Sometimes I Miss My Old Brain
Sometimes the silence is worse than the noise.
Ever since starting therapy and taking medication on a regular basis, I’ve found a lot of ways to cope with and address the old insecurities I used to get hung up on. At the same time, I’ve also noticed a drop off in the passion I once had in creating. I don’t know if it was healthy to make several trips in a day to various craft stores and work into the late hours of the night trying to craft a mix c.d. to perfectly express my feelings, but it was exhilarating. There is a certain zest, an indescribable feeling of being alive that comes with that passion, though I am not sure now if it was an artistic drive or just a general sense of anxiety mixed with being in my early twenties that caused me to think and act the way I did. It wasn’t always a bad thing, but it definitely wasn’t something I could have kept up with without completely burning out.
Recently, with my journal comics, I’ve been working on trying to find the balance of allowing myself to explore and express those feelings, to take a mini-vacation with them while I create, without allowing myself to be consumed by them.
That’s one of the main reasons I am afraid of seeking therapy. The chaos in my head is dark, but at least it’s there and at least it’s mine.
I think therapy can really help in learning to navigate the chaos. Though there are times I miss the pure manic energy of spending all my waking hours creating things (and when I was anxious, there were more waking hours than sleeping hours) I realized that, for me, a lot of that energy was being spent in unhealthy obsessions. Often I was focused on winning the affections of another person, thinking that would make my life more “complete”. My efforts weren’t being channeled in the most productive of ways and were actually somewhat self-destructive.
So anyway, I guess what I am getting at is that I can understand the fear of starting therapy, and there have even been times I have fought it while in it. Personally, it has helped me find a more productive way to channel my creative energies and focus on more healthy pursuits.