Seasonal Tension

I think maybe I wanted to note that I feel like I made it through this time, but the thing is, I didn’t take the monotropic tunnel. I thought it would be a lot of letting go of the rope, but I had tied that in my mind to playing a game. And when I lost interest in games, I flailed for a bit, trying to figure out what else I could sink into to try and ignore the tension, the anxiety, because that was my best plan for it; ignore it until it goes away.

It doesn’t sound very smart, writing it down like that. Sounds like the exact wrong thing to do, the worst approach to the problem. I just don’t know what else to do. I suppose I could try and do EMDR for the wound, see if we can’t let that go. Maybe see if we can do EMDR for the toilet training, since I think that’s the root of a lot of my stomach issues. The muscles in my lower intestine and bowels are much too rigid and tight, years of squeezing too hard. It seems like a lot of work, but maybe it would be worth it to free myself of those two monkeys at least. Life would probably be a lot easier if I did.

Short of going back into therapy, though, waiting it out, the seasonal tension/anxiety, not the constipation, waiting out the seasonal tension seems to have worked. I’ve been a lot more relaxed once we hit the solstice, since this new person came into my life.

Once I identified that a seasonal anxiety attack may be occurring, may have been occurring all these years, the root of all our problems, it was then a matter of figuring out how to weather it. My assumption was that it was temporary. Constant general anxiety is the background radiation of deep masking, but we are no longer engaging in deep masking. We’ve pared things down to their simplest steps, and now we are able to move through life with increasing grace and ease. It’s actually a marvel how it builds on itself, how the extraordinary becomes routine, like doing laundry.

Previously, when I had been unaware of what my body was doing and just felt it, I would try to weather it by trying harder, which I guess is just code for masking harder. Harnessing that restless energy and try to apply it to getting things done, which seemed to be the challenge at the time. You see yourself as someone who doesn’t get things done but should, who could if they just tried harder. It fuels the shame and feels obvious and natural and right. I should be more organized, I should be able to get these things done. I want to get these things done. So if I just hold on tighter, I’ll be able to get through.

The problem is that the seasonal anxiety does go away on its own, so when you are using that to power your trying harder, you will find yourself adrift when the anxious wind leaves your sails. You will crash, you will not be able to get things done, and with the anxiety gone, all you’ll have left is the shame, which will feast upon your failure. Welcome to Burnout, population you.

My solution was to try to escape into the monotropic tunnel. The autistic mode of attention is monotropic, mono meaning one, tropic meaning topic. One track mind, and if you want to make it happy, put it on a single track that it is interested in and let it go. Once you are in the monotropic tunnel, time and space disappear. Everything melts away but that one interest, as hours and days disappear. I’d used the monotropic tunnel a couple of times over the summer, sinking into a game, a deep play game that would fully occupy me, that somehow would fulfill the desire to work, to make, to create. The rules would be simpler, and there was knowledge to be gained and skills to master, all within a safe and simple self-contained environment.

I called it letting go of the rope. The cable cars in San Francisco are powered by these cables set into the ground between the tracks. The cable is always moving, being pulled by big wheels at the top and bottom of the hill, and to move the cable car reaches down and grabs the rope and gets pulled along. Holding onto the rope meant that I was being pulled through life and all its attending demands, work, childcare, chores, maintaining this body. Slipping into the monotropic tunnel meant that I could let go of the rope and just coast through time.

The problem was that about this time I lost interest in gaming. All the games felt too small, too limited to me, even my deep play games. Interest and desire actually became really difficult at this time, and then my body started really reacting to the constant increased stress. It seemed like the best I could do was read and write, both of which seemed very high energy to me at the time, and so had a high threshold to get started on. I spent a lot time at this point just sitting in desk chair, looking out the window, holding my hand up to watch it gently shake and tremble, the gentle shakes and trembles running through my whole body.

I ended up dumping this raw energy into dating. I don’t recommend it. I was on four different dating apps, and I was checking them multiple times a day. I would play with my filters to get new people to look at. The whole thing was very frustrating. You send out your likes, and then you sit and wait for someone to respond. Once in a while, someone new crosses your dashboard, but eventually you’ll cycling through the same profiles over and over. It also didn’t really endear the people who live around me to me. You try not to judge, but sometimes life makes that hard.

It was close enough to game to catch my attention. It was just a crappy, awful game that didn’t seem to have any winners, just lonely people, people who didn’t seem to know what they wanted or needed, only that they want and that they need. It was such a relief when I did actually meet someone, someone cool and nice and interesting. Once that felt at all stable, I deleted the apps, cashed in my chips, and left that horrible game.

Fortunately, I think I was right in the end. The storm seems to have passed. I don’t want to tempt fate; it could swing by again, but things feel good right now. I don’t feel like I’m charged with anxious energy, but I am calmly getting more and more done each day. Things just gradually become easier the more that you do them. Definitely made it through on a different path this time. The landscape looks different. There is still no shame, and I am still not a hero, not a victim, not a martyr. I was able to approach a new relationship authentically, maybe for the first time in my life. It’s not just that I weathered the storm and things are ok; things are better. It feels like things are growing, and that’s not how I’m used to feeling this time of year.