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Painting my limbic system blue


I’m not used to having TV. I grew up in Egypt, at a time when you only needed to take off one shoe to count all the TV channels in New Jersey. Didn’t even have to put down your real-sugar-sweetened soda to count the channels in Cairo — none of which were in English.

arabic-tv
This delightfully expressive image is from wn.com

J is a more normal American, so between his restoration of normality, and my sense of novelty, we’re delighted to have TV again. His ear for BS is too keen to make sitcoms bearable, so we default to true crime, amateur survivalist, and judge shows, where people really are that idiotic and don’t have to pretend.

A couple of days ago, we stumbled across a show about felons on the lam. I think that was on one channel or another from noon to bedtime, except for the news. It was strangely entertaining, seeing how people fool themselves into believing the false lives they create.

For the past two nights, I’ve woken up in the wee hours from dreams of having done something I knew wasn’t quite right, then it turned out the feds really didn’t like, learning that they were displeased, then discovering they were after me (a mortal issue, since I wouldn’t survive a week in prison), then finding myself hiding and running and trying terribly hard to be clever enough to survive in my decidedly impaired mental state.

This morning, I woke up feeling, quite vividly, as if my limbic system — that set of tiny, nervous parts clustered deep in the primitive brain — was huge, red, and pulsing with overstimulation.
brain_limbicsystem-inflated
I’m no fool. I know how to deal with imaginary brain inflation.

I wrapped a band around it, colored the whole thing a pleasing blue, and gently and persistently cooled and prodded it down to a more reasonable size.
brain_limbicsystem-deflated
I also massaged the point between my eyebrows that my old acupuncturist used to needle when I was too jumpy to let her stick sharp objects into me.
acupuncture-yintang-institutyinyang
When I was calm enough to do my brain exercise that stabilizes my ANS somewhat, I worked it like a plowhorse.

Once I had done that, I was actually capable of noticing how tense my system feels, and could mentally reach the lever that makes that inner spring gently unwind.

Then J brought me a nice fresh cup of hot tea in bed.

mug-drwho-steam
…Oh, heaven!

Then I read this out to him, and he laughed out loud.

Now, it’s a good day.

1 thought on “Painting my limbic system blue”

  1. Nice self care routine! Good to have a go-to plan in place for when the brain is wonky; since it may or may not be so hot at coming up with self-care concepts at the time… nice post! (So glad you have hot tea service, too. 🙂 )

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