` In fact, the Good Doctor Nociceptor's already written a bunch about this, which you can read here.
On October 19, long after my last post here, an amazing transformation has occurred in my brain. This one psychology professor, who finds me to be fascinating (presumably because I describe to him what it's like to pass through various stages of childhood development, as an adult) said that this transformation, or at least aspects of it, normally occurs in people who are only 2 1/2 years old.
` And to tell you the truth, I've gone through even more since then, but none so shocking as the first one I mentioned!
And what was it, and why is it significant? Well, in my past, I had a very terrifying and unpredictable life of abuse, and for a while I developed a fantasy life to escape. I'd been violated so much in so many ways and brainwashed to believe that I didn't exist because my own thoughts and perceptions weren't really happening and something else was instead.
` I hated humans, because I thought they were all horrible, and often imagined myself to be some small, furry, fictional gliding mammal, like this one:
They seemed a lot more interesting than the abusive lunatics that I knew and thought were 'normal, happy people' because I didn't know any better. I knew that animal behavior could be predicted and catalogued much of the time, but humans?
` They were always saying one thing, doing another, and telling me that what I wasn't conscious of wasn't really what I was conscious of. I was cut off from the world and everything in it... except for the fuzzy animals I liked so much!
Trying to survive in the adult world, after years more violation and abuse, and living with crazy people and trying not to jump at the slightest noise, I had figured out that earplugs helped me find my 'mental space' as long as I couldn't hear anything around me.
` For a while, this was nearly impossible because of the 24/7 loud noise I dealt with in the condemned house I'd lived in with all those crazy roommates and the fish tank motor that echoed throughout the house and kept me up all night. I literally lost my willpower and went back to 'survival habits' and low-level fight-or-flight consciousness. I was dead on the inside because I couldn't move away, and felt ashamed of myself for wanting to kill myself.
` At last, by October, I was finally living in a quiet house where people wouldn't be constantly invading my space and making me feel that my own room was their territory and that I had limited rights to it. It was my own this time, no one could take that from me.
` I had also come back to those feelings of escape and of self-identification, and drew another one of those gliding creatures:
And on October 19, I was thinking about all this, when my identity with the furry thing kind of clicked together, as if putting on a mask, and I 'turned into' myself! All or a sudden, I felt as though there was a boundary around my body, my personal space, the room around me, and the moon shining through the conifers outside my window.
` This abstraction has greatly streamlined my thinking and perception so that I don't literally have to look around the room to see what is there but can instead just remember it -- the room is 'just there' in my mind.
` Without the constant noise and space-invasion, I finally feel that the space around me will not suddenly change without warning as it has for most of my life. It's just my space. The objects that I call mine are just mine, and I feel a connection to them when I hold them in my hands.
It also helps me perceive objects contained within a space. When I think of a bag or a drawer with objects in it, or even an abstract category with items within it, I can picture it, rather than having to think about it in mental long-hand.
` It's really changed my life and everything that goes through my head is so much more efficient, straightforward, and less blundering. I also realize that I now rely on more assumptions about what seems to be certainly 'there' in the world, but at least I don't have to think so hard all the time to keep it 'together' in my mind!
Such are the human mental shortcuts that allow us to be misdirected -- but I greatly prefer them over mental strain!
Posts
