I did my best to look after my transport system, of course. I'm a responsible car owner, too- regular oil changes, tires rotated and balanced, new hoses and belts as needed.
I used to call my body "a transport system for my brain." I lived above the base level of sensory gratification and suchlike. (Thanks, sick patriarchal religion!)
I did my best to look after my transport system, of course. I'm a responsible car owner, too- regular oil changes, tires rotated and balanced, new hoses and belts as needed.
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The culture I grew up in gave me a terrible burden: It taught me that "absence of pain" is a sign that all's well, 'normal' conditions are prevailing, I'm doing it right, and that I belong to a community, a world where "absence of pain" is the way things are supposed to be. "Absence of pain" became my touchstone for making decisions and evaluating options. "What do you believe?" When talking about the spiritual aspects of life and recovery, that question gets tossed around a lot. I don't answer it much, anymore. If I'm being polite I just say something about "Twelve Step Spirituality" and hope to hear more about what the questioner believes. It's not that I don't want to share. But they didn't finish the question. "What do you believe?" is about as meaningful as "How high is up?" Yesterday I was invisible. There's just no pleasing the jerkbrain. Most of the time it complains bitterly about exactly the opposite: too much exposure. Too many demands. But sometimes it goes all empty and needy and attention-seeking. I love my Autopilot. It’s such a useful tool. For the (comparatively) unimportant things, it’s easy to program. You figure out the optimal way to accomplish something— break it into steps, figure out the best order to do the steps in, what needs to be arranged where and how to facilitate the task, set that up, do it a few times, integrate it into your routine, and there you go. You never have to think about it again. I'm very lucky to have a woman--more than a friend-- who does cleaning for me. When she comes to clean, we usually chat for a few minutes, then I vanish into the office to work, and she interrupts me only if she has a question, or when it's time to clean the office. (That's when I get some errands done.) This works well, for me. It hasn't worked so well for my mother, who's elderly and uses (or used, until recently) the local Community Center's cleaning service. They assigned her Edna. At first, I heard good things about Edna. She was friendly, mature, competent. As a slave of The List, I’ve spent too many days immobilized by anxiety. The List itself is partly an artifact of my old days in Autopilot Development, and partly the Blueprint for Perfection. Add in the subversion of my misfiring brain chemistry, and it moves from the “tool” column into the “weapon” category. Populated as it is by everything from brushing my teeth to invoicing clients, The List can be formidable even on the good days. On the marginal days, it’s an efficient self-torture device. On the bad days, it’s a mixed blessing. It adds to the misery, but it’s also likely enough to trip the “shutdown” failsafe, and immobilize me. My jerkbrain loves misery. It wants to kill me, and misery is a great tool to accomplish the job. Acute misery can end in self-destruction to end the pain— woo-hoo, mission accomplished for the jerkbrain. Misery that isn’t acute enough to accomplish self-destruction can still be lethal over the long haul. Miserable states, though, consume a lot of energy. |
AuthorIn lifelong recovery from a chronic brain disease,Terry lives in the U.S. Southwest, and actively pursues several hobbies, including confounding assumptions, extreme semantics, and damage control. Subscribe to Teritas
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*"Teritas et factum convertunter"-- roughly translated, "One can know Terry only by interpretation." (More literally, "Terry and reality are interchangeable.")
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