[This is just a decontamination of last year’s one. With some slight navigational shifts]
Unsurprisingly, it’s all C.G. Jung‘s fault.
This article was (, again,) inspired by the results he was able to obtain throughout Liber Novus (The Red Book)- by allowing a space of inquiry into possible meaning behind the visions/hallucinations of catastrophe he faced in 1913-1914, initially leading him to conclude he was schizophrenic, considering hospitalization.
Rather than giving into the blanket statement of sickness and psychosis, he instead decided to actively engage and examine his visions- and, by way of their symbolic exploration, not only managed to heal himself, but to discover a number of fundamental psychological concepts and insights[0], and to this day remain one of the most influential psychologists of the 20th century.
[..]
I’d never done that personally. To consider there could be anything but insanity in the states of psychosis I experienced during the manic phases of Bipolar I/Schizoaffective disorder (which I’m blessed with since a near death experience via serotonin syndrome + sufficient traumatic brain damage to spend a couple months in silent darkness, until my brain stopped being allergic to sensory input. Boredom for another time though)
Giving into the classic left-brain hemispheric bias of western society, I subscribed to the church of reductionist materialism™ and considered my issue like a Windows XP bluescreen. You reboot and hope for the best. But you don’t look for meaning under fatal error at address 0x426699k.
Especially not when the contents of your psychoses leave you little to no capacity to work with, in the time they occur (as they seem too real to appear like reasonable targets for symbolic inquiry).
Or during the try-not-to-die period of their memory re-evaluation afterwards, which usually too focused around the realization and integration of loss and catastrophe, to leave much capacity for inner exploration outside of catatonic depression.
And when even that had passed, and usually had less than no desire to think back, more than I already did reflexively, with my mind being the sadistic bitch it usually was/is (with all due respect).
Which made for a general MO of: repress and stumble forward. Until and into the next phase. At least for the longest time. Until last year.
[-]
I’ve used to have reliably terrible manic phases. Hyperpsychotic, hyperparanoid. Angels, demons, snipers in the walls, agents wherever you look, all birds are drones, matrix/simulation/reality theatre perceptions- sufficient shifts across fundamentally held ontological axioms to ensure a horror trip of memories after finally coming down, and realizing the real world outcomes. Lost relationships, traumatized friends, obliterated work structures. Legal proceedings. Paper trails. Psychological institutions.
Integrating interactions with law enforcement-
When my Ex got bad advice from a psychologist friend in 2022 and used a false accusation of danger to get me reliably hospitalized (after the noobs great staff at Schloßpark Klinik let me go after 1 day despite obvious psychosis), it resulted in me being raided by the most elite local police force available, with a door explosion charge, a flash-bang grenade, and me suddenly facing the floor with a bunch of automatic rifles in my back, under a concert of macho shouts and me screaming,
The cops seemed a bit confused at how relieved I reacted, once I realized it was them instead of the evil murderous agents I had been expecting. Not the most common reaction to being raided I guess. The head of operations and I were in humorous conversation a couple minutes later, once he realized I wasn’t actually dangerous. At least not they way they thought. Good dude. ACAB SCAB.
Still took me about 2-3 weeks to lose the massively shakey legs I got every time when approaching my flat after the clinic. This trauma stuff actually seems to be legit.
I could go on, but why roll around in darkness. Stuff like that, and worse, on a expectable rotation every 2-5 years. And the terrible depressions afterwards, when the memories of glory, of the past weeks and months, are being re-evaluated into catastrophe, within days, in a wave of shame, loss and sadness, that always took me months to overcome.
Thank Gödel that I’m too much of a stubborn bastard to allow any reaction to suicidality- other than encouraging it to kill itself. Suck it, suicide.
But even the best times come with a distinctly bitter side-taste when they’re packaged with a reliable destruction timer. And no real reason to hope- Until, well, last year.
[-]
The impossible.
The first non-terrible phase.
Uh, what?
But it gets worse.
Somehow- good?
WHAT?!
It was nuts!
I kept trying to find the obvious cognitive buffoonery causing such a ridiculous tragedy of a thought. But from whichever angle I looked at it, arguably– more beneficial outcomes than bad ones. The first phase I felt better after than before. Reality under obvious cyber attack. Utter insanity.
(As for possible mechanisms: Hard to say. At best. Impossible more likely. There are only data-starved correlative guesses [1] to point at, and that may be all I ever get. But if at all resulting from attempted intervention, the overall signal seems to be: onward. And beyond. Whether optimized or not.)
Mania comes with dis-inhibition, usually (way) too much. Add psychotic delusion for a reliable recipe for terrible memories and real world losses.
But this time that second psychosis part was barely present. Occasionally, but mostly as a special guest. With the usual loss of constraint I was able to catch up on things I’d been postponing for ages, mostly: contacting amazing people from the past, where this or that emotional had kept me from doing so. For years. Decades.
And- amazingly- instead of bridging those time-gaps only to spread psychotic weirdness- actually reconnect! Which made for the unusual experience of ending up with more friends after a phase, than before.
Nuts!
Instead the usual horror and traumatic hate towards my manic self (and the months of depression alongside), I was genuinely intrigued with that guy for the first time. Looking up to him even. The ease with which he was doing things that I would consider emotionally impossible normally- it gave me a nut to crack. Especially with first-person memories of his actions:
Naturally starting random (but nice) conversations with people in the street/public transport/wherever, acquaint myself with my neighborhood, dressing up a little fun, or a lot even, instead of the usual grey and black blandness I usually rock, take decisions without analysis-paralysis, be generally in a less hostile relationship with the mind- but, most of all: Seeing no reason not to be fully and utterly honest about what I think and feel, even if uncomfortable. Especially not holding back on sharing any felt appreciation or affection to someone, but just as much with unpopular cognition, or outright conflict. And with a humorous lightness underneath for this not to result in physical altercation.
I- I was intrigued.
This was so much closer to my super-ego / the person I’d liked to be- Why not try to incorporate that? With the first person memories making it seem possible- Could I learn it in normal mode?
At minimum: worth a try.
A purse somebody had left in the free item section of our house, almost thrown away after the phase, is a now a training tool. The moment my other self found it, it was immediately second nature to him.
After the phase I was about to reflexively burn it with fire, in my trained post-phase behavior. A purse?! Cringe. But I had enough first person memories of some glorious moments with it, and girls seem to like it (at least the ones I like), plus it comes with a little dopamine hit of daring to be silly, and reminds me of my guideline to not take myself serious. Ever.
So I start wearing it. Core lesson: Nobody really gives a fuck. And if they do, I enjoy it. Either some cute/funny interaction, or some confused/triggered looks. Besides the mini dose of self-respect for allowing myself to be silly. Plus aesthetic superiority, clearly.
I was intrigued even further. What else could I import?
So I map out all the aspects of my other self that I appreciate and look up to:
– honesty
– openness
– decisiveness
– silliness
– an absence of fucks given over things that one shouldn’t give fucks about
– non political-correctness
– self-deprecation wherever possible
– courage to Jesus myself for what I believe in
– a habit of telling you, yes you, how much I love you, as much as I can, even if weird
– an appreciation for a sort of gay-militant aesthetic (watch out)
– [..]
.. and start working on incorporation into normal mode.
I can’t (yet) tell you what the outcome will be, but so far it at least doesn’t seem to hurt. At all. The honest / open part pays off the most, as I used to struggle with that a lot. Deeper connections, better communication, a bit of self-respect in sprinkled over the inner ocean of self-hatred and -denial. All this gross stuff. But worst of all, I’m like, *puke* happier, the more I do it. Disgusting, I know.
[..]
I even found more tools for inner work, within the newly discovered mental landscape opened by my homeboy Carl G., where before I only saw neural pathways and receptor sites and other chemo-electrical neuro-soup stuff.
While the Red Book opened my mind to the potential value of exploring it, my mental landscape is decidedly too different to whatever Mr. Jung’s problem was, to directly apply a lot of the methods derived from his grand-archetypal, biblically-themed mental interactions. I found a more compatible approach in Richard Schwartz’s Internal Family Systems model (aka IFS).
Its an exploration of assumed personality sub-parts with different functions that can be interacted with (if this makes you cringe, like me initially, try considering them a functional interface for interaction, and restrict your judgement to wether this seems helpful or not. The general theme is also found in parts in approaches like ego states– or Schema Therapy).
While I’d like believe that there are little people in us all, maybe the whole thing mainly seems to come down to whether considering them real enough could allow for integration and healing through interactions.
At least for me it for sure doesn’t seem to hurt. The opposite if anything- And it’s becoming a recurring experience that I share this “it’s like a hotel in here” kind of perspective/approach with people, and they end up finding it more helpful than most other shit they tried therapy-wise. Like me. ba
There’s a variety of recorded sessions online, some of them very striking [2].
But obviously don’t listen to some nutjob on the internet and do your own research or ask someone with a worthless university degree.
With this we’re back in the now. You, me, right here, right now. I can’t believe you read all that shit. Sorry for that.
Otherwise I have little regrets for this phase-iteration. Kinda the opposite. Let’s see if my next phase wipes that disgusting smirk right off’ my face again. As it should, maybe.
But if this is really a trend- and boy I hope it is- I might even be able to lose that free taste of bitterness when looking into the future. Imagine. What a ridiculous concept.
Wish me luck bitcoin world-domination whatever’s appropriate. For yourself as well. And thanks for stopping by.
Oh! And, even if it’s annoying, be good to yourself. Please. One love.
[0]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carl_Jung#Key_concepts
Not only that, there’s a bit of a case for his visions to have been precognitions of upcoming World War 1, although it is by no means my intention to insult any followers of the materialist religion.
In any case, the idea of Jung celebrating the news of war as a sign of his sanity gives me a bit of a psycho-historic chuckle.
There were a number of people who suddenly started having such experiences in that time. But [citation needed] and I’m too lazy right now. Some are mentioned in Shamdasani’s introduction to the Red Book if you feel like digging.
[1] The reason behind the dampening of psychoses will likely stay opaque, since I didn’t take many initial measurements, but there’s data that bipolar can in part be characterized by deficits in inter-hemispheric communication and certain types of right brain malprocessing ( https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=bipolar+hemisphere+review ). I looked into a way to attenuate, I knew that doing unfamiliar movements with the body is conducive to neural growth stimulation, so I searched in that direction. And indeed, there’s data that the size of the corpus callosum (that thicc slug that connects our brain hemispheres with each other) is considerably larger in left-handed and ambidextrous people:
Paper: hopper1994.pdf
So for the last two years I’ve been training myself for ambidexterity. I can now brush my teeth with my left hand, use my phone (left pocket ever since), use sharp kitchen knives, eat with sticks, shave myself, play with my kendama, jerk off, stuff like that. All on the left. It’s hard work but fun to progress. And I notice that there are slight emotional shifts depending on which hand I use. It’s interesting. Plus if my right hand is ever injured I can still pet a pigeon. And maybe do other things. But that’s the focus.