Monthly Archives: December 2022

Automatic, Negative, and Racing Thoughts

Manic depressive people aren’t the only people who have to deal with these kind of thoughts. It’s just that typically they are more common and more severe for manic depressives. Let’s look at each one individually, and then talk about how they combine.

Automatic thoughts are those that pop into your head out of no where. The common thing is to have an automatic thought and then say, “where the hell did that idea come from.”

Negative thoughts are thoughts with negative content. Some examples are “I always screw things up,” or “I’m stupid, and always will be.”

Racing thoughts are thoughts that race around your head at an increased rate of speed. How fast can racing thoughts go? I’m not sure what the maximum is, it would ultimately be limited by the speed of the hardware in out brain. But in practical terms, twice to then times faster is common.

The fun really begins when you start combining these ways of thinking. For example, “I’m gonna crash,” which may come out of nowhere while you’re driving. Another example would be having the thought “I’m a loser” race through your mind, repeating over and over again at a great rate of speed.

The combination that has had the greatest impact on my life combines all three: automatic negative racing thoughts. This happens when I’m severely depressed, and a negative thought will come out of no where and will race so fast no other thoughts can enter my mind. An example would be, “I’m useless so I’m just going to quit trying.” This is an actual automatic negative thought that took over my brain and led eventually to a panic attack. I’m sure you can think of other automatic negative thoughts that would cause such a reaction

The truth is you can also have racing automatic positive thoughts. In a lot of ways this defines mania, this is how common they are for someone who is manic or hypo-manic. I am certainly experiencing this at the moment, and it’s mindfulness that allows me to label it as such.

Today I’ve felt like I was high all day long. Sometimes I felt almost sober, others falling down drunk. What informed me of where my mood was at was my mindfulness of my mental state. The awareness was most often triggered by recognizing I was having automatic, negative, and racing thoughts. So have heart, this shows these kind of thoughts can lead to positive outcomes. At least I take heart in them, hopefully you would/will also if you become manic or depressed.

Being Depressed

I’m hypo-manic at the moment, so talking about depression is a little like swimming up river. You have to work twice as hard to compensate for the current.

One thing to know is that depression is the ying/yang of mania. So mania feels light, where as depression feels heavy. But being two sides of the same coin, each feels “pressured”. The best way I’ve found to describe the pressure of depression is to compare it to being at the bottom of the Mariana Trench. The trench at it’s lowest point is almost six miles deep. Down that far there is an enormous amount of water pressure, and it is cold, way below freezing. And everything is pitch black, everything except for the luminous creatures that live at that incredible depth.

The pressure is so intense you can’t think as you normally would. Your memory is stunted, and all you can think about is the pain all that pressure is putting on you… The pain can get so intense that it feels like the only way to end it is to end your own life. It’s at this point when a depressive will take their own life, or at least try to. I’m in the group that tried and was lucky enough to have failed.

Under all that pressure, how does anyone rise back to the surface? The answer is one inch at a time until you slowly build momentum. Then the problem becomes rising to the surface too fast. If you have too much momentum you’ll crash through the surface and blast into the atmosphere. Your so glad to be out of all that pressure you launch from the surface and head straight into another pressure, the pressure of flying higher and higher into the atmosphere until you approach space and where there is the “pressure of there being no atmosphere”, and the heat of the sun is hundreds if nor thousands of degrees.

Depression is sitting on the bottom of the trench in all that pressure and cold. This is where I was just a few months ago. Now I’m trying to keep from flying into he sun.

Being Manic

How do I know if I’m manic? Because I know how I feel when the glands are pushing out the hormones at a great rate of speed. These extra juices make me high, high like when I use to snort cocaine. In fact I tell people that a mania high is even better than cocaine ever was.

So, when I’m being mindful I can take a step back, as if an independent observer, and say, “Man, I’m really loaded, therefore I must be really manic.” Without this ability to be mindful I would just feel really good and wouldn’t question why. It’s the act of stepping back into mindfulness that allows me to be aware that I’m manic/hypo-manic.

It probably took me fifteen to twenty years to develop my mindfulness to this level. I’m sure there are others who can obtain mindfulness quicker, but I don’t think it’s uncommon for it to take as long as it did for me. In fact many manic depressives never reach this level of mindfulness. And even if you do, that doesn’t mean there aren’t times when your mindfulness fails you. It’s impossible to be perfect, so there will be times when you are high on mania and all you can do is run with it, i.e., let your mania have its head.

In such cases, off your mania gallops taking you with it. The feeling is as addictive as any other drug, with mania producing the drug internally through the brains base biology. The “chemical imbalance” often referred to when a person is manic or depressed is nothing but the brain operating as it always does except it;’s either producing too much happy juice, or too little.

The truth is all human moods are on a spectrum, it’s just in the case of manic depression the spectrum is stretched wider and more intensely than in a non manic-depressed person.

I’ve got one last observation. How do you know when you’ve attained “mindfulness”. For me I know when I’m mindful because accompanying all other observations is the awareness that you’re being mindful. Call it being mindful of being mindful. Once you’ve attained this level of mindfulness it almost becomes automatic. That includes being mindful of being mindful even when it’s the last possible thing you want to be having. One reason is that mindfulness can become circular, leaving you trapped going round and round. Depending on how manic you are, say if you’re having racing thoughts, and hence your thinking races ever faster and tighter in the circle. You can actually get stuck and require an external interrupt to get out of the loop.

I hope this discussion of being manic has been helpful, but I hope it was at least been interesting. If not, please let me know.

Being Manic Depressive

I’ve been trying to write this The Way Of The Mystic Of Cascadia story for quite some time now. I guess you could say I’ve hit writers block. I could continue to just make up shit, trying to say something that has some kind of meaning. But the fact is the shit I’m making up is for the most part is meaningless. Not very satisfying to write, and I gotta believe not very satisfying to read.

They say write about what you know. The fact is the one thing I know the most about is being manic depressive. It’s so obvious to me that that is what I should be writing about I just have to shake my head. It’s the one thing that I have a life long experience with, likely at least fifty-fix years. It’s the one subject I’ve read the most about. It’s the main subject of over twenty-five years of talk therapy. It’s the one thing I have to deal with on a daily basis. Sometimes on an hourly, or minute by minute basis.

So for the time being The Way Of The Mystic Of Cascadia will be put on a shelf. For the foreseeable future I”ll be writing about being manic-depressive. To write about it in a way where I can share my experiences, and most importantly the lessons I’ve learned. Time will tell if I’ve made the right choice, it’s just at the moment it feels like the only one I can make.

Battle Of Anshon

The two hosts gathered on the battlefield for three days. At dawn on the fourth day the armies lined up against one another. The valley and river folk were on one side, the forest and mountain folk on the other. The kings faced each other at the head of their hosts, each refusing to back down from a war neither man really wanted.

But the die had been cast. A nobles honor was at stake, and each king was honor bound to go to war over it. The reputation of one man had been disparaged and because of that thousands would be killed or crippled.

Before either king could give the signal for their army to attack, down the road between them rode a solitary figure. He screamed, ” Halt, don’t anyone move or suffer the wrath of the Mystic of Cascadia.”

The mystic came to a sliding stop between the two kings. Both looked upon the great wizard with unveiled hate. “Out of the way mystic, ” one of the kings yelled. “You have no jurisdiction here,” yelled the other king.

A silenced preseeded and as each king was about to give the signal to attack the top of the mystic’s staff began to blaze with fire.

“Stay where you are or suffer the dragon’s blaze,” he yelled, but both kings raised their swords, ready to drop it straight down, thus giving the signal to attack.

Before the kings’s swords could drop, flames shot from the mystic’s staff, and with two simultaneous beams of white lightning setting their swords on fire, both kings screamed in agony as their swords melted in their hands. “Commence with this war and I will vaporize your kings,” he screamed such that every person on the war field could clearly hear.he

“Drop your swords now or they die,” the mystic roared. A guardsman of the king closest to the mystic let fly an arrow, clearly intending to kill the mystic. Before it could strike it’s target the arrow was met with a beam of fire from the mystic’s staff. The arrow was instantly turned into ash.Seeing this had not properly scarred the kings, so the mystic sent another beam of fire, this time hitting the arrow’s shooter.She too was instantly burned to ash.

This got both of the king’s attention, and each gave the order to stand down.

“Clearly there’s another path that can be followed,” one king said. “A path to peace,” the other king added.

And thus ended The Battle At Anshon with only one casualty, and two kings determined to save their own necks simply by maintaining the peace.

The Official Interview Begins…

“I wanted to ask you, have you always had these ‘abilities’?”

“Yes and no. When I was young I had these feelings but I didn’t understand what they meant. It wasn’t until the priests found me when I was ten. When they took me to the Temple Of Truth then the exercises taught me to understand what I was feeling. But I’ve had the feelings for as long as I can remember.”

“Did the priests tell you were unique? Did you understand that you weren’t just an ordinary acolyte?”

“Ever since I can remember I knew I was a mystic. I just had the thought one day that that was what I was, and I knew it was True. It was the first and only time I understood my feelings before going through the training.”

“Mystic training is extremely rigorous. Many simply can’t keep up with the process. Did you struggle to keep pace as I’m told is to be expected.”

“No, I always felt like I could have gone a little faster, that the physical aspect could have been more taxing. I always had to do work on my own to get a real sense of accomplishment.”

“When it was time for your Truth Quest did you feel ready?”

“In this regard I was like all other acolytes. I just couldn’t imagine what it would be like, finding the Truth of your Soul. The training was intentionally vague about this, like they wanted to keep you virgin until they found the right person for you to be with. I went on my quest not having a clue how to accomplish its goal.”

“Your quest is quite famous and has been very extensively written about. Have you read some of the writings about your quest?”

“I believe I’ve read them all. The quest I feel is just like fixing your initial course. The rest of life is the discovery of where that initial course sent you.”

“You see, there is one of the unique things about you. Most discover their final destination during the quest. You sound like you still don’t know what your final destination will be.”

The mystic paused and put on a face of deep satisfaction. “Well that’s what defines the Mystic Of Cascadia isn’t it. That sense of open endlessness. That is the one characteristic that is unique to the Mystic Of Cascadia The one that sets them apart from all other mystics. “

“Yes, well, that was something I was hoping to get clarity on in this interview. Unfortunately I’m out of time. Hopefully we can flush this out more in future interviews.”

“I would like that.”

Thus ended the firs official interview of The Mystic Of Cascadia.

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