A few posts back I talked about how I was feeling marooned on an island. I have a new
metaphor to use now. A well. If you find a persons inner thoughts disturbing or their inner issues and disturbances uncomfortable, then please click over to a different page or slide over and read a different blog because I feel the need to go deep. (you have just been victim to pun number one)
Whenever I feel attacked by life or things start to become stressful and chaotic, or if a situation occurs that is intense or traumatic, my mind and body have been taught over time to react in a very specific and peculiar way. The more stressful and intense the situation that I find myself facing, the more pronounced this reaction becomes. I internalize, rationalize, think in black and white logical terms and measure out every word and action that happens with slow and deliberate efficiency. Situations that cause normal people to become agitated and acting outwardly due to adrenaline reactions, cause me to slow and become deliberately logical and calculating. This is a defense mechanism that I have perfected over a lifetime of feeling attacked. It works oh so efficiently. The more hazardous the real situation is, the more I can feel this reaction kick in, all reactionary elements of a personality drain away, things like anger, frustration, fear, hopelessness, they all run down and out leaving only cold logic. This allows me to concentrate on the problem and more, at a steady pace, towards resolution.
Let me give you and example. Several years ago my dog Woody jumped up and bit my nose. I will spare you all but the necessary details. I was leaning over to kiss Angie goodnight while she was sitting on the couch and Woody was in her lap. He took offense to this motion and turned around and hung his bottom canine tooth in my nose hole, pierced through the other side and tore open the wound all the way back down. Most people would react a
ngrily to this and irrationally to the pain. My “systems” kicked in immediately and prevented this from happening. I stood up and walked , not ran, walked to the bathroom to get a visual on the damage. Moved the flap of skin away from the gushing blood to see how bad it was. Determined that I would need to have medical assistance and asked Angie if she would mind driving me to the hospital. She has ran in four circles at this point, had one or two of her Charismatic Pentecostal prayer sessions, and hasn’t yet stopped long enough to hear the answers to her question. Angie, the dog bit me, I need a towel, some clothes to get dressed, and if your able, a ride to the hospital. We will worry about the dog later and take care of the mess later, right now I need you to focus on what I am asking you. She then tossed me a white towel and a white t-shirt. Now, I am bleeding a lot, I don’t want a white towel so I go get an old towel that we can through away, I don’t want a white t-shirt, so I go find my own clothes. I say my own clothes because I need more than a t-shirt to go to the hospital since I was naked at the time and I would really rather have shorts, shoes, etc to wear. I am thinking that maybe I should drive myself but on this one I relent because my eyes are watering profusely. I will stop that story here because you get the picture.
One other shorter example. Once one of my employees walked into work in the morning, grabbed his stomach and drop to one knee and fell over in the floor of the shop. Reaction kicks in. Sam, I am going to call 911, stay put. I call, they come and take him. I then call his wife and she is a lot like my wife, or I guess, she is more normal than me. I tell her that Sam has been taken to the hospital. “why, whats wrong, how is he, which hospital, how long ago, is he okay, what did he say, how does this happen, he was fine, but…………..why wont you answer me?” Well you wont stop talking, but yes he will be fine and they are taking him to University Hosp…..Click. Phone goes dead. It was kidney stones and he was back in a few days with a message for me from his wife, “tell the slow guy not to call anymore, get somebody else who talks faster to call me.” Uh, okay then.
Anyway, these are examples of a conditioned response that has served me well. Whenever I feel stressed, attacked or overburdened this response kicks in automatically. Now lets expand on this a bit shall we. What about those longer lasting events like having two houses, mom being in the hospital, Gracie and her growing and adapting issues, moving into a new house, boss having health issues, wife having stress issues, God putting me back on that island alone, friendships becoming strained, finances becoming strained, etc. How does this work with longer running issues? Well, it works the same way only over a longer period of time, I become focused on the problems and oblivious to everything else. I function with cold logic towards the things that must be done to address each issue. On the long running issues, however, there begins to be side effects. It works towards correcting the problems, but with these there are great costs.
Well, one would think things are looking up, I have new directions, though not clear directions, in my spiritual life, I have one house about to be sold which will help with the finances and the stress levels of wife, mom is home and doing much better, it has become clear which friends are going to vanish and which are going to stick around and grow stronger with us. While this is all true, its not quite so simple. Its time to pay the price for these things. Listen carefully, if you internalize, the problems don’t go away, they just wait there turn, fester, and resurface as different issues.
Lets see, what’s the cost. I am now ready to go to that metaphor I spoke of at the beginning. Think about a well for a moment, they are deep, dark, narrow, and cold. That’s were I am right now. I am at the bottom of the well. Narrow is what happened because I became too focused on a few issues that needed attention. The fringes have all slipped away from me. Deep is the well of depression. I am losing more and more desire each day. All I want to do is eat and sleep. All I do is work and eat, not much sleep involved. Eating is becoming related to other things besides hunger and I am putting on weight, which only feeds the lack of energy and desire to do anything. Dark is the place at the bottom of the hole that I am at right now. I don’t see things getting better anytime soon; possibly because I cant see what’s going on right now without any light. Cold is what I feel I am left with right now because I don’t have the warm and comfortable things around me that I did because I over focused on the dangers. My body is complaining loudly right now. Both my shoulders are torn up, my feet both hurt worse than they have in years, my back aches, my stomach is churning all the time. I vomit about 3 times a week now. That’s not too bad, it has been twice a day everyday before, but its still enough to keep me from sleeping well.
So now I am down here, what do I do next. Do I fight to climb out? Don’t have the ene
rgy to climb or fight right now. Do I call for help? Friends have been seen at the top of the well but I am safe down here so I haven’t reached up to grab them and I wont call them to come down and get me because while I am fine, they might drown. Do I stay here forever, no, I would rot away. For now I think I must wait. If you have ever wondered where my blog got its name, wonder no more. For me these cycles of chaos are normal. In time, I will find the energy to climb out on my own, someone will decide to come down and extract me, or God will blast away the well and leave me standing on a pinnacle. All have happened in the past and one will happen again, for now I will just wait here in the dark and hope I feel up to getting out soon.
metaphor to use now. A well. If you find a persons inner thoughts disturbing or their inner issues and disturbances uncomfortable, then please click over to a different page or slide over and read a different blog because I feel the need to go deep. (you have just been victim to pun number one)Whenever I feel attacked by life or things start to become stressful and chaotic, or if a situation occurs that is intense or traumatic, my mind and body have been taught over time to react in a very specific and peculiar way. The more stressful and intense the situation that I find myself facing, the more pronounced this reaction becomes. I internalize, rationalize, think in black and white logical terms and measure out every word and action that happens with slow and deliberate efficiency. Situations that cause normal people to become agitated and acting outwardly due to adrenaline reactions, cause me to slow and become deliberately logical and calculating. This is a defense mechanism that I have perfected over a lifetime of feeling attacked. It works oh so efficiently. The more hazardous the real situation is, the more I can feel this reaction kick in, all reactionary elements of a personality drain away, things like anger, frustration, fear, hopelessness, they all run down and out leaving only cold logic. This allows me to concentrate on the problem and more, at a steady pace, towards resolution.
Let me give you and example. Several years ago my dog Woody jumped up and bit my nose. I will spare you all but the necessary details. I was leaning over to kiss Angie goodnight while she was sitting on the couch and Woody was in her lap. He took offense to this motion and turned around and hung his bottom canine tooth in my nose hole, pierced through the other side and tore open the wound all the way back down. Most people would react a
ngrily to this and irrationally to the pain. My “systems” kicked in immediately and prevented this from happening. I stood up and walked , not ran, walked to the bathroom to get a visual on the damage. Moved the flap of skin away from the gushing blood to see how bad it was. Determined that I would need to have medical assistance and asked Angie if she would mind driving me to the hospital. She has ran in four circles at this point, had one or two of her Charismatic Pentecostal prayer sessions, and hasn’t yet stopped long enough to hear the answers to her question. Angie, the dog bit me, I need a towel, some clothes to get dressed, and if your able, a ride to the hospital. We will worry about the dog later and take care of the mess later, right now I need you to focus on what I am asking you. She then tossed me a white towel and a white t-shirt. Now, I am bleeding a lot, I don’t want a white towel so I go get an old towel that we can through away, I don’t want a white t-shirt, so I go find my own clothes. I say my own clothes because I need more than a t-shirt to go to the hospital since I was naked at the time and I would really rather have shorts, shoes, etc to wear. I am thinking that maybe I should drive myself but on this one I relent because my eyes are watering profusely. I will stop that story here because you get the picture.One other shorter example. Once one of my employees walked into work in the morning, grabbed his stomach and drop to one knee and fell over in the floor of the shop. Reaction kicks in. Sam, I am going to call 911, stay put. I call, they come and take him. I then call his wife and she is a lot like my wife, or I guess, she is more normal than me. I tell her that Sam has been taken to the hospital. “why, whats wrong, how is he, which hospital, how long ago, is he okay, what did he say, how does this happen, he was fine, but…………..why wont you answer me?” Well you wont stop talking, but yes he will be fine and they are taking him to University Hosp…..Click. Phone goes dead. It was kidney stones and he was back in a few days with a message for me from his wife, “tell the slow guy not to call anymore, get somebody else who talks faster to call me.” Uh, okay then.
Anyway, these are examples of a conditioned response that has served me well. Whenever I feel stressed, attacked or overburdened this response kicks in automatically. Now lets expand on this a bit shall we. What about those longer lasting events like having two houses, mom being in the hospital, Gracie and her growing and adapting issues, moving into a new house, boss having health issues, wife having stress issues, God putting me back on that island alone, friendships becoming strained, finances becoming strained, etc. How does this work with longer running issues? Well, it works the same way only over a longer period of time, I become focused on the problems and oblivious to everything else. I function with cold logic towards the things that must be done to address each issue. On the long running issues, however, there begins to be side effects. It works towards correcting the problems, but with these there are great costs.
Well, one would think things are looking up, I have new directions, though not clear directions, in my spiritual life, I have one house about to be sold which will help with the finances and the stress levels of wife, mom is home and doing much better, it has become clear which friends are going to vanish and which are going to stick around and grow stronger with us. While this is all true, its not quite so simple. Its time to pay the price for these things. Listen carefully, if you internalize, the problems don’t go away, they just wait there turn, fester, and resurface as different issues.
Lets see, what’s the cost. I am now ready to go to that metaphor I spoke of at the beginning. Think about a well for a moment, they are deep, dark, narrow, and cold. That’s were I am right now. I am at the bottom of the well. Narrow is what happened because I became too focused on a few issues that needed attention. The fringes have all slipped away from me. Deep is the well of depression. I am losing more and more desire each day. All I want to do is eat and sleep. All I do is work and eat, not much sleep involved. Eating is becoming related to other things besides hunger and I am putting on weight, which only feeds the lack of energy and desire to do anything. Dark is the place at the bottom of the hole that I am at right now. I don’t see things getting better anytime soon; possibly because I cant see what’s going on right now without any light. Cold is what I feel I am left with right now because I don’t have the warm and comfortable things around me that I did because I over focused on the dangers. My body is complaining loudly right now. Both my shoulders are torn up, my feet both hurt worse than they have in years, my back aches, my stomach is churning all the time. I vomit about 3 times a week now. That’s not too bad, it has been twice a day everyday before, but its still enough to keep me from sleeping well.
So now I am down here, what do I do next. Do I fight to climb out? Don’t have the ene
rgy to climb or fight right now. Do I call for help? Friends have been seen at the top of the well but I am safe down here so I haven’t reached up to grab them and I wont call them to come down and get me because while I am fine, they might drown. Do I stay here forever, no, I would rot away. For now I think I must wait. If you have ever wondered where my blog got its name, wonder no more. For me these cycles of chaos are normal. In time, I will find the energy to climb out on my own, someone will decide to come down and extract me, or God will blast away the well and leave me standing on a pinnacle. All have happened in the past and one will happen again, for now I will just wait here in the dark and hope I feel up to getting out soon. 
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