Self Awareness in a world of Madness...
Mental health is a serious trip.
Like, one of the ways that I stay sober (the most effective way of staying sober) is knowing that my self-awareness in my madness is way more fucked up than any drink or drug can get me.
I feel like I'm piloting an exploration ship, but my sensors are out of alignment and my processors are running parallel systems of analysis that never agree with each other.
Before I gathered skills from Cognitive Behavioral Training and Dialectical Behavior Therapy I pretty much made decisions by averaging what my processors told me and then rolling 2D20 to make my life choices. It wasn't great. My mind was a turbulent mess and I didn't have any system at all for even existing within myself let alone interfacing with the world.
I was very lucky to have work that was very mission oriented. This allowed me to throw myself into that work, that purpose, and set aside the tiny fact that my perceptions and beliefs about the world were not accurate or much like those of anybody around me. My symptoms were consistent so much of the time I could use a kind of Kentucky windage to dial in my aim on my goals.
As I learned skills from CBT, I was able to set up queries in my mind when things felt unbalanced or too sure about things. Sometimes these skills are taught as challenges, but I find that a kind of command line: Query... works best for getting my attention in an open minded and receptive kind of way.
DBT is the bomb. I sincerely believe that the basic DBT skills should be taught in all schools.
Some people seem to think that because DBT was designed for people with Borderline Personality Disorder that it's an extreme mode of therapy. It can be used as a framework for intense therapeutic study and growth, but it is also a very simple, step by step, user-friendly list of skills for emotional regulation, communication, and problem solving that would might be taught to children by those who raise them.
An extended family living together in a close community where children are surrounded by those who are dedicated to caring for and protecting each other would be a great place for a child to learn these skills. The burden wouldn't be on one or two individuals to be all things and to teach all things to a child. There would be grands and aunties and uncles and cousins who could teach, practice, and display all of the DBT skills.
In a world where the adult to child ratio is often 2:1 at best, and in schools where the ratio becomes 1:30, the main providers of examples on these living skills are going to be other young people who are still developing their brains and their skills by trial and error. In a household where the parent figures are frightening or frightened, this ratio can dip into negative numbers. We end up with a child whose parents are dealing with bigger issues than they can handle and the child ends up developing a very skewed system of perception and processing.
That child? That's me.
However, this child developed the skill of awareness and defensive overthinking to the point that, once they stopped self-medicating with alcohol, they were able to experience the skewed nature of their perceptions and the complicated, glitchy, and unreliable nature of their processing with an intense sense of curiosity and a willingness to fiddle with things until they stop exploding regularly.
As I type this I am experiencing some pretty intense derealization and depersonalization. As always when I notice this coming on, I ensure that my surroundings are secure. I have a perimeter around me that is secure and cannot be broken without making an alarm. I make sure I've taken my meds correctly. I drink some water and see if I need to eat something. I consider showering or sleeping.
Once this is done, I review the present mission. I establish which tasks I require of myself for this mission and I see that those happen to the best of my ability with huge patience for myself and long pauses before I speak or contact another person to ensure that I'm not going to lash out or fawn.
That done, there is very little to do except observe the conditions and accept them as they are.
I trust inertia. Things are likely to be where they have been in the past. If I sit, I am likely to stay in one place. I feel my perceptions warp and fade in and out around me and my connection to my body glitches randomly. I see my hands typing and I remind myself to think, “These are my hands.” They don't feel like my hands right now, but neither do they feel like anybody else's hands. Logically these hands are mine and I live within the body to which they connect. I see my feet and they feel far away so I wiggle a toe and watch it move.
It's so cool that I can control my toes simply by thinking about moving. I don't have to know which muscles contract and which tendons and joints work their magic. I don't even have to think or voice a command. I move those toes. Those are my toes, otherwise I could not do that with them.
And before I get lost in this kind of meditation, I put on Koyaanisquatsi because the visuals are amazing and Phillip Glass music soothes my mind when it is scattered and gnawing at itself like an animal in a trap. I look at the images and watch the physics of mechanical creations juxtaposed with the natural world. The horror/beauty eases the conflict in my brain and I don't feel like I have to fight to hold everything together and be sane because this world is everything but sane and to be sane is to consider this world acceptable.
And then... I sit in the awareness of my own madness as it fits in with the madness of the world around me. I can see plain evidence that people around me behave as though they are experiencing similar symptoms. I am not alone.
We're all here in our own madnesses and we're all part of this world. That's a pretty heavy thing to be aware of all the time, so I try to save it for when my brain is at its crunchy toast stage.
Self-awareness in madness can be the worst thing ever. It feels like me watching me make stupid choices and screaming helplessly, unable to change anything. But it can also be the best thing ever. It feels like me watching me surf the waves of chaos and confusion, reaching out to drag my fingertips along the inside of the curl of reality.
In the end I'd much rather live like this, not knowing when my mind is going to glitch and my perceptions slip, than being absolutely sure of reality and my processes at all times. If I'm not sure, there is always room to explore and learn more. If I'm sure, then all the doors of growth are closed and I might become stagnant and putrid. Yuck.
That's what it's like for me, as best I can describe it right now. If any of that sounds familiar, you might enjoy learning about some DBT skills. I think everyone should make some time to learn about DBT skills. They're great guidelines for functioning in a social environment.