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The Lesson
Rogan: if there is one thing I had to peg as the most important lesson I have learned about my brain, it would be: all of it, no matter how unpleasant, self-defeating, or painful, is on my side.
ALL OF IT. This includes the suicidality, the eating disorder, the screaming ghosts and the ocean made of loss and agony, all the things that I’m encouraged to treat as an enemy. Even Edward Cullen, my sparkly vampiric symbol of self-hate, is secretly on my side!
People who’ve been reading a while may have noticed I don’t use diagnostic categories for myself much these days. Part of that is just wanting to avoid multi diagnostic dicksizing, but also, it’s because a lot of them plain don’t serve me anymore.
Take depression, for instance. If I say I have depression, that comes with some presentiments baked in: that I have a medical condition, perhaps a chemical imbalance, most known for being treatable with medication and therapies like CBT. These ideas were an improvement over the one that I was just weak, but they were also a hindrance. See, my depression isn’t actually any of that. It’s psychological exhaustion. That’s it! That’s all it is. It is a sign that I am overextended (be it from homelessness, closeting, an abusive situation, or a painful mental posture held overlong) and need to stop. Everything else—the despair, the misery—is just the inevitable result of not stopping. I truly thought while homeless that my problem was just my brain and was honestly shocked that getting decent housing instantly “cured” my depression! Thinking “I have a brain problem” misled me into drawing the wrong conclusions! No medication or therapy on earth could fix the despair, the exhaustion of my homelessness. It would be truly horrifying if it could; why provide people housing if we can simply medicate them instead? As I learned so painfully during the Homeless Year, pills were far cheaper than rent.
Similarly, there’s a reason the Homeless Year culminates with my embodiment of self-hate stopping with its constant gleeful “kill yourself” exhortations and saying, “I am a destroyer. You chose to only hear the self-destructive parts to protect that which you didn’t want to destroy. But it’s time to wake up now. You know what I’m really after.” What really needed to die wasn’t me; it was my precious illusion of my happy family. Self-Hate protected me from the pain of that loss by letting me blame myself instead. I needed that time. After all, it’s no coincidence that AllFam started just a few months after Homeless Year ended! Once the illusion was dead, memory work was inevitable. I couldn’t bear it and the strain of homelessness at the same time, so self-hate stepped in to protect me.
All of our most destructive behavior and headspace entities have been protective in similar fashion. Feral Rat’s constant threat-crunching allows us to escape heinous situations, if we listen to it properly. Rawlin became the group stalker because he sacrificed everything, even his soul, to keep the rest of us alive. The ghosts force us to deal with pain left buried. Even my suicidality has kept me alive—I can withstand a lot of pain, knowing I have a plan to prevent the worst. And considering how bad my life has gotten in the past, no, there are some things I choose not to live through (again). I don’t think that’s mental illness. That’s just basic common sense. As Viktor Frankl said in Yes To Life, a man who knows he can run into the electric fence at any time no longer fears the gas chambers, and vice versa.
All of it, every bit of it, is on our side. And that’s not a statement intended to be warm and fuzzy. That’s a statement of responsibility. It means no matter how awful something is, it’s my, our duty to find out what it’s protecting us from. It’s our duty to break the cycles of enmity and demonizing and “everything would be fine if not for YOU.” It’s our duty to make this life, this mind/body, one we can live in, and while other people can help or hinder, in the end it’s down to us.
It’s hard to say this. I feel compelled to disclaim, to equivocate, to make caveats. But I am talking about myself, my headmates, nobody else. That’s why I’m using the first person singular mostly. If other people generalize it falsely, that’s them, not me.
ALL OF IT. This includes the suicidality, the eating disorder, the screaming ghosts and the ocean made of loss and agony, all the things that I’m encouraged to treat as an enemy. Even Edward Cullen, my sparkly vampiric symbol of self-hate, is secretly on my side!
People who’ve been reading a while may have noticed I don’t use diagnostic categories for myself much these days. Part of that is just wanting to avoid multi diagnostic dicksizing, but also, it’s because a lot of them plain don’t serve me anymore.
Take depression, for instance. If I say I have depression, that comes with some presentiments baked in: that I have a medical condition, perhaps a chemical imbalance, most known for being treatable with medication and therapies like CBT. These ideas were an improvement over the one that I was just weak, but they were also a hindrance. See, my depression isn’t actually any of that. It’s psychological exhaustion. That’s it! That’s all it is. It is a sign that I am overextended (be it from homelessness, closeting, an abusive situation, or a painful mental posture held overlong) and need to stop. Everything else—the despair, the misery—is just the inevitable result of not stopping. I truly thought while homeless that my problem was just my brain and was honestly shocked that getting decent housing instantly “cured” my depression! Thinking “I have a brain problem” misled me into drawing the wrong conclusions! No medication or therapy on earth could fix the despair, the exhaustion of my homelessness. It would be truly horrifying if it could; why provide people housing if we can simply medicate them instead? As I learned so painfully during the Homeless Year, pills were far cheaper than rent.
Similarly, there’s a reason the Homeless Year culminates with my embodiment of self-hate stopping with its constant gleeful “kill yourself” exhortations and saying, “I am a destroyer. You chose to only hear the self-destructive parts to protect that which you didn’t want to destroy. But it’s time to wake up now. You know what I’m really after.” What really needed to die wasn’t me; it was my precious illusion of my happy family. Self-Hate protected me from the pain of that loss by letting me blame myself instead. I needed that time. After all, it’s no coincidence that AllFam started just a few months after Homeless Year ended! Once the illusion was dead, memory work was inevitable. I couldn’t bear it and the strain of homelessness at the same time, so self-hate stepped in to protect me.
All of our most destructive behavior and headspace entities have been protective in similar fashion. Feral Rat’s constant threat-crunching allows us to escape heinous situations, if we listen to it properly. Rawlin became the group stalker because he sacrificed everything, even his soul, to keep the rest of us alive. The ghosts force us to deal with pain left buried. Even my suicidality has kept me alive—I can withstand a lot of pain, knowing I have a plan to prevent the worst. And considering how bad my life has gotten in the past, no, there are some things I choose not to live through (again). I don’t think that’s mental illness. That’s just basic common sense. As Viktor Frankl said in Yes To Life, a man who knows he can run into the electric fence at any time no longer fears the gas chambers, and vice versa.
All of it, every bit of it, is on our side. And that’s not a statement intended to be warm and fuzzy. That’s a statement of responsibility. It means no matter how awful something is, it’s my, our duty to find out what it’s protecting us from. It’s our duty to break the cycles of enmity and demonizing and “everything would be fine if not for YOU.” It’s our duty to make this life, this mind/body, one we can live in, and while other people can help or hinder, in the end it’s down to us.
It’s hard to say this. I feel compelled to disclaim, to equivocate, to make caveats. But I am talking about myself, my headmates, nobody else. That’s why I’m using the first person singular mostly. If other people generalize it falsely, that’s them, not me.
no subject
The hobby part is like, tip number one for clawing your way out of the Problems Guy trap. It gives you something entirely outside the problem and also a thing to talk about/avenue to connect with others that isn't The Problems and also is a way to pass the time while you're working on the problems and waiting for them to resolve. The way my wife talked about it, how she got herself out of the Problems Guy pit, was that she started on a hobby, started spending more time on it, branching off into others and then suddenly one day looked up "and realized [I hadn't] thought about the Problems in a week." It's something so straightforward but so effective if you can put the time in.
no subject
Us: Rawlin, what do you want to do for fun? What do you like doing? Something unrelated to The Problems?
Rawlin: ...o_o *has never thought about it before* ...running? I like running? Hiking? ...playing with the cat?
Us: EXCELLENT! Join us on our runs, it'll be great. You can read books with us, see what you're interested in. Also, you seem a miserable joyless bastard, would you like to try headspace antidepressants? They may make you sleepy or hungry.
Rawlin: ...sure. *accepts a copy of what our vessel takes, takes it*
NEXT DAY:
Rogan: So, Rawlin, how are the meds? Feeling okay?
Rawlin: I don't know that I notice any change...
Sneak: LEAFS! AUTUMN LEAFS! JUMP IN THEM WITH ME RAWLIN
Rawlin and Sneak: *jump into leaves and kick them around*
Sneak: 8D EEEEEE
Rawlin: :) hahaha
Mori: Okay yeah, that's the first time he's laughed happily in years, the meds are working.
no subject