Okay, this is beginning to worry me now. Ii read last night about the effects of long term pain-avoidance in Janov's New Primal Scream.*
Possibly pop-psychology, but still what he explained is very relevant to my life. For the last few years now I have been feeling that there is no magic in the world, a phrase I have used countless times these last few months. AJ put it slightly differently in his book, about an inability to experience joy, but they are the same thing I think. To me at present I can foresee nothing in my near or distant future that gives me any reason to strive to reach a near or further future. Everything looks explicable, every action can be traced back to a cause. Even random human events, like a smile from a stranger have their roots in evolutionary desires to reproduce, and as such the facial tic is just a slave to that ancient chemistry.
Funny, I started last weekend with the view to "doing something nice", like eating out and catching a movie. These wishes rapidly dissolved, evaporated, as the weekend progressed and gabo completed its usual cycle of heights to pits. I guess starting out at my parents with my sister were not the best origins.
Creature of habit.
With my iffy public transport tickets I have been relying on this last year or two, I have developed a significant response to getting off the train at Toowong station. Basically, if I get off at TWG and exit up the stairs, there's occasionally a wall of whiteshirted ticket inspectors. and these guys can be pretty thorough, although on one or two occasions I have passed them okay.
I noticed a couple of months back that as the train slowed to pull into TWG, my heart would noticeably thump louder, and I felt the anxiety that comes with adrenaline release. I have experimented with relaxation techniques such as "thinking about kittens" etc, but nothing seemed to distract or calm me properly.
Then today, a miracle. Toowong had closed platforms one and two, so I used the 3 and 4 platform that is on the left hand side of the station. So at the point at which I usually start to panic, nothing happened. And even coming up the narrow stairs to where there either is or is not a wall of whiteshirts, I had no response. Heart normal. Easily thinking of other issues, my mind could contemplate scenarios other than impending embarrassment and arrest.
So was the anxiety brought on purely by the geometry of the room? Can I avoid other anxious situations by rearranging surroundings?
Is that what Feng Shui is all about?
I will try to devise a test based on gabo-triggers to see what happens.
*"Unlike the shot of morphine in the cardiac patient, we have what amounts to a constant shot of endorphin to match imprinted pain. Then as adults we wonder why we can't get any real joy out of life." - The New Primal Scream, Dr A Janov, Abacus Books, 1991.
p.s. Noticed reference to this book and this practice in a book about pseudo-science. Not a well-respected method in the wider psychoanalysis community. Pop-culture phenomenons are often like that, appealing at first glance, but little of substance when studied.