The Beast Within

More "Thoughts on Chronic Illness"

This continues my experiments with AI tools for turning some of my written content into audio-visual media, begun here:

"Thoughts on Chronic Illness"

The video below is an abridged, and slightly modified, version of my written article “The Beast Within and Parkinson’s Disease”. For those who prefer to read, I have included the transcript below the video. As before, while the images and voice are computer generated, the words are 100% my own.

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Transcript

There is a beast within me which has a dual nature.

The first aspect of this beast is a timid, frightened dormouse, whiskers twitching, eyes alert, heart racing. I was even afraid to sleep, with night terrors as a child. I was hyper-vigilant and hyper-sensitized. I had painful shyness as a teenager and suffered with irritable bowel syndrome. I also suffered from anxious behaviours and thoughts, so of full self-doubt.

The other aspect of the beast is a top-of-the-food-chain wolverine, who will sink in teeth and claws and never, ever let go. My choice of a first career fed this beast. The highly competitive viper's nest of academic science was a rich hunting ground for this aspect of the beast. I developed the need to have the last word, the need to win every argument, and I would never, ever back down. This avatar of me grew and grew with my arrogance.

And the name of this two-faced beast is Fight or Flight.

Both aspects became stronger and stronger parts of my personality. Then something happened, perhaps a cumulative effect of physical or mental health issues, or a perfect storm of circumstances which took away my control. Whatever the trigger, this is when my Parkinson's symptoms came to the fore.

The beast was trapped now by things which were beyond it’s control, and so it found itself caged. The dormouse aspect no longer could run, had nowhere to hide. The wolverine aspect could only pace back and forth, forever hungry. So when my dominant fight or flight beast became locked down by circumstance, it was no longer free to roam or express itself. When this occurred, a new aspect of the beast emerged and quickly took over.

The new aspect is an opossum, forever playing dead and its name is Freeze.

I sincerely hope in sharing this story, that it will help others to start thinking about what they will need to address in order to recover, and also to begin to understand that Parkinson's is a lot simpler than physical brain damage of unknown origin. We need to address the parts of the root cause that are to do with our nervous system dysregulation which existed long before the symptoms became disabling. Without acquiring full self-realization and coming to terms with our out of control beasts, I do not believe that recovery will be possible. Indeed, I believe the healed state looks like a calm, relaxed human being.