The last time I graced you all with my presence on here, I spoke about the short and sweet stint I had unloading all of my negative thoughts to a therapist/counsellor/paid listener.
I also said that it had worked – which was true to some extent because I did feel better at the time. I had less brain fog, I felt happier and, crucially, the thoughts I was having had gone away.
Well, now they’re back. Which sucks.
I’m not ready to release to the internet what the problem thoughts are. Some people know and they’ll instantly be able to put two and two together. Maybe one day when I’m famous and they finally make that already long-overdue sitcom about my life that I imagine episodes of in my head on a daily basis, the wider public can be made aware of my deepest, darkest secrets. But for now, all you get is a metaphoric description.
I’m actually surprised I never thought of it this way before, considering how much overthinking I do. But walking around at work last week, I came up with probably my most accurate long-winded description of something ever (I can promise you there is plenty of competition for that).
The scenario: you’re reminiscing over something you shouldn’t be reminiscing over any more.
I’ve started to think of the reminiscent thoughts as some kind of monster. Or beast. Or angry dog. All metaphorical, obviously, therefore you can take your pick as to what it is, but monster was the thing that came to head the first time around.
You’ve had this monster inside your head for years now, and every now and then it wakes up, demanding to be fed. It keep snapping at you and bearing it’s teeth, letting you know it’s hungry. Do you feed it, or let it starve?
I used to be pretty good at letting it starve. I didn’t want the monster anyway so I was happy to leave it be until it went back to sleep. Every now and then, during a moment of weakness, I might have given it a snack, just to ensure it didn’t die completely, but ultimately that was just to shut it up so I could carry on with my life.
The problem is, if you continue to starve it and just throw a few scraps at it every now and then, every time it wakes up, it’s hungrier. It wants more. In this metaphorical case, it wants you to sit there, reminisce, beat yourself up, feel guilty, overthink. If you do that, you feed it. Therefore it grows stronger and stays awake for longer. But you do it in the hope that when it does go back to sleep, it’s nourished enough to stay down for a while.
I find there’s different ways to wake it up too, just like there’s different ways to wake up in real life rather than this made-up, in-your-head bullshit. When you’re in a deep sleep and you’re woken up suddenly, like someone shaking you, you could act aggressively. Whereas if you’re allowed to wake naturally, it’s a more gradual process.
This is the same. When I decided to have those therapy sessions, it was because the monster was aggressive. It had been asleep for ages, possibly more than a year, which is the longest it had ever been. But it got a violent jolt, and suddenly it was up, realising how hungry it was and making that very much known to me.
This time around though, it’s been allowed to wake of its own accord. That’s allowed me to judge better what I want to do with it, which was, after cautiously throwing it some bait for a few days, giving it what it wanted. Hopefully, that will keep it satisfied for a long while.
As much as I resent the monster, I don’t want it to die. That would mean losing its memory completely, and I think it’s fine to think back to things as long as you can be in control of how you feel about them. Therefore, that’s what I need to learn. How to be in control. How to make the monster sleep and wake on my terms and not its own.
The monster is still awake at the moment, it’s still hungry and I’m still feeding it. Hopefully, when it’s had enough, it’ll piss off again back into the dark abyss of my brain and not come out for a while. I’m resigned to the fact it will happen at some point, but I hope it gives me the break I need.
This has been really weird to write. I’ve always been pretty open about my mental health but I’ve always done it in a real way, rather than talking bollocks about monsters and dogs. I also don’t plan anything I write; I just type and see where it takes me, so if there’s a big gap in the ‘story’ and something you don’t understand, let me know and I’ll be happy to explain it and add it to the piece if it makes sense to.
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