Don't Hide the Sins of the Parents

My humble opinion at the Goodreads site about the book by Joseph Le Doux "Anxious: Using the Brain to Understand and Treat Fear and Anxiety ":

"I really appreciate the effort Joseph Le Doux put in writing this book, but, to be honest, from the perspective of the person who is suffering from severe anxiety problems, it is completely useless work. It's not helping, and it should - otherwise, what is this whole effort for? It's not explaining anything, though the title contains the word "understand". I, myself, can figure why I am so scared and why it is so hard to feel better, so I will remain at my own way of looking for help."

I was about to add that 'neuroscientists are morons', but it wouldn't be just since I don't know works of many of them and maybe there are some good books they have written. 

The opinion came for two reasons. One, the Author listed some causes of anxiety problems and none of them had any sense. Two, he wrote - correctly - that experiencing anxiety problems is very unpleasant and that most of the people (everyone I presume) want to get rid of the fear they feel every day and that the science's role is to find how to bring some relief. 

In regard to the reason one, I expressed what I really think about the causes of (my) anxiety in the previous post. Genetic or environmental factors are secondary to the relations that were built by our parents or carers when the matrix of our nervous system had been formed. 

When it comes about the reason two, I am absolutely sure that both contemporary psychiatry and science are totally wrong claiming that the sick people need to take meds (psychotropics) and that there is no other way to help them. Sorry, but this is a f***ing mistake. 

Indeed, the anxiety or fear or anything else that makes we feel frightened is awful (whole the deliberation concerning terminology was also annoying while reading). But! It didn't come from nowhere. In my case, the origin of my fears is very clear though very hard to accept out of very simple reason: I was afraid of a person who I loved the most thus I was raised in constant cognitive dissonance thus... I hid the real causes from myself and other people (sometimes other people intentionally were hiding it from me).

And the problem is in this hiding. 

Believe me, there is no better way to hide the sins of our parents than meds prescribed by psychiatrists, produced by scientists. They make us fuzzy, sleepy, spaced out... And they induce other problems - e.g. with digestive system - that even more cover the real issues. 

The only way to get better is to face the problem. Face it! Not escape. I myself didn't believe that I am strong enough to make it, but once another psychosis episode approached me, I felt that it's too much and that I need to work this problem out in a different way. 

So, it turned out that the truth sets us free for real.

 

Simple Recipe for Schizophrenia

Black clouds have been gathering over my head for some time now. This is a real dark, nothing made up. 

This is the fear that becomes like a snowball - it is growing, increasing its size. It may not be real, yet it is... 

Something happened a long time ago. This event caused irreversible changes in the way my brain has been functioning: it always tries to come back to that painful experience by pushing me to the thoughts and emotions (think the thoughts induce the emotions) that would invoke the whole sequence of mental states.

So, you may ask, what did happen?

Well, I have no bloody idea. I don't remember, for who wants to remember such thing that had fried your brain?

I still insist on coming back to the past, instead of rationalization of current events, of one particular reason: as an adult person, I've been through so many and so bad things - all of which I overcame smoothly and with courage - that I should have learned that there is nothing to fear... But I didn't. I see again how my body and mind are preparing for another psychosis episode. They are doing so because they were created to stand guard over the Truth and they don't care that my conscious was trained to deny it for the sake of the comfort of other people. And the Truth is someone had hurt me a long time ago and never redressed it. 

My anxiety is in regard to:

1. being rejected (in general, not only by certain people)

2. losing things that belong to me and that I worked very hard for (it also concerns basic needs like my flat, food, even nationality) - in two words: being robbed

3. being invisible (anything I do or say is unnoticed or disregarded)

4. being a victim of some kind of collusion (though it contradicts the point above) of people who want to get rid of me... 

Yep. Once I wrote these sentences, I saw my problem in a little bit different light. Let's face it.

1. As a child, I was constantly terrified that my mother would reject me (I had been writing about that not once, also in my books); moreover, she was maintaining that others don't accept me. That's right! My own mother was telling me such things.

2. I was robbed of many things, but maybe let's start with my father and the right to have him. Imagine you need to live with the person who took you something essential and you are obliged to love, adore and honor her... You cannot fight for your rights (like you can fight as a citizen who doesn't want to pay higher taxes) and everybody around you is backing her, not you, hence...

3. ...you sometimes feel like an invisible creature. You try to say something, to scream or just to die - everything seems to be good as long as that would ensure you any attention. 

4. Okay, though it really sounds like paranoia, I did experience the situations in which I was hounded and bullied, e.g. in the army when I reported sexual abuse... But! The people who scare me the most are members of my mother's family. I am seriously frightened, for they did give me a reason to be so. They are insane and dangerous. And they constantly plot against me (luckily, I have the witnesses for their lunacy). 

So now... let nobody tells me that the cause of schizophrenia is something mysterious. 

The Cascade Catastrophy

Last time, I wrote about being triggered by something that may lead a person to commit the suicide... Well, despite there might be the events that occur right now, the real reason is hidden in our brains and was created a long time ago. It would be good to find the primary cause and face it.

Today, something bad happened to me. I am not sharing the details with anyone (except my 'analog' diary), for I know that, for most of the people, the situation is trivial. But not for me. And it did trigger whole the sequence of bad thoughts and emotions in my body, leading me straight to the edge of despair. 

Why?

As a child and a teenager, I always had to be perfect. And my every decision and action must have been good. This was not about perfectionism but about how other people think and look at me. If anything was going wrong - in my mother's opinion - and there was a slight possibility that someone else could have criticized me, I was sure I won't have a life at home. The punishment was definite. And cruel. And lasting.

And this is what I am afraid of - the lasting punishment, the cascade catastrophy: wry face, evil words (or silence for a week or more), rejection, anger... All these just because I did something 'wrong', that I placed her in an unfavorable light in front of other people's eyes. 

Now, after many years those situations took place (though not so many), the wound on my nervous system is still open and bleeding. I constantly dwell on evaluating what would she have thought about this or that, and the list of 'wrong' things according to her hasn't changed whatsoever. 

The main problem is that, by her vicious 'upbringing', I wasn't taught that some people sometimes may have a negative opinion about me, and if they do, it doesn't decrease my value and it doesn't take away my elementary right for living the normal life.

The Abyss

Today, I read on Twitter about the suicidal death of a woman, young, beautiful, smart and kind person, who was a TV star broadcasting the weather. As someone commented, 'no one knows what for real is in other person's head'. 

Well, I may tell you - it's an Abyss. 

A couple of times, I had these strange dreams about traveling into the darkness where there was simply big Nothing. The Abyss. And this is how most of my days look like: traveling into the darkness.

Why?

I can tell you that too. 

Me, as a baby and toddler, waiting for my mother coming back from her various 'entertainments' - those were the moments when I was traveling into the deepest darkness in the Universe, for I was dying thinking that she would never come back.

Me, as a ten-year-old and as a teenager, waiting for my mother coming home after work - those were the journeys into the evil darkness, for I was sure that, once she comes, she will torment me again and again.

This is waiting for something bad. 

And, as in my case, it always comes. Being abandoned by my mother (and also by an absent father) was as much dreadful as her being around. An impossible situation, without salvation. And it lasts. It has never ended. This is how my brain works. And my body. 

After work, I am coming back home and I am terrified though there is no one here who could hurt me. I sit in my flat and I am trembling when hearing any noise behind my double door.  And sometimes, bad things happen - and these are the moments I cannot deal with. 

You have no idea what kind of 'stupid' issues may trigger someone to commit the suicide. Except they are not banal, not for us, for they are the wide road to the darkness.

Psychiatrists are Idiots

The main problem of the contemporary psychiatry is that the vast majority of patients are badly diagnosed. Why? Because, in fact, the doctors and psychologists don't listen to them. At all! And this is not like in the TV series, House M.D., where the patients were being blamed for not being honest with their doctors in every single episode (the episode 1 of the first season was titled "Everybody lies"). The doctors I came across didn't want me to be honest, for they had their own agenda in treating me. The psychiatrists (and other kinds of doctors) were not interested in my truth, in my story I wanted to tell them. As I wrote in "The Notes from the Abyss", I don't like shrinks because, instead of healing, they try to cope with their own problems by using other people, dependent on them (and they are not aware of that whatsoever). 

The most common situation - in which I also was - is when a psychiatrist tries to make peace between the patient and his or her parents. My psychiatrist, the dumbest person I met, herself had some issues with dad and, by convincing me that I am doing wrong not to talking to my mother, she was dealing with her own demons. She didn't want to hear about my mother's deeds (even if she was able to admit that she 'might' have been a bad parent). If she would have listened to me, she would know that the meds she prescribed me were useless because I am not bipolar but I have very serious anxiety problems caused by a sadistic person who was raising me. I was so scared that I wasn't able to admit that I am... scared as if it was something shameful. Back then, I needed someone who could understand my situation and helped me to recall what really happened. Instead, it took me over five long years to get to this very conclusion by myself. 

Chance One in a Milion

Most of my friends don't know me. Not to mention my own family. I mean... When I think about it longer, I realize that no one knows me, like at all. 

I discovered that fact after publishing "The notes from the abyss" when some people started looking at me with this weird look and asking strange questions. It was shocking, however, explained a lot.

The funny thing is the only people on this planet who have any idea who I really am are the readers who bought "The Notes..." or "Guide for (Ultimate) Losers." 

At some point, this situation is my fault, because it is the evident manifestation of the two worlds I have been writing about: I was focused on building the world No 2 that, in fact, is something unreal, some fake I created believing that it would ensure me people's love and attention because the world No 1 is the reason to be ashamed of. 

But! At some point, this situation is not my fault. It was coerced by others - my family in the first place and my 'educators' from school times. Later on, I had this misfortune to meet 'friends' who had been forcing me to be someone else too. My struggle and pain were inconveniences. 

I was always afraid (and many people had been telling me so) that once I'd open up and be me, nobody would like me. I then didn't know that being 'liked' is not the most crucial thing in this world and that being real me means the chance for meeting persons who could like me for real.