Tonight, in our continuing series Michael Bertrand goes crazy in text”, we’re going to talk about being a cold person.

I have spoken before about how modern brain science has identified a “hot circuit” and a “cold circuit” in the human brain.

Standard disclaimer : these are just useful names for highly complex phenomena. 

The hot circuit is extremely fast, wired directly into the amygdala AKA the emotion center of the brain, and is the generator of gut feelings,. instincts, snap judgments, waves of emotion, and what Western culture calls “passion”.

This is the circuit we share will all other mammals. it is well suited for navigating life in the state of nature. It reacts quickly and motivates and activates in one lightning fast motion in order to serve the mammal best.

However, it’s not very smart.

For what we would call intelligence, there has to be a cold circuit too. The cold circuit of the mind is the generator of forethough, reflection, calculation, and the rest of our higher mental functions. In creatures unburdened with all the gray matter we humans lug around. it primarily resolves conflicts between instincts.

For example, imagine a solitary hunter like a leopard sees some tasty looking monkeys a couple of trees over. One instinct would tell the leopard to go for it, and were the leopard a simpler creature, that would be the end of the story.

But predators can’t afford to be that stupid. The leopard hesitates because it knows that one monkey is helpless against its predatory prowess, the more monkeys there are, the more dangerous they become, and so opportunity must be carefully weighed against risk For that, it uses its cold circuit.

I have wandered off on an academic tangent once again. Sigh. Back to the point.

The point is that I am, in many ways, a “cold” person. This is confusing to everyone because I am, in many ways, a very warm person as well.

But it’s the cold that worries me. When I withdrew into my mind as a result of being raped as a child, the place I retreated into was much more a product of the cold circuit than the warm and this cold world of the mind and mental stimulation became the prison I now labour to escape.

This cold-circuit bias has worked its way so deep into the circuitry of the mind that it interprets nearly anything that would produce an adrenal response as a threat and responds with anxiety, which my brain then tries to kill by kicking into the parasympathetic response (the opposite of the adrenal) WAY TOO HARD.

So I go from anxious to alienated as a killer frost descends. And then I get to be anxious about THAT because it’s actually pretty fucking horrible.

Isolation is the last thing a scared monkey wants. What a scared monkey wants is the company of a whole bunch of others monkeys who will face the scary thing together with the scared monkey.

This overbearing cold circuit response is the opposite of that.

And I know the sort of ways this icy retreat of mine makes me different from others. It makes me more calculating, thoughtful, incisive, and deeper than the average person.

There’s a lot of benefits to that. But it’s also what cuts me off from others. I might feel safe withing my icy vault, but I am not.

I’m dying in there, and running out of air.

And lately, I have realized that underneath all that ice is a very strong and deep seated rage common in adult survivors of childhood sexual abuse, and that response is a cornered-rat emotion that screams ‘NOBODY FUCKING TOUCHES ME!“.

That voice speaks with the vehement violence of the violated. it’s like when I was raped at the age of 4, my mind dug this moat of infinite depth around my broken screaming mind and absolutely nobody is allowed inside.

That drawbridge never goes down. People can get close to me but they can never reach my inner sanctum.

They can’t. I can’t let them. There has to be somewhere where I am safe and I can only be safe if I am alone.

Explains a lot, doesn’t it?

I hide this truth from myself and others with a sunny demeanour and plenty of intellectual fireworks to keep the crowds entertained and happy and distracted from the man behind the curtain with the sad, sad eyes and a heart made of cold blue steel.

See how it shines?

It’s my infinity moat that keeps me from really connecting with people. I hear the words but I don’t feel the warmth, no matter how sincere the person is. To open myself up for that kind of input would be to risk being touched. Truly touched.

And my whole psyche is built around keeping that from ever happening again.

And yet, that’s exactly what I want and crave and need so badly.  Someone or something that can get past all my ferocious defenses and rescue me from myself and take me to where it is warm and friendly and safe and finally, I can return to the peace and the light that I knew as a child before the rape happened.

I want to go. I really do. But I can’t do it on my own yet. My prison simply will not let me go until I no longer need it any more, and that could be a long time coming.

Maybe the problem is my all or nothing thinking, which is an endemic problem with us depressives. I sholuldn’t be thinking of it as a sudden total liberation with no backsies.

That’s what I want to believe, but it’s not how these things work. The unsexy truth is that I am better off comings out of that vault a little at a time, baby steps, and that I never close the door behind me because that will just make me panic.

That’s what logic and reason say is the path most likely to succeed.

For what that’s worth,

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.