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The Swirling Pool of Mental Illness

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Something changes…

A swirling pool of internal conflicting processes emerges. You can feel it building, growing, strengthening. It’s stealing each thought and tearing it apart, stealing every emotion you have ever felt in your entire life and chewing it up. It’s exhilarating, it’s terrifying, it’s expected and it’s surprising.

Then combustion, complete chaos. Everything spat back into the wrong place, nothing fits, nothing will ever be the same. You know this for fact.

Next comes the destruction that is doubt. It’s the kind of doubt that burns your mind like acid. The kind of doubt that weighs more than the entire ocean. Doubt that manifests into self-hatred, unworthiness and the need for validation. Doubt that distorts your entire perception. Doubt that leads to losing the internal battle between reality and fantasy. You know what that kind of doubt does, you’ve learned through experience.

You are desperate, you are frightened, you are overwhelmed, you need something. You need to let go, you need to hold on. You need the stability and the release. It brings you power, it brings you control, it’s an escapism. It’s a motion, it’s autopilot. It’s good, it’s bad, so bad. It’s a shameful accomplishment.

Then you move on, next face, next mask, next reality, next personality. Nothing sticks, it never lasts.

Something changes….

A swirling pool of internal conflicting processes emerges.

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Thinkstock photo by Stephanie_Zieber

Originally published: January 25, 2017
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