Part 6 - Space invaders*

I went to see my therapist this week, for the first time in a month. Ordinarily I wouldn't go quite so long between visits, but I had to cancel my last appointment (two weeks ago) due to a nasty sinus infection (mine) and couldn't reschedule until today due to a vacation (hers). It was a loooong month.

One thing I brought up this session was how I'm just now coming to realize the incredible physical effects of an anxiety disorder. When I say physical, I don't mean just a queasy stomach or an adrenaline response, although those things do happen. There is something else too, not so easily described or understood, but just as felt, and seemingly just as real.

For me, it was an unbelievable sensation of pressure and noise and chaos in my head. Like my mind was an overcrowded room, filled with people on top of people, shouting and climbing and elbowing and shoving. Except instead of bodies, it was the contours and angles of voices and images and thoughts, all competing for my attention. Basically, it was one big Charlie Foxtrot.

Anyway, the sensation I'm trying to describe is caused by intrusive thoughts. These thoughts and images are sudden, random, frantic, constant. And I think it goes without saying that they are not healthy or productive (quite the opposite). They are uninvited and completely illogical, and because one does not feel at all in control of them, the whole experience lends itself to a genuine fear that one is LOSING ONE’S FREAKING MIND!

Hence, the title of this post. I'm not talking about little green men (though there's a whole other unexplored analogy), but an invasion of alien thoughts and emotions.

I tried a bunch of times to come up with examples, but I’m realizing that it’s impossible. Because in trying to write out some of the thoughts I might have had, I'm shuffling them into a logical progression of thought, image, worry, reaction, and that's just not how it happens.

They are jagged and nonsensical, spiraling thoughts. They occur so rapidly, it's hard to even know how to recreate them. It might be an image of something horrible happening to Littlebat, meshed in with a thought about a story I read on the Internet (about something horrible happening to someone, though not necessarily a related something), tangled with obsessive worries about a conversation or interaction I had with someone (any topic), overlaid by regular (or more likely, slightly irregular) thoughts and worries about everyday goings on. It's like a flip book of devastating and disturbing images and thoughts, only the pages are out of order.

I can remember how it felt, I can recall that sense of noise and pressure. Thankfully, it's just a memory. But I can’t believe I lived like that for… approximately a year and a half.

I previously described recovery as a sense of lightness. And that's exactly what I meant, literally like a thousand pound weight had been lifted off of my head. And that's a really good feeling.

I have space to think, space to breathe; quiet, empty, peaceful, wonderful space!

Ahhhhhhhh... I want to dance around! And play ping pong! And listen to the echo! And for the time being, once every couple of weeks I want to open the space to my therapist... as a safeguard against any future invasions.




To be continued.


*When I first sketched out a post about intrusive thoughts (... a month ago?) I’d titled it “Space Invaders” because that was the first thing that popped into my head. Later, I erased that title, even though I couldn't come up with anything better. BUT then I started thinking about the mental space created through recovery... and there you have it - the relevance I'd been searching for, and finally another post.