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a beautiful moment of clarity

psychobaby — Sat, 05 May 2007 12:03:23 CDT

This may just be the best thing I've ever written, came up in response to some serious self questioning and response to an email to a friend/mentor of mine.
And like the title suggests, it came after a seriously clear moment, like the air just after it rains.
Ok, here goes.

At some point we know what we want and who we are yet we're so strongly
compelled by the desire to not offend that we ignore this
overwhelming
want to be who we want to be.
And the hitting.
Mostly for me it was the residual gossip.
People talking about what I'd done, goingall he said she said on me.
I hated it.
Then I realised that with that came the desire to conform.
There's comfort in conformity.

But I died inside.
I was no longer me, but someone else's idea of who i was, what I
wanted no
longer featured, it was what was expected of me.
Sickening.
Then at some point I was expected to go one further.
To actually go against my beliefs for the sake of that same group.
i resisted and got insulted so badly I still reel at the thought of
the
stuff that was done to me.
By the way, this was when i was in High School.

And the group was a silly clique.

But it kinda prepared mew for life at the fringe of conventional
society.
A place I have found acceptance at.

But I still do stuff I don't really want to.
Just to please other people.
Shame, innit?

Everybody's a freak to someone.
Take a newborn baby for instance. To it's mother it may be a freak
(based on the circumstances of conception) but to everyone else it may be
the
cutest thing on earth.
Life's a constant battle. You have to pick who to listen to and who
to
completely ignore.
And when to do the rest that's in the middle.
But at some point we realise that everyone's saying different
versions of
the same thing.
Morality, good, bad, man, woman, time, space, me, you

All boils down to a central string running through them like a set of
beads on a necklace.
So what you have to do is look for the string instead of getting
dazzled
by the beauty of the beads.
That people may not be perfect, but if you took a little of what
everyone
is saying and collect it together so that it's what they may be
saying but
at the same time it's not, then you have an interesting collage of
stuff
people have said. And in the end it's the content of everything they
say
that matters, not every single word they use.
People have this strange ability to completely dissociate from what
they
say. Half the time I'm not really me when I say stuff.
It comes from the consciousness.
Like now I have no idea what I just wrote, like I stepped outside of
myself for a moment and became what I was writing so it came out the
way I
felt it.

This is what you should do. Don't wear your heart on your sleeve.
Vulnerability is weakness.
But don't shut it in either. It's one of the things that make you
human.

psychobaby :o)
kenyan105@aol.com

Once upon a Chatroom

Anonymous — Tue, 20 Mar 2007 13:18:45 CDT

Paltalk: This is a G rated voice room intended for a General Audience including minors. Offensive language is not permitted.
Paltalk: Welcome to the Freemason Chat Room.
psychobaby: are you for real?
Bill1991: Greetings
psychobaby: hello
Bill1991: I hope so
psychobaby: No, I just saw Freemason Chat Room and got thinking...
Bill1991: ok
Bill1991: So what's the problem?
psychobaby: what's Freemasonry really about? I mean, aside from all the skeptic and often wrong hype from the media, what is it really?
Bill1991: Freemasonry is the world's oldest fraternal organization. The lessons Freemasonry teaches in its ceremonies, are to do with moral values. A Freemason is basically encouraged to do his duty to his God, his family and those who dependent on him.
Bill1991: He is to help his neighbors through charity and service. None of these ideas are exclusive to Freemasonry, but all should be universally acceptable, and Freemasons are expected to follow them.
psychobaby: Ok, so it's like a brotherhood of sorts, with a code and everything where the main aim is solidarity among men?
psychobaby: His God?
Bill1991: That woud be part of it.
psychobaby: But how has it become equateed to some extent with the occult?
Bill1991: It's not.
psychobaby: Over here (In Kenya) it has
Bill1991: Why do you say that?
psychobaby: what I've gotten from teh media here at least is taht anything to do with Freemasons is regarded to some extent as dealng in the black arts.
psychobaby: Which I know is a lie
psychobaby: But I'm just interested in how it happened
Bill1991: YOu would have to ask the people of the media why they are spreading lies.
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psychobaby: I live in a very skeptic society
psychobaby: and from what I've learned, the media is a reflection of the society it serves
Bill1991: YOu can't blame Fremasonry for that either
psychobaby: I know. That's not what I'm doing.
Bill1991: Then what you've heard isn't true then............by you're own understaindings
Bill1991: Greetings Piyudi
psychobaby: But to some extent Freemasonry has encouraged that
piyudi2000_1: hey bill
Bill1991: How?
psychobaby: Becoming even more shrouded in mystery
psychobaby: and retreating isn't exactly the best way to do your PR now, is it?
Bill1991: Just because Masonry doesn't respond to lies, doesn't make it any less than it is.
Bill1991: Freemasonry doesn'
Bill1991: doesn't have to do PR work
psychobaby: It has to.
psychobaby: In order to survive
Bill1991: nope............never did ...........never will
psychobaby: Why do you think the Shakers died out? And convents in Europe are shrinking?
Bill1991: Just because Masonry doesn't fit any of your preceived ways of existing, doesn't make it wrong or mysterious.
psychobaby: It's not me, it's the rest of the world.
Bill1991: AS you preceive it.
Bill1991: Greetings Jamie
jamie_379: hi there
psychobaby: And bvelieve me, everything fits along a certain pattern, from your basic monotheistic religion to the running of the most complex economy in the world
Bill1991: Masonry is not a religion
psychobaby: Haven't said it is
psychobaby: I said everything follows a certain pattern. Everything human has a source, a course and an outcome
Bill1991: so everything has to fit into a litel box then.
psychobaby: no, everything eventually flows along the same course. Something like a river
psychobaby: or an ocean current
psychobaby: sorry for attacking you like that
psychobaby: I mean, I have a tendency to overthink things
Bill1991: I see that
psychobaby: but you're a nice guy
Bill1991: I try to be
psychobaby: *smiles* I can see that
psychobaby: Are you a freemason?
Bill1991: yep
psychobaby: how long?
Bill1991: over 20 years
psychobaby: that's longer than I've been around. I'm turning 20 on Friday
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Bill1991: ok
psychobaby: why'd you become a freemason?
psychobaby: If it's not too private a question?
Bill1991: it is but I'll answer it
Bill1991: My family are Masons so it just seemed lke the thing to do at the time.
psychobaby: ok
psychobaby: by at the time it sounds like you didn't have much of a choice
Bill1991: sure I did
psychobaby: Sorry, that came out rude
Bill1991: I was a Demolay and that is the next sept
psychobaby: so you started young?
Bill1991: I guess you could say that
psychobaby: which is why you know way more about it than I ever will
psychobaby: I have this Freakonomics attitude towards life
Bill1991: I see that
psychobaby: where I believe that one theory can explain a whole load of other often unrelated phenomena
Bill1991: naaaaa doesn't work
psychobaby: but in some cases it does.
Bill1991: You can always make a theory fit..............but is it right.
psychobaby: like Supply and Demand can be used to explain more than just open market economics
psychobaby: in some cases. Depends on what you use the theory for. some people push it, like justifying genocide or general human evils with one theory, natural selection
Bill1991: If you do what you always do.......you'll et what you alwaws got
psychobaby: what, people never learn?
Bill1991: yes they do...........when they want too.
psychobaby: but they may choose to inore the obvious
psychobaby: ignore
psychobaby: people do that sometimes
Bill1991: people do lots of things
psychobaby: and one of them is ignore conventional wisdom
Bill1991: human nature can not be put in a box anymore than anything else can be.
psychobaby: but all men are created equal, therefore all men are composed of the same fundamental functions
Bill1991: if you are talking about the bodie
psychobaby: not th body, the mind
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Bill1991: The mind is diferent for each person............that's what gives us shuch diversity in life.
Bill1991: YOu seem to be stuck on putting things in little boxes...........it doesn't work
psychobaby: But it's not that we have different minds, we have different versions of the same mind
Bill1991: YOu keep confusing phisical with mental...........there are no two minds alike
psychobaby: because each version is different
psychobaby: Like my fingerprint is different from yours, but that doesn't mean my finger is different from yours
psychobaby: And with mental, our minds are the same, but we think differently. Like having two identical computers, one with Vista, the other with Windows 98.
Bill1991: there you go with the box...........and confusing phicial with mental.
psychobaby: Which does not mean the computers are different, it means they work different
Bill1991: now you compare computers to people?
Bill1991: Greetings Fly
D_Fly_On_D_Wall: greetings
psychobaby: you have an idealistic view of the human being as incomparable to anything else
Bill1991: See now you re trying to put me in a box.
psychobaby: so you don't believe in making distinctions were possible, like the limit
Bill1991: Greetings Macboon
Bill1991: When you talk about people each is different and should be understood as different than the anyone else.
psychobaby: so I'm not the same as you?
Bill1991: Onc you start trying to fit them into a box........you will lose site of what you can learn and what they can teach you
Bill1991: only that we are both human beings...........that's the end of it
psychobaby: and that's my point exactly
psychobaby: we're both human beings, but when you add on the labels that come with being within a human society, religion, societal placement, that's when we start diversifying, but to a really big extent we're all the same
Bill1991: nope..........you'll never get it till you stop those littel boxes..........we are not the same never were newver will be.
Bill1991: even our DNA isn't the same
Bill1991: only that we are of the same spicies
psychobaby: so what happened to ''all men are created equal''
Bill1991: you are reading that line wrong
Bill1991: It means we have the same chance to be what we want as everyone else. WE start out as empty books and we learn from there.
Bill1991: Greetings Kush
psychobaby: learn what? How to become human?
Bill1991: What ever you need to learn.
psychobaby: don't we all at some point have to learn the same tings? I mean, we're not all born speaking or reading or adding
Bill1991: That goes without saying.............but that doesn't make us the same
Bill1991: Welcome Free
afreemason: Ty Bill
psychobaby: But since we do the same things, then what does that imply?
Bill1991: nothing
psychobaby: it implies a whole lot, Bill
psychobaby: You're refusing to see it from my perspective
psychobaby: You've put yourself into a box
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Bill1991: not really.........we all learn differently..........so even taught the same things we will be different people.
psychobaby: I agree with that, we will be different people, but at some level I still insist we are the same
Bill1991: not at all.............not phisicaly or mentaly.........we are different
Bill1991: back to the box again I see
Bill1991: brb
psychobaby: then why are we urged to conform or die?
psychobaby: I mean, go with society or lose out completely?
Bill1991: YOu don't have to..........that is up to you.
psychobaby: Ok, thanks Bill for a very interesting discussion. I have to leave for work now. I added your room to my favourites and hopefully I'll hear from you again

Self Awareness

Anonymous — Thu, 22 Feb 2007 07:06:16 CST

There is no abstract available for this page revision.

Je suis employé

psychobaby — Mon, 05 Feb 2007 01:49:32 CST

really sleepy. Seriously. I'm zoning in and out right now.
Got a new job the other day, selling ISP service over the phone.
So people call up and what I do is basically tell them about our available plans and whatever and they either buy or not buy depending on whatever they want. So the thing is, I live in Kenya, and the market I sell to is in the States, so I have to stay awake the whole night to do my job.
So in the end my body clock is messed up.
Badly.
It doesn't help much that half the time I have to convince the guy on the other end that I have a real job, that I'm getting paid for talking to him and telling him why he should quit ISP A and join ISP B.
Then there's the people who call "Just to ask", and in the end that's not a sale.
So initially I was a bag of nerves and I really tfelt the pressure to perform and as a result I was permanently on my toes.
I've relaxed more, the challenge is off, so what's happening is that I'm getting complacent.
I'm bored.
To wit's end.
I reached my zenith some time last week when I made 14 sales in one night as opposed to some other people with something like 3, so it was major.
But now I'm not driven to do the same, to make 14 sales again.
Now I make 6, 7, 10 if I'm feeling inspired.
But the thing is,I've been there for 2 weeks now.
And I'm bored.
How can that happen to anyone? I mean, 2 weeks?
But it's partly because the office is strange.
I have to wear a suit all night.
It's at night, so the relevance of that I still fail to see.
But dress is everything.I'm not reallylikely to make more sales if I'm wearing jeans than if I'm wearing finely spun wool now, am I?
Wrong.
I made more sales wearing a cotton throw-on than when I was wearing the same finely spun wool.
People are funny, there's neat freaks, like my boss.
Then there's couldn't-give-a-damn people like this guy at the office who's constantly getting made fun of about his shoes, but he always insists that whoever's saying it isn't paying his rent so they don't really deserve any of his time.
End of the day, it's what you've done that matters.
Not how you do it.
That's what life's like.
Noone cares that you were wearing a yellow t-shirt with green socks when you made that 100th sale.
But if you make the mistake of screwing up, the t-shirt and socks will be blamed.
Success can happen on its own, failure has to have an explanation behind it.
I sleep days now.
I've had to reset myself.
It's been a process.
But I'm going back tomorrow, and the day after.
To prove a point to myself.
That 2 weeks is way too short a time for self evaluation, and that I can hit 14 or more as easily as I did it the first time.
That's kinda the point of this page.
It's self-confidence time...
Moving on with life.

My idea of God

psychobaby — Tue, 26 Dec 2006 03:39:52 CST

I have delusions.
Some are really big.
Like this one. I grew up believing that I could switch places with God.
Switch places.
Meaning I would become God and he would become me.
Coz I was convinced that he was doing such a poor job and that a person like me could do way better.
First off, he wasn’t paying enough attention to me. So I thought I had a right to access.
My life was very run of the mill.
I was an average child.
If I was God I’d change that.
I’d change everything around me.
I’d make me more special.
I’d give myself whatever I thought I needed. And that varied wildly with the times. One time I wanted to be a pilot. And I was 10. I even looked up the directories for airlines that sounded like big possibilities. And I wanted to transform directly from average everyday child to big shot airline pilot. I still laugh at that time. It was innocent yet filled with the same stuff that happens to me up till now.
So I still contemplate how my life would be if I was God.
First off there’d be more to worry about.
With me to worry about myself I thought that was enough, but I didn’t really realise that God has an entire planet to look out for. People like me, some worse, some better, some just like me.
And there’s loads of people last time I checked.
No wonder he hasn’t got that much time for me.
I figured out how God works.
He has to give every being its chance to find its way. Then once in a while he gives a friendly nudge in the right direction when the being starts to veer towards the dark side. But sometimes the nudge isn’t hard enough and the forces pull the being into the darkness.
Here’s the great part. Even in the darkness he still cares. He still contemplates for the lost being. Like what to do. So all sorts of hints are dropped, like visions of your life flashing before your eyes just before you make that all important decision to take your own life, making you ask whether your life really has lost its meaning or you need to get a new dictionary.
I suggest the dictionary.
I’m not saying you should become a religious monolith. I know people like that. Just because they’ve adopted this view of God, they decide that that’s it with their search. That’s it with their direction in life.
I believe that God’s dynamic. He changes ever so slightly as we move along that with time he becomes invisible. We don’t bother to look any more, coz after all, he’s always there.
Then come the hard times, when we ought to see him, then we don’t coz we get so caught up in looking for a solution that when he eventually hands us one we act like we got the Nobel Prize and we did it on our own.
So he ends up not getting any credit.
He doesn’t really need it. I mean, isn’t he God?
So he still watches over everything, nudging wherever he sees fit, hinting where nudges don’t work and eventually getting involved in subtle ways.
God is such an incredibly human concept that it gets so interesting to watch as we gradually abandon the whole idea of him even being there.
I have to say this is generally my idea of God. I’m not saying that I advocate for any religion in this piece.
And I used he as the pronoun for God. I know. He. Leave me alone.

Help springs eternal

psychobaby — Sun, 10 Dec 2006 23:29:46 CST

One thing about having something like OCD is that you can’t really take it down yourself. You need someone, either someone who’s gone through it or someone who’s read about it, someone who’s been found fit to look into your head and see what exactly is off. So that’s what I did. I went to see this therapist I got off the Yellow Pages (mistake no. 1), then I called and asked to speak to the therapist. Some guy picked up the phone and asked what I was calling about so I asked if he was the therapist (mistake no. 2). He said he was, and asked me what my “particular concern” was. So I told him I have a condition. He asked for a description and asked me to hold on for a moment. I suppose he was going for a pen and notepad. So I told him I have particular concern that my symptoms indicate OCD. Just seeing if he’d catch on. So he asks, “You mean obsessive compulsive?” I wanted to go “Like duh?” but didn’t. (mistake no. 3). So I set a time and date for my appointment.
I went and met the guy at his office. Or what I thought was his office. And I talked and talked about me, and what I’ve been going through. Meaningful deep belting out. Not holding anything back. And the dude was taking notes. Which I took as a good sign. (mistake no. 4) And we arranged for a follow up session where he’d give me his feedback after he “pondered and analysed.”
So I went home happy. Or at least happier than I’d been before. But with a serious hole in my pocket. I had to pay in advance. Not that they didn’t trust me, but apparently it was “policy”. So I was happier than before.
The follow-up was bad. Horrible. He said from what he’d observed from my behaviour that he didn’t really think I have OCD, that I was “faking it” just coz I know people with OCD and I wanted to “fit in”. So apparently all that discussion of the stuff I’d gone through was proof of my “wanting to belong”. Aren’t there easier ways to do that? Like dressing like everyone else and piercing every possible bit of skin that I wouldn’t have tattooed by then?
In his defence the chap insisted that that’s what the textbook insisted and that I had no “solid obsessions”, and that the compulsions were “fake, imagined at best”. His words. I was shattered. I left. In a cloud. Walked out. Told the receptionist that I didn’t think I’d come back coz I didn’t like the therapist. Which was when she felt it necessary to tell me that that wasn’t the real therapist and that he was the trainee that wanted some practice with patients and that the point was that the patient thinks that the guy was the real therapist. I don’t like pranks. Especially of this kind. So I left and refused to pay. Told them I’d call them.
I did call them. And gave them a piece of my mind. I was really pissed off at them. But then I started asking myself what the implications were if they were actually true. I started doubting myself and my ability to get through whatever it was throwing at me.
But the thing is, it’s people like these that we need. People who actually know about the mind and how it works.
This example was just to show how hard it is to get help for OCD. Very, very hard. Especially in a society that doesn’t believe that things like OCD exist.
With OCD, it takes understanding. The reason why it’s hard to help someone with OCD is that they usually hide it in public. It’s easy for someone with OCD to “blend in” and become one with the rest of society. Easy. I do it all the time. When I’m with my family, with my friends. Only a handful knows. No one in my family knows.
With OCD, therefore, diagnosis is mostly up to the affected person. So there’s the real risk that diagnosis may be fake. Some of the telltale traits of OCD include:

Extreme anxiety, worrying over things you have little or no real control over
Extreme reaction to dirt and grime, like excessive hand washing, avoiding things other people have touched, anything that may have become “contaminated” by other people
Desire for order, wanting to sort things, example playing FreeCell or Solitaire for hours on end with the cards having to be in the order Hearts, Diamonds, Spades, Clubs
Becoming unusually observant, seeing things that aren’t so obvious and feeling that they affect you more than they should. This is OCD-related empathy. Depending on how you use it, this empathy could be a good thing or a bad thing. Good because you understand stuff more, feel it more and are able to process emotions more clearly, bad because half the time you feel stuff that’s too hard to handle and might end up making you snap and become numb to whatever feeling there is.
Things you can’t explain, like not stepping on cracks, counting steps, that sort of thing.

These are my symptoms. My core symptoms at least, and they’re what I think is the common symptom to all OCD sufferers.
And that it’s all in your head. But if you’re convinced that you have, beyond reasonable doubt, gotten OCD, then here’s how you get about towards recovery. The beauty with OCD is that you can let some of the bad things go while keeping a chunk of the good stuff. Being a disorder also means that there’s prevailing circumstances.
The human mind is complex, but it is under your control. You control your mind. Don’t let it control you. It can happen, that you do whatever your mind tells you to, but to avoid this, do the opposite
Sort those out first, like broken home, way too much TV, extreme shyness, whatever it is. These may impact on you and leave you scarred. And one response to scarring by the mind is retreating to a perceived safe haven. And this may in turn cause whatever ability the mind has to sort between the perceived rational and the perceived irrational to be distorted. That’s one of the possible causes of OCD.
There is help. If you look hard enough. And it starts with you. Take it slowly. One symptom at a time. Don’t take it on all at once.
Take back your mind.

Home

psychobaby — Sun, 10 Dec 2006 10:25:35 CST

Before I made this page I had no idea what to call it. So it was going to be something like "brainchild", but then that would be horribly cliche. I hate cliche. So I mutated brainchild into psychobaby. So it's the child of my mind. And my mind has come a long way, but it's still a baby. Taking steps. Then after I made the page I realised there's a band actually called Psychobaby. I hope there's no legal issues involved. But my brainchild will live on. And Wetpaint is great (smiles and hopes that'll get him user of the year).
Go through it, tear it apart, put it back together, do whatever you want. It's open. It's honest (or I want it to be as close to honesty as possible). It's all about me. And my mind. And me dealing with my mind.
That's about it. Have a blast.
Here's to the human mind. And making it a truly wonderful place.
A toast to the idea behind this page, Nick Eliot at www.cannotfindserver.net. Thanks a heap.

Sincerely,
Eric
:o) (I'll have this smiley copyrighted)

Singularity

psychobaby — Sun, 10 Dec 2006 10:10:17 CST

Growing up was hard. Having no father and all. No man figure to look up to. And becoming a man-figure for my family. That was hard. But still it says quite a lot for who I am now and what I’m becoming. See, I’m a bag of nerves. I can’t really say that I know what and who I am. I didn’t really have the guidance of a father to direct me and show me what to do, what was happening to me (puberty was hell), explain stuff to me and when necessary become an example.
And so I turned out the way I am. Confused. With responsibilities I have no idea how to handle.
What’s worse is there’s loads of people like me out there. With one parent. For some reason. There’s the extreme. The dead spouse. Then there’s your occasional baby mama who got pregnant at age 16 after giving herself up for a song. It’s the baby mamas I’m against. Do you realize just how much damage you’re inflicting on poor Junior who has no idea who their father is? I mean, just look at how many kids there are now with no fathers. Girls grow up thinking all men are nasty and evil and after them for their looks/brains. Usually looks. And the chances of a good lay so that they’ll end up like their mamas.
And guys grow up without the fatherly influence they need. Or they might get it from mama’s occasional boyfriend. That’s how you get perverts. Guys without fathers to guide them at their own inner development. Then they grow up hating women coz their mothers were all intrusive and as a result they think that all women are out to control them.
Most single parents are happy with whatever they’ve done when they see their kids smiling happily and flooding them with “I love you”s. But they have no idea what their kids are feeling inside. Anger, confusion, wondering what the heck you’re supposed to make of your life coz it just doesn’t make sense on its own. Therein lies the answer to this whole problem. There’s just too many people with no idea what’s going on, but as a result of the delusion that has become all too common they believe that whatever they’re holding in their heads is the truth. Absolute and pure. While in fact it couldn’t be further from the truth.
Here’s my advice to the single parent. If you’re reading this, that is. First off, don’t regret having your child. That takes guts. There’s millions who, faced with those very same circumstances, cut and run when they saw it was too hard to go on.
Secondly, talk to your kid(s). Don’t leave them out in the dark. But wait till they start asking questions. Like why there’s no daddy or mommy. If they genuinely want to know. So don’t think that keeping the truth from them helps. And don’t bend the truth a bit when it seems a tad inconveniencing. Put it in a way that they can understand, like instead of “irreconcilable differences” (an all time favourite that leaves kids going …eh?), say you didn’t agree on things. And embellish it a little. Give them something to look forward to when they’re your age. Coz forcing it on them that people just leave each other and become absolute wrecks as a result won’t exactly leave them happy and healthy emotionally.
Third, teach by example. Move on. Don’t really worry about why the kids are asking about the absentee parent, instead show them that it’s something that can be avoided, and that you really did try your best but it didn’t work. Failure is real. Even to kids. Teach them to empathise.
My advice to the single parent kids everywhere is that whatever happened is not your fault. Live your life for whatever will happen, not whatever happened. Don’t let it define you. And whatever happens, don’t make decisions that will affect you adversely, like becoming a lesbian or not ever having kids because of what happened. These are decisions you make in fits of passion, maybe anger. Think them through first.
Think…

Facing the Future

psychobaby — Wed, 06 Dec 2006 00:19:51 CST

One of the things my OCD does is it makes me afraid of the future. Obsessing over what might be, what might happen. Most of the time I end up picking on the negative and magnifying it so that in the end my future looks like doomsday. Instead of being content with whatever I have, I obsess about what I don’t have, what I could have gotten and in the end I feel like a loser. So in the end I have all this fear of the future, like there’s nothing I can do to change it. That is apparently known as neophobia, fear of novelty. Fear of the future. For most people, the future is something to look forward to. Something to be all excited and happy about. At least they have something to look forward to. I’m not one of those people. I shrink at the hint of me tomorrow. I see failure, and in this I’m afraid to do anything that would improve my future. I go, “after all, it’s not like I have something to look forward to”. Obsession is unhealthy. Something that’s 100% destructive. Damaging both to the body and the mind. But it happens so often and so regularly that it’s considered normal. We see it on TV that often, and sooner or later we become desensitized, so much so that we regularly obsess over trivial things. Like clothes, looks and what other people think about us. Things that we otherwise wouldn’t care about given a choice. Like I don’t care what clothes I’m wearing or what the make of my phone is until I see something I perceive as better. That’s when the mind goes into overdrive and questions like why I’m not like that person, why I don’t have what he has and what I should do to become like that person become the focus of your thoughts, your actions. TV just makes it worse. With advertising and induced peer pressure. The sad thing is that’s what happens to non-OCD people. With OCD it’s worse. Way worse. So bad that it at one time involved thoughts of death and destruction for my will to be done. I wanted to be like other people. I hated me. I didn’t want to be me. I hated me. I’d imagine me dead and the world just moving on over my dead body. I felt inconsequential. And this would get me angry and depressed. Hating the world and blaming it for what I thought it had made me. Turns out that that was one of the many things I had become obsessed with. Making the world “feel” me and who I was. But one thing I realized was that that was what my OCD wanted me to believe. That the world was so bad that the only escape was to build an internal world. A place where I would be safe from other people. Then came the voices. I made up an entire collection of people in my head. With personalities that I could become whenever I wanted. Switching when the circumstances changed. In effect I became a me person. With the burden of all this I slowly cracked and obsessed about a future after a complete meltdown. With the world having deserted me, all that was left was for me to desert myself and whatever I decided would be the eventual outcome of my life. But I didn’t. I left the world to its devices and set to fixing myself. Becoming a person. Becoming real. All this time I was just toying with myself, moaning at failures, not realizing that eventually I had to come out of all that nonsense and define who I would be. So I set out to become who I wanted to be. No illusions, no ideas, no voices. Just me. And I set out to make my life something I would be proud of, not regret. I cut out all that thinking and set to getting things to do. That’s why I listen to so much music nowadays. And good music at it, none of that sick suicide-inducing garbage. And reading. I do read loads of books now. Gives me things to think about. Western philosophy especially. So I have a future. And I’m proud of it.

Today, me and OCD

psychobaby — Mon, 04 Dec 2006 07:35:04 CST

Today’s one of those days when it’s really hot. As in a blanket of heat all around you. Makes me want to know just how hot it is. With my obsessive compulsive disorder (henceforth referred to as OCD) I like to know about stuff, like how much rain there was, how hot it is, how many litres of water I drink (around one per hour, I think, but not today. The cooler’s empty) The sky’s totally clear. There’s not a cloud in sight. Makes me feel like I’m being watched. Like there’s some satellite lens trained at me. Looking just in case I slip up. Then there’s people. I feel them looking at me. Here’s where I make strange patterns. Connecting things that don’t really have a connection. I read somewhere that OCD is caused by abnormalities in the brain, like from overdeveloped perception at the thalamus causing a loop of “worry signals” to flood the brain.

Got this from Wikipedia. 'Brain Lock' by Jeffrey Schwartz, suggests that OCD is caused by the part of the brain that is responsible for translating complex intentions (e.g., "I will pick up this cup") into fundamental actions (e.g., "move arm forward, rotate hand 15 degrees, etc.") failing to correctly communicate the chemical message that an action has been completed. This is perceived as a feeling of doubt and incompleteness which then leads the individual to attempt to consciously deconstruct their own prior behavior — a process which induces anxiety in most people, even those without OCD. Therefore, an OCD sufferer is likely to feel things a lot more than just your everyday Joe. This in turn leads to feelings of extreme sensitivity. Sensitivity in the sense that whatever usually passes by most people is amplified and turned into something else. An example is counting steps. Or not stepping on lines. It becomes apparent that anyone with OCD wants control over these small things. It happened to me once. I kept trying to make an even number of steps while not stepping on the lines. If it didn’t work I would then go back and start again. I did this in high school. Over and over again. Counting stairs, stepping on the odd numbered stairs and as a result becoming the laughing stock of a bunch of ignorant self-centered SOBs. I still obsess over strange things. At least I find them strange to me. Like the credit on my phone has to end with a 5 or a zero. So I won’t call someone unless it’s absolutely necessary if my credit has a five or a zero, but if it doesn’t I do it very readily to achieve that goal. Then there’s the empathy. I have some really strange empathy, like I feel things that people are feeling. Like I can’t go walking through a street and look right into people’s eyes without reading a bit of what they’re thinking or feeling. I can’t help it. I read into their actions, sometimes even think out loud. And they hear what I say. And I feel awful afterwards. That’s why I can’t stand public places. Coz eventually I read off of people, get looked at badly and in the end. Sometimes I wish it would stop, that I would stop being so critical of the world but then that would mean losing the ability to feel what I feel, denying who I am. I think I came out of the greater part of the condition a better person. A person who counts his steps, yes, who doesn’t step on the lines in the walkway, but then again one with incredible empathy. It’s still hot. According to CNN it’s about 24 degrees today. Incredible. Sweating like a pig. Cooler’s still empty. I’ll have to go out and buy some water. And, oh yeah. Nelly Furtado rocks (randomly inserted thought).

Consequences 101

psychobaby — Sat, 02 Dec 2006 09:55:35 CST

Anything and everything has consequences. Good or bad, now or later. That’s how it is. The universe is built on this tenet. That there is action and reaction. For everything I do, there’s a change that will happen to me either now or sometime in the future. Take this for example. I’m drinking now, I get myself drunk and I have to drive home. I might crash on the way and die, or in the long run twenty or so years from now I’ll have liver cancer. I’m just using alcohol as an example. Don’t take that too seriously. The present action has in fact led to the result in the future over which I have no control. So in determining the present I have determined the future. I can change my present and in the process change the future. Think. Saw that on a t shirt. That’s what all this is about. Get yourself thinking. Look outside and beyond the obvious. According to Reuben Abel, the present lasts in a time frame of about 12 seconds. That’s it. And within those 12 seconds some decisions are made, like which country to invade next or how many children to have. Some serious life-changing things. As well as some trivial ones. Like to get that piercing in a fit of rebellion, or to quit school and join that band, or to bully the local genius coz he got an A minus in the test you got an F in. The consequences of these actions may seem trivial at first, but the consequences leave a dent in the thread of time. Two chains of events based on a decision some would consider as fickle and otherwise inconsequential. But it has happened. Just look at how many bands get stuck with drugs and alcohol, turning otherwise seriously talented chaps into mush. Everything has a consequence, every action a reward (reward may be anything, good or bad). That is how religion goes about. Making people think. Think about things they wouldn’t really think about. Like how they affect the people around them. If we were all decent and kind to each other like we’re supposed to, then there would be love instead of war. That love that makes you want to bake your neighbour a pie and not stab him in the heart. But man is inherently defensive, believing in self preservation over society’s needs. That’s why religion feels so uncomfortable. It’s an attempt at making man see that there’s more to the world than just him. Like there’s this other dimension that he will not really see until his eyes are open. So open that they will see that everyone else is just like him. That’s why individuality is all the rage. We don’t want to be like “everyone else”; we want to be ourselves no matter how essential it is that we conform. Take school for example. Uniforms were put in place for everyone to look the same, so that there wouldn’t really be a difference because there would be a unifying factor: school pride. But someone somewhere decided that that was a stifler to creativity and self pride. Self pride? So I have less pride in myself by being proud of something else? Isn’t that the point?? And the consequence of banning uniforms is a world where kids go to school in strange clothes, whatever’s in that season. And whoever doesn’t have one is laughed at. Or worse. Deny kids uniformity and they’ll do it on their own. With worse consequences. Where’s your self pride now?