How to pin a butterfly. (Article 15 of the history of my epilepsy.)

How to pin a butterfly.

Over the years there have on and off appeared mental states which for various reasons have fascinated me and which I wanted to capture and put into words. It could have been everything from humor and dreams to states outside the usual that challenged me. The challenge was primarily for me to create a verbal description of phenomena that do not have any given interpretation. It has not been easy, and it has felt like trying to pin a butterfly with a spear.

My experiments with neurosis and epilepsy in different therapeutic contexts have given me many occasions to experience feelings. If they were not caught in the drain, the brain and the neuron clusters of the memory would soon have oscillated into new combinations and the experience that had passed could be difficult to repeat. Own feelings and dreams are relatively “easy” to catch compared with the mood, including mood swings, which may affect another person.

I have wondered about my need to document these moods. The answer is that if I am living with a person, who with some regularity exhibit reactions, which do neither comply with the general picture of the person concerned nor with either mine or the person's self-granted image, then it can be of help to endure or to use as an aid if I want to move forward.

One such example was an apparently stable woman, who gave a balanced and safe impression, who seemed to have the situation under control, radiated experience and reflection, and whose maturation solved the problems of life without apparent hesitation. A seemingly good state for someone to feel comfortable with and be married to.

Out of the blue, without apparent reason, when we “sat quietly in the boat” it shook violently and the steady-state blew away in a trice and the entire ship trembled. Where it before shone a powerful and quiet soul, there was suddenly only panic from which anxiety and pain poured out. All common sense was gone. Threats, accusations, cruelty, screaming, crying, and impervious to any factual arguments created a terror-like atmosphere that was panicky and unmanageable. A painful soul discharge.

Being a good participant and spectator in the process my own buttons were pushed down and caused a disappointment that this occurred again and made it just as a number of practical problems had been successfully resolved. It was a sense of having been cheated, not so much by the person's conscious behavior as by nature's seemingly unreliable reaction. Apparent unreliability, the pattern of which represents imprinted pain, which is hidden in the memory and brain of the person who collapsed.

With my experience from different painful states of anxiety, I know that it is utopian to believe myself capable of, as a spectator, diagnosing the cause of the incident, just as difficult as it is constantly to act cautiously and carefully to avoid the heart-rending nerve crashes. (Attempts in that direction abort all the spontaneity and naturalness, and an unconscious adaptation to an increasingly controlled and unnatural behavior will take place.)  Since we in the immediate vicinity also had our personal flaws, it could happen that self-control released, and the subconscious could not suppress one, as we thought well-funded needle stick. The frequency of these needle sticks, conscious or not, could subsequently increase, a fact the woman often interpreted as the root of her pain. 

The frequency of the collapses intensified and became increasingly a pattern. The overall pain and tension had found a valve to release its pressure and in the end, it was impossible to suppress or redirect it (which incidentally is not without risks). Medical treatment, medication, or therapy might have been alternative solutions, but this was something that the woman during her stable periods wouldn’t accept. The paradox of this kind of situation is that even in the repeated mental collapses, there is a security, albeit limited, that the process is known...

The mental collapses were not only washed over us in the immediate vicinity, but they penetrated us, and more than one epileptic hallucination provoked by the mentally twisted situations have occurred. I stayed and tried to suppress my feelings to get through the crisis when an escape from the situation would have been the best choice at an early stage, but there was a child, so I avoided this option.

The child, a girl, often causes dramatic reactions close to jealousy in her mother. The girl knows the mother's reaction patterns and knows what will happen if she is acting in the favor of her father. It belongs to the image that both the girl and myself, for the most part, represent a Swedish culture of freedom with responsibility, which means that I soon began communicating with the girl as an equal peer, while the mother represents a Spanish / Latin culture of discipline, obedience, but with many physical contacts and feelings in which they emotionally never cut the umbilical cord. Those facts, of course, played in as an undercurrent and participating factor in the repeated breakdowns, while they for long periods gave ground to much joy and positive experiences. Without the mental breakdowns, by whatever reasons they were triggered, a mix of Swedish and Spanish upbringing could have developed into a success.

A collapse can be described from several different approaches depending on the individuals, causes, effects, and consequences. Surely, we have all three diverging opinions in line with our relatively strong personalities. In my case, I’m trained in arguing and giving reasons for and against which easily can create a risk that I convince the other party of something that is uncertain which in turn increases the risk that I convince myself even more that my argument is accurate. What I am trying to say is that in most relationships we are living with relative truths, which often work for the family’s and the individual's advantage, a modus vivendi. From many points of view, I think we were a normal case if we look away from the emotional collapses. However, even when the mother was right, the collapse occurred and the anxiety and depression, driven by the underlying latent pain, was a fact.

Normally, the process took 3-5 days, and then suddenly everything worked on the surface as if nothing had happened. It may surprise that the stability so soon regained its form, and life went on. I could, despite my insights into how the brain's defense mechanisms work to deal with unbearable pain, wonder if what I had experienced really had occurred. I was relieved but could sit with a bad conscience while I pondered whether I had been the cause of the abscess to burst and if it would have ruptured anyway on its own. A confusing experience it was, and I hoped that it would not happen again, or if it should happen, then at least not for long ...

Can you prepare and predict the timing of the outbreak, which likely will come? With many years of experience, my answer is maybe. I knew from experience that they would come, but not when this would happen. There were certain patterns that went on, but the infernal (and profoundly logical) with them was that these patterns were “the stability” which we would have liked to be permanent. It is when a fake, apparently stable, and safe conduct passes over into being manic that depression lurks. It is at this moment when the seemingly confident person himself feels sure about his stability and feels euphoric and places the struggle which in the most refined way leads to the brain's internal production of analgesia. With the brain's own painkiller in neutral and with external psychiatric drugs, for reasons of principle, being banned the pain broke through and chaos became a fact. An imprinted pattern. A perpetual motion. 

Our marriage ended in January 2009 after one crash too much of the kind I have described. We lived together for 18 years.

The marriage should have been a port in the storm but was often a storm in the port.