much ado about nothing
I have been much preoccupied recently about the power of belief to create symptoms of illness, and the following dream fed into that preoccupation.
What I remember of the dream (I am conscious that there was much more, but as I have explained in joan-blethers.blogspot.com, one should allow ones mind to filter out what is significant, which means, do not try to remember) is this:
I am being chased by two men, and I have stollen a bullet-proof car that belongs to them to make my get-away. They are chasing me in another identical car. We are racing up a mountain road. I see a chasm in the road ahead of me, but I think, 'these cars are designed for this road, so they must be able to cross chasms like this'. With that, I do a bit of trick driving and do, indeed, manage to cross the chasm. Further on, the road runs out, and I have to leave the car. I find a motor-bike and take to that. The men leave their car, but they have a field-gun set up at the end of the road, and they start firing that at me as I race away across the fields. The ordinance keeps landing close to me. They are small things, looking like a nut screwed into a bolt, and they are on delayed charges, so none of them explodes before I am well out of the way. Later, I come to a stop, and the men come running towards me. I laugh because I am thinking that I am inside a 'protected' car, and so they cannot get me. But the men run up and do capture me, and then I burst out laughing, and I share the joke with them --- I let them capture me because I had forgotten that I was no longer in the protected car but on a motor-bike.
This related to symptoms of illness I have been experienceing since yesterday morning: an itchiness over my torso and down my back. Since I became schizophrenic, I have been subject to panic attacks, and these cause me to break out into a sweat, and my skin to prickle. Over time, that has seemed to lead to my skin becoming extremely sensitive. Silk can feel like sack-cloth against the skin of my abdomen or back. If I experience persistent rubbing, eg the waist band of my trousers when I take exercise, this can become a maddening itch.
I have long since realised that this is not real. It is of the nature of an hallucination, and must be dealt with as such. The dream relates to an outbreak of itchiness resulting from a walk I took two days ago.
My enemies in the dream are the symptoms of illness; these are what I am currently trying to escape.
The 'vehicle' I use to try and escape, however, is the very vehicle used be the symptoms, --- one that is designed for crossing chasms and other faults as though they were not there! The road I am following has to be understood as a 'track' in the mind, a series of logical connections, or somesuch. So, the vehicle is designed to get passed faults in the logic!
In this case, the principle fault, that I can see, is a time-error.
One way of spotting psychosmatic symptoms is by observing their timing. For example, I have, on several occasions, reacted badly to drugs I have been prescribed. Often I could tell the side-effects were psychosomatic because they came on as soon as I put the pill in my mouth, and long before it had even reached my stomach, much less been absorbed into my blood-stream!
In the present case, the time-fault operated in the opposite direction ---ie, the time lapse between my walk, and the onset of the maddening itch, was the better past of a whole day, an included a night's sleep. So, the enemy has been rumbled --- it is an hallucinatory itch!
That chasm reappears in the form of the delayed charge. That is, the cost of my taking some exercise, the development of a maddening itch, is delayed.
(I will just mention another 'fault', not referred to in the dream, but another dead give-away: often such symptoms will 'switch-on', or off, with un-natural suddenneness.
Then there is my capture by my enemies, when I thought I was still in the 'protected' car. The fact is that I had taken a walk earlier in the week, and had experienced no adverse effects, and, in light of the fact that I have been recovering from most of the symptoms I have been experiencing, that led me to suppose that I had got over this susceptibility to itchiness. Well, this is precisely the sort of trap hallucinations lay for one --- by being inconsistent, they lead one to develop a false sense of security, and then they strike. But, of course, that very inconsistency becomes just another give-away.
Finally, at the end of my dream, I am caught, but I find it funny, and just share the joke with my enemies. Well, the hallucinations did catch me --- that is, I did get itchy after that last walk. But I made a very fast recovery, and that came about because I am able to make friends with my enemies.
The main problems I am left with as a recovering schizophrenic, and that I have been weakened and exhausted, and have suffered a massive loss of confidence. Well, as the saying goes: when the going gets tough, the tough get going! That is, you do not recover strength by lying in bed and feeling sorry for yourself. When things get hard, eg by by experiencing the onset of hallucinatory symptoms of illness, the 'tough' side of ones nature goes into action, and each time you exercise it, it gets stronger. Then, in the words of the old hymn: each victory will help you, some other to win. So, now, when I experienced the onset of this maddening itch, I just said, "oh good, withstanding this will just help get my strength back all the quicker!"
Of course, as it happens, these sorts of symptoms do not like to be welcomed, so this attitude has a double effect, in that it also helps to put an end to that particular hallucination. And that, too, is where the laughter comes in: at the end of the dream, I was sharing a joke with my enemies, laughing with them at having been caught out --- well, hallucinations, as I have said, rely on being taken seriously. So, my final, best card in the fight for recovery, is humour.
What I remember of the dream (I am conscious that there was much more, but as I have explained in joan-blethers.blogspot.com, one should allow ones mind to filter out what is significant, which means, do not try to remember) is this:
I am being chased by two men, and I have stollen a bullet-proof car that belongs to them to make my get-away. They are chasing me in another identical car. We are racing up a mountain road. I see a chasm in the road ahead of me, but I think, 'these cars are designed for this road, so they must be able to cross chasms like this'. With that, I do a bit of trick driving and do, indeed, manage to cross the chasm. Further on, the road runs out, and I have to leave the car. I find a motor-bike and take to that. The men leave their car, but they have a field-gun set up at the end of the road, and they start firing that at me as I race away across the fields. The ordinance keeps landing close to me. They are small things, looking like a nut screwed into a bolt, and they are on delayed charges, so none of them explodes before I am well out of the way. Later, I come to a stop, and the men come running towards me. I laugh because I am thinking that I am inside a 'protected' car, and so they cannot get me. But the men run up and do capture me, and then I burst out laughing, and I share the joke with them --- I let them capture me because I had forgotten that I was no longer in the protected car but on a motor-bike.
This related to symptoms of illness I have been experienceing since yesterday morning: an itchiness over my torso and down my back. Since I became schizophrenic, I have been subject to panic attacks, and these cause me to break out into a sweat, and my skin to prickle. Over time, that has seemed to lead to my skin becoming extremely sensitive. Silk can feel like sack-cloth against the skin of my abdomen or back. If I experience persistent rubbing, eg the waist band of my trousers when I take exercise, this can become a maddening itch.
I have long since realised that this is not real. It is of the nature of an hallucination, and must be dealt with as such. The dream relates to an outbreak of itchiness resulting from a walk I took two days ago.
My enemies in the dream are the symptoms of illness; these are what I am currently trying to escape.
The 'vehicle' I use to try and escape, however, is the very vehicle used be the symptoms, --- one that is designed for crossing chasms and other faults as though they were not there! The road I am following has to be understood as a 'track' in the mind, a series of logical connections, or somesuch. So, the vehicle is designed to get passed faults in the logic!
In this case, the principle fault, that I can see, is a time-error.
One way of spotting psychosmatic symptoms is by observing their timing. For example, I have, on several occasions, reacted badly to drugs I have been prescribed. Often I could tell the side-effects were psychosomatic because they came on as soon as I put the pill in my mouth, and long before it had even reached my stomach, much less been absorbed into my blood-stream!
In the present case, the time-fault operated in the opposite direction ---ie, the time lapse between my walk, and the onset of the maddening itch, was the better past of a whole day, an included a night's sleep. So, the enemy has been rumbled --- it is an hallucinatory itch!
That chasm reappears in the form of the delayed charge. That is, the cost of my taking some exercise, the development of a maddening itch, is delayed.
(I will just mention another 'fault', not referred to in the dream, but another dead give-away: often such symptoms will 'switch-on', or off, with un-natural suddenneness.
Then there is my capture by my enemies, when I thought I was still in the 'protected' car. The fact is that I had taken a walk earlier in the week, and had experienced no adverse effects, and, in light of the fact that I have been recovering from most of the symptoms I have been experiencing, that led me to suppose that I had got over this susceptibility to itchiness. Well, this is precisely the sort of trap hallucinations lay for one --- by being inconsistent, they lead one to develop a false sense of security, and then they strike. But, of course, that very inconsistency becomes just another give-away.
Finally, at the end of my dream, I am caught, but I find it funny, and just share the joke with my enemies. Well, the hallucinations did catch me --- that is, I did get itchy after that last walk. But I made a very fast recovery, and that came about because I am able to make friends with my enemies.
The main problems I am left with as a recovering schizophrenic, and that I have been weakened and exhausted, and have suffered a massive loss of confidence. Well, as the saying goes: when the going gets tough, the tough get going! That is, you do not recover strength by lying in bed and feeling sorry for yourself. When things get hard, eg by by experiencing the onset of hallucinatory symptoms of illness, the 'tough' side of ones nature goes into action, and each time you exercise it, it gets stronger. Then, in the words of the old hymn: each victory will help you, some other to win. So, now, when I experienced the onset of this maddening itch, I just said, "oh good, withstanding this will just help get my strength back all the quicker!"
Of course, as it happens, these sorts of symptoms do not like to be welcomed, so this attitude has a double effect, in that it also helps to put an end to that particular hallucination. And that, too, is where the laughter comes in: at the end of the dream, I was sharing a joke with my enemies, laughing with them at having been caught out --- well, hallucinations, as I have said, rely on being taken seriously. So, my final, best card in the fight for recovery, is humour.
posted by joan @ 3:14 AM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home