Profoundly Uncomfortable

Profound:  Characterized by intensity; deeply felt; pervading.

There's a guy at my morning meeting who suffers from a mild form of schizophrenia.  He's a rambunctious, profane dude, very outgoing and assertive, with strong opinions on everything that he promotes often and with no regrets.  He does not back down from anyone if he's doing what he wants to do.  He's not the most popular guy at the meeting.  He's disruptive.  He doesn't politely follow our unwritten rules and he's unapologetic about his behavior.  I try to show him love while secretly wishing he would go Elsewhere for his recovery.

The other day he walked up to me and started a conversation with "So how ya doin'?"  I was caught off guard as he has never acknowledged me in a social situation.  It's quite hard to catch me off guard.  I have a huge guard.  I can come up with something to say on the spot in just about any situation.  I'm not saying it makes sense or is appropriate in any way, shape, or form, but I can get something out in a hurry.  I had to pause a couple of beats to assess the situation.

Like a lot of people suffering from mental illness this dude is a bright man.  He really is sharp. Unfortunately he gets some weird shit stuck in his head and he has a tendency to go on the offensive over some of this stuff.  I'm often struck by the disconnect I feel when I'm talking to someone who is more insane than I am.  Naturally, I try to reason.  I talk more slowly and attempt to simplify my logic.  But all this is useless when I'm talking to someone who doesn't have the proper wiring to reason things out.  

In a way it's like trying to convince an active alcoholic that he should stop what is obviously self-destructive behavior.  The capacity to accept this reasoning is in there but it isn't being processed the right way.  When I was drinking you couldn't tell me shit about my drinking.  I knew at some level I was literally killing myself but there was a total disconnect between this knowledge and what I needed to do about it - I couldn't make the leap from conscious awareness to healthy action.  I let the aberrant thinking run on.  Our book uses the anecdote of the inability of an otherwise sane man or woman to cease and desist with the putting one's hand on a hot stove problem.  It doesn't compute.

I'm off to see my professional about my anxiety uptick this afternoon.  I have a grasp on everything intellectually but I can't seem to make the transition of this knowledge to my emotional life.

My friend from Massachusetts had a series of anxiety attacks many years ago.  He shared the sensation with me as best he could, in his typical thoughtful way: "It was profoundly uncomfortable."  I've had my share these and the description is apt.  It's like being caught in a whirlpool - it's hard to stop the swirling down and down.