I’ve been in a slump, and drinking. My emotional and physical resources are depleted. I awoke this morning and very easily started getting annoyed by little things people have done.
At first it was the way my friend was playing this online multiplayer game with me. I felt like he just wasn’t understanding or respecting the way that I like to play. I got annoyed with him a little, and I think he got annoyed with me. He made two patronising comments with in-game text that I couldn’t tell if were jokes or not.
While I was warming up for my day, I started to get annoyed at the way my mom commented on my cooking yesterday. It slightly made me feel like I was being an intrusion. At the time, I recognised this and just let it be as I do every other time she gets a little neurotic about something. But this morning I was ruminating, going over and over how these perceived slights hurt me.
The central theme seems to be that I have done something wrong, or am any less than idealizable.
I feel guilty for wanting to cut my father out of my life. So I go off on these self-righteous and vicious ruminations and imaginary conversations. ‘I am the victim. I am pure of intent.‘
I hate it when I get into this headspace. It drives me around in a circle of misery.
Realising that I was doing it about my mom was a key to getting out. I’m usually very happy to let her get a little anxious about things. Because, I know that she still loves me and wants me around.
I’m so used to zero conflict, that slight conflict feels annihilating. So what if my friend has a misconstrued idea about me, and treated me like I was in the wrong. If that is how he treats others, then he is only creating his own misery, and it’s not a reflection on me. I know he’s still going to be my friend. And if I don’t enjoy playing the game with him, then I don’t have to.
Big misunderstandings can always be worked out. But maybe this is the first time in my life I should say, “Don’t sweat the small stuff.” We bounce back very easily, but my attachment issues make me very sensitive.
To some, I might be a pathetic English white liberal that is not worth his weight in salt. To others, I might be a lighthouse in a world of misguided trauma and collapse.
Some might see in me what they envy, and they want to destroy that. Some might see in me a resource, and they want to internalise it.
Sometimes I feel competent, hardworking and sensitive. Sometimes I feel useless, narcissistic and childlike.
These splits, oscillating from idealisation to denigration, are sometimes difficult to bare, to integrate.
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The great threat that the superego will not forget is that retribution is always possible. In order to remain safe, I have to be idealised, faultless, enviable. And so the split is driven by this fragmenting, annihilating anxiety. Oscillating. Oil and water.
What are the stakes, if integration is possible: That some people will not like me, people whom I wish would, and that my self-esteem would have to survive nonetheless.
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It is difficult to see around, beneath, or through this issue. I want to fix it without facing it. Yet, as I so often reiterate, “It is freedom through, not freedom from.”
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As the minutes tick by and I read back on what I have just written I am struck by two feelings: That this came from a place of defensiveness and feels melodramatic.
It is when I am in the denigrating aspect of the splitting that I feel the need to recover the ideal aspect. Perhaps, the attempt is to recover that through framing myself as a victim – misunderstood and hurt.
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What do I know about reality? I work with some lovely people that I have slowly begun to trust. Every day that I show up as just myself and do not receive negative comments or punishment is another little moment of learning. Little by little, the true self can emerge and the false self can be let go of.
The loss does arrive; I am not the idealised. As much as I wish that I could be the hero, the lover, the king, and the magician in absolute fulfilment, I am only myself.
To succeed, I push outside of my comfort zone, to surf that tension between the actual and ideal self. This is personal growth. The self-defeat comes in when there is an identification with the ideal self and the actual self is then not good enough.
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It is curious that my first association to being the true self would be that some people will not like me. That is yet another symptom of the lack of integration: Like or dislike; good or bad.
Perhaps, what I am learning is that people will accept me with both my good, my bad, and my ugly: As a whole person. And I too learn that they are whole people, not set on either my absolute fulfilment or destruction.
This is a crux of the development of the self per Melanie Klein:
“Much is gained in the movement from the experience of others as split into good and bad to the experience of others as whole objects. Paranoid anxiety diminishes; one’s pain and frustration are not caused by pure malevolence and evil, but by fallibility and inconsistency. As the threat of persecution abates, the necessity for the vigilance of splitting is reduced; the infant experiences herself as more durable, less in danger of being crushed or contaminated by external or internal forces.” – from Freud and Beyond (1996)
I realised yesterday that I felt off, even a bit down. This morning I couldn’t rise for work. I took a day for sick leave. I have tried to do wholesome things: stretching, reading, journaling, meditating, and playing a video game that I really want to enjoy. My mind and body seem to be pulling me apart from these things though.
I feel listless. I have no energy to get out into the beautiful sunshine outside. I can barely stretch, while I drag my aching back through burdensome chores.
I looked down at my body just now, “You’re fat, and you’re not losing weight”. Involuntary thoughts, bringing shame upon me.
I tried to read my book aloud so as to better concentrate. “Remember how poorly you spoke at the workshop last month, and how that woman is probably disappointed with you”.
Meditating or journaling is usually sufficient to reset my state, clarify my woes, soothe the anxieties, or open up possibilities of action. Nothing is working today, or it feels that way.
“Nothing is working”, “You can’t lose weight”, “You don’t speak well”. All these judgments are so negative. Meditation does not owe me an outcome. I am being hard on myself just as I imagine that woman from the workshop is being hard on me.
This is the point I have arrived at then. I know this is some sort of transient depression. I wish I just knew why and what to do now.
The immediate association in my mind is that I am depressed because I fucked up my weekend. I was meant to reconnect with a friend and enjoy a game of D&D. What I did was to get drunk on Friday night, so I was hungover for the D&D game and too beat up to see my friend. I drove the long distance home just needing to nurse myself.
So why the depression then? I betrayed my values and my goals. I do not feel like I can trust myself or that I am in control of my behaviour. Additionally, the alcohol has a devastating effect on the physical body which is probably exacerbating the depression.
Is that it though? What am I supposed to do with these morsels of knowledge?
I long for the perfect perversion: someone to love, hold, soothe, and indulge me. A woman who can give herself over for my love and care. Playing with this fantasy in my mind, I see that she does not make me feel better, but she allows me to be sick.
To be allowed to be sick… Is that it? Can I still love myself even when I am not shining?
Almost brought a tear to my eye, but my mind fights back! “You hardly ever shine. This is the same escapist pattern that you are constantly in. Every day is a ‘cheat day’, as you constantly postpone your self-actualisation”. (Fantasy: If I just lay down, I will waste, my back pain will only increase.)
Is that the voice of my own shaming mother? The high standards beating me down so hard that I don’t even get a chance to stand up and achieve them? Is this some sort of paradox I am trapped in?
Can I have goals without needing to reach them, and can I be loved all the same?
Love. Holding. Patience.
This feels difficult to do alone, but I learn a little more each time.
First of all, don’t touch the other side unless you feel secure in your environment. Physically safe, safe that nothing is going to break or stink, and free from intrusions.
There is a common theme from my last experience. The ego does not need to be dissolved. The ego can be held and healed.
I am aware of something like an escapist tendency in me. “I want it to happen to me.” With that comes being at the throws of a superego’s repetition compulsions playing out in the symbolic and emotional matrix at hand.
I can be a participant rather than an observer. When participating I turned the mirror around on the manifesting automatic mind, splits of my whole psychic apparatus. Those uncomfortable drives and callings were apparitions of parts of myself that, if followed, would take me into a challenging trip. It can be difficult to hold the mirror up, to stare the dragon in the eye. Doing so allows one to hold and integrate what lies behind. What lies behind are painful elements of myself, memories, states of self, emotions.
Healing work is work.
I noticed, staring out the window, smoking a cigarette, that I had this constant evaluative intrusion. This superego of mine is very embarrassed (for me, ego) and shaming (of me, ego).
Coming down is precious work. So much can be lost if one returns to automatic thinking. The default mode network, as it’s called, is sitting there ready, with its automatic superego judgments. The challenge is to remain in a healthy relationship to the present moment. Just like in a good meditation session, this is the golden opportunity to notice and not be taken.
There are so many impulses and intrusions. Go to sleep. You are wrong. This is not sustainable. Each intrusion wants to return to the default mode: satiate and sleep, meanwhile dragging the self through daily work.
“I want it to happen to me.” Or, I can be a participant in it. In my work anxiety is also my fear of being seen; my fear of proclaiming anything, for fear of shaming.
Without a clear intention and goal, it is difficult to parse out the task from anxiety. As is in the psychedelic trip I just had, so is it in my daily life. I too often approach each day unstructured, and thereby do not achieve anything, nor fail at anything.
I am thinking a lot of my past psychologist, still something of an idol to me.
I am extremely grateful to my work supervisors who saw a gift in me. Despite how bad things can be at this time, I can remember that my elders see success for me.
A very wholesome trip and meditation this has been.
i dont know how to describe my relationship to DMT. I have a great love for taking smaller dosages. I understand that people may wish to blast out into self-disollution, but I can’t help but feel that that is antoginist to a few things….
The ego needs to be resilient. Yes, spiritual teaching has taught letting go of an ego, whatever that is, but maybe we are missing purposes semantically or missing purposes on the function of being an ego.
I smoked and became immediately aware that I have taken this thing with scents of the past anticipations…
I saw the beauty of the geometry of the neighbourhood buildings and the colours, surrounding me balcony view.
I was aware of people laughing, and it felt like they had something to do with me. To be honest, still maybe a bit high, I do not often hear that much laughing. It feels like something of me is involved with there being so much laughter, especially when I psychotically interpret their laughter to be about my thinking pattern.
I came to the resting place that maybe, as I have been thinking soberly, that reality does split. Like reality is multi branching every moment and we are just choosing the next branch to follow.
my dad called me to close his window. according to script, that is because it is too cold. I was high of mood doing it, which may have seemed peculiar to me at least. but there was no reason to suspect that he might have been a little high himself OR even being a bit bewildered by the emanating presence of myself shiting reality branches.
It is weird that I cannot answer whether the psychotic question is true or not. What is even more awesome though, is that my cognitions about relationships to others especially remain grounded to a mutually cohered reality. Obviously, I am not talking about reality as in, there is chair. I am talking about the reality we live in, such as , “why is a chair there. in other words, the kind of reality my dad protests to…”why did you do that? *angry*”.
I’m not quite what much more to say.
Vertainly, talking higher dosages results in crazy experiences like self-disolution or my recent experience of being trapped for eternity, but… those require dissolution of the ego…. Some ego has tp then kind of integrate those experiences afterward, even though it cant remember 99% of (and I cant remember a lot even now at lower dosage). That partial integration of forgotten experience does not seem to me to match this current experience of integrating moment by moment, a semi-fluid ego, not absolutely washed out.
20h06 stop here. TIme since dosage unknown. maybe 10 or 20min.
20:20 I will edit the test to correct spelling and grammar
08/12/2021 – Corrected some spelling and grammar but I am going to post this as is.
I have learnt not to expect anything to go according to plan these past 2 years. Nonetheless, the final fall-back plan is coming together, and I should be out of my father’s home by January, just 2 and a half months away now. One of the things I have learnt in this year of living with him is that I end up getting hurt when I open up to the possibility of authentic connection to him. I have had to be of daily assistance to him for little things, but I am otherwise distant, do not converse, and remain neutral and honest. Today I saw the risk of the opening up again.
He had written up a will and called up a cleaning lady who works for him to witness it. Her English is not good, and she seemingly does not have much education. Indeed, she did not understand what it meant to be a witness on a will. My father got increasingly frustrated, telling her to sign it, not explaining anything. She remained hesitant, and eventually he said that it didn’t matter and let her go. I have a particular distaste for his rageful fits at people who do not understand him. So I asked him, “Are you annoyed now, Dad?”
“Yes! It’s such a fucking simple thing and…” He was fuming. I told him it is not a big deal. “Exactly, it’s not a big deal, so why can she not just sign the fucking thing!”. I continued prompting, something like, “If it’s not a big deal, then why get so angry?” He eventually, succumbs, saying, “Yes, I suppose”. I told him that he seems to get so angry at things that are not worth being angry about. I even went to the next room, following him, to qualify that “I understand that it’s frustrating, annoying, but you are positively fuming“.
He was looking at that lady like he wanted to hurt her. I find that disgusting. He comes back into the room, saying, “You know, I shouldn’t, but I just cannot stand, what I regard as, absolute idiocy”. Before I can say anything, someone else comes to the door and interrupts.
Now, great for him that he recognises that he gets too worked up, but still this image is burning in my mind. He was not just angry, he was looking at that lady like he wanted to hurt her and talking to her commandingly and condescendingly. She was visibly nervous and glad to get out of there. I really wanted to ask him, “How did you think she felt when you were so mad at her?” I do not think that the thought crosses his mind. Of course, my follow up comment playing through my mind is, “What do you think it was like being your child? … Having someone get furious at you for things you don’t understand?”
Many painful feelings and memories were aroused, and over an issue centring on his will. I thought to myself, “I would not mind if he died”. I thought about what I’d say at his funeral, and I thought how I would not be able to lie about who he really was. People wouldn’t take it well. My brother would understand what I was talking about but would still admonish me.
After the little episode, and along with the ruminations afterwards, I felt very dis-settled and unable to concentrate. I had to deliberately breathe and calm down, and writing this is also an act of getting this thing to settle into unconsciousness. I was reminded of how painful it was to approach insight from my father and the fantasy of getting an apology for how he treated us as children. I mean, he still treats people like shit, it used to be horrid though.
What was it like… to be a child, terrified of your father? I wish I could put words to it, but for now its just grief.
Thank you for showing up today. I called on you and you responded. You heard the echoes of my voice in its many forms, beckoning your spirit to step into the world. I loved today; it was perfectly imperfect.
You set yourself such a wonderfully reasonable goal regarding your work, and you even attended to the list of general life tasks that you have had floating in the background.
You had one emotional wobble. You experienced a severe anxiety spike just after mid-day that lasted for about 30 minutes. It felt like it lasted much longer. It felt like it had always been there and would never go away. You knew that it was transient even as it took total control. Fortunately you adjusted your environmental stimulation and broke the loop. You pulled yourself away from anxiety-generating distractions to, oddly enough, find soothing in reading through your work material. It was not clear what triggered the anxiety, though it may have been revisiting ideas and hobbies related to a past self. As I wrote to you yesterday, that past self also felt fragmenting anxieties, but that past self could not do what you can so gracefully do today. Do not shut him out, but integrate him mindfully. If it is too much right now, then let the sleeping dog lie.
Just one day, and I am filled with compassion for you. I wonder what tomorrow will hold; I see your reasonable to-do list and am proud of it.
Blessing, my friend. Rest well tonight and Godspeed.
Listen, my brother. I am writing from a place of feeling quite shaky. You probably remember. It’s unstable enough that I cannot even remember the words that I found so consoling but a moment ago. Nonetheless, hear me out.
It often feels like things are getting worse. Put the state of the world aside, and just focus on your own psychic integrity. What I can tell you is that you have become comfortable with things that would previously have sent you down a hole, things that might have made you want to quit this life. At each stage you have faltered, I am not going to ignore that fact. You did not, however, fall off. At each next stage you have judged yourself as if you were the person before, and that prevents you from getting the gold out of the rough, from appreciating the new person that confronted each more challenging obstacle.
Remember when you were so ardent at academic brilliance. You neglected your physical health, and there is a memory that is burnt into your mind of your stepmother accusing you of being selfish. She didn’t understand that you were focused, and that you were holding something together. That memory triggers the shame; it reminds you that you weren’t sleeping and that you couldn’t even think about holding down a job or having consistent professional relationships at that time. That blinds you though. You were brilliant, shining. Your mind was turned on with enthusiasm that you had never encountered before. You learnt that your reasoned opinions were valid, if not actually quite good. And, where you got it wrong, you figured it out and corrected path without getting bogged down.
You do not have to be that brilliant. But, if you do not salvage the gold, you risk losing that enthusiasm and the opportunity to integrate it into your life. Too often since then, your sole ambition has been to escape work and to disappear into self obliteration through socialisation with alcohol. That held you back, and offers another rendering of shame over your other great accomplishment.
You completed 12 months of gruelling work. Working at [redacted], under demands which some have not been able to cope with. You did struggle to cope, you did falter. You tarnish that accomplishment with the label of alcoholism. You do not think that it could have been any different. Remember when you could not go through a single day without smoking weed? Remember the horrid lengths you would go through to even scavenge a scrap of THC? Yet that all went by the wayside. Something that you never thought you could do, you passed through.
Sobriety has been a consistent foe. You have at times replaced weed with junk foods, eating yourself into a stupor. And, later in life, drinking yourself into a stupor. But, do you even remember the times you were sober, and tolerating the pain of being, transmuting it into meaning, into the lived experience of wholeness? I dare say, you might not. You will likely minimise them. I will not lie to you; those times of sobriety have not ever been in the majority. But, you suffer from the catastrophic overgeneralisation that you have never done it, and worse off that it was not filled with wholeness.
As it has ever been, the world is once again at your doorstep. These tasks immediately ahead of you feel like obstacles, but they are equally amazing opportunities. You fear that if you show up fully, as your true self, that you will not just make a mistake, but that the world will hold that mistake against you. You fear that if you ever actually have a professional identity, that it will end up carrying a horrid reputation. You have no evidence to back this up. People have seen you falter, but they did not judge you for it. (Forget about the parental judgments; those people are not emotionally competent. The sooner you embrace that fact for each and every one of them, the sooner you will be liberated from their judgment.) You know for a fact that those people did not catastrophically overgeneralise your flaws. That belongs to you. If ever anyone does do that, remember to do with that judgment what you do with the parental judgment; see it as unsupportive.)
There’s this horrid catch. It feels like time is rushing on and that you are losing out. You keep going out, seeking The Other that will bring about your wholeness and sense of security. That could be a lover, or just the clinging onto friendships that you fear will evaporate in your absence. Fuck, maybe some of them will. But the calling is there, my friend, my brother. You have been the bravest warrior before, and I would love to see that light shine in you, in me, again and again.
Your faith is often slim, but remember what Jung said of the old alchemist’s consolation to his disciple: If you do your work truly and conscientiously, unknown friends will come out and seek you. Individuation does not push the world away but rather alters one’s relationship to the world. Remember the calling. It is calling so strong my friend. Remember when that spirit pulsed through you, however fleetingly, and you felt your destiny. I know for a fact that you see it. It is not just fantasy. It is possible. It is undefined and ambiguous enough to not be unrealistic. This is not the creation of your ideal life, but the becoming of your true self: the one that encounters the world but does not require the world to be a certain way.
Grandiosity comes and goes as well. You have at times wanted to rewrite the world. When you have stumbled into the light, you have risked psychotic levels of power. That is also becoming integrated with time. Remember your humility, that other great gift which you have all too easily left to the shadows of shame and the past. You do not need to be welcomed by choruses of triumph, the choir of the heavens can chant quietly within you. You know when you are walking the true path. As your supervisor once said to you, you have a quiet confidence (despite the outward anxiety). You know what she was seeing, although she may have not put her finger on it.
The calling is chanting. At times it hurts your ears. At times you seemingly cannot bear the pain of being, against the shame of who you are tasked with becoming. It’s not that big my friend. Do not make mountains out of molehills. I am not asking you to conquer everything. I beckon you to see the next task immediately in front of you.
I have faltered so many times. But, tomorrow, I plan on showing up. I plan on first and foremost being honest. Honesty is the remedy to shame. Send that message, make that phone call, STUMBLE YOUR WAY THROUGH THIS. But most importantly, dare to stumble at all!
I live forever in you, outside of time. I am not me, and I too am only a refraction of my self, but you know that the calling is there.
I’m worried about myself. I am thinking of suicide a lot. I do not seem to have perspective; I seem to be lost. I know that there were good times, recently too, where I did not feel suicidal. I cannot seem to imagine them, though. I cannot imagine anything better than temporary relief from the interminable emptiness of my being. It is as if this emptiness has come to define me.
It’s been a few weeks since I have had any work. Work provides a sense of belonging and productivity that offsets my depression. I opened up a job search portal now, but I could not see anything that would be suitable for me. My belief in my ability to do anything is also extremely low. I have a fucking master’s degree and work experience but feel like a child.
Serious concern began yesterday. I considered reaching out to my therapist. If push comes to shove, I will have to pay and go back in to treatment. I would rather not. I also expect that I should have to go back on medication. It all costs so goddam much, the appointment with the psychiatrist I mean. The rest is affordable. My therapist would probably be willing to give me a reduced rate.
I will do what is necessary if it comes to that. This would be day 2 of worrying that intervention is needed. I am also aware that this month has been absolutely awful for my mental health. We have been put under strict lockdown because of another wave of Covid-19 cases, there is civil unrest in the country, and I also smoked cannabis daily for a while. These factors together make me forgive myself a bit for going through an episode. It offsets some of the personal judgment.
The personal judgment does not seem to go away, though. I think to myself that I should be more resilient, that I should have more natural goal-directed behaviour.
I feel alone and without adequate social support. When I burnt out last year, my HoD said to me that I do not seem to have a tribe. That was shockingly true. Many of my friendships feel empty, unsupportive. The worst of it is that many of my friendships revolved around alcohol. When I am feeling alone and need to be near someone, it is the easiest thing to go to the pub and drink with a friend. In that way, the lockdown is helpful as it means I cannot go out and drink.
I am stuck at home, alone with my father. Our relationship is terrible and it has only worsened over the past weeks. I am quite sure that we are both frustrated with each other. He disguises his better, though. He is desperate to connect with me; I resent him for being an abusive parent.
I cried about my shit with my father yesterday. I resent him so much that I refuse to give him my spontaneous and joyous self.
Fuckit. I need to talk to my dad.
Well, I spoke to my dad. It was in some ways helpful. It was very unhelpful in other ways. I tried my best to communicate what was happening inside of me, but I do not think he is able to understand. All he is able to do is give advice, some of which is correct advice. He did not seem capable of understanding, though, that my problem is not knowing what to do. I know too much. My problem is that I am hurting, I am hurting so god damn much. What I will never get from my father is a warm embrace and curiosity about my life.
After talking to him, I wept. I tried not to weep too loudly because I did not want him to worry or come to me. (That sentence is a fucking tragedy to have had to write.)
I had begun to think that maybe he is not as neurologically compromised as I thought, and that there was still the possibility of us meeting emotionally. I need to come to accept that whether he has a neurological or personality disorder, that we will never meet emotionally.
If I need to use him for emotional support, I need to be careful how I do it. It was helpful when he offered praise and reassurance; it was not helpful when he did not listen and gave advice.
This post is a mess, something that would usually end up in the long list of drafts. But, I want it to be visible to my future self.
I wish that this was more structured and that I could still remember all of the fascinating experiences I had last night. DMT has, once again, absolutely blown my mind. I cracked the glass pipe while cleaning it (inevitable after repeated use), so I switched back to the bong. I racked up some cannabis and what I thought was a low moderate dosage. I got a good few hits out of the bong, and then the last one brought the world in.
I wish I could remember the experiences; there were so many that were obviously interpretable and eye-opening. The thing that is stuck with me though, that I voice recorded into my phone as I was lying on the floor recovering last night, was getting trapped. I don’t know where in the trip it was, or how I ended up there, but I was in a white room. It was taller than it was wide, and the corners were all smoothed, rounded. There was some colour; it was not just white. There was a feeling of another entity, a ‘cellmate’, though I could not see anything.
I had no idea how I got there, I had no idea who I was. All that was obvious was that something had gone wrong; I went through a wrong door or pushed a wrong button, and now I was trapped. There was no escape, the room was timeless. Waves of calmness and panic flowed through me as I contemplated eternity. I thought about how I might entertain myself in this minimally coloured room, with no objects, for eternity. It all seemed entirely real; I do not know how to capture that in words; I do not know how to convince myself of the reality of what I experienced.
Then, a memory came to me. I cannot remember what it was. I think it was something that had happened yesterday. Oh boy, I held on to that memory for dear life. It was two things. Firstly, it was something that had come into the cell, which was a closed system, so that was like a miracle. Secondly, it reminded me of who I was, that I had an identity, that there was someone outside of this bubble in space and time. I basically held tight and kept rehearsing or reliving the memory until I started noticing other things and could trust that I was out of the cell.
My mind is blown. People so often talk about facing death and mortality, but I just found that it was facing eternity that was truly terrifying.
asfarasiamwillingtosay 