Daunted

Friday, September 17 2004

After some haunting dreams, I woke up completely daunted this morning. Maybe it's not really a word because I don't remember ever seeing anything but undaunted. Undaunted is the state of feeling not discouraged or disheartened about something. It has connotations of defiance for me and it is one of my favorite words. After years of dealing with pain and symptoms that are difficult to explain much less handle, I remain undaunted. Things will get better.

That's not how I feel this morning. I feel drained of courage and subdued. The dreams that I remember were realistic even though they depicted events that never happened. An old boss of mine whom I like and respect very much fired me for being too sick. Evidently, I had tried to get back to work with some mixed success and then got fired for how my job performance was affected. The dream involved the feeling that this was an unmitigated disaster as if I had somehow lost my disability coverage.

The second dream was worse if weirder. Two long dead relatives had me trapped in a conversation that I could not escape politely. This conversation involved how much they loved me despite my many horrible flaws. No, I never had this conversation with either one of them but I believe there were many milder versions with one or the other. They didn't know any better and had no idea of the damage that could be caused. Also, I thought both of them were completely crazy most of the time so I never would have taken them seriously. Unfortunately, I lack that defense in dreams.

When I woke up, I had taken both dreams to heart. All I could think about was how unworthy I am of friends and family. All I wanted to do was to get back to sleep and escape the reality of it all. Eventually, I got up and watched some TV to help lose myself. Eating brownies for breakfast helped in a way yet made it worse in another. I haven't recovered but I did shake it off enough to try and deal with it.

Why do dreams affect me so strongly? For one thing, they reflect how I really feel about things. Once upon a time, I believed that pessimism is the only accurate view of life. Anything else was mere delusion. Since then, I've been working on that delusion because I learned to believe the little things within my control are what really make me happy or sad. The big things will move along in their own time because the little things act as a rudder on a big ship.

This is not a view shared by others. Others struggle with the big picture because they feel they must. If I just had more energy and strength, I'd do the same so I need to appreciate what others do. It's just that too much exposure makes me think about the things I can't do or haven't done. Those things outnumber the things I can handle or have handled. It takes a certain degree of mental discipline to keep these things at bay without actually registering their enormity.

I know that my ability to deal with life is one big example of framing and double talk. Just yesterday, I was confident in the ability of my team to win in the end. While I knew that the people on my side were working hard, I felt confident that I was doing my part. Recently, I've been able to go on the offensive medically and I thought I had handled the worst of the chaos around me. My strategy is to hang on until something changes and to do what I can to make the change be a drastic improvement in my health.

There are stages to this sort of setback. First, I tell myself that my whole support system should abandon me because I am unworthy. Secondly, I get angry and think a lot about the flaws of anyone who would dare think I'm unworthy. The third stage is that I remember that flawed people can have good ideas and that I don't have to be completely unworthy to have flaws. The triggering event gets put into context and gets used as nothing more than a tool for self improvement.

The stages can happen in seconds or days. The faster they go, the better the outcome. This time, I thought I had gone through them very quickly but got tagged by those dreams anyway. It's now a few hours after I woke up feeling daunted and I think writing this has helped me go through the process again. I'd like to get back that feeling of inevitable victory but that might be too much to ask. Nothing is guaranteed.

No, nothing has changed since yesterday. This was a mere burp or hiccup in the process that could have been bad but wasn't. Dreaming about dead people always freaks me out but it's worse when it's about dead people about whom I have very ambiguous feelings. That's probably why my subconscious chooses them to punish me. I know I should have liked them more and valued their opinions more but I lacked the filters back then to handle their craziness.

The filters are fine examples of psychological technology. (Yes, that was a slight joke but I find it easier to explain non-physical things in physical terms.) Remarks from most other people get sent to a place in my brain where they wait for their turn to go through the filters. When that turn comes, things get sorted out into various categories.

Actual facts get little or no filtering. My house is almost never clean so it could use a good cleaning. The parts that are worst get filtered out of the tour other than the downstairs bathroom. I can't exactly keep people out of the bathroom because that's just sadistic. Therefore, I try to keep it pretty clean but couldn't find a sponge that I was willing to ruin yesterday.

That's the first filtering that takes place. Someone that I trust tells me something I know is true about how things should be. I take it and run it through the filters concerning priorities and rationed energy. A clean and unspotted downstairs carpet would be very nice. Unfortunately, it would involve moving all the furniture to some theoretical place where it could be stored. After that, it would involve using a machine that I don't possess to do something that I don't have the energy to do. Therefore, this goes on the list of things I'd leap at if someone offered to do it for me. I'd figure out how to keep the cats safe and where to put the furniture.

The next filter that I use involves conclusions drawn from facts. My house is not as clean as it could be so I am a slob. (These conclusions are usually drawn by my inner critic not by another person.) That is a conclusion that can be attacked with logic. Whether or not I am a slob is something that requires examining a lot of factors.

I have a history of letting things get out of control and then not dealing with them because they appear to be impossible to fix. This is the primary evidence against me and it is true. You can look back at my college transcripts and see it there, too. Once I was daunted by a task, I was not likely to attack it with anything resembling efficiency.

The good news is that history does not repeat itself. As someone with an interest and a degree in history, I can tell you this. Events do not repeat on their own. Instead, human nature remains relatively stable so human behavior resembles what it has been in the past. The differences are usually understated because repeating events make a good story.

In this case, I have the memory of my experience with the apartment. I was afraid to have people come in because it could get embarrassing. That was a negative experience that made me want to change. When I moved from the apartment that always seemed hopelessly dirty to the house that was clean, I had a different choice. Now, the house is almost always clean enough that having someone come in isn't scary.

As I get new chances, I make different choices. That alone suggests that I am not a slob despite some slobbish tendencies. It would be very easy for me to become one if I were as isolated as I was in the summer of '96. Happily for me, I can shame myself into doing housework pretty much no matter how I feel. Sometimes, I find myself in near shrieking agony because I have been cleaning but I choose to do it anyway. That suggests that I am not a slob.

If someone were to voice such an opinion, I would use a different filter. This filter works for opinions that seem to be substantiated in fact. This is a more active filter. Depending on what the unpleasant opinion is, I bombard it with facts leading in the other direction. If the opinion is that I'm unworthy of such pleasantries as life or family, I try to remember the good things that I have done. I think about the times when I have shown loyalty. Most importantly, I think about the people whom I admire who have chosen to keep me in their lives. How can so many people be wrong?

Once I deal with the worst of these moments, the people involved go on a sort of blacklist. Anything these people tell me gets taken with roughly the yearly national production of salt. Sometimes, they mean well but there are certain things I cannot let myself hear. For instance, my personal troll speaks with a forked tongue so he is no longer welcome in my inbox. Any useful things from what he says are too outweighed by venom to be of any use.

I guess I'm ok now. Going through this stuff step by step is helpful. Maybe I need to designate a "back to the basics" day for myself more often. That's supposed to be done in the monthly "State of the Mind Address" but it might more resemble the "top-down review" I used to think about. That never got done because I realized that my life seems to depend on accepting some things while ignoring others. Maybe I've gotten past that.