Having Reterned From Therapy...

So - I went to my therapy session. So - yes it was as always a little too intense. But - I think I begin to understand what my therapist means and, to some extent, agree. My main goal OF COURSE is to stop pulling my hair out. However - if I have to rewire my brain not to panic quite so much before I can achieve that goal, so be it. It's true - I do mostly pull my hair out when I am panicking about something or other. Which I do rather a lot - to the extent of feeling my heart beating away at my ribcage and being, because of that, in a fair amount of physical pain. Why? What can possibly be happening, quite so often, to trigger that level of alarm? I'm a girl not a forest faun ... and all that jazz. Well... For reasons I won't entirely go into here (no-one needs to know the exact details - except perhaps me - and I'm not sure even I do...), my brain (and I am quite prepared to believe this) has been wired to have a somewhat hyperactive alarm-system. So I am a little to often seemingly faced with two options - FIGHT or FLIGHT. Or, I suppose, fainting ... but that probably comes under the heading of FLIGHT. Not that I actually faint. I have been known, in extreme cases, to fling myself onto a bed or a sofa or a floor (whatever's handy) and sob - but not actually to faint. So I need to rewire my brain - to attain a new and more workable level of alarm-system. OK. I suppose I'll just have to be brave. Damn it - in so many other ways I really am. But I think I've attained such a level of endurance of alarm that actually I'm often not altogether aware of it. I'm used to ignoring it. To inwardly saying to myself 'It's perfectly alright, you know - you're being absurd - you really will just have to get on with what you're doing - KEEP CALM AND CARRY ON'. Keeping up a narrative-of-the-sensible is an awful lot less scary that listening to/reading The Narrative of Somewhat Excessive (in the Circumstances) Alarm. I am living like someone is some play by Sartre. And the Existential angst of it all is getting to me. Rationally, I really to believe that the world is, at least potentially, DREADFULLY dangerous. ANYTHING could happen. I am terribly (literally) imaginative. All this is rather OCD-ish. Invasive thoughts and all that. But part of me whats to stare these invasive thoughts in the eye (do they only have one eye? Are they, collectively, a cyclops?) and say to them 'I have you so I'm damn well going to endure you because I can take it'. But simply because I can endure something doesn't mean that it's a good idea (and then I come up against the slight - note the irony - problem that I don't actually believe in objective 'good', having had my ethical/ontological world shattered a couple of years ago by Nietzsche's 'Beyond Good and Evil'). OK - let's rephrase that then: simply because I can do something doesn't mean that it will lead to a more-enjoyable rather than a less-enjoyable state for me. Even if it doesn't ACTUALLY matter if the emotion that flitters across emotional whiteboard-linked-up-to-the-projector-of-my-sensory-input-equipment is JOY or TERROR - well, I like joy more. And if it's all meaningless, what does it matter if I meaninglessly choose joy over terror? 'A man who is master of himself can end a sorrow as easily as he can invent a pleasure. I don’t want to be at the mercy of my emotions. I want to use them, to enjoy them, and to dominate them.' (Oscar Wilde) *cue 'it's my life'*