My Brain is Angry - From the Compound to the World - CycleBlaze

My Brain is Angry

The Danish guy, we'll call him Liam, who lives in our compound has proven to be a goldmine of insights. I'm glad our paths crossed, quite literally, while doing endless laps of walking around confined spaces.  

On a positive note, my Achilles is healing rapidly and my walking step count is increasing a lot without so much pain.  But my body is still as stiff as ever from the walking and this is something that Liam echoed as well.  He is a big, tall muscular guy who can easily walk twice as fast as me and left me in the dust many times.  But on one such occasion we happened to stop and chat and he commented on why the bodies might be so stiff.   "It's because my brain is angry,"  he said.   

Somewhat puzzled yet intrigued, I thought I might have an idea as to why and he continued:  "For two months they locked us in like caged animals and this did a number on our mental health.  Even this bullshit pass system where we go out for 3 hours once a week, I decided it wasn't worth it and gave to someone else.  I am angry at what they are doing here and this has made my body exhausted."

I couldn't agree more.  There had to be a mind-body connection here and so I started digging up some sources to learn more

[One] cause of muscle tension is psychological tension. Psychological tension is any form of anxiety, frustration, sadness or anger that we develop as a result of our perceptions. For example, we may develop psychological tension as a result of our thoughts regarding our coworker (e.g. they’re lazy) or of us being stuck in traffic (“this shouldn’t happen"). Our automatic tendency to attach to these thoughts and take them seriously is what causes us psychological tension.   [Another] cause of muscle tension is environmental stressors and habits. For example, our sedentary lifestyles tend to exacerbate our physical pain because we aren’t giving our muscles a chance to expel the tension. Other habits such as poor posture, lack of sleep, drug use, unhealthy eating, and environmental pollution tend to increase the likelihood of us developing chronic muscle tension.

Seeing this closed gate from the inside for over 60 days nonstop, you'd also be saying 'this shouldn't happen'
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Connecting the dots with this reading and the conversation with Liam, I began to develop a theory of my own

  • The predominant thought during the entire two months of lockdown is "this shouldn't happen".  For pages and pages already we've gone into why this is and how none of what's happening makes any sense.  Psychological tension comes from the dichotomy between the many reasons why the lockdown is irrational and yet dealing with the reality that this is indeed happening beyond our control.  An angry brain leads to stored tension.
  • Being confined to the house means a sedentary lifestyle by default which makes the tension worse and leads to increased muscle soreness and, in my case, muscle atrophy + inaction that leads to the Achilles calcification and extreme pain while walking again.
  • Bad habits such as poor posture, lack of sleep, unhealthy eating etc..  are exacerbated by the situation as we try to cope in whatever way we can.  This creates a vicious cycle where, for example, poor sleep leads to more anxiety which leads to more unhealthy eating then more negative thoughts about how none of this should be happening, etc...

There is a recovery to some of this which is coming up later in the re-emergence section.  

Meanwhile, I think it's important not to skip or dismiss these mental health issues as the damage done on this front across the entire population has been catastrophic.  As you would expect, the authorities could care less about any of this.

On that note, one last thing to say involves the myriad of well-meaning people who try to spin these last two months as "you just have to accept this".  They go into their own psychology of gratitude and letting go, freeing the mind, using this time for meditation, helping out in the community, coming together with neighbors, etc.. All this sort of thing.  There are merits to all of this and I don't mean to put these people down.  I've tried to be positive as well by making use of this time to be productive and be very organized.  Not my strong points.  But the problem here is they ignore the tyranny that is behind the lockdown in the first place, and by accepting it they are complicit.

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Andrea BrownI agree with everything you've said here.
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1 year ago