Category: Thoughts (Page 3 of 3)

I imagine the honey bee’s world is dictated by two emotions: desire and avoidance. When a honey bee sees a flower off in the distance, it has a strong desire to fly towards it, to rid it of its nectar. A small reward circuit lights up in its little mind whenever it comes across a flower. Similarly, whenever a honey bee sees a predator, like a bear, spider or bird an avoidance circuit lights up (or in dire situations an attack circuit).

To a honey bee, it is like their world is in greyscale, with only the flowers in green and predators in red standing proudly out against the background. A honey bee does not care about the bright blue sky, or a trickling waterfall, or a lush field of grass. Neither does it care about the mundane, like roads, bricks or trees. To a honey bee, it is as if these things don’t exist. While it sees them, knows they are there, it pays these phenomena absolutely no attention. The honey bee’s world is almost entirely determined by the green flowers and red predators.

I had just left an rTMS session a little frustrated. The nurses ask how I have been to report back to the doctor, and I always find it difficult to describe. Not because there is some doubt as to what I am feeling (even if I do not understand why I am feeling it) nor because I do not have the language to describe it. I have realised after years of living with mental illness that my words become misinterpreted. I have felt consistently that every doctor and psychiatrist I have had so far has thought I am at least 3x better than I actually am. I think those who have never lived with a severe mental illness don’t realise that for the entirety of their lives they have this background feeling of ‘you are safe enough right now’ running through their heads – sometimes even through deep feelings of grief, sadness, anger and worry. This background ‘okayness’ may only go away for a moment, a day, a month at most (but usually remains in some form even if it doesn’t feel like it). But to the healthy-minded it always comes back. There is eventual relief. This does not happen with the mentally ill.

I was trying to describe to the nurse how a little bit of this ‘okayness’ had started to come back after I started lithium treatment. I said “the days are easier, time goes by faster than it did before”. After some more discussion, the nurse says “so time used to drag and now it is not?”. Time being a drag is like boredom. What I was experiencing was most definitely not boredom. But no matter how hard I thought (thinking is very hard nowadays) I couldn’t think of a way to explain what I was feeling in a way that the nurses could understand. How do you tell someone that under specific circumstances, the feeling they have in the back of their minds they don’t even realise is there, can go away?