Trapped in our own heads.

     Do you realize we are trapped inside our own body? God! How frightening is that? Nothing, and I mean nothing, is real unless your nerves that are just bags of jelly infused with chemicals, send signals to more bags of jelly. And for some useless impossible reason if you have enough of these bags of jelly and they all for some reason swap the right combination and mix of chemicals, you can have this thing called Self Awareness.

                 Yeah. Sounds crazy right?

Well, who knows what "real" really is? It is whatever your nerves tell your brain it is. And then if your nerves are not really telling the other nerves what is real, then you are just trapped in a brain full of lies. Now isn’t that just fun?

                  Me? No, this is not me. But how do you get a person to take this reality that they are trapped inside their head with and get them to realize that is it not the reality they are experiencing? Better yet, they really do understand the perception of reality defined by our culture and are deathly petrified of it and are withdrawing behind anger and meanness, and denial. How do you change that thinking? You don’t.

                  Actually, I don’t even think you can. At least I don’t think you can.

                They tell you they are telling you that nothing is working and you encourage them to keep trying. Keep practicing the techniques. They respond by telling you that they don’t work and they have tried them lots of times. They don’t work. They say that you are not helping and that telling them not to give up is making it worse. They tell you they would rather not live than feel the way they are feeling. They say that if this is the way growing up feels that they want nothing to do with it.

                They say that you are not listening.

                I am though.

                I hear you say that you are not happy and that you are scared and that you find no enjoyment in life. I hear you when you say that you are scared to talk to people and that you are scared to be alone and that you are scared to be around people you don’t know and you are scared to get to know people. I hear you when you say that you don’t feel like you can make it as an adult with these things like taxes and loans and bills and all those ethereal things that will become real too fast and too soon. I hear you when you say that you hurt all over because I understand that mental pain shows itself as physical pain. I hear you when you say you don’t think we care because we make you do this stuff to see if it will help you even though you keep saying it won't or hasn’t. I hear you.

                But I am not giving up when you tell me you want to.

                I am not giving up when you say that you already have.

                You say that I am not hearing you when you want to stop trying and I want you to keep going.

                You say I don’t care because I insist on trying when you are done trying.

                And so here we are . . . we both are filled with these sacks of jelly that seem to have just the right amount of chemicals in the right amounts that are passing back and forth. They give us this self-awareness and it is a curse to some people. To you, it seems. You are trapped in yours and I am trying to show you how to be ok with it. . . . how to manage and change the way you see and feel and touch and smell and hear the world around you. I am trying to show you that you can learn and get around those feelings and that you can feel better.

But all you feel is trapped and it scares the hell out of you.

All you feel is wanting to be nothing and you can’t change it.

All you know and are able to experience is fear and being alone in your head.

And I just don’t know what to do anymore.

But, I will tell you one thing – I still am not giving up.

Even though you have told me you have.