When not-enough is too much.
I have lived with chronic illness for roughly 10 years now. I know exactly what it is — it’s just treatment resistant and modern medicine doesn’t have much in the way of answers, mostly because modern medicine spawned it. Lots of people just kind of give up in the face of it and live restricted, diminished lives. The good news is that it took me 9.5 of those years to even have the exact name of what’s plaguing me.
So every day I wake up or stand up from being awake for a lot of the night, and do a ritual where I read, consult AI, mark down data, do an adjustment or two, and get on with my life. But this health struggle used to consume the entirety of my thoughts.
I would love to not have to think about it or account for it anymore.
Thankfully, I have a lot to live for, am active in the lives of others, and had a tremendous tour de force on this philosophical journey before any of the health stuff kicked off.
But for people who have been saddled by child abuse and its resultant madness, there can be no North Star to compare to.
There is this agonized middle ground that some people walk where they are cognizant that there’s something wrong with them, therefore they take steps to alleviate it, and what modicum of improvement they gain is what they satisfy themselves with, not knowing that it could be so much better for them.
I met a lot of people like this when I was in a Masters for Counseling. They’d done some baby steps and thought they were ready experts. And compared to most of the sandaled goyim at Walmart, they were!
Fortunately, self-knowledge is a merciful process. Only a small portion of it ever “holds out” against your best efforts, usually in the form of a difficult addiction. If you put in the work, you see results. But “the work” is different for everyone and you need some good feedback to bring it into focus.
A lot of depression is an inability to get out of the drama. You have these critics and cynics just running in your head 24-7 and you are inundated.
You turn toward yourself to make it better and you drown.
This is why connection to others is so important.
Late last summer and into the fall, I went through a phase where I just had to vent about my medical issues to people behind my paywall. I was in the thick of talking to specialists, getting prescribed crazy, expensive pills, and trying to make sense of it all — all with my typical perseverance and my refrain, “Guys I am about to fix it this week!” That support from others was crucial and it helped me to knock a lot of the maladies off of the list. I went from having 5 not-so-good and 1 bad thing going on with me to now just 1 bad thing.
This can be likened to madness and addiction. The relevant treatment for madness is interpersonal connection, physical exercise, moral/philosophical discernment, and then you get a “clearance” experience where you breath a tremendous sigh of relief.
I would caution against too much self-reliance. There is an Aristotelian mean for everything. The more resourced I have become, through speaking to people far and wide through the Internet and through LLM’s + research, the more knowledgeable I have become. I am more humbled and awed by the collective genius of mankind.
I would love to work in the medical field in a lab research setting but the credentials to get in there are goofy and not what I want to spend my time doing, especially with a young family.
With madness, the more adept you become at resolving it, the more capable you are of transmitting outwards in a way that leads to more rationality and solace for others. The more rational you are, the more of an organizing force you are on the world.
Reach out to me for any private coaching you need.
With resolution comes an availability to look outwards and resolve what is beyond you.
When I was younger, I thought my life’s work was firmly squared on philosophy + counseling. But as I learn more and more, I see just how rampant the chronic illness epidemic is in America, largely due to statism’s effects on the food, air, and water supplies. There has also been an extreme over-prescription of antibiotics that is leading to incurable conditions. I want be of assistance somehow!
Everyone has their own strengths and tendencies to develop — not everyone is a “healer”. There are plenty of fields outside of “healing” that can benefit from integration with philosophy. Maybe you will be the first to do it…
Seeing the self-defeat alleviate in someone and be replaced by motivation, enthusiasm, and inspiration is a tremendous honor and privilege.
Through our meaningful work in the world, we see such restoration in others. But getting to that meaningful work can involve walking a personal labyrinth for a time. Lots of people remain stranded in various stages of maturity because they will not address their blind spots or cannot muster the courage to make a leap. Not everyone “makes it”.
Getting outside contact to people who have “made it” is so vital for your calibration. I’m contending with something highly pathogenic and treatment resistant, yet I do know there’s hope because there’s roughly a 60% clearance rate for the intensive track I’m on.
Self-knowledge is doable. It can be done efficiently. It doesn’t have to take forever. You will see results, especially if you are not trapping yourself in a solipsistic concern that leaves little room for education enrichment and talking to people who have “cleared madness”. But woe to the person who stays ensconced in their own resources and does not reach out. Isolation is a hell of a drug. World scary and bad. Digital device safe and snuggly.
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