Aug 12

 Exhaustion has kicked my ass over the last several days. I tempted the devil at each step by keeping up a low effort task of cleaning bits of the car over those days. But I paced myself better. And did not reduce myself to the sorry state I initially had.

Yesterday, out of the blue, I felt much better. Much, much better. Functional. I picked up a very limited set of grocery supplies, and went to the effort of cooking slow cooked creamy tarragon chicken with mash and green beans. I didn't flake. I didn't feel it. It was. Like I used to be. And dinner was super yum.

And then today. We are back in the swamp once more. And additionally, out of nowhere, my anxiety has ramped up to a nasty degree, making me jumpy and in a permanent state of impending doom all day. Very not nice. But. You get on with it. Grit your teeth. And try to keep a clamp on your state of mind which is, you can feel, very sketchy, and has more than a little of that "mad itch" to it, where you are starting to lose grip on reality. Losing your mind. Super not cool.

Whilst in the bathroom I reflected that today was a very different day from yesterday. For no good reason. But there was also a sting in the tail. That, putting two days like that back to back, one end of the scale to the other, made the bad day so much worse. It makes it very clear what you lose. It also makes going back into the shit harder to do. A fresh plunge into cold water, as opposed to having got used to the temperature.

Sigh.

There is no apparent rhyme or reason to it. Just the ebb and flow. Of my shit health, sputtering. Of my mental state, and dead end of a philosophical and life alley. Perhaps some of that is no great mystery. Despite carrying a heavy load, a person may, have a burst of strength, and carry it forward without breaking a sweat, before the next hour, collapsing under its weight. There is then no mystery as to why the collapse. But perhaps just a testament to how strong sometimes a person can be - despite the shit. Or perhaps another way to put it. If you're in a freezing environment, the tendency is for you to be frozen. If on a rare occasion you can find warmth, all well and good, but don't then be surprised when you return to being frozen. It is the resting state of where you are.

So today I am severely struggling with just getting through the next 10 minutes. There is no trigger. It is just how it is. And I am again, suffering hardcore. I don't need to say how tired I am of suffering. My brain doesn't work correctly. Or maybe. It doesn't work correctly in the environment it finds itself in. Although really that's the same as saying it doesn't work correctly. You're either well adapted to your environment, or you are not.

So, I've touched before on the belief that buddhists have that essentially is - life is suffering. And that you need to address that in order not to end up utterly devoured by it.

There is a second belief they have. Which is that your capability for suffering comes from the thinking bit of your brain. The "smart" bit. The bit that has a voice. It is the source of all your suffering. Hence the idea of emptying your mind, stopping thoughts, meditating, living in the moment, all in an aim to quiet that source of suffering.

Perhaps then it follows that the more you think. The worse it can be. Overthinking. The deeper you dive, the worse it gets.

It's certainly true that depression originates in your pre frontal cortex. This is a fact. Monitored. Scanned. Scientifically measured. Along with the reinforcement mechanisms involved with your neurons - there is a tendency for things to repeat, strengthen, deepen, like digging an ever deeper hole. Which lets you learn things. It also interestingly enough, makes negative thoughts and ideas "sticky", and get worse. All of this in your pre frontal cortex. And the pre frontal cortex is... dun dun darr... the bit of your brain that makes you - you. The latter evolved bit. The thinky bit. The voice in your head. Compared to the lizard brain way in the back.

Science seems to be agreeing with Buddhism here.

Unpicking those things also, perhaps not unsurprisingly, starts to chime with things like CBT. The art, says any number of therapies is in not reinforcing the unwanted behaviour. And instead. Reinforcing something else. Stop that. Do this instead. Just like teaching yourself out of any bad habit. But this stuff is much more sketchily defined and thought of for the shape of someones thoughts, their mental health. It is much more of a standard for more obvious things. Like posture. Or quitting smoking. But. The same principle applies to fuzzy things such as the way you think. Why ? Because all you are talking about is your neural pathways. They either strengthen or weaken depending on whether they get repeatedly used or ignored or new patterns are laid down. That mechanism is behind everything that goes on in your head that is even slightly above automnic.

Of course. Doing that is no easy path, given that the endocrine system also ticks along with that. It's one thing to decide to not smoke today. It's another thing entirely when the chemical soup that sloshes around in you, signalling, hunger, fear, satiation and just general mood, is keyed to those switches. A bit like deciding that today you will walk a straight line down this path, only for someone to inject you with LSD as you take the first step. Try that on for size with a non helpful chemical bump sloshing around in you.

Anywho.

So much for the understanding of it.

You can write it down, like an equation on a piece of paper. Yes. I see how that works.

Living it. Is different.

I have a headache ghosting over my "pre frontal cortex". Threatening to be a migraine. I feel like shit. The temperature and humidity today has climbed into that too hot, climate change is here with us, place, and it's making me feel worse. And todays temp is not even close to how hot it can now get.

I am off to curl into a ball. Sleep if I can. And see if I come out the other side. I am perpetually surprised when I do.

Eventually, of course, as it is for everyone, that dice roll will fail.