Dysautonomia of the Mind

With mental health issues becoming more and more common and concerning, how the mind functions requires our fullest attention. 

Just as your heart beats without you and your lungs pull air on their own, though you can take control of your breathing as you wish, your brain is always producing thought whether you are consciously thinking or not. 

Your dreams don’t feel like you thought them up because you didn’t — your brain was thinking on its own. Your brain is a shark, swimming for a living; in sensory deprivation the brain quickly creates hallucinations in order to continue to experience stimulation where none exists. Your brain is always thinking in the background, even if you cannot perceive those thoughts. 

What your brain thinks all on its own is undoubtedly crucial to understanding one’s mental health. But how do we learn to hear our brain’s automatic thoughts, or at least shift them in the right direction?

Dysautonomia, a physical condition affecting the things your body is supposed to do on its own, such as breathing, digesting, and maintaining blood pressure, has been found to be linked to several mental health conditions, such as autism and ADHD. I myself happen to have dysautonomia and ADHD with suspected autism. It occurs to me that perhaps some symptoms of mental health problems are in fact a kind of dysautonomia of the mind. When you are depressed or anxious, your brain appears to be producing negative thoughts on its own, without being caused by outside circumstances. Could this model of thought and mental health be the key to finding new modalities of healing? I think it’s worth looking into. 

You Are A Human Breathing

You cannot claim to value life itself, the sacredness of all that happens without a person’s deliberate action or intervention, while simultaneously judging a person’s worth by the merits of their efforts. 

If you need to earn a living, your life has been given no value of its own. If life is what you make of it, you have tossed aside the stunning mystery of being alive in the first place. 

You are not a breath-winner. Your body largely runs itself, and your efforts will never eclipse the value of your heart beating for you. Without your body’s autonomic functions, you would have no chance to achieve anything of your own will. Your achievements are secondary. 

Perhaps they don’t matter at all. 

We inhabit ancient buildings, these bodies. We do not really know how to use them and this alone shows that our bodies are separate from ourselves. Your cells know precisely how to grow teeth and have done it before and seemingly could do it again — but you don’t know how. You couldn’t grow yourself a new tooth on purpose no matter how deeply you understood why your body does what it does. 

Our bodies might as well be alien craft that we try (and fail) to make full use of. If ever there was a mind that could take control of the body’s autonomic functions, tweak parameters for optimization in different circumstances, and truly lay claim to having first willed its consciousness into physical form, such a mind would be simultaneously both the creator and the created. This pair, working as intended, feed into one another endlessly to fuel perpetual progress — though it could also be viewed as play. 

The brain has a fundamental operating system, something acting as the code for experiencing thoughts. The operating system is not composed of thoughts or consciousness itself, but instead the kinds of pre-thoughts required in order to think and to perceive one’s own thinking. Thus it becomes apparent that the brain is separate from the phenomenon of consciousness. A mind capable of changing its own operating system would be a fully integrated brain and mind, one that is both the programmer and the user all at once. Again, the possibilities of such mastery of one’s grey matter are remarkable. Such a person might cease to feel antagonism from her environment, from other people, or even from gods. Such a person would be complete in herself and able to navigate most concerns by adapting to the needs of the moment. 

Such a person might be capable of so-called achievements that we would envy. But I think that if this person spent all their years in pursuit of no particular goal, just play — this would not be a waste of time and potential. To play one’s life with the pleasure of a musician in eternal improvisation is the treasure of life. Meanwhile the individual melodies need not be judged, since they are technically of no value at all. 

Your value is not in being a bread-winner, and you are not a breath-winner either. You are a human breathing. This alone is the measure of your value and I find it worthy of having faith in, for it lays to rest one’s struggle for achievements. 

You may then rest assured in your greatness, and play with life instead of trying to survive it.  

There is no creed that makes pain less painful

All that exists owes its life to all that is no more. Each passing moment is a martyr for the next, just as pain is our debt to joy. There’s no wisdom or faith that makes pain less painful. It must hurt if anything is to matter: your life depends on it.

So stop. Your sorrow chases you: turn toward it. Watch it catch up. It will not pounce and end you. You will not lose more than you already have.

Grief is your mother. Let her feed you, for grief is the food your soul was made to eat. It digests pain into life itself. Your soul knows how to break pain down into its parts, which are the same nutrients that combine to make purpose and awe and laughter. You don’t have to do anything, just as your stomach knows what to do with meat and potatoes. Turnips have birthed poetry — consciousness — war crimes — human drama. Pain birthed the chance at eking out a living at all.

Stop starving yourself. This hunger strike never prevented the bad things from happening, and your numbness slips into dissolution as you cease to exist.

So greet your sorrow. Make room for it at your table. Accept the dish it offers and break bread for you both.

Grief is here. Grief, your mother who loved you. Eat, weep, and see tomorrow. Nourished, you will survive; one day you will have enough strength to give as thanks.

Poetry: In the Cracks

a random poem that spilled onto the page just now.

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People who fit into the cracks
don’t get there by falling —
they slide, duck, and twist,
slick as shadows,
as they’ve always admired
tree roots for their secrets.
Jeweled branches that reach
above ground into sky praise
themselves too much. They’re too loud,
too brash, too selfish, always
in the way of someone else.

Those who fit into the cracks
can be but a blur of light, barely seen,
the way curls of smoke
are scarves for air.
These souls smooth
themselves into a second skin
over wounds and ugliness, hoping
to be unnoticed,
like a stitch that holds
a despairing heart together.

Those who fit into the cracks
become what is needed
in the manner of an underling,
a servant quick to please,
or a mother-goddess tending
her young;
the same thing, sometimes.

And those that notice
the wisp of a quiet girl hidden
in the cracks
might see a frightened deer
or the bravery of star-birth.
She doesn’t mind
which you choose;
she’s busy knitting
purpose into the lost,
and perhaps, looking
to see where she fits
into the cracks of you.