It is easy to pin down a butterfly compared to pin down anxiety.

Janov's Reflections on the Human Condition

On Different Kinds of Memory

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My comment:

Art, you have “pinned down” one of the butterflies in my stomach.

I certainly value that You still are going strong and inspired to create Reflections. They continue to work in favor of my understanding of my birth trauma and its subsequent seizures.

Over the last 30 years, I have, over and again, tried to pin down what memories are causing different fits in me, and I have been persistent in my almost “scientific” search. I have, however, consequently failed to catch a memory in the moment of a fit even after my seizures, over the years, have shrunk to a fraction of their old magnitude. A brief fit does not worry me, which the impotence to catch and explain the memory behind the feeling does. Every time I have had fits in my epileptic life, I have had, what can be described as an electric anxiety shock, which I never have been able to catch. 

Having a stubborn personality, I have every time thought: “next time” I’ll catch it. How could I? It is a wordless feeling of immense anxiety, which leaks out through my defense when I’m caught off guard in an unexpected emotional situation or memory. (This may sometimes occur in combination with a rapid cooling / temperature change). They have never appeared when I have been doing my often challenging job as an international executive.

I remember how I, after a week of qualified work, having driven 1100 km - non stop - from Karlshamn, Sweden, came to visit a primal retreat with Art in Bergen, Norway, in the summer of 1984. I had disarmed my defense by fatigue, and when I met with Art and his therapists I became overwhelmed by the kindness. Art saw that something was going on with me and came up to me and said “it’s a feeling, lie down”!  Then my primitive, instinctive memory relived a traumatic, oxygen deprived birth, which was one of the crucial steps in the demystification of my epilepsy. In this and all the subsequent occasions, it was about wordless experience of anxiety caused by asphyxia and assault recorded during a birthing process between life and death.

To understand how crucial the repressed anxiety was for my epilepsy, a key factor has been my intuitive allergic reactions to cognitive insights trying to verbalize my anxiety / my symptoms. Art’s intuitive knowledge to guide me to my deepest feelings have been brilliant. In parallel, Art had the ability verbally  to analyze the process, communicate his knowledge and make sure that I understood how I by reliving feelings developed an integrated unified circuit between the different levels in my body / brain.

It is easy to pin down a butterfly compared to pin down anxiety.

Jan Johnsson