Brain Hacking (intentional and otherwise)

I’ve had a really interesting half year. I can put together a coherent narrative now, though it was confusing and distressing going through it.

Late last summer, I started experimenting with a thing that Kestrell does all the time: listening to an audiobook while going to sleep. (Only listening to books I knew well already, so that I didn’t get confused when they suddenly seem to skip ahead several chapters…) This was designed to accomplish two goals. First, to avoid the behavior where “I’m bored; I’m gonna get up and do something.” Secondly, to avoid what my therapist refers to as “rumination”, lying in bed worrying about things that you can’t do anything about.

At first, this went great. I adjusted to it quickly, and it accomplished both goals extremely well. And it had some mildly interesting neurological side effects. Sometimes the book would bleed over into my dreams. Sometimes I would wake up, but my ability to parse spoken language was still turned off, so it was several seconds until I was able to actually hear the still-playing audiobook. The phone app that (crudely) monitors my sleep patterns show that there were definite differences, but everything seemed to be going swimmingly.

Around November, I started entering a significant depressive episode. During therapy, I realized that I seem to be missing a sense of validation. My initial reaction was, “Maybe I should just ask for some?” I went on to the Alan Moore Scholars group and told them that I was depressed and could use some encouragement. There was a significant outpouring of appreciation for my work, which was great on one level. But… I didn’t actually feel any better afterwards.

Christmas was rough, really rough. I am subject to chronic (and hereditary) seasonal depression, but it was much worse this year. I was just seized with self-loathing through the whole holiday season. This despite several events which even in my depressed state I could tell were on objective proofs of my having value. I just couldn’t FEEL that.

In early January, I had a therapy session with several breakthrough events. Firstly, I identified that “The part of my brain that is able to accept validation is just BROKEN.” Possible breakthrough number two was moving on from that to “Maybe I should give antidepressants another try?” (I am, but it’s still early days to be saying whether or not that is helping.) Most significantly, however, I gave some thought as to how or why this should be happening and suddenly noticed a possible correlation with the whole audiobook/sleep thing. Could this new brain malfunction actually be a side effect of messing with my sleep process over a period of months?

So I stopped listening to audiobooks while sleeping, and within DAYS my ability to receive validation came back! I’ve been feeling MUCH better about myself, and about life in general. This has led to a certain amount of overwork, and hence aggravation of my chronic pain. But I feel good enough emotionally that I am totally willing to take that hit physically.

So, that’s the state of the Alexx. Shared both because many of you care about my state, and because brains are complex and interesting.