberately remind myself to let the speech flow on it's own. This allows me to stay with the emotion - a feeling that cannot be cognized. Feeling and thinking are different states, and it's a paradox that we can think, cognize, and yet be fully "embodied" and feeling ourselves in the moment; its as if feeling were the medium that conceptual awareness passes through.
It feels incredibly good to feel this way, to loosen up my hold on speaking; to let the words pour out without my anxiety about "how i sound" even entering my flow of thought. Liberating. Peaceful. I feel better, sleep better, read better. The only thought I can think when I feel this way is..."Thank God".
My brother came home. I began speaking with him; I found myself letting myself 'follow' the initiating thought that then became voice; it felt embodied; it felt "fast", it felt enjoyable, but most of all, it felt liberating. It's as if I let the dog off it's leash - the prying and obsessive mind took a break from torturing itself with the thought of tension; it took a backseat. It calmed down, and said "you take the reign".
But what is the reign? What, or who, am I referring to? It's bizarre. Both are me. The side that anxiously intends and attends while speaking and the part that pursues it's thoughts without restraint. It's difficult to put it into words what the difference is, but Ill try. The former, aberrant state ruminates about the subject I want to talk about. I put myself in opposition to it, and in that opposition, I build tension. This tension conflates conscious awareness, causing my self to "intend" to speak, and then to "attend" to my speech, all the while anxiously flexing my vocal chords while I'm listening. The healthy and normal self simply avoids all this; I empty my mind - I try to keep it as free from those types of thoughts as possible. When I do speak, I deliberately remind myself to let the speech flow on it's own. This allows me to stay with the emotion - a feeling that cannot be cognized. Feeling and thinking are different states, and it's a paradox that we can think, cognize, and yet be fully "embodied" and feeling ourselves in the moment; its as if feeling were the medium that conceptual awareness passes through.
It feels incredibly good to feel this way, to loosen up my hold on speaking; to let the words pour out without my anxiety about "how i sound" even entering my flow of thought. Liberating. Peaceful. I feel better, sleep better, read better. The only thought I can think when I feel this way is..."Thank God".
Wednesday, 24 July 2013
So I saw the Psychitriast Today
My first ever psychiatrist appoint. 12 years too late, but better late than never, as they say!
We talked about my situation, my diagnosis of PTSD; he suggested (perhaps, due to some miscommunication) that my social difficulties reminded him of Asperger Syndrome. But, as I pointed out, Aspergers is developmental. I had a pretty normal social life up until age 12 - the age that my mother went through her 4 year long major depression. Once we got the Asperger suggestion aside, we got down to business.
He's got me going down from 75mg of Venlafaxine (effexor) to 37.5 mg; and with it, I'll be taking 10mg of Cipralex. My first ever SSRI.
Now I get to "enjoy" the transition period off a drug that carries with it a painful "discontinuation syndrome", to another drug with a reputation for also being difficult to get off of. Happy happy joy joy. That's the bad news. The good news is, this drug may be able to help improve my mood, and I'm hoping for it. I'm orienting myself in as positive a way as I can. It'll begins with how we situate ourselves.
I will have to be very careful in the next few weeks regulating my thoughts to the tensions that getting off one medication and going on another might create. I am going to have to keep focused on the goal: to maintain an awareness of my body - my emotions.
Previous entries, particularly the one before the last (sloppily written) entry, have really helped orient me. But reading it is more difficult than it first appears. I can't simply "skim" it. I have to put myself into the words. This means meditating upon them, to get into the mind frame that caused me to make these distinctions. At first, I didn't quite appreciate this, but as I returned to the words, I realized that I needed to better focus myself. My present "incomprehension" is due to the current feeling I'm experiencing. I need to quiet any feelings, meditate on the words, and by doing so, will bring myself back into the proper perspective.
We talked about my situation, my diagnosis of PTSD; he suggested (perhaps, due to some miscommunication) that my social difficulties reminded him of Asperger Syndrome. But, as I pointed out, Aspergers is developmental. I had a pretty normal social life up until age 12 - the age that my mother went through her 4 year long major depression. Once we got the Asperger suggestion aside, we got down to business.
He's got me going down from 75mg of Venlafaxine (effexor) to 37.5 mg; and with it, I'll be taking 10mg of Cipralex. My first ever SSRI.
Now I get to "enjoy" the transition period off a drug that carries with it a painful "discontinuation syndrome", to another drug with a reputation for also being difficult to get off of. Happy happy joy joy. That's the bad news. The good news is, this drug may be able to help improve my mood, and I'm hoping for it. I'm orienting myself in as positive a way as I can. It'll begins with how we situate ourselves.
I will have to be very careful in the next few weeks regulating my thoughts to the tensions that getting off one medication and going on another might create. I am going to have to keep focused on the goal: to maintain an awareness of my body - my emotions.
Previous entries, particularly the one before the last (sloppily written) entry, have really helped orient me. But reading it is more difficult than it first appears. I can't simply "skim" it. I have to put myself into the words. This means meditating upon them, to get into the mind frame that caused me to make these distinctions. At first, I didn't quite appreciate this, but as I returned to the words, I realized that I needed to better focus myself. My present "incomprehension" is due to the current feeling I'm experiencing. I need to quiet any feelings, meditate on the words, and by doing so, will bring myself back into the proper perspective.
Thursday, 18 July 2013
Revisiting the Past
Marijuana can really help bring into focus things you wouldn't usually think. Or perhaps, being stoned makes reality more subjectively significant? Whatever the case, I had an epiphany.
I called this post "revisiting the past" because thats where all my problems started. Last week, my therapist emailed me and suggested that I "think about the adolescent Mike and how unsafe he felt, and using your active imagination and visualization to connect with him and work to make him feel safe?". The insight that I had was already formed 4 or 5 days ago. My last entry really set the tone for this insight. Basically, the crux of my problem is my attitude. What do I mean by attitude? It mean many things. Attitudes are our subjective orientation in life. It creates what is and isn't possible for us. My earlier attitude basically said "I can't do it. I have to try to do it", this was the basic narrative repeated by my subconscious and conformed to consciously. In essence, I have been pretending. When I try to "aim" for a particular sound while I'm speaking, I'm pretending. What kind of preconscious orientation is that? Who thinks this way before they speak - and if they did think that way, wouldn't it be entirely logical for them to feel uncomfortable during the act of speech? To be acutely aware? To reenforce the underlying obsession with voice? I'm basically setting myself up. I create the internal conditions before I actually do it. I am superficializing what it means to be yourself.
The way to undo all this degenerate thinking is to ask the right question. For so long I have been asking "how do I speak"? Now, I am no longer asking. That is the answer to the ultimate "right question": the question posed by every moment that we live; what do I like? What do I find enjoyable? What do I believe in? These are the questions that precede normal emotional development. Everyone goes through it. It begins so early, that we never really notice that we are constantly oriented to life in this way. Emotions come to us, and our minds reply; something catches our awareness, and we engage the reality. There is a type of fishing to this behavior. We are quiet - in a parasympathetic nervous state - until a "fish" or object, catches our awareness. And then we throw out our line and go after that fish. We enter the flow of life. What is the flow of life? It is that endless torrent of emotions which fly in and out of us.
I am revisiting my past, revisiting the point where Mike didn't develop properly. When Mike retreated from the world, and from himself. And I am going to ask him: Why did you retreat? Why were you afraid?
Grown up Mike (i.e Me) will tell 13 year old Mike that feeling yourself feels good! It's ok to feel good emotions. Not just that, but you have as much right as anyone else to feel them - and to not care what anyone else has to think or say about it.
I remember a time when I enjoyed the element of risk involved in socializing. That if someone didn't like me, I thought to myself, "who cares!" There was an element of rebellion in that. This "rebellion" seems to be at the heart of the developmental process. This is the process of individuation. From feeling comfortable and confident being "you". Feeling what you feel and saying what you want to say without any anxiety. There is a "I will be ME and if you don't like it you can go fuck yourself" quality to it all. It is arrogant, in a way. But it is a necessary arrogance. Or maybe "arrogance" is the wrong word? Or perhaps what I call "arrogance" another person would call "confidence"? It's funny. I used to abhor the way some theologians and philosophers described the usefulness of Satan's rebellion against God. But now I see it is an apposite metaphor referring to our own rebellion against the collective - from being 'subject' to the expectations of others. Perhaps, the evolution of the cosmos - both constitutively and historically - is the archetype for this development. From the universal core - which Kabbalah would call "Ein Sof" - comes Malkuth, the "kingdom", with it's multitudinous forms and differences. And historically, we go from the amorphous glob of the Big Bang, to the myriad worlds that spawned from it.
Each of us reflects this process in history. Each of us are a segment in this process.
So I feel myself at that point in time, and understand where I went wrong. I will now go back into that self - emotionally - I am there right now - and renew the process of individuation. I need to "feel" myself, to be excited at the prospect of socializing, and to experience myself as not "pretending" but as authentically being the true Michael. Its surprising how powerful a rational assessment of any situation can help reduce feelings of anxiety, and bring you back into an awareness of your self and your emotions.
I called this post "revisiting the past" because thats where all my problems started. Last week, my therapist emailed me and suggested that I "think about the adolescent Mike and how unsafe he felt, and using your active imagination and visualization to connect with him and work to make him feel safe?". The insight that I had was already formed 4 or 5 days ago. My last entry really set the tone for this insight. Basically, the crux of my problem is my attitude. What do I mean by attitude? It mean many things. Attitudes are our subjective orientation in life. It creates what is and isn't possible for us. My earlier attitude basically said "I can't do it. I have to try to do it", this was the basic narrative repeated by my subconscious and conformed to consciously. In essence, I have been pretending. When I try to "aim" for a particular sound while I'm speaking, I'm pretending. What kind of preconscious orientation is that? Who thinks this way before they speak - and if they did think that way, wouldn't it be entirely logical for them to feel uncomfortable during the act of speech? To be acutely aware? To reenforce the underlying obsession with voice? I'm basically setting myself up. I create the internal conditions before I actually do it. I am superficializing what it means to be yourself.
The way to undo all this degenerate thinking is to ask the right question. For so long I have been asking "how do I speak"? Now, I am no longer asking. That is the answer to the ultimate "right question": the question posed by every moment that we live; what do I like? What do I find enjoyable? What do I believe in? These are the questions that precede normal emotional development. Everyone goes through it. It begins so early, that we never really notice that we are constantly oriented to life in this way. Emotions come to us, and our minds reply; something catches our awareness, and we engage the reality. There is a type of fishing to this behavior. We are quiet - in a parasympathetic nervous state - until a "fish" or object, catches our awareness. And then we throw out our line and go after that fish. We enter the flow of life. What is the flow of life? It is that endless torrent of emotions which fly in and out of us.
I am revisiting my past, revisiting the point where Mike didn't develop properly. When Mike retreated from the world, and from himself. And I am going to ask him: Why did you retreat? Why were you afraid?
Grown up Mike (i.e Me) will tell 13 year old Mike that feeling yourself feels good! It's ok to feel good emotions. Not just that, but you have as much right as anyone else to feel them - and to not care what anyone else has to think or say about it.
I remember a time when I enjoyed the element of risk involved in socializing. That if someone didn't like me, I thought to myself, "who cares!" There was an element of rebellion in that. This "rebellion" seems to be at the heart of the developmental process. This is the process of individuation. From feeling comfortable and confident being "you". Feeling what you feel and saying what you want to say without any anxiety. There is a "I will be ME and if you don't like it you can go fuck yourself" quality to it all. It is arrogant, in a way. But it is a necessary arrogance. Or maybe "arrogance" is the wrong word? Or perhaps what I call "arrogance" another person would call "confidence"? It's funny. I used to abhor the way some theologians and philosophers described the usefulness of Satan's rebellion against God. But now I see it is an apposite metaphor referring to our own rebellion against the collective - from being 'subject' to the expectations of others. Perhaps, the evolution of the cosmos - both constitutively and historically - is the archetype for this development. From the universal core - which Kabbalah would call "Ein Sof" - comes Malkuth, the "kingdom", with it's multitudinous forms and differences. And historically, we go from the amorphous glob of the Big Bang, to the myriad worlds that spawned from it.
Each of us reflects this process in history. Each of us are a segment in this process.
So I feel myself at that point in time, and understand where I went wrong. I will now go back into that self - emotionally - I am there right now - and renew the process of individuation. I need to "feel" myself, to be excited at the prospect of socializing, and to experience myself as not "pretending" but as authentically being the true Michael. Its surprising how powerful a rational assessment of any situation can help reduce feelings of anxiety, and bring you back into an awareness of your self and your emotions.
Tuesday, 16 July 2013
A Cognitive Description
This is what I'm thinking while I speak:
I situate myself to my speech in too focused and conscious a manner. An idea enters my mind; for most people, this idea enters instantaneously. There isn't a pause to preconceptualize before they actually do it. Rather, their focus seems to be on the the feeling to speak. The object of their thought is the obvious motivator, but it is the feeling which sets the perimeters of their attention.
When I speak, I immediately put myself into hyper-focus with the object of my thought. I find myself tensely involved with the thought: it stays in my mind too long, I'm thinking too deeply about it. There is no instantaneous sense of desire to speak-speak, which seems to occur simultaneously in a normally functioning mind.
When I do speak well, I find things happening more swiftly, less tensely; I feel pulled by the current of the moment. I am positively situated to the things I want to say: I do not consider a possible negative response from the person I'm speaking with. Rather, it feels like I'm just sharing myself and my current interest with another person.
This feels like a "system 1" type thinking. It is automatic - it isn't preceded by brooding, and then a hyper attention to the performance of my speaking. Rather, it's preceded by a simple attentiveness to my current interests. And the transition from these interests to speaking is not met or undermined by worries or concerns. The transition is smooth, swift, and natural.
As someone who has spent so many years understanding and constructing his reality around the tension he experiences while speaking, it can be startling how different my usual state is from these states. It's a mixture of amazement, encouragement, and utter horror. How can I be so removed from the normal human condition? But this is the effect trauma can have on the mind. It's slows things down; emotion implies motion. Trauma is the absence of forward motion feelings. Usual states are either a bland dullness, also called hypo-emotionality, or anxiety. Both these feelings hyper inflate conscious awareness, or "system 2" thinking.
A big part of my recovery involves my becoming more comfortable with this movement in living. Not having fears and obsessions interrupt my act of speaking feels like something is missing. It's bizarre. Familiarity breeds contempt they say. Not always. Oftentimes, familiarity breeds comfort, and well, familiarity. It's safe and easy living with what you know and are comfortable with. Going outside whats familiar, although good on one level (the joy of feeling good) can also strike you as "too good to be true". This "too good to be true" feeling is natural, obviously. It's a way of being that I'm not used to. I need to constantly remind myself to stay in this state, to embrace this state, and understand that living is supposed to happen in this state.
I situate myself to my speech in too focused and conscious a manner. An idea enters my mind; for most people, this idea enters instantaneously. There isn't a pause to preconceptualize before they actually do it. Rather, their focus seems to be on the the feeling to speak. The object of their thought is the obvious motivator, but it is the feeling which sets the perimeters of their attention.
When I speak, I immediately put myself into hyper-focus with the object of my thought. I find myself tensely involved with the thought: it stays in my mind too long, I'm thinking too deeply about it. There is no instantaneous sense of desire to speak-speak, which seems to occur simultaneously in a normally functioning mind.
When I do speak well, I find things happening more swiftly, less tensely; I feel pulled by the current of the moment. I am positively situated to the things I want to say: I do not consider a possible negative response from the person I'm speaking with. Rather, it feels like I'm just sharing myself and my current interest with another person.
This feels like a "system 1" type thinking. It is automatic - it isn't preceded by brooding, and then a hyper attention to the performance of my speaking. Rather, it's preceded by a simple attentiveness to my current interests. And the transition from these interests to speaking is not met or undermined by worries or concerns. The transition is smooth, swift, and natural.
As someone who has spent so many years understanding and constructing his reality around the tension he experiences while speaking, it can be startling how different my usual state is from these states. It's a mixture of amazement, encouragement, and utter horror. How can I be so removed from the normal human condition? But this is the effect trauma can have on the mind. It's slows things down; emotion implies motion. Trauma is the absence of forward motion feelings. Usual states are either a bland dullness, also called hypo-emotionality, or anxiety. Both these feelings hyper inflate conscious awareness, or "system 2" thinking.
A big part of my recovery involves my becoming more comfortable with this movement in living. Not having fears and obsessions interrupt my act of speaking feels like something is missing. It's bizarre. Familiarity breeds contempt they say. Not always. Oftentimes, familiarity breeds comfort, and well, familiarity. It's safe and easy living with what you know and are comfortable with. Going outside whats familiar, although good on one level (the joy of feeling good) can also strike you as "too good to be true". This "too good to be true" feeling is natural, obviously. It's a way of being that I'm not used to. I need to constantly remind myself to stay in this state, to embrace this state, and understand that living is supposed to happen in this state.
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