Having set up my space over a month ago, I have yet to post anything ! “If there is no action, you have not truly decided” – perhaps that is what was happening with me.
Today, well yesterday now, I have allowed myself the luxury of doing nothing. Lulling in my jimjams all day; allowing the harmless television programmes to mentally lap over me. I could not even muster the interest to log onto to eBay in search of kookai dresses. Late afternoon had a small tussle with my super-ego to do some outstanding accounting paperwork. Noticed it was a feeble pretence at being virtuous; did not even offer my super-ego righteous indignation such as I-have-already-worked-70-hours-this-week. Just could not be bothered !
That is the joy of psychoanalysis. Do all that agonizing and soul searching with my therapist and then just live the rest of the time ! Sort of get on with being in the process; and then process the process with my therapist. Without my therapist, I am exhausted living the process and processing the process – at times, I feel I am physically oscillating between the me that is in process and the me that is trying to analyse the process simultaneously. I feel like I am two SELFs and they are materializing and vapourising between the two. At these moments, I wonder if others can actually see my two selfs flickering rhythmically like the transporting in Star Trek.
Hence my almost evangelical belief that everyone needs to be in therapy sometime and return to analysis throughout their lives. The current obsession with healthy living does not appear to extend to mental health. Even first world attitudes is that there is something wrong with you to seek therapy. Yet to have a health check is commendable, something to which others may wish to aspire.
Under medical definition, the definitive sign of death is considered to be “the cessation of brain activity (brain death), which is determined by electroencephalograph (EEG) recordings of brain-waves, which must be completely flat, that is, the tracing must be a straight line (iso-electric line), for at least ten minutes”. Is it folly, denial or fear or all of the above, that the vast majority of our fellow human beings so doggedly avoid any examination of their mental state of mind ? Are we so rigid with shame and guilt that no insight and self awareness can permeate ? Are we so terrified that our rigid shell is so brittle that we would be destroyed by the merest soft breeze of an honest open balanced insight ?
Self preservation is completely understandable and a thankful human instinct.
Living with hand-me-down prejudices and childhood helplessness is debilitating. Not only is it debilitating, what was helplessness for a child of five is not true for a woman of fifty. Yet many of us live a whole life feeling like a fearful five year old, even though we are competent and intelligent, perhaps influential and independent people.
Unchallenged hand-me-down prejudices lock us into our own prison cell. We each hold the key to step out of that cell by asking : is this hand-me-down prejudice my own experience of what it is really like ? And is it true for EVERY incident ?
Is it not worth courage and energy to discard those unreal fears and unquestioned prejudices ?
To live a contented life; truly engaging with authentic relationships.
What a wonderful gift to have this blog ! My fingers can babble and perhaps someone might babble back !