When a need for rest becomes an urge to obliviate consciousness

At around noon today, one of my beloved elders phoned me. I'd just tucked myself into bed with a book and was realizing that I was too sleepy to read. I told my elder how dopey I felt, and she said, "Too much partying last night!"

No. Not "too much partying" (those days are long gone!). Too much ... simply too much. Yesterday was a banner day, full of beautiful surprises -- a Father's Day phone conversation with my Dad, who estranged himself from me many years ago and yesterday not only picked up the phone when I called, but listened to me blather "I love you" several times; a dinner invitation from a dear friend (BBQ'ed steak!) who'd also invited two other friends from out of town -- They'd come to visit me just the day before, so I got to see them two days in a row. These friends had also brought me a bounty of nourishing foods -- veggies, fruits, cheeses, bread, juice, frozen spinach pizza -- so my belly and heart were overflowing by last night. I felt full of all the best gifts of Life.

I was overstimulated by it all, and didn't fall asleep 'til about 4:30 a.m., so a few hours after I'd originally arisen later this morning, I needed to sleep again. When my elder phoned, I began to experience the closing-in of panic -- simply from holding a phone receiver to my ear and absorbing the sound of another human voice. I couldn't get off the phone fast enough ... and this elder is someone whose stories I usually love to hear.

In minutes, I was asleep. I was down for a couple of hours -- until the phone rang again! I chose not to answer it ... and as I was waiting for my tea-water to boil, I got to wondering what is happening inside me when this desperation to sleep comes on.

Survivors of trauma (trauma being helpless entrapment + terror) can turn on a dime from functional human beings into maddened primal creatures. Once overwhelmed nearly to death, a person's nervous system tends now to be overwhelmed by the ordinary. It's simply too much.

I've worked for decades to moderate my inability to tolerate much sensation, and have integrated an 'underwhelm list' to the point of habit. The first imperative on that list is to keep my senses operative in the present moment. I'll focus my eyes on something nearby, name it to myself, and notice it. Then I'll scan around the space I'm in, telling myself where I am. I'll hear the word Breathe... in my head, and I'll do it. Right down to my belly, if present tension allows it.

There are more imperatives on that underwhelm list like Move; drink a glass of water; stay warm -- but those first few are the most important. If I don't or can't orient myself to the immediate moment, I'm quickly lost. I feel trapped. 

One of the ways that I escape panic, I realize, is to relieve myself of consciousness. This is what any creature does when consciousness itself becomes too much -- a prey-creature, brought down and unable to escape, will become numb to sensation and dumb to sense itself -- in effect, its body begins to shut itself down. This is Nature's mercy when death is immanent.

My body, because I experienced trauma at birth (if not before), seems to have a basal set-point of shock and immanent shutdown. As a neonate, I was born six weeks early and went into cardiac arrest three times in my first three days. Imagine the scene of an ER trauma suite with an adult body on the table, being intervened upon by the lifesaving invasions of a trauma team.

Now imagine all that bearing down on a newborn who weighs less than two pounds.

No wonder ... no wonder, I thought as I stirred my tea, all these years later.

There's almost a need to not be that overcomes me when even ordinary experience becomes extreme. It's not what I know as my old 'suicidal imperative' -- There is no urge to do myself harm; there is no rage, no despair, no intent to bleed out the pain. There is no emotion, really, but fear in its purest form ... and then what fear becomes when even it is exhausted.

If the body can't escape, then the consciousness will.

A primitive central nervous system, like that of a newborn baby, cannot differentiate among degrees of danger, or discern any sense in what the body can only know as a threat to its life. And when a person of any age is dangled over the edge of death, the animal within us begins to shut itself down. Nature's last mercy.

When we're yanked back to full existence, we're shell-shocked.

... So there I am on the phone with my beloved elder, hearing her launch into a story, and my nervous system cries out, Escape! I think she felt miffed that I ended the call, having decided that I'd engaged in "too much partying" last night. It would sound strange to a person who hasn't experienced the extremes of sensation that I have, to hear the panic quickening my voice during an ordinary conversation, and my insistence that I need to sleep now -- goodbye!


I'm feeling the urge to sleep again as I type these words. Lie down; go under. Not to die, but to rest.

I think there's a differentiation we need to realize here, between the desire for escape from consciousness and the urge to kill oneself. I'm going to sleep on that thought for now ... More later.