My brain biofeedback sessions always end with SMIRB — stop my irritating ruminations book. This week, I didn’t want to write during SMIRB. Or rather, a personality within me didn’t want me to write. For a few interminable seconds there, I thought I wouldn’t be able to start at all. For someone like me, this is not normal. I may whine, I don’t know what to wriiittte. But once pen is in my hand or fingers on keyboard, off I go, my unconscious expressing itself rapidly and fluently through my fingers. Sometimes my conscious mind participates too in writing.
But today, pen remained motionless on the paper for long enough, I began to worry.
Then I began to write.
Phew.
Uh, wait a minute, my pen is flowing across the page, but there’s this person inside me who doesn’t want me to write, whose force is spreading itself into my muscle cells in my arms, wrists, hands.
I keep writing.
But energy is fleeing me as the force to stop exerts an implacable will. I’m implacable too. I tell it no and forget how to spell. It’s like the early years after my brain injury when my stellar spelling skills morphed into misspellings, muscle jerks that turned “l”s into “f”s, and strange verbos. No verbos this time, only usual kind of misspelling where you combine two words into one, as in you write “feal” because you want to write “feel” but are thinking ahead to next word: “fear.” Force grows stronger; focus harder on what it is I’m writing.
Focus saved the day. I was able to ignore that stop-writing force as I put myself into what it was I was writing, thought about the puzzle and fear-inducing emotions of it all, and stuck with my unconscious mind driving my pen across the page. At some point, I realized I had more energy and the force was gone.
No phew this time. Just stick to writing until time was up. My heart rate dropped by about 5 beats per minute. Not great. My trainer knew I was not myself because I didn’t take the results printout as usual. She had to hand it to me. It’s the second time in three weeks I’ve forgotten it.
