real or not?
I had to deal with this dilemma from a very early age, so I can tell you what I have come up with now at age 46.
I was an allergic kid, inherited it from my german dad, and I'd get these attacks and be overcome, all sneezing and itching, and my mom, who had no allergies, mexican/aztec sorceress's granddaughter, she would say it was "all in my mind", all this suffering that was disabling me and that would cause me to complain, she couldn't relate, so she would simply laugh at me, tease me, and tell me it was all in my head and that if I was tired of suffering I would give it up. Laughed at me, it seemed kinda cruel. I was five.
So I had to face the dilemma you are describing, completely abandoned and on my own to cure my attacks. I figured that, ok, she's got a point, the head is involved, the nervous system in general, and maybe I get all hyper, enjoying whatever extreme thought experiment. I think some kids are pushed to be tough, go outside and play and get along in life with the others, but some kids like me, my parents isolated me and encouraged and forced me to spend my time doing schoolwork, reading comprehension all the time, and a kid like that is going to drift off into his own dreams more than most, since that what he is being optimized for, the pdocs call it "ruminating" now.
"All in your head", that was never a helpful way of dealing with it. So ok, it's in my head, can I swap that out for a well-functioning head? I remember a girlfriend with bipolar anxiety disorder, her parents would yell at her to snap out of it, they would tell me not to "humor" her by paying any attention to her complaints. That was no way to help their daughter.
But I know what they mean, on the other hand. They are splitting body and mind realities. There's the body reality that the doctor or your mother have to tend to, is it hungry is it tired is it sick does it have a fever? no? then all is well, send it on its way. The body has certain needs and some care practitioners are only tending to that.
The mind, especially in a ruminating kid, is another story. Those of us who go too far into mind at the cost of the body, so that we stay inside and think or read, get all involved in our thoughts of anxiety or stress, then get to the point where we ignore the cries of the body, for food, for sleep, for calm, none of that counts because the mind tries to take over, all these "issues" in the mind bring the body to a point of distress. So to make the distinction, it’s another way of saying “I can't help you cause none of the needs I tend to is needed here, and if you want to do something about your situation just stop doing whatever it is you are doing in our head, the thinking, the worrying, stop it and you'll solve your problem.”
That’s what they are saying. If they were a little more honest or insightful they'd acknowledge you have a serious problem that needs to be dealt with, and all avenues that could possibly help need to be explored. They are just saying you've gone too far with mind, come back and realize the body's needs.
But you and I, we suffer, in our worlds, in our minds, and the authorities we try to go to for help don't understand, tell us it's all in the mind, it's all in the imagination, it's not real.
How does that help when we suffer from these tormenting tactile hallucinations, if that's what they are, or maybe we're just sensitive to the environment like canaries in a coal mine, and the environment is getting bad, infested. Same with the visual and audio hallucinations if they torture you. For me I'm able to drive and control those so I enjoy them as a hobby. It's the creepy crawly pin pricks and tickling on my skin when I try to relax that drives me insane. I manage it with diet and weird sleeping arrangements. It's NOT all in my mind. They just mean they don't understand.
So someone like me has to deal with two completely different realities. There’s the one the pdoc is talking about, where a lot of my issues are not “Real”; I call that “consensual reality”, the plane where all the normal people have their understanding of the way things are, like they think there’s an invisible force in the ground called gravity (even though the scientists can’t FIND it, they BELIEVE in it because of Newton’s mysticism, or because they built so much of their math around his ideas and they don’t want to do it over), they think the resources on earth are finite and so you have to hoard them and hide them from your neighbor (when every religious tradition on earth says no, there’s no property or property rights, all is for all, the permanent universal capital, infinite; the bible says you should be like a bird and don’t worry about food and shelter, providence will provide); and they think you have to work as little as possible and consume as much pleasure as possible (might be the line in the constitution about pursuit of happiness, throws a lot of them off, Mitt Romney is out quoting that phrase to defend his wealth).
It’s important to understand consensual reality, what’s “real” and “not real” to them, the majority, the people who hold the power over your life, the authorities who hold your food and shelter and freedom hostage until you agree with them on what consensual reality is. Do you talk to aliens? Demons? The CIA? Can’t do that stuff in consensual reality.
But then of course there’s private reality, where many talk to sprites and elves and aliens and demons, and the CIA in that white van outside the window all the time.
Private reality becomes important when that’s how your body, your unconscious, your madness, that’s where it’s signaling you, that’s where it’s set up a relationship with you, the mind, the consciousness, the enemy as far as the body is concerned sometimes.
So in madness the mind is the affliction of the body, and the body resents it and cries out, in tears, in voices and visions and pin pricks, cries out for very real human needs. Needs of companionship and trust and friendship, needs of sleep, of proper nutrition, of proper relaxation.
But the body and the mind evolved together, as partners. There must have been a balance in our ancestors, they must have controlled how much “ruminating” they were doing, didn’t have my mom forcing them to be doing reading comprehension tests al l the time, or sending them into her basement with all her self-help and philosophy and religion books. At 12 I was practicing astral projection and talking with aliens, because I was bored and that’s what the books in her basement taught me to do.
Maybe that was bad parenting. I see the normal kids, out there being tough, out in the cold, not thinking too much, on purpose, it makes me wonder who taught them that wisdom and who let my parents isolate me into madness?
The body and mind get like yin and yang, one trying to destroy the other in order to dominate and win and be superior. Guess that’s the problem. Gotta get the yin and yang to be quiet about eachother, don’t let them get so upset with eachother. Just leave it all alone. Let it all go.
So after I’ve got my food and shelter secured, after I’ve done my 8 hour day in the cubicle, I go home and I set aside the consensual reality I am forced to hold all day, and open up into the wide vistas of my private, floridly psychotic reality, full of grandiose delusions that satisfy deeply.
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