A schizoid personality

(Nancy, this one’s for you)

It’s time for me to post about something that I think even professionals are underestimating. There is little reference about “the fear of going crazy” for schizoids. And yet it is of capital importance, at least for me, I’ll explain why…

My mind is like one of those little spring toys that once wind upped won’t stop doing what they are meant to do. Even when they do stop, you just barely touch them and they go at it again.
Well my mind is meant to think and is wind up by thoughts. So you can imagine my mind like always thinking. And the more it thinks, the more it’s wind upped, and the more it’s wind upped, the more it thinks… That’s 24/7, every second of every minute of my life, restless… You can’t really understand what it means. My wife is the most empathic person I have ever known, and she can’t even start imagining what it’s like…
I mean, I am at the dinner table, talking, I get up to go pee, by the time I am upstairs I have travelled 3 million light years away thru a vortex that sucked me right from the stair case, I sit on the toilet and I am now peeling plantains in the 1750s on a remote island. As the drips fell done the bowl I wonder what will happen if the ballasts of a submarine were filled by an uncompressible gas instead of air, could it be released at a slower rate, smoothing the ride? I am back at the table exactly when the first computer more intelligent than any human being becomes aware of himself. I pick up the conversation around the table like nothing happened, realize that I probably did not flush, or did I? Can’t remember… Well my hands are misted, so at least I washed them… which makes me think: did I close the faucet? Well, let’s finish eating I’ll check discreetly after, why will a dog jump thru a hoop?…

Now, you can probably start to imagine how tiring that can be… Yet, it is kind of reassuring in a way. I mean it’s a windup toy; it does what is expected of it, no surprise, no deviance of any kind, you just got tired of it after a while… But not once, not ever did I mix reality and fantasy. I know exactly what I thought, what I fantasized and what I really did or said.
Still some times you’d like a little rest, a bit of quiet up there, and there are ways to achieve that, like with any windup toy…

1. You can put the toy underwater, that really slows down its movements. I believe that might be in part what Schizoids turning towards alcohol and/or drugs are trying to do. (Though some are probably fighting/trying to forget their apathy this way too, another post to come on that - done post is “Apathy? Did you say apathy?”).

2. You can jam the mechanism of the toy with a pen for example. That stops the movements, but can only be used for a limited time, because the spring gets harder and harder, tenser and tenser, and whatever it is you used to jam the mechanism will eventually just snap, freeing the toy again.

3. And of course, you can just do nothing and live with it… That is, of course like all complex mechanisms, until the toy breaks… Structural fatigue or material weakness, all mechanisms used without any stops will break, it’s just a question of time.
   And when a windup toy breaks, what do you get? Springs, gears and parts all over the place… hence the fear of going crazy when that toy is your mind…

Me? I am a number 2 guy. I never drink and never did drugs. My way is the “keep in control” way, and drinking or abusing substances will achieve quite the opposite wouldn’t it? But I also understand the “letting go” way. It works if you know exactly when to stop, (I am just afraid I won’t if it is too soothing…) then you can safely wash it away or blur it away for a while.

Number 2 “Jamming the mechanism”:

Before I was able to understand all that, I went thru at least two episodes of overloading (number 3, trying to live with it without stopping/slowing it), and the fear of going crazy was there trust me! I was so tired, no amount of sleep could do anything about it, headaches were pretty much constant, I was really in pain… “Mentally in pain” there is no other word/concept for it… I felt like “Cyclops” that X-Men character shooting laser beams out of his eyes, yes I felt like him when he does not have his neat little glasses to control the flux of the light… (Except I could not even close my eyes to make it stop).
And that’s when I have been saved by… THE MOVIES! I have always been a movie buff, and as deep as I was, I continued hitting the theaters, until I realized that when watching a movie, my mind was pretty quiet… As passive as the action of watching was, my mind kept inside of the movie boundaries, trying to get to the plot, making some assumptions, but, for me, that was in a VERY DEFINITE SPACE, very restful. So I went more to the movies… Of course you can’t keep on jamming the mechanism, remember? And I certainly did not want to break my passion for movies (and the soothing effect I had discovered about them). So I started broadening the concept until I finally realized that proper external stimulus and/or focus was all I needed. Reading? You bet! As long as I am reading, it’s under control (as soon as I put the book it’s back). Writing? Yep works too (and I get to write some of my mind ramblings on top of it). TV? Well sorry to much crap, funny how “reality” shows won’t work (I guess it does not need enough “focusing”), BUT, series are working wonders, they are like little movies for me (has to be without the commercials though). Working (probably explain why unconsciously I was a workaholic back in the days), playing (video games) works well too. Running? Quite the opposite, I actually use running when I NEED to think…
Because yes, I need my ramblings, my thinking and all that. It’s part of my introversion, comes with the package, I would not get rid of it for the world, this is who I am, and my only defense against feeling too much. My mind is the foreman of it all, it needs its little escapades to better built up my defenses against those feelings that while otherwise cripple kill me. Sadly the same mechanism is probably what forbids me to properly express my inner feelings towards my closest entourage, but hey, you can’t win all across the board, can you? That will be cheating…

Note on meditation:

Meditation is somewhere between number 1 and number 2. You got to “let go” while still “in control” somewhere very deep inside of you… I have tried it, and go back to it from time to time, but I think it takes a degree of control still out of my reach (or should I say a degree of “letting go” I still cannot grasp…)
There is that very moment where my mind reaches perfect balance for a millisecond, but I just can’t stay there because of the apparent loss of control tie to it… And I know the idea is to let go completely to better take control afterward, but that is still a step I cannot make yet. And since I found a pretty decent equilibrium for now, it’s fine by me.

Note on staying in control:

two decades ago I was hospitalized with a bad peritonitis (badly infected appendices), needed to be removed asap. I was scheduled first thing for the very next morning.

At 7am the nurse comes with the anesthetic, shoves it in my bottom (left chick) and goes away explaining I will feel drowsy in the next ten minutes and then will fell asleep. At 7h45 the anaesthetist comes checking on me and find me quite awake. Second dose, this time in the right chick. I am moved into the corridor, then up the operating room’s floor. In the corridor upstairs, waiting, the anaesthetist spot me eyes wide opened again. “you’re not going all though guy on me, are you?“. This time, stronger dose, directly in the arm.
I am brought on the operating table. I can hear the staff preparing. The surgeon enters, sees me and yell “what the hell is going on, the patient is still awake!” The anaesthetist tries to explain I already got two regular doses plus a stronger one a few minutes ago (they clear the room to discuss out of eavesdrop). A few more minutes and the anaesthtist comes back, grabs a mask, tells me to count to ten and put the mask on my mouth and nose. The gas is entering my lungs, I count up to seven and drop asleep at last.
Less than two hours after I woke up, they are moving me from the operating room to the recovery room, they just finished sewing me up and still got the tubes down my throat!

I am not a “control freak” far from it, but since that day I think it’s pretty obvious just how far I’ll push it to not “let go” by fear of losing all control… (local anesthetics seems to work normally, never had a problem at the dentist or in the emergencies for bad cuts and such).

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