Thursday, December 23, 2010

The Shattered Mind...

I absolutely love the show Hoarders...and the TLC cousin Hoarding. My mom cannot stand them. But I love them. Why? Great question! I think it's because I love seeing the clutter get organized and there being some sort of resolution. I enjoy seeing the "helping/therapy process". But there is something more...

I identify with the people. Having struggled with major depression and anxiety, I totally understand how *some* of the houses get there. Now, some are just crazy - I clean my bathroom regularly. But I am a messy person and definitely have some hoarding tendencies. Every time I watch shows on obsessive compulsion, I know I have similar tendencies there. And from time to time, it makes me nervous.

Tonight, as I was watching the show, I have gone back to that place where I really want to know what has caused it. Typically, major traumatic events or emotional scarring happens to trigger the hoarding - it's sort of like a latent disease that lurks in the background, always there or encoded in your genes until something turns the "show the illness" switch on.

Never in the past did I feel such depression about living. I was a messy kid, but I cleaned my room regularly (courtesy of some strong encouragement from my mom). Lately, my room has been a shambles. And I haven't even cared to touch it. And I acquired stuff from college, etc. that has piled up. I did sell some stuff at garage sales and did get rid of lot, which was very cathartic and freeing. But I feel like I still own to much.

A few factors as to why I hold on to some things:
1. Too many ideas, too little start up: This is a case of lots of hobbies - but the answer lurks deeper in unfinished business. I did some hobbies as a kid, and while I like to learn, my motivation has waned. Part of this probably has to do with an ongoing battle with perfectionism - and I have swung the pendulum so far to the other end from where I was. I would do everything, and I didn't feel it was enough. Now I do nothing because I know it will never be enough. And the devil lies in the extremes. So, I keep stuff around, acting like I will get to it. But I feel like there is this invisible forcefield of "not enough time" to where I will spend money on it, but I don't want to spend time on it. What's that about? This can (and I know it is) is tied to impatience for learning new things coupled with, simply, horrendous impatience in general. I think I don't want to spend time because I don't want to be patient and see the project through, sticking with it.

2. Past burns with work: I could name a bajillion excuses for why I'm not motivated - and many of them are valid, but I wish to simply get back to work and out of depression. High school was a devastating time for me. I wish I had never applied to the Magnet Program I entered - I wanted to be "the best and the brightest", but I don't think I really wanted to work for it. Somewhere in the mix, I was burned out, either by a teacher, or feeling so behind that I gave up because I couldn't finish the semester "perfectly." With the teacher, it was the pacing of the class along with the explanations and actual teaching that left me in the dark. This happened twice - and doing poorly in one class impacted my thought of doing things "perfectly" for the others.

In thinking about what I am writing here, I feel like I live a domino mentality. Have you ever seen the movie the Replacements? Keanu Reeves's character (I don't listen to the others, Keanu, I love you!) talks about quick sand where one error after another error happens in a football game, and the player (or team) feels like they can't get out. Then morale starts to slip, and players feel trapped, and some give up. I think that's me - I think I give up. On domino in the little pattern falls. I don't rebound well after failure. After failing (I've never failed a class, but I've disappointed myself enough to have felt that AWFUL feeling of failure), I think I don't want to risk it again. And if you don't try, you don't fail, right? But I'm finding that I feel like the greater failure is not trying because I'm feeling pain in a different, more numbing and depressing ways. And I think I'm trying to medicate by saying that I'm going to do all these things and accomplish this, that, or the other, but I fear that I won't do them, and that is another failure. So I hold on, trying to say that "even though I'm not touching it right now, I will" and this saves me from feeling like I have failed to start or try. Messed up, right? I know!

3. Trauma: I have been well-provided for and cared for, but there have been two things that really devastated me. The biggest was the divorce of my parents. My spending when out of control when my parents divorced and I started college. I went from just my student loans at the Art Institute my first year, to credit cards and more student loans up till now. I purchase things out of control, didn't have a budget. It was awful and I still struggle now. Not to mention the pain of that divorce, the silence about what was happening when my parents were clearly divided the year before they actually separated, took its toll and I remember that I was very anxious then. By buying things, after their divorce, I think that I was trying to neutralize the emotion to desire things by purchasing them and neutralizing the feeling of want. I couldn't neutralize the pain of the divorce because that process was so ongoing. And, being impatient, I needed a stimulus or a drug or something to make me feel in control at that moment, when my family was crumbling, something that I could not control. Losing control is a sickening thing that messes up an impatient perfectionist. And it was the perfect storm for me to create a disastrous mess of myself and my mind. The second trauma was moving to the South when I was a child. While not as major as the divorce of my parents, the loss of control began again - and I think it might have been what triggered me to overeat. Again, to control the emotions and manage myself, I think I used food as a drug - something I could control the amount of. Since restraint was bad, and more was good, I let myself have as much as I wanted. Add a dose of rejection, and well, I mean, CLEARLY, I was entitled to enjoy at least whatever food I wanted. It's amazing the things we use to justify sin.

In any case, I don't really know myself, my mind is a shambles of thoughts and not-quite-thoughts - and now I think my living spaces and work ethic are reflecting that broken mind. I feel like I have too many possibilities to consider for what's wrong, too many ways do this or that, and I'm overwhelmed. But you know what's so wonderful and merciful about all this hard stuff? Thinking about it tonight, I kind of know where to start thinking and praying about healing and getting better. I know that it is not within me to fix myself - I feel that damaged and depressed by my own mind-world. But I really believe that if I keep at the work of honoring the Lord by the power of the Holy Spirit through prayers of thanksgiving and supplication, I will finally conquer the perfectionism, depression, lack of motivation, and impatience that are affecting me. Since they are sin-based, I have a great hope of getting better since God desires us to cease sinning and He will provide us with the means to defeat it (and already has through the death and resurrection of Jesus). I'm so thankful for glimmers of hope in vast darkness.