Hallucinate
Strangely close to the word ‘eludicate‘ – ‘to explain or make something clear’. Maybe the visual (or other sensorial) expression of an internal dilemma it can crystallise a set of unconscious concerns. The resulting metaphor may represent something only understood by the being that generated it, and then the meaning can shift in time to an unknown beat. If they care, others may seek to understand it and hold your hand through it. Either to soothe, guide or ground you. Hallucinating may represent the illustrations to the book of an individual’s journey through the void but it usually serves to make it clear that someone is on course for a diagnosis. Telling someone ‘its not there, it’s not real’ is like trying to convince someone herrings aren’t red. And to respect individual differences and the subjectiveness of ‘reality’ we can in many situations be clear that it is there, if only for that person. The real question is ‘why is it there?’ and is it a keystone in the jenga of the experiencer’s mind? If the meaning the ‘hallucination’ holds for the individual is central to the structure of their world, embracing other, neutral interests may be the least toxic escape, implying there are ways out of the grip of the loneliest place there is – the inside of our own minds.
Heal
To ‘get better’ from injury but also to ‘make someone better’ – but do you have to think of yourself as better to be able to do that for another person? If ‘ill’ is a value judgement does the healer have to be superior? Or even well themselves? If a solid place to stand is needed to shift someone’s world view, the pivot point is dictated by the healer who also therefore assumes all the control. Where the removal of autonomy or the misuse of power has been implicated in the troubles an individual lives this seems profoundly ill judged. Where the act of healing heals the healer careful attention to whether the act is consciously benefiting both people’s sense of self is key. Not being personally invested in the recipient of the intervention’s wellbeing may be more selfish than seeing others’ improvements as a support to the wannabe healer’s ego. Healing may represent the journey everybody takes from the trauma of birth to the often hoped for wisdom and serenity of late life. Sadly the trials and burdens people face on this ride can lead to a deep desire not to reach the end state of life and to cut short the journey instead. If living is learning, we have to be supported to stand the lessons we can’t unlearn not considered inferior for having a blind spot others diminish.
Heaven
A place on earth? If it is it might be hell to be stuck there. Believing you are the lucky winner and no longer need to strive to improve or change anything when all around you pity your self absorption sounds a lot like addiction to me.
Hell
Sounds a lot like life for so many who care, who feel and who are ignored in the great distribution of luck that is called life. Those I know who have been to their own personal hell cruelly feel and care more than those who think they are ‘normal’. But which comes first? Hell or giving a fuck? Those who seemingly don’t care so much seem destined to to end up in some kind of infernal torment but are seemingly working (or playing) to build up a tolerance. The journey is hedonistic, the destination desolate. If they get what they deserve, those who feel and care would be reciprocated, though may most likely be driven by rescuing others from the hells of their own making, feeling for them to fill the gaps in their own sense of self.
Help
A cry to meet an urgent need but also assistance, a supplement. The best help is not having it done to you, but being supported to find out what you are going to do to achieve / deal with something significant. Not realising you’ve been helped and delighting in the notion that you did it all yourself is a particularly deft form of aid. Its not always clear what we need other than to be somewhere different in your mind / life /relationship(s) and if anyone tells me what they think I need, rather than shrug it off feeling annoyed and patronised, I am highly likely to defer taking responsibility for my actions and try out any suggestion, delighting in the knowledge that if it gets spunked up the wall I’m not responsible. Trouble is that’s usually the problem – unlikely estimations of my own accountability.
High
Intoxicated, stoned, wasted…adjectives abound. Being high sounds like being naturally elated, as if you are somewhere with a good vantage point enabling a well observed overview of stuff that you’re usually too close to to properly comprehend. Though in my experience it was like being over inflated, losing perspective on the accuracy, appropriateness or interest value of your musings. It seems, from my sober observations, to lead to becoming more and more acquainted with the seedier, grittier and decidedly less picturesque aspects of life available for insatiable consumption.
Hope
Vital to recovery from most forms of the Darkness and successfully not killing oneself. Elusive and likely to evade definition or permanent capture but beautiful in its fragility.
Humour
Builds hope, shows acceptance, the possibility of new understandings and ingenuity under pressure. Impossible to formulate and delicious to experience. Therapeutic, inventive and mischievous at its best; banal, divisive and lumpy at its bigoted worst. Almost anything is endurable with a dash of hopeful humour, with tolerating some troll’s hatred draped in stereotypes being the decidedly-not-droll exception to the rule.
PsychCoblog 