Finding My Way

I decided early on not to concern myself with understanding what was going on but only to focus on results. From my reading, I felt that whatever mechanisms were behind the results could not be accessed to be quantified. This is also a problem for string theorists in that, currently, there are no ways to conduct experiments to test the hypothesis. So if the results were dismissed as "...being all in my head..." then so be it since that is where the problem seemed to be in the first place.

The problem was that I was constantly being bombarded by negative scenarios projected by some uncontrolled process going on in my head. As a result, I was experiencing horrific anxiety attacks that robbed me of sleep and otherwise decreased the quality of my life. In addition, my emotional reaction to the gloomy scenarios triggered my adrenaline gland which altered my blood chemistry. The change in blood chemistry intensified my emotional reaction which increased the activity of my adrenaline gland which again intensified my emotional reaction. This was a positive feedback loop that kept working until the system was pegged at maximum output. Furthermore, the increase in adrenaline caused the hypothalamus to get into the act which further altered my blood chemistry and intensified my emotional reaction.

I had read "Consciousness Explained" by Daniel Dennet. In this book he describes the theory of "Multiple Drafts". In this theory, the single observer is replaced by multiple parallel processes. These processes analyze neural activity as inputs and propose an interpretation.

In the single observer model a little person is sitting in a chair in your head and monitoring a television screen, listening to sounds coming from speakers and pulling the levers that direct your actions. One big problem in the single observer concept is that when told of it, people imagine seeing the observer. Of course this implies another observer. And when this is realized another observer is imagined to observe. If this continues the result is a veritable conga line of observers. Also, this model just leaves the consciousness of the little person unexplained.

The best analogy that I can come up with for the multiple drafts model is a room of observers continuously scanning a wall of gauges. The television screen and speakers are gone. There are no direct observations only interpretations of gauge readings. And the observers also don't pull the levers that control actions. Instead they shout out their interpretations of what the gauge readings mean. There is no awareness of most of the interpretations. And only a small number make it to the surface of awareness. Once awareness receives the candidate interpretations a course of action is selected -- voluntary or a conditioned response.

I felt in my case, that there were similar processes out of control in my head that were constantly imagining disastrous future scenarios based on no real inputs and presenting their analysis to my awareness. I wanted to take control of these mental processes and shut them down.

First I tried mentally repeating the mantra I had learned in Transcendental Meditation. No good, I would mentally keep repeating the mantra and still have the anxiety producing processes running either in the background or foreground -- sometimes the processes would change places. Similar results with counting breaths and various other meditation techniques.

Another thing that I did was to slow my breathing. I think this is important to access neural inputs usually below the level of conscious awareness. Breathing is controlled both by the autonomic nervous system and the somatic nervous system. It seems to be a pathway for obtaining awareness of more neural inputs.


In desperation, I tried a full frontal attack and decided to just try and shut down the processes -- no mantra or any other techniques. I just tried not to think at all and as a relaxation technique I slowed my breathing. I did not focus on my breathing or count the breaths. I had tried that before and it stirred up the anxiety producing mental demons. I just felt the sensation of breathing in and out while trying to keep my mind thoughtless.

BINGO!

Initially my thoughtless periods were short. But gradually the length of time I could be "empty headed" increased. As the periods became longer I became aware of other sensations that I had overlooked.








One of the first things I became aware of was physical sensations of tightness and stiffness in certain muscles. A few years ago I injured my shoulders by leaning on my elbows at work. I trapped a shoulder ligament in congenitally narrow passage way. The result was that the ligament sawed into the bone. This not only damaged the bone but was not too good for the ligament. Most of the damage had occurred when I was unaware of any pain. I became aware when I used my arms to push myself up from a chair and the ligament abruptly caught on the notch in the bone. The resulting pain put me on the floor kissing the carpet. It amazed me what you can miss when you are not paying attention. Now however I could feel the problem spots. All I had to do was turn my awareness in their direction and the feeling of tightness or stiffness would abruptly disappeared. Over several weeks my physical health improved in that all my aches and pains disappeared. My weight also dropped and my blood chemistry dramatically improved.









Then as time passed, the next thing I felt was mental aches and pains. I started getting memories of passed events that cause some mental or emotional trauma -- those I experienced and those I inflicted. I would relive the events as if I were there and it seemed with all 5 senses -- along with the either the trauma I had felt on the receiving end or the new shame I felt for the hurt I had inflicted. This went on for a while sometimes the same event coming back several times. Then this phase passed and my mental health seemed better in that my anxiety level plummeted and the source mental processes virtually went away. Also my cognitive ability and stamina seemed to improve. Sleeping at night helps a lot of stuff.





Then came the hallucinations. I feel the reason the hallucinations appeared was that the mental processes scanning the gauges where seeing or seeking unfamiliar inputs. Because the inputs were in a language that was not familiar they made a best guess interpretation of the readings and presented the results. In addition, they added any inputs that were missing such as the heat I felt when the bookcase "burst" into flames. I can only wonder, however, what neurological inputs results in the interpretation of a 6 foot, robed and hooded grayish reptile. If this is was selected as the most reasonable I would hate to see the others.

Fortunately, the hallucinations were also a phase. It lasted a few weeks and things quieted down. I increased the length of the sessions to 40 minutes twice a day and I could keep mentally quiet for most of that time for most of the sessions.

Then I became aware of my friend flicker. I will discuss this in my next blog...