~04:30am
Sat Dec 25th 2021
(Xmas day!)
BJ FEELINGS
When I have a mental problem to solve, like when I wanna fix or resolve something in myself, I just try a bunch of stuff until I find something that works. There’s a lot of deadends and I guess it’s hard work, I don’t notice that though, cause I like to experiment in that way, like changing how I think in little ways to see what impact it has, and I usually end up finding a solution so it pays off. Plus it’s like a reason to think and feel about things differently, so that’s always a fun mental challenge.
Anyway my mind has been puzzling over your trauma, I can’t test theories for you unfortunately! But I wondered if u wanna hear some more ideas and stuff to try?
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I read that in research done in 2015, it was found that seriously traumatic memories are actually stored in a different part of your brain.
Also, accessing them requires being in the frame of mind you were in when they got stored there – so, if normal everyday memories are an FM radio, and you can tune into different stations to reach those different memories, then the heavy trauma memories are all on AM radio. Normally inaccessible, unless you switch over to AM.
Incidentally, that’s probably why you get the “when it rains, it pours” thing, where if you remember one difficult thing then a bunch of others follow closely, cause your brain is suddenly tuned into the AM radio and is picking up all these radio stations that it basically didn’t even realise were there.
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/08/150817132325.htm
> so was anything else locked away with those usually-inaccessible memories? Is it possible to explore those memories while in that state, see what else is there? Maybe there’s other stuff you could take back with you, that’s not painful
> what if its a good thing to allow the pain to bubble up? Because you couldn’t feel it at the time, maybe it’s like, a wound that never healed? So if/when you get a meltdown, what if instead of it being this darkness from the past coming back, it’s instead: the woman bryony looking after a scared little girl, not fighting her but sayings it’s ok to feel what she does?
> but at the same time, when I had that brief moment with Alistair, where I felt all the feelings I had buried and hidden in my poetry as a teenager, I feel like it was really, really useful… But now that I’ve done it, I don’t need to do it again, like I took everything I needed from it. So, just for me, I needed to feel it before I could, like, understand and accept that pain and stuff. But it was super important having Alistair there, he was like an anchor who brought me back, he didn’t invalidate my feelings or say to snap out of them or anything, just gently guided me away from them, something about what he did was like a reminder that the pain and trauma I was reliving wasn’t worth experiencing, that I didn’t need to be there, that I should come back
> obvs that’s easier for me, but I’m thinking, like, you already have these episodes where the door is basically swung open. So why not see what you can do with them?
Something that really helped me when I was started recovering from my paranoia was to talk about it as it happens. Like, before, it would happen and I would freak out and basically freeze up. Then I started to tell people what was going on – like, “sorry I’ve just got suddenly paranoid, and this is what is happening in my body, and this is where my thoughts went”. And it was weird, once I started talking I kind of regained control. I think it’s like, when I was packing and had all these crazy thoughts, but because there was a plan that needed to be done, objectives to fulfil, then the crazy parts had to settle down
And what if you could re-contextualize them as being something productive, and therefore won’t be needed once their usefulness or purpose (whatever it may be) has dried up?
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Related to above : On holiday, while I was high at the Airbnb, I was walking down the dark hall back from the bathroom to the main room — where we were sleeping and where there was light… But it was totally dark, I’d left my phone for light behind, all I could do was fumble on the dark.
I still had that paranoia, and it was my last night there, so I thought fuck it, I’ve gone deep into one dark feeling, I’ll go deep into another. I knew it would be over the moment I found the door handle and got back into the light, but in those brief moments, just a few seconds really, I let myself experience the full terror of thevheight of my delusions (the alien torture existential nightmare that I only experienced truly for a short while, but which scarred me for years: I gave in fully and said, this is it, this is when they take me).
Then I found the handle, the light came in, and I closed the door behind me. That’s it, I thought to myself. I’ve felt it’s peak and survived. There’s nothing left in that darkness for me. I’ve closed the door (literally!), I’m done with it.
I also thought about how badly I wanted to share that experience with you, and how cool it would be if we both closed our doors together.
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I was also looking up different related things and got to the term “emotional avoidance”. Maybe that’s what happens now with you sometimes? Like, the feelings are technically accessible, but it’s too scary to let yourself feel them, so you just avoid it altogether?
https://www.verywellmind.com/ptsd-and-emotional-avoidance-2797640
See also “emotional numbing”
https://www.verywellmind.com/emotional-numbing-symptoms-2797372
> that goes back to the image of a girl being trapped in a room full of darkness, where the girl can feel, but to be able to express those feelings, she need to come out of the room… Which means opening the door… Which means, letting out the darkness
> what if there’s a way to separate them? What if the idea that you could feel more things doesn’t have to be tied up with the idea of you hurting?
what if the little girl, who in this case is a representation of good feelings that you wanna keep — what if they’re not in that room at all?
You wanna shut that door for good, and if there’s nothing there but blackness then you should because it’s a pointless door.
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I had a vision on the holiday. Dunno if you remember me saying about “lady bloodstone”, the safeguarding lady I met in a pub? I said, her piercing was like an inverted star. Normally a star is a small white thing among a huge blackness, but her small piercing was black and her face was white, hence, inverted star.
So on the holiday, at some point I remember thinking or talking about your trauma, and I had this mental image of you being a star among the infinite darkness… Then I dunno why, but it flipped, it was inverted, suddenly you were an infinite whiteness and the trauma was this tiny black dot. Still there but basically irrelevant, considering everything. I remember thinking, yeah, that’s how it should be.
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I also read a spiderman comic recently about Carnage, the big scary red villain, but in this story it wasn’t really Carnage, it just looked like him, the real person behind the mask of Carnage was basically some dumb idiot, so when the carnage mask came off he wasn’t scary anymore. I guess I wondered, does it help, unmasking your carnage and seeing some dumb idiot behind it all?
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Also: Unrelated probably but I wanted to tell you, you being the only person who really gets alternate realities.
So I was packing my bags on the last evening, when I witnessed infinity and became the universe and all that stuff. I was trying to be quiet and focus, which was hard because I was high and having all these lovely breakthroughs, the summary of all my learning experiences over the holiday (eg. Alistair at the museum withthe white room, accepting autism, the hilarious T-Rex, other bits I can’t remember)
So I’m packing my bags and I made noise, and thought, shit I wonder if Alistair can hear me cause if he could he’d hate me right now; so the thought was, I wonder i Alistair hates me yet. Then I heard him snore, almost on cue! And I was like, hang on, I’ve been so stressed out about being quiet and trying to be a certain way, thinking of the worst possible outcome if I don’t “behave”… And for what? Turns out he was asleep so couldn’t hate me anyway.
That’s when I realised something: Alistair was like schrodinger’s cat, both hating and not hating at the same time. And I realised, there are 2 realities that could exist right now. There’s a reality where my uncle hates me, and there’s a reality where he doesn’t. Which one do I want to live in?
It was like I had that choice for the very first time, ever. Where I get a say in my reality.
And its at that point where I told myself, I’m not going to have paranoid delusions anymore, because I choose not to live in the reality where they happen. From now on, I’m gonna live in a reality where they don’t… and I’m gonna fight to make sure I stay there. If something flares up now, I can look back to that moment in time and remind myself that I have a choice to make when my mental state gets bad like that: so I give in, and live in that spiky reality where my delusions are plausible, or do I decide to resist that ugly, boring reality and live in one I think I’ll like more?