It’s occurred to me recently that on a deep level, I am always having a panic attack.

It never ends. There’s a part of me that is in a constant state of freaking out, and nothing I can do or say will calm it down.

It started running when I was raped at the age of 4 and I am going to be 47 in a week, so that is 43 years of having that scared little animal inside of me, telling me that I need to hide, that to be exposed is to be destroyed, and that safety trumps all else.

It’s the root of all that fear that depression uses to keep me down. The source for all my crazy. The bane of my existence.

And I am getting really tired of it.

I mean, what do I have to be afraid of, really? Let me recast that : what could possibly be worse than my current unsatisfying life?

At least if I push my boundaries, I might get some things done and thus rescue some of my self-worth from its current vortex of oblivion. Have something to show for my time on Earth instead of having my limited time on Earth drift past me as I bury my mind in video games and other distractions.

I dunno what would calm my scared little animal down. A sense of safety would do the trick nicely but I don’t understand how I would convince it that everything is okay.

And it is. I lead a ridiculously safe life, and that’s no accident. When you are hemmed in from all sides by tall walls made of fear so pure it requires no justification, a hyper-safe life is the only way you can feel at least a little sane.

And even then, that scared little animal barely even slows down.

I am safe. I am safe. Repeat one million times. Whatever real threats I have experienced in my life are long gone. I lived with people who love me and care for me, I have no enemies that I know of, and I am totally capable of contributing so much to the world if given the chance.

And the only thing keeping me from going out there to conquer the world is these massive walls of unreasoning fear.

They seem to multiply and overlap on a daily basis. I develop new fears so easily and get rid of old ones so rarely. No wonder they often seem like one massive complex chimera of all negative emotions melted into one nasty beast.

Other times, it’s more like I am floating in an ocean of toxic anesthetic, and I have to keep treading water as hard as I can just to keep from drowning.

All because my scared little animal forgot what it’s like to stop running and feel safe.

Well come with me, little critter. It’s okay. You’re home now. Come inside and I will fix you a nice, nourishing me and we can curl up by the fire and I can stroke you and pet you and tell you everything is going to be all right.

You’re a good boy, little one, and I love you.

Now come insider.

More after the break.

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The virtue of being a zombie

So I was flailing away at that bit of Doom Eternal that has been giving me so much trouble and which I described as giving me a fascinating sensation of sensually lush agony as the coldness left my soul, and a new thing happened.

I realized that as I fought and died over and over that a very deep part of me was relaxing. Some fell tension in me was slowly unwinding, and it felt quite wonderful.

Even better, I think I can recognize that tension now and make the conscious decision to seek out an experience that will relieve it now.

I don’t really know what to call this particular kind of tension, or what unmet need it represents. “Challenge” makes a certain amount of sense but doesn’t really capture the flavour of it. “Effort” is also in the right ballpark.

“Strain”, maybe? A bit closer, but still not quite right.

Tell you what, in the interests of clarity, I will further confuse the matter by using an old analogy : “the ox needs the plow”.

What I mean by that is that for those of us of a certain temperament there is a deep need for something to work against. A burden to carry, a cart to pull, a challenge to overcome, a plow for us to push.

When I was trying to get past that sticky part of the game, it taxed my ability to keep going and keep trying. It took willpower and personal strength to keep hammering away at something so frustrating and unrewarding.

And that’s where that beautiful feeling of the tension draining away came in. My usual wimpy lifestyle, where I give up on things the moment they seem like work and respond to any real challenge or strain by falling apart and running away, does not give me anything to push against. Turns out I need something that taxes more than my mind.

And in order to get that, I have to be willing to mindlessly keep trying something until I succeed. Not even think about whether I should keep going or whether I could be doing something that was more rewarding or really anything at all.

Just trying over and over again, like a zombie, as if I had no choice.

And you know what? It worked. I got past that part earlier today. Mindless persistence paid off. I conquered. I overcame.

But more importantly, I got a glimpse of the true virtue of persistence. It’s not just that it leads to success… that much is obvious.

It’s that in doing the same thing over and over, you give your subconscious mind (which is most of it) a chance to learn how to do things better without all that messy and counterproductive interference from the conscious mind.

Many times in my journey I found that I had completely zoned out for ten seconds or so and yet, I had not died as a result.

Somehow, acting totally by reflex and with the conscious mind gone, I had done reasonably well at the game.

And that is huge. I feel like I have one of the secrets of the universe now. I now know that there are many ways to learn something and that the conscious, cerebral way you learn at school is only one of them.

Time to teach my subconscious some new tricks.

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.