I can’t believe I never put all this together before.
Of course I’ve been stuck in “freeze” mode for a long time. That’s where all my talk about being cold, feeling frozen, wanting warmth, and so on comes from.
When I was being raped at the age of 4, I dealt with it by freezing up inside. I went limp in hopes that the predator would lose interest and go away. I disappeared into the depths of my mind because that was the only place I could go.
And that’s when my system became hostile to its own adrenaline. In freeze mode, the directive is to hide and stop moving. To basically disappear.
That’s the exact opposite of what adrenaline normally wants you to do. So in order to create what it thinks of as safety, my mind had to scrub all the adrenaline from my system and lock me in a mode that told me the only time I am safe is when I am alone and nobody notices me.
If you’re having trouble visualizing this mode, imagine a scene from a horror movie where the killer is chasing someone and that person hides in a closet and goes completely silent despite the loud beating of their heart.
That person is in freeze mode. It’s the third F from fight, flight, or freeze. They aren’t fighting and they aren’t fleeing but they aren’t exactly relaxed and calm either.
And that’s me. I’ve been hiding from the killer in my head for my entire adult life and I am going to turn 50 next month.
Still not looking forward to that.
And it makes total sense to me that the solution to being frozen is to move your body around. Not only does that pull your consciousness out of the deep freeze and make you deal with the here and now, it of course generates adrenaline and that is exactly what you need to counter the freezing effect.
No wonder exercise works so well as a way to combat depression.
Or so I am told. Overcoming my fears and depression’s anti-action bias is not easy. But what I have learned from the video linked above will help.
And of course my depression will fight me on this. It will continue to repeat the same old song about how I can only be safe if I am silent and still and how all this motion will only lead to unnecessary pain and suffering and my feeling stupid for having done it when I could have been “happy” doing next to nothing.
Physically, that is. Mentally, I’m constantly turning cartwheels.
And fighting it will take energy and commitment and willpower, all of which I have considered to be in very short supply until quite recently.
And who convinced me of that? My fucking depression, of course. Trying to save its own unwashed and unworthy ass.
What I want to glean from all this, at the fundamental level, is a reflex that responds to that frozen feeling with the urge to get up and move.
Or at least move. My leg issues make getting up more… complicated.
Which reminds me. I think ending up in the hospital last August when my legs stopped supporting me entirely and all I went through as a result has turned my mere laziness into fear of doing anything that might make things worse.
And while there is wisdom in that – I probably shouldn’t be trying to run any marathons any time soon – exercise is also my salvation and I can’t afford to ignore that,
Who knows, with enough exercise, my legs might even start working again and I could return to the unbelievable luxury of being able to fucking walk.
Oh, and here’s the reference for today’s title :
How to reheat
It’s time to declare war on being frozen.
I feel I need to do that because the truth is the deep freeze is part of how my entire psyche operates and that means it will not die without consequences and sacrifices.
I’m going to need to trust that I can handle things in real time, for instance. No deep freeze means no icy detachment from the here and now and therefore no setting aside what I am feeling in the moment to be dealt with “later”.
Because “later” never comes. The emotions just pile up in the deep freeze. And the longer they are in there, the more toxic they become.
So it’s time to clean out my freezer and throw away all the inedible stuff from so long ago the “best before” date is in Roman numerals.
Luckily, I know there is a raging wildfire within me eager to bust out of its tiny compartment and melt the fuck out of some ice.
It’s my long suppressed id. It contains my rage cage, which is full of all the deferred anger I have never let myself feel except for occasional bouts of bitter rage.
That helps but it doesn’t really get the job done.
It also houses my stifled libido. A long time ago, I more or less resigned myself to the fact that the only sex I was going to get was of the strictly solo variety.
I mean, given my intense social anxiety AND my mobility and health issues, random hookups are not possible and going to “the baths” would be very tricky for any number of reasons, like claustrophobia.
If it’s too crowded, I can’t go, period. Even if it’s crowded with dudes fuckin’.
And online dating is so depressing. It forces me to face the fact that I am, in fact, extremely picky when it comes to with whom I want to spend my time and the minimum qualifications for my boyfriend include being smart enough to understand me, and seeing as we’re already drawing from pool of homosexual and bisexual men, the number of potential mates for me is awfully small.
And it’s not like my urban hermit lifestyle brings me into contact with new people at all.
These days, if I meet a new man, he’s probably a doctor treating me.
And I mean…. I could do worse.
But I imagine flirting with one’s doctor is frowned upon by civil society.
Especially for us gay dudes. Could get really awkward.
And we can’t have that, can we?
I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.