I have always struggled with my mind, but the intensity seemed to worsen in the past few months. Tracing back, I think it was since my covid infection.
I wasn’t surprised to struggle with low moods post-covid since it is a common symptom. The virus messes up our brains. But my moods stayed low and turbulent even as my physical health improved. The only thing that helped was travelling, probably because having novel experiences is so distracting and stimulating. But each time I travel I feel like I am dramatically increasing the chances of getting covid again.
Then I had an epiphany during one of my runs last week. I realised one of the the reasons why I am drowning in my mind is that now I have the space to. For the past 8 years I was too sick and exhausted coping with my migraines. It was just days and days of pain, followed by days and days of fatigue caused by the intense encounters of pain. I had no energy, time or space to drown in my emotions and thoughts, because I was drowning in some form of pain, fatigue or discomfort. I was still depressed, but it was a lot more influenced by my illness, the trauma I had to process because the illness forced me to truly reckon with my life, and the idea I would never recover again.
There was something to blame whenever I felt depressed, angry or frustrated — my chronic migraines. I knew there were a ton of things I couldn’t do and a ton of expectations I couldn’t heap on myself because I was sick. The past few months however, apart from one mild episode in August I have been mostly migraine-free. So my mind is at least temporarily freed from dealing with pain and the fallout caused by the pain. Now it has the space to deal with my self, and that is very unpleasant.
Previously my inability to function was because of my migraines. Now I am left with my self, and I am still unable to do much. So it is natural to start blaming my self. Please don’t get me wrong though, I am not saying that it is now all only mental. I think depression is very much a physical and neurological illness (unless you don’t consider the brain as an physical organ) – to live a life where the mind is a suffocating prison and a perpetual saboteur is a debilitating disability. I was already experiencing a lot of difficulty living with migraines because it is an invisible illness. People just don’t get how debilitating it can be. If something with intense physical pain is so easily dismissed by society, it is of no wonder why any form of neurological suffering is looked upon as imaginary and voluntary.
There are multiple dimensions of suffering for someone who has a neurological disorder. The actual suffering from the disorder, the stigma and lack of empathy from the people around us, and the suffering caused by the internalised stigma and lack of empathy from our selves. Take someone who suffers from executive dysfunction. If undiagnosed we are often misunderstood for being lazy. So we grow up with the internalised belief that we are lazy, and that causes all sorts of negative consequences and cascading effects: the self-blame for being “soft” and not hardworking like their peers, the belief that they are unable to do anything that requires hard work. This limits the breadth of life one can experience.
For many years I accepted the “fact” that I was lazy and I even made it sound like a joke: “Nah I am lazy so I wont’t be able to do xyz”, and I’ll end the sentence with a laugh. It is a very disempowering belief to have. It deprived me of the objectivity and opportunity to expand my self and my life because I wouldn’t even try. I just reinforced the belief on myself, over and over again. Yet over the recent decade or so through some favourable circumstances I learnt that I was not lazy. With the right conditions I worked harder, learned more, and accomplished more than the average person.
But no matter how much I worked, how hard I tried, how many accomplishments I chalked, till today I still have this insidious semi-conscious belief that I am lazy, and this presence quietly judges me every single time I am unable to do something. Even if it is due to illness. This judging seems innocuous – what harm can it do? Well, each time I (is it I?) silently judge myself it sends me deeper and deeper into a spiral of depression because it reinforces my belief I am useless and unworthy. The negative feelings that arise out of this spiral depletes any motivation or energy I have, disrupts the normal function of my hormones, reinforces the negative wiring of my neurons, resulting in more executive dysfunction, and it becomes this life-impairing feedback loop.
“I” am constantly judging myself. I cannot seem to understand that due to how my life has unfolded and my neurological wiring I do not function like a typical person and should not expect that of myself. But I do anyway, just like the relentlessly judgemental society I live in. It would be a much better world if we truly understood every single person has different ways of living, have different means to survive, that we are all dented in different places. I know this intellectually, but I still harbour the same lack of compassion for myself.
How much of what goes on in my mind is influenced by hormones and neurons, how much of it is influenced by my own compressed/oppressed views, how much of my views are truly mine, and how much of them are violently ingrained upon me due to systemic conditioning? They are all negatively reinforcing each other, and I am still figuring out how to break the loop. Can I reverse the psychological damage that has been done chronically onto me? That there are so many things that I intellectually know but I am still unable to internalise them psychologically and emotionally. I know I am not a useless person, but I desperately feel so. My brain tells me so. My body is reluctant to listen to me. I am struggling to change the feelings I feel about myself.
I don’t know if I am going through some migraine remission, if I would start suffering from them again. But for this phase I am able to be somewhat grateful that I can look into my mind intimately and live very closely with my difficult feelings. Without the distraction of pain or novelty. They are difficult, but I am able to see them and feel them. Avoiding them by distracting myself is not going to bring more openness and wholeness to my life. I need to be able to sit with them, to acknowledge their existence, to be able to go deeper into the grieving process of what I have lost as a person. I am always dismissing myself, just like how other people did. I feel like I have gone through multiple cycles of this: opportunities to look at my shadows more closely. I would emerge, but it would be a matter of time that I would plunge back into the dark depths of my self. I would like to believe that each time even if it feels similar I am making a different exploratory journey, because I am never the same person before.
I want to see if I can embrace everything about myself, and not feel like there is somewhere else I ought to go. To be curious about the darkness instead of being swallowed by it, perhaps that is how I can find a way out. Or maybe it is not about finding a way out, but finding a space in the darkness to live in, where it may no longer feel claustrophobic and draining.