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posts/0009_palace.md

@@ -5,7 +5,9 @@ slug: mud-mind
 
 (content warning: suicide)
 
-I don’t know when I first came across the (LINK https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Method_of_loci memory palace) technique but I thought it was interesting. I historically do not think of myself as a person with a “good memory” so I filed away this concept to try at some point. What ended up sticking with me and resurfacing was not the idea that a memory palace could help me memorize things but instead wonderment at the idea of building physical spaces in my head at all. I first noticed myself creating such spaces in the early 2010s when I was groping at an understanding of my severe, suicidal depression. I had started obsessively journaling (in addition to therapy) in this detached and impersonal sense in order to see how my emotions fluctuated day to day. I started getting this notion of depression as a room I would wake up in with no windows and no doors–the lack of escape representing my obsession with suicide as the only means of dealing with my life. Realizing based on my journal/therapy that sometimes I was *not* in the doorless room was key to treating my depression. In other words–my brainspace could feel inescapable and I could feel incapable of remembering that any other type of brainspace existed but if I held onto there being places outside of the doorless room as an article of faith I could weather the worst depressive episodes (nota bene: though I still have the occasional depressive episode, the worst of my depression is years behind me and I do not experience suicidal thoughts).
+I don’t know when I came across the (LINK https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Method_of_loci memory palace) technique but I thought it was interesting. I historically do not think of myself as a person with a “good memory” so I filed away this concept to try at some point. What ended up sticking with me and resurfacing was not the idea that a memory palace could help me memorize things but instead wonderment at the idea of building physical spaces in my head at all.
+
+I first noticed myself creating such spaces in the early 2010s when I was groping at an understanding of my severe, suicidal depression. I had started obsessively journaling (in addition to therapy) in this detached and impersonal sense in order to see how my emotions fluctuated day to day. I started getting this notion of depression as a room I would wake up in with no windows and no doors–the lack of escape representing my obsession with suicide as the only means of dealing with my life. Realizing based on my journal/therapy that sometimes I was *not* in the doorless room was key to treating my depression. In other words–my brainspace could feel inescapable and I could feel incapable of remembering that any other type of brainspace existed but if I held onto there being places outside of the doorless room as an article of faith I could weather the worst depressive episodes (nota bene: though I still have the occasional depressive episode, the worst of my depression is years behind me and I do not experience suicidal thoughts).
 
 Years later I was struggling to explain what the inside of my head was like to a new therapist. I ended up visualizing what the experience of having my consciousness felt like as a physical space like I had done years prior with the doorless room.
 
@@ -19,7 +21,7 @@ I started with a foyer. It has a tiled floor with black and white checkering, da
 
 North from there there is an entry hallway with a similar aesthetic. It has doors to the north, east, and west and a staircase up. The door east opens into a (LINK https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_War_I#/media/File:Cheshire_Regiment_trench_Somme_1916.jpg WWI era trench). I go here in times of crisis and hunker into a dugout while artillery explodes and bullets fly overhead. To the west is the pillow room which is warm but not hot, fragrant but not reeking, and absolutely stuffed with pillows. I go here when I’m allowing myself to relax.
 
-Up the stairs is a long landing with doors along the wall. The first door is the room of constant suffering. In this room I can’t close my eyes and everywhere I look is a gilded framed picture playing out the worst scenes I can imagine (like Salo x 100). I can hear an incessant, surrounding wall of screaming anguish and the harshest feedback. I don’t really choose to go in here. I just find myself in here during panic attacks.
+Up the stairs is a long landing with doors along the wall. The first door is the room of constant suffering. In this room I can’t close my eyes and everywhere I look is a gilded framed picture playing out the worst scenes I can imagine (like Salò x 100). I can hear an incessant, surrounding wall of screaming anguish and the harshest feedback. I don’t really choose to go in here. I just find myself in here during panic attacks.
 
 Next is the TV room, then the rope room. After that, a door opens into a glass dome I call the observation deck. Outside the glass dome is whatever I’m seeing in “real” life. I go here when I’m in a situation that is uncomfortable and “watch” it from behind the glass, putting myself on autopilot.