Even when I’m in a good mood (I have been since last brain lady appointment, as she predicted), it’s impossible to imagine my situation improving. I know from various experts that this is a symptom and consequence of my weird PTSD-like situation, but it’s still a huge barrier.
It’s as though if I could just draw a line or two from here to some place I’d actually want to be, and believe that I could get there for real, it’d be so much easier dealing with the day to day.
It’s a strange situation to know reasonably and intellectually that at least some of my beliefs about myself and the world are untrue, unreasonable, even a little insane, and still not be able to dislodge myself from them. I could write a ten page third-person analysis that would be completely accurate and still read it to myself and say to myself “you don’t understand”.
And it’s even stranger to see myself doing or not doing things that I can’t stand, or that seem alien to my personality. I’m the slob who hates a mess, for example. And I’m the outgoing, socially successful person who likes women and wants to be close to one, and I never have. There are a host of other minor things like that that leave me thinking “who the hell put the brain slug in when I wasn’t looking?” The technical term for this is “ego dystonia”. Brain lady says it’s consistent with my injuries.
I’m no longer a Christian, but I still have a lot in common with poor old grumpy self-deprecating Paul. There’s no better statement of ego dystonia than Romans 7:14:
I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do.
Be My Blog 
i was brought up methodist, although i never could buy into the jesus as son of god bit, which is kind of key. 🙂
of the apostles, i always felt the most affinity for paul of tarsus. i like his call to live a virtuous life. that’s a tenet of judaism as well.
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