Crazy

[yarrow_dreamer]

I guess my post under depression sounded apeshit crazy because I actually wanted to write about another flavor of mental/emotional health stuff.

Nuts. Whacko. Insane. Off the deep end. Out of touch with “reality” (whatever that means). Paranoid? Delusional? I get just enough feedback/reinforcement of that nature (and I don’t mean from other folks who rewild) to make me question whether I really have fallen off my rocker. Jeez, this feels like some scary stuff to say “out loud”!

I feel really unglued a lot of the time–that may describe it more accurately than depression. Unhitched from my moorings. Nothing under my feet. Like a frenzied, inconsolable, raw nerves, out in orbit kind of crazy (maybe that zoo polar bear pacing and nodding his head knows what I mean) more than a down in the dumps, sad kind of feeling. Not really just anger, either. Alienation kinda fits. Like everything matters, INTENSELY, but at the same time nothing really matters at all. Meaning and meaninglessness, intertwined. Pulled-apart universe.

Maybe this represents a healthy and natural response to crazy circumstances, crazy world. Or maybe this emotion has a name in some other culture, and people recognize the fierce power in it and how it may prove useful to us in navigating the emotional landscape of our lives (wish I knew).

Does rewilding make you crazy? Do you have to go crazy before you can start to rewild? Do they go hand in hand?

Does this resonate with anyone?

[Willem]

I spent a good decade up until recently feeling like just that - unglued. It came and went, at times, but definitely set the rhythm of my life.

I’ll tell you, it “came” when I focused on the desperateness of my situation, and “went” when I just followed my passion and fun. I remember one section of my life where, in the middle of primitivist rewilding (though I didn’t know the term back then), I started to learn swing dancing and bought all kinds of secondhand vintage clothes. I did that for a year or two, and really enjoyed myself. It felt good. It felt like a reprieve.

I in fact learned so much about myself, by no longer dressing like bad upholstery, and experiencing the awkwardness of learning to dance, that I would say I still benefit from that time of my life today.

I think that counts as the real rewilding for me. I feel more and more confident in this, that rewilding looks different according to the person who does it, their stage of life, and the gifts that they bring to their village, family, and land. Following your bliss, passions, sense of fun, reinvesting in yourself, gaining self-knowledge, I think all of this saves me from ungluing whenever I do it.

I don’t know if all this applies to what you mean by your description of your situation, but I know that my desperate panicky feeling, which I would describe as “feeling unglued”, has died down now to a pretty low whisper, after doing the above things.

I won’t claim it has gone away, unfortunately. But hey, I’ll take the whisper over the constant screeching anytime.

[BlueHeron]

It is good to see I’m not alone here!

The paleo diet has reawakened my passion. Now when work is slow, I daydream about what to cook next instead of focusing on what’s wrong with… well, sometimes it seems with everything.

I feel ready to quit therapy. Then I can actually afford to buy more meat.

I’m not regretful about therapy though, and I don’t feel it was/is a “waste of time.” To the extent that my counselor and I could agree on various issues (which climbed and dipped and wavered throughout the course of the past year and a half), I have learned something about myself. My counselor got me through some rough times.

I’ve come to recognize that “death” means “change.” Death is often painful, as is change.

I’m realizing that when I say to myself “I want to die” I REALLY mean “I want to change.” If a part of me dies, something will grow in its place.

In some cases I can willfully change – choose what part of my life is dead and gone, past – and choose what I want for the future.

[Matt]

I’ve been struggling with this recently. This complete dissconnection un-caring for everything, it’s not depression, like you say, it’s just disconnenction. I don’t fell motivated to do homework, but not doing homeowork leaves me feeling guilty if a do anything substantial outside of homework so I leave my self reading and posting and not commited to anything big.

Blue Heron, I’ve tried to reconnect through cooking too, but I just can’t seem to get past the homework thing. I feel like when I do anything substatianal I am sloughing that responsibility too much, but spending hours doing small things, that’s another thing all togehter :P. I am going to try the food thing more though, I really like to cook. I also agree with the death is change thing. I think part of my problem is my un willingness to change that completely.

Following your bliss, passions, sense of fun, reinvesting in yourself, gaining self-knowledge, I think all of this saves me from ungluing whenever I do it.

I always tread over the same ground here, and never change a thing, madness anyone? I can’t follow my heart, but I have to follow my heart, but I won’t follow my heart, but I should follow my heart, but I need to look to the future, but I need to do good things now… ohhhhhhhhh…

[mar]

i keep on having to remind myself it’s a response to the whacked circumstances we’re all in and i’m not innately a psycho…

i’m in a pretty “ape shit crazy” spot myself. but i do think it all has to come out somehow. we lack rituals for dealing with things. even our dancing is so often escapism instead of ritual. so we deal with it often alone, or in spurts of madness… if at all. hell honestly i wish i let myself be ape shit crazy more often - i control freak my madness and when i look back, my efforts to not LOOK and ACT like a hurtful psycho woman have made me more of one. could have avoided a lot of pain - mine and others’ - by just acknowledging that i’m nuts as shit right now and acting from there instead of from a headspace that tries to deny it.

there’s a lot to listen to in madness. i’ve failed to learn that many, many times and still struggle with it. i think you have to acknowledge whatever is making you nuts for it to start to heal… and i consider healing in that sense synonymous with “rewilding the heart.” i think a lot of us underestimate how intensely the way we live messes with us, so when we lose it we assume it’s us being ill for no reason as opposed to a response to something really goddamn screwed.

not sure how to articulate this… but yeah, i think you have to go nuts to heal. the only times i’ve ever felt healing in my state of mind recently were after i did something “nuts.”

but you’e definitely… definitely… not alone.

[yarrow_dreamer]

[quote=“mar, post:5, topic:871”]but you’e definitely… definitely… not alone.[/quote]Wow, thanks Mar (& everyone else) for your supportive responses and sharing your experiences. They really help.

[quote=“mar, post:5, topic:871”]there’s a lot to listen to in madness. i’ve failed to learn that many, many times and still struggle with it. i think you have to acknowledge whatever is making you nuts for it to start to heal… and i consider healing in that sense synonymous with “rewilding the heart.” i think a lot of us underestimate how intensely the way we live messes with us, so when we lose it we assume it’s us being ill for no reason as opposed to a response to something really goddamn screwed.

not sure how to articulate this… but yeah, i think you have to go nuts to heal. the only times i’ve ever felt healing in my state of mind recently were after i did something “nuts.”[/quote]

Yeah, I guess it helps to SEE the train wreck before you can dig your way out. I cried with a good friend today and afterwards, some things started to come clear.

Rewilding the heart, rewilding your life, involves shedding some skin, peeling back layers and casting off what didn’t work, what hurt, what needed to change. I think I got to the point where I’d peeled away so much, I got down to raw bone and nerve. To the point where everything I touched felt too intense, even reaching out to people for help and support.

I also realized the dire impact of our culture’s expectation for self-reliance and independence. Why should I feel shame about having unmet needs, problems, unclear feelings, things I need help with? At least anger drives you to do act. Shame inhibits you from acting and drives problems deeper.

Some of the things I peeled off included people, work, patterns that at least felt familiar and gave my life structure, even if a destructive one. Maybe I’ve tried to change too much, too fast. Maybe the time has come now to pile some stuff back on, grow some new skin. Or find some warm blankets to wrap up in while the new skin grows.

I’ll keep listening to my madness, though. . .

[chase]

Ai know that feeling. Mindstorm, lets call it. When civ wraps its ugly fingers arround you and jerks you into that empty gulf between their mindscape and yours, desperatly trying to draw you in, succeding only in part, into that brutish mindstorm of uncertainty and fear and the yawning casm that calls your name…
that is when you must remember to just look arround you, smell the flowers? feel the earth?
open your mind and see your answer written in green. LIVE

[Matt]

Ai know that feeling. Mindstorm, lets call it. When civ wraps its ugly fingers arround you and jerks you into that empty gulf between their mindscape and yours, desperatly trying to draw you in, succeding only in part, into that brutish mindstorm of uncertainty and fear and the yawning casm that calls your name…

Yes, chase, thank you, that is exactly how it feels, thank you, I know I am not alone, thank you.

[quote=“chase”]that is when you must remember to just look arround you, smell the flowers? feel the earth?
open your mind and see your answer written in green. LIVE[/quote]
I need to do this, I put it off and put it off, oh I’ve explained this already, I need to stop talking, tepai, just figure out a way. Thank you for saying this again, maybe if a I see it enough it will get through :).

Maybe the time has come now to pile some stuff back on, grow some new skin. Or find some warm blankets to wrap up in while the new skin grows.

I agree we need to reach out to people, reconnect, and I really feel with what you are saying about needing to peel off layers in order to really understand who and where we are, so that we can properly build up from that. I know the wanting warm blankets feeling too, we need things to hold on to, to support us while we grow, and I feel that so many of these support structures just aren’t around. True safety nets, large scale feelings of frith (such a great word) that we can fall back into, these are things that we need to create as we go, making our madness experiences just that much more difficult.

we lack rituals for dealing with things. even our dancing is so often escapism instead of ritual. so we deal with it often alone, or in spurts of madness… if at all.

Yes, yes, yes! We need rituals to acknowledge these feelings, and acceptance that they happen, on a personal and societal level. We need to stay here with these feelings and not escape, work through them and find why they are happening, fix that, and then move on, but like you say, we can only do that if see them and acknowledge them and deal with them.