Setting our ghosts free

It’s widely accepted (to the point of being trite) that everyone has their own inner demons to fight. But I don’t think that’s the right metaphor.

It’s more like ghosts. Ghosts because our problems revolve around memories we just can’t let go of, and the popular conception of ghosts is that they are waiting to complete some task here on Earth before passing over.

Plus, ghosts are people who are gone, and that fits perfectly with how our souls tend to be haunted by people from our pasts that for whatever reason we cling to… and curse.

These ghosts of the past inside us are frightening to us for a reason : they guard the forbidden knowledge, the memories we have walled off like in the Casque of the Amontillado because they are too traumatic for us to deal with, or so we think. So we freeze them in time and lock them away. The ghost acts like a Scooby Doo villain, scaring us away from where they do not want us to go.

And who know who we would be if we could set all our ghosts free?

I’ve described myself as haunted many times.

 

It really feels that way. Like I am not alone in my own mind. Part of me has become partly alienated and floats through my mind like an icy mist, keeping a big part of me on ice.

I would love to recapture and integrate the fuckers. But I don’t know where to start. And I feel like they serve some kind of purpose, however maladaptive that purpose might be. I am afraid of what would happen if they were not there.

I suppose they keep me in my place. Keep me from leaving my tiny comfort zone. A lot of the time, I feel like I am being held at gunpoint by someone who says they will kill me if I move. Or standing on ledge smaller than my feet and if I move, I will fall to my death.

Many times, I have dreamed that as I slept, the ground beneath me had risen up, and when I wake up I am high in the air on a column of rock barely big enough to hold me, and if I move, even just to roll over, I will plummet to my death.

Clearly, that is the very strong anti-action bias that depression engenders made manifest in the dreaming state. Depression has often made me feel like I am just barely hanging on and that if I move too much, something really terrible will happen.

Like any sound will waking the sleeping giant inside me and it will demand to be fed.

This operates on the level of dread. That’s how it makes you feel like something terrible is going to happen. That’s what dread is, more or less. I have experienced primeval dread when I try to fight certain compulsions of mine, like my compulsion to do what I had decided to do even if it makes no sense now.

It’s also the source of that “I have a bad feeling out this” feeling.

This unnatural quiet of the soul is very unhealthy.  It may not seem like it, but all those ghosts take up a lot of space and weigh down your mind, dragging you down. and pushing you deeper into the mud.

For a long time, I thought that cold wind I felt blowing through my soul and made me feel like I was always naked at the North Pole at midnight was simply a fact of life and there was nothing I could do about it except make myself as small as I could to preserve what warmth I had and cling to whatever shelter was available.

Paxil saved me from that. I still feel the chill sometimes, but not the wind. Paxil is my parka, as wells as my tuque, my mittens, and my scarf.

Of course, the only long term solution is to release your ghosts and be rid of them. The fewer ghosts, the less the chilling effect, and that means you can thaw out some of those frozen moments and set those ghosts free as well.

That does not come free, though. You have to let the ghost complete its task. Namely, to finish feeling and processing some traumatic memory from your past. You have to go to the places in your mind where you least want to go and open the boxes you are terrified to open, and deal with the things you dread most in the world.

So, you know, no big deal.

Therapy, ideally, should greatly aid this ghost releasing process. It’s a lot easier to release your ghosts when you have help finding them and bringing them to a conclusion. Only then can you set them free.

When the time comes, I get a very specific kind of chill. Like the process is so delicate and difficult that I have to stop absolutely everything else. Like a group of people falling silent as they watch a deer in their backyard.

Before they leave, I think it is not inappropriate to thank our ghosts for their good work. After all, it’s not their fault that they were left at their post for far longer than was good for you. They were only doing the job you gave to them.

Because remember : there is nothing in your mind that is not you.  You play all the parts. Even your deepest problems are mere puppets of your psyche. They do what you have told them to do, and then forgotten that you told them to do it.

To finish, I will give you a magic spell to use on all your scary ghosts :

Simply tell them “I don’t need you!” to them till they fade away.

It’s sure to work if you keep at it long enough to convince yourself!

The hardest and most important thing is to recognize that even our toughest inner demons are serving a need, and it is only when that need is gone (or met in a healthier way) that we can truly be free.

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.