Dear Gaia:

Everything I write to you is not aimed at making you feel shitty (an adjective you like to use, so I am using it to make a point to you). I will never write to you anything with the thought: I hope this makes Gaia feel shitty! As a matter of fact, I am keeping it in my mind to be careful best I can to not  make you feel shitty. On the other hand, I know that no matter how hard I try, some things that I write to you will make you feel shitty. The reason for that is the following (and the following may make you feel shitty): too many things make you feel shitty, and a lot of things make you feel very, very shitty.

The only way I can avoid writing things that will make you feel shitty is not write to you at all. But I don’t want that, so I keep writing.

Now, what I mean by too many things make you feel shitty, and many things make you feel very, very shitty (it is the same for me, but I am making great progress on the matter): your brain is like a minefield, that is, a field where bombs are placed just below the ground, and when a vehicle drives above ground, a bomb right underneath it explodes. Later another vehicle drives and another bomb explodes, and so on. So you end up in a frequent state of explosions: feeling shitty and often feeling very shitty.

The underground area is like your brain (your thoughts and emotions); the vehicles driving above ground are words & tone of voice you hear, sights you see, body sensations you experience (ex., pain, gas), and sometimes a touch, a taste or a smell. But not only things you hear or see in real life, but memories and visuals of things you heard and seen.

An example from your recent post: you heard the words Valentine Day– that’s the vehicle driving above ground, what exploded is this bomb: the thoughts: “I’ll spend it without a significant other like I did since forever”, “how much of my youth I’ve wasted and keep wasting”, “my closest friends pities me somehow”, “me being single and unexperienced is shameful”, and more and more thoughts. And the emotion: “making you feel shitty”.

Then another vehicle drives above ground and that is your memories of words  you heard your friend and her mother say: “always calling other women sluts and whores”, and another bomb explodes, more thoughts, ex., “They have a pretty much degrading view of women”), another shitty feeling, angry and whatnot.

Here is what I mean by you feeing very shitty: “trying to change my mindset and feelings is a waste of time, sometimes I even think I should kill myself because my life is a wasted life and will always  be wasted. I feel in a cage”.

There is a term to having a minefield kind of brain: over arousal, we get overly aroused, overly excited when hearing a word or remembering words said and so on.

What can be done about it, the best possible way to go about it (if you have the means and if such as available to you): you make an appointment with a responsible and excellent psychotherapist for an evaluation. After a few sessions, if the psychotherapist is also a medical doctor, she (or he) may prescribe you with a psychiatric medication so to tranquilize that very active minefield/ to soothe that overly aroused brain. If the psychotherapist is not a medical doctor, she may refer you to a medical doctor/ psychiatrist and she will communicate with that psychiatrist over time. The purpose of the psychiatric medication is short term, to soothe or calm that overly aroused brain for a short time while you work with the psychotherapist on soothing your brain without medications.

The psychotherapist will introduce you to mindful guided meditations to do daily, as well as recommend that you exercise daily, and in sessions, the therapist and you will examine your relationships with family members, understand how these early life relationships affected you, how you responded and so on, that’s called insight. Understanding better will calm your overly aroused brain. All this will take, I am guessing, at least six months of twice a week, or more therapy sessions, to make a difference, and then you will need to see that therapist less frequently, and eventually once a month so to maintain the progress, for about three years, I am guessing.

I will stop here for now and submit it so that this post is not too long, but I will write you more shortly.

anita