Schizoaffective

 Psychiatrists are like car mechanics who don't know how to drive—they've never actually used what they give to us people with mental health issues to purportedly "fix" us. They are like car mechanics who never felt their foot depress a gas pedal or allowed a steering wheel to ease back into the straight ahead position after a turn. Such car mechanics may very well know what books say about cars, but they have no idea what it is like to operate one. They don't fix cars from experience, but from what they have been told. Psychiatrists, I have found, are woefully naîve about medications, particularly when it comes to side effects and withdrawal. Sometimes, I think they are willfully naîve. I say this because they dismissed me and refused to listen to me when I tried to tell them about side effects and withdrawal. I guess they believed the books and classes they took more than they believed the evidence of my own body. Their body certainly couldn't tell them anyt...

by Jay Paul Estrangement is neither good nor bad. It is a position I find myself in many times a day. It occurs when I need to step out of my most intimate involvements with people and things, to see as a stranger, one who is not so involved. I do this to understand conceptually what is going on. When I am clear, I go back into the involvements, having reoriented myself. This is the role of conceptualization: to solve estrangement and allow me back into my involvements, to help me be intimate in my world once again.                    When I am driving, I usually do not rely on concepts. Oh, I rely on training and experience, but these have become habituated into my very muscles, well below the level of conceptualization. I don’t  think   when I drive, unless I have to. When driving I make sense of little around me. Other cars are blurs of color, as are pedestrians. Sounds come from them, too. Not thought, but habituation marks...

Meditation is in vogue. Various people representing divergent interests frequently tout its health benefits. I have no doubt that there are benefits to meditation, but that is not why I do it. At this point, I feel I do it for the same reason I breathe: it is part of my make-up and the way I am in the world. I meditate frequently: twice a day, 50 minutes a session. That's 100 minutes a day on my chair. The type of meditation I do is called "shikantaza" and is based in Zen. I simply sit quietly, and when a thought or feeling comes up, I notice it, acknowledge it, and let it go. Sometimes, of course, I get caught in my thoughts and daydream for a while. When I notice I am doing this, again, I acknowledge it and get back to just sitting, noticing thoughts, and letting them go. I have meditated off and on my whole adult life, but I only got truly serious about it in early 2019. Soon, I was meditating twice a day for 40 minutes a sitting. I became quite devoted to meditation a...

Beginning this past spring, I have become tremendously anxious when driving on highways outside my home base of Minneapolis. Driving the interstates and highways in the metro area does not bother me. But the moment I hit that 70 mile per hour speed limit beyond the beltway, I tense up and get extremely nervous. It is hard for me to drive faster than 60, and impatient drivers behind me swing around to pass me. In each case, I was driving to one of a number of state parks I frequent to go hiking. A couple times, the anxiety got so intense I wondered if making the trip was worth it, and I love hiking. My stomach would tie up in knots. My legs and arms would feel weak. I gripped the steering wheel so tightly my forearm muscles started to ache. I worried about being so tense that I might cause an accident. What was I so anxious about? As the other cars sped down the interstate around me, I was quite afraid of getting in an accident and dying. Sometimes, while driving, I actually visualized ...

As I get older, I dread winter more each year. I am now 55, and it all comes down to one big worry: slipping and falling on the ice. I have visions of myself cracking a hip or twisting an ankle. I sometimes even worry about hitting my head.  The strange thing is, it's been years since I slipped and fell on the ice. I remember once when I was in my early 30s, I was walking to the bus stop to go to work, and a thin layer of snow covered a slick spot on the sidewalk. My legs flew right out from under me, and I landed on my back, the wind knocked out of me. But in the subsequent years, I didn't worry about slipping and hurting myself as much as I do now. Getting older has made me feel my vulnerability more.  I have always been vulnerable. I could have cracked my head open when fell onto my back. But I didn't feel this vulnerability as I do now. When I was younger, I just assumed nothing bad would happen; I assumed away many of the dangers of this world. I imagine most of us do....