In the grip of ego

I can barely believe it’s been a week tomorrow since my last post.  Usually there are two or three each week, but lately my head has been all over the place.  I spend too much time fretting over whether my thoughts are worthy enough to interest people.

It’s a bit ironic, while millions of things flash through my mind every day, there is not a lot to write about.  Low self-esteem says, ‘People won’t want to read about that nonsense….’.

Writing is about the only activity that actually centres me in the present moment.  The incessant chatter in my head is something I am becoming more aware of since starting this blog.  On the one hand, I believe awareness is a step towards healing.  On the other hand, the heightened awareness is driving me up the wall.

Anyone who reads this blog will know I’m doing a therapy writing class.  There are only about three sessions left.  My end of course project, which is a focus on our recovery using writing or art, doesn’t even have a foundation.  This piece of writing will go forward for publishing in the college’s second book of testimonies about recovery from mental illness.  There were a couple of ideas in my head, but without more research, they amount to little.  Once again, there is an internal battle saying I’m not good enough.

I was thinking of writing about the importance of seeking a diagnosis.  The more I researched, my opinion started to waver.  Of course, an accurate diagnosis means that we can access the appropriate treatment.  However, in the long process, I now understand more about the dangers of stigmatisation, sometimes by the health professionals who are there to work with us.  There is a lot of value in treating the patient and not the diagnosis.  I’m not even sure if the thirteen-year wait provided my comorbid issues with an accurate diagnosis, anyway.

Perhaps I should forget about research.  Maybe I hide behind research.  Writing about things that are already widely known is probably a barrier to writing/talking about my own testimony.  What will happen if I write just about me?  The trouble is, knowing where to start.  How can I fit fifty years of a very mental – an extremely tragic – existence into about 2,000 words?  Would people really want to read that sort of stuff about me?

I guess you could say, I think too much.  Eckhart Tolle, in his book, “A New Earth”, would say I am in the grip of ego.  I’ll finish this with a paragraph from his book that stands out to me

“What you may be aware of as a voice in your head that never stops speaking is the stream of incessant and compulsive thinking.  When every thought absorbs your attention completely, when you are so identified with the voice in your head and the emotions that accompany it that you lose yourself in every thought and every emotion, then you are totally identified with form and therefore in the grip of ego”

This is the boss, Missy.  14yrs old