One of These Days...

I'm going to steel myself, grit my teeth and drag my posts out of draft and actually finish them. 

I swear. 

Small Solace

It's October now, but the Summer of Ill Luck refuses to give up its bony grasp. My brother is in the hospital, in intensive care. Despite seeming perfectly fine on Saturday, by Monday he was on a ventilator, suffering multiple serious conditions. There's no knowing at this point if he will recover.

This of course has been distressing to the family, my youngest not the least, and it's causing him to act out. And then there is my mother, whose state of mind is not good. And there's my spouse's health, and my teenager's moods, and the bills to pay and those other fears I never talk about. This leaves me in the position where I often find myself - having to prioritize my worries.

It's a crappy state of affairs when you have to decide what scary thing to focus on first.

Crappy, but hardly new.

In times like these, I find myself I find myself running the same old internet search - how to find solace in times of trouble. The results are always the same, too - references to Bible verses or comfort food. Being a chronic dieter who went to Christian school, these things leave me more than cold. They leave me feeling hopeless and alone.

So the internet having let me down, I turn back the way I always have, to the small, seemingly meaningless things that tie me to the material world.

The sound of a branch tapping in the wind. The red light on the radio tower that blinks all night. The hum of the power lines, or scratch of dry leaves on the ground.

I'm not the only one who finds comfort in such things. My friend and I used to intone "the strawberries, the bowl of milk" ala the Seventh Seal, knowing that it wasn't about the strawberries or the milk, but the solace of simple objects during the dark night of the soul. The focus on the thing that is not your despair.

We all have our ways, I suppose. My cousin watches the original Planet of the Apes whenever she feels desperate. I prefer that episode of Doctor Who, Partners in Crime. Grandpa Wilf at his allotment, always watching the sky. But to each their own.

There are things I like to think about.

I like that the Vatican has an observatory, and that the time and date website thinks, for some reasons, that I am in a town 20 miles away. The sight of moths fluttering in the lamplight, and hot tea after midnight. Taillights receding into the distance. Weather reports for small towns. Articles about gardening. The knowledge that the road stretches beyond the horizon.

All together, it makes a sort of sacred space, albeit it a strange one, full of the most ordinary things. The strawberries. The bowl of milk.

Ordinary, but still sacred. The small solace, the respite, however brief, from the suffering of existence.

update - In the several days it's taken to write this post, my brother's condition has improved and it looks like he will live, though he will need major surgery. He's able to communicate enough to complain now, so that at least is normal.

Invisible Monster Update

A while back I posted here about the "invisible monster" of anxiety and depression, and my use of  theta wave isochronic tones to try to reduce it. I promised an update back then, so here it is. 

Originally, I had planned to use the use the tones regularly, then take a break to see if the positive effects lingered. As it happened, I couldn't take a break for very long, as the anxiety levels would start creeping up again. I also experimented with many of the different types of theta wave tones available. Some of them make very pleasant listening, but for my own anxiety reduction effects, I still haven't found any better than the ones posted in the linked entry. YMMV.

Despite these not being brainwave frequencies, I also experimented with tones from the solfeggio scale. Even though any scientific evidence of these being beneficial is suspect in the extreme, I've personally felt that some musical tones can have positive effects. 417 Hz is a very comforting sound to me, though 528 Hz seems to be most popular. Regardless, this method didn't help and actually was starting to make things worse. I kept at it for a while, because I really wanted it to work, but eventually couldn't deny the detrimental effects. I found Buddhist and Hindu mantras to be more helpful than these. Again, YMMV.

What I did find to be extremely effective - and gives a huge boost to any calming or anti-depressant effects of the tones - is combining another form of media with the sounds. There are a lot of  videos on youtube that combine tones with visuals or music, but I found creating my own version to be much preferable. Here's how I made it work: 

I'd play the tones with headphones, through a phone or tablet. Using the television in my bedroom, I'd select either a piece of music that had only pleasant associations for me, or video that I'd found particularly calming, pleasant or had especially good memories attached to it. The aim here was to keep my mood elevated and thoughts focused while in the meditative state and not have them veer off into some grim or frightening territory. With depression and anxiety, the thoughts are already trained to go in that direction, so it was important for me to counteract that.

With music, the volume on the television didn't need to be especially loud, just enough to hear it behind the tones. For some reason, this tended to work better than the tones that were already embedded in music. Not sure why - maybe it was simply down to the music being a personal choice.

With video, the one I find most helpful has a particular hypnotic effect. It's a section of a playthrough from a video game I once enjoyed, called Rollaway (or Kula World, or Kula Quest.) I don't play a lot of video games, but this one I recall being unusually happy playing way back in the day. Given what I know now, this makes perfect sense -  imagining a ball rolling away from you while you're standing still is an excellent hypnotic technique. (Go ahead, close you eyes and imagine it right now!). 

Here's the video, for reference: 

The music in this section of the game is also one of my favorites (Hiro, by Twice A Man). With this video, I don't even bother to lower the volume, as the ringing sounds of  the collected coins and keys, along with the music, strike me as both calming and upbeat. The combination of visuals and tones in this case create a more lasting positive effect. 

There are a few others that I've been working with, too. I suppose ultimately it comes down to which ones give you the effect you want. 

So, my assessment today, having done this for a period of several months, is that these techniques have been more or less effective, at least for me, and none of them (save the solfeggio tones) have been detrimental. None have actually made my condition worse. Of course, my condition at the start was pretty damn bad, so this is not saying that I'm anywhere near "normal" for an average, non-depressed person yet. I still hold out hope, though.

Using my blog posting habits as a measure, I've been able to post more than in a long time. This is significant, because it's something that has to be planned, constructed and time being made to actually write something, as well as the power of concentration needed to do so - and it does create some amount of guilt for me because it feels more like "playing" than any kind of work. The fact that I've been able to do it shows improvement, I think. 

The invisible monster is not defeated yet, but the battle continues.

November Night

My previously mentioned experiment to lower my anxiety levels was having excellent results - I'd only had one serious anxiety attack in a week, which is a great improvement - but having my psyche in (apparently) better shape brought out an old nemesis. Quite suddenly, I'd fallen ill with what seems like a total body breakdown, some systemic illness erupting in assorted peculiar ways. Conversion disorder, anyone?

On one hand, it hardly matters if this is my unconscious way of expressing self-hatred through illness. The fact is I'm ill, in pain and life has become extra difficult at the moment. Naturally it's very worrying (and oh so convenient, smirks my punitive super-ego). When one is beset by illness and worry, it's damn nigh impossible to take the necessary steps toward self-improvement. Which, obviously, is what's on the other hand. Of course there is a chance that I'm simply ill and the timing was purely happenstance - there is a chance, but I know my neurosis, and I'm not buying it.

Still, I'm dedicated to finding a solution. I am determined to work my way toward some type of  inner peace. If joyfulness is too much to ask, then contentment is perfectly acceptable. I'll keep working at it, even if I feel I'm falling apart.

That isn't the point of this post though. What I came here to say is quite different, really.

Before I became ill, there was this one night - the tenth of November, I think it was - the weather was warm, the sky was lowering and grey. I'd felt well and strong enough to take the dog for a walk. It was sunset and we went the long way, since it was that sort of evening. Silhouette birds swooped low over trees and there was a sprinkling of rain every now and then. There was a feeling of walking upon the crust of the earth - which of course we always are, but really feeling it, you know, walking atop this ancient and marvelous place. The beauty of even the ragged rocks is apparent at times like these. The hills and creeks seem to contain some ineffable secret.

At home, the boys had got hold of a projector and were playing with it on the lawn, shining pinpricks of light at the house and trees. They laughed so much, chasing around in the surreal landscape they'd created.

I consider myself fortunate that happiness, when it does come, seems to come for no particular reason. There is no set criteria of events that must be met; I know from experience that such criteria would never be met. Instead it comes at random, perhaps triggered by some confluence of factors impossible to define or maybe nothing at all. Again, it hardly matters. There was nothing special about November tenth, except that I was happy for half an hour. Because it was random, it could happen again at any point. Therefore there is a reason to keep going. I don't dare give up, because happiness could suddenly appear with no warning. It's worth it to keep going. When those fleeting moments of happiness do appear, I wouldn't miss them for the world.

Fighting The Invisible Monster

Possibly the worst thing about my anxiety/depression  is what I call "the horrors". It might be more accurate to call them "the terrors", but the horrors, with its shades of  Heart Of Darkness and Apocalypse Now, has always felt more appropriate.

The feeling may be best summed up in an image. The Scream might be the most famous example, but what really comes to mind is a drawing, ubiquitous in old horror comics - the face of the hapless victim, pouring with sweat, eyes wide upon finally seeing the monster that's been hunting them for the last couple of pages. I know that feeling, intimately and horribly. For me, though, is what seems like the ultimate unfunny joke - the monster is invisible.

This has been the most frustrating thing for my loved ones, I think - seeing a person frozen in blind terror at something that can't be seen, heard or otherwise perceived. It's frustrating for me, too. This is not something I'd signed up for, this nameless, faceless, free-ranging annihilation anxiety that's beaten my quality of life to a pulp. It's not something easily understood by people who haven't been there. Trying to explain this miserable internal state is fairly pointless, and not something I do well. Indeed, I hate writing about it at all. It makes me nervous.

The only reason I mention it today is because I have found what seems to be a little relief, and I want to write it down, make some catalogue of minor success. I've tried many things over the years, but aside from taking a particular SSRI  (which worked all right until it gave me OCD and chronic sleep-paralysis) and a combination of COQ10, barley grass powder and yoga (which worked like a charm throughout the summer of 2002, before running out of steam), most things haven't made enough headway to make them worth noting.

I'd tried binaural beats with some small success, but when I came across  isochronic tones, I felt my response was much stronger. About 6 weeks ago, I started listening to theta wave isochronic tones while sleeping, or even just sitting quietly, and noticed my anxiety was much less prominent afterward.
It's this one in particular I've been using while meditating or sitting quietly:

And this for sleep:

I've tried the Alpha, Gamma and Delta wave tones also and find Gamma and Theta to have the most positive effects. For me, anyway. While Alpha  is touted as a most beneficial type of brainwave, and I do find visualizing comes more easily while listening to the tones, I've found that my depressed feelings and despairing thoughts increase afterward. Delta has its own set of weird effects, which may be down to my peculiar brain chemistry. Whatever the case, my anxiety - though not gone - is reduced and I haven't had a real attack of The Horrors since beginning. Because of this I've been able to leave the house 4 times under my own power, organized my closet, made a Halloween costume and have turned in several blog posts in the last 6 weeks, after promising myself that I would do so -  which is sort of like climbing a mountain would be for a normal person. At this point, even if it's far from ideal or even average, I consider this a great improvement.

I'm going to stick with this pattern for another two weeks, then take a break and see if the reduction in anxiety continues. I've read that an overabundance of theta brain waves can lead to depression, but given that my depression and anxiety seem to be hideously intertwined, I'm grateful for a relief in at least one of those things. The fact is, I can't do much to help my depression when I'm frozen in terror. Or horror. Whatever.

Meditation is supposed to be an excellent tool to deal with anxiety, but lets's face it, I'm far from being an enlightened monk who can find inner peace amidst the constant, grinding fear. This might be meditation the easy way, tinned and ready for consumption, but between that and never getting better, I'm going to take it. The effects seem to be quite similar anyway. It's not so much fighting the invisible monster as dissolving it - like the koans say.

I will write an update at some time in the future. Meanwhile, I'm keeping my fingers crossed that this could be a drug-free remedy for The Horrors at last.