The voice in your head – Trauma Brain when it’s feeling especially nasty – can sometimes get worse as you’re starting to feel better. I found the perfect embodiment of that in one of Ren’s songs.
After I watched the almost 10-minute music video to “Hi Ren” the other day, I literally said “wow” into the silence. This is one you have to see and not just hear. Ren sings parts for both himself as he’s getting treatment and for his mental illness that doesn’t want him to get better.
It is a chilling, yet beautiful, personification of the hell we go through in our minds and exactly why that voice in our head holds such sway.
Ren starts where we’ve all been as soon as we’re starting to feel better: with the voice in your head sneaking back from the dark where you thought you’d left it.
“You thought you'd buried me? Risky.”
There it is. Risk. And yes, in a way, you are taking a risk when trying to heal. You’re actively choosing to step away from the mentality, the behaviors, the coping mechanisms that kept you safe or at least able to manage daily life.
You are choosing to carve new boundaries, behaviors, and perspectives. And most importantly, a new relationship with yourself – and your mental illness. That’s scary.
“Cause I always come back [...] Deep down, you know I'm always in the periphery.”
This is the other scary part – the fear that no matter how hard you try, the monster in your head won’t go away.
Living with anxiety, depression or other mental illnesses can feel terminal, like any therapy, medication and lifestyle changes are just different forms of palliative care. Because it always comes back, doesn’t it? We always fear our illness is there, lingering in the periphery, waiting for its moment.
I’ve learned a few things on my journey, and one of them is that it’s possible for the voice in your head to dissipate and show up less often. Maybe one day, it will go away entirely, but the fear of it rearing its nasty head and wondering what the point is of trying to heal is the silent version of the voice. It is what it has conditioned you to fear so that IT can survive.
“You're the sheep, I'm the shepherd, not your place to lead me. Not your place to be biting off the hand that feeds me.”
#micdrop
Now that’s not to say we don’t get tired of fighting and throw our hands to the sky and ask what the point is, with agency, but sometimes this is conditioned thinking.
The voice in your head says so. When Ren tells his illness that he’s been making progress lately, learning new coping skills and not really needing the voice anymore, it says back to him:
“Ren, you sound more insane than I do.”
Insane for daring to believe that peace, progress and daily life being easier for once is attainable. Insane for trying to turn things around. As if that life and reality isn’t meant for you.
I am here to tell you that it is. What you’re living with now is what wasn’t meant for you. The pain, misery, and constant barrage of hatred and disgust and shame and guilt – that is NOT meant to be your reality.
You are not experiencing what you’re living with because you screwed up somewhere in a past life, because God has given up on or doesn’t love you, because you’re unworthy, or because you are inherently broken or sh*t. You were dealt a deck of cards and sometimes there is no lesson. But you are not the reason you were dealt that deck. You’ve done a heck of a good job living despite the crap.
You are not insane for believing what is true. I’ll repeat. You are NOT insane for believing what is true.
When we dare to dream, it sometimes feels like we’re tempting fate. As if we need to knock on every piece of wood in the house to ward off any bad juju. And when we, in our timid little hearts, dare to hope that things could be different…
“I feel like things might be falling in place [...] Like I actually might do something great.”
The bully, the abuser, the waking nightmare lands this “truth”:
“You think that you can amputate me? You got to kill you if you wanna kill me.”
This is how that voice literally has the power to kill us when we’re at our weakest. Many feel that they can only be rid of the agony, and can only kill that evil in their heads, by killing themselves.
The voice in your head doesn’t want you to succeed, and it keeps you from healing by conflating its survival with yours. You are not your mental illness, and it is not you. Please don’t fall into the trap of believing that it will only finally die if you do.
And to be clear, I’m not talking about actually hearing voices.
If you still push back at that voice and dare to stand your ground, the bully switches gears and becomes the guilt-tripping manipulator. It tries to befriend you and reinforce this faulty thought in the back of your head that maybe, just maybe, it’s right. That maybe it IS what has kept you going.
“You should be so lucky, having me inside you to guide you, remind you to manage expectations, provide you perspective.”
It’s not. Even if it were (which it’s not), it isn’t what’s going to help you going forward. And that’s what matters from here on out.
The illness says it’s the snake in Eden, the original evil, and can’t be gotten rid of. Maybe so, but Ren’s response is what we are taking to heart today and every day we’re able from here on out:
And I go by many names also
Some people know me as "hope"
Some people know me as the voice that you hear
When you loosen the noose on the rope
And you know how I know that I'll prosper?
'Cause I stand here beside you today
I have stood in the flames that cremated my brain
And I didn't once flinch or shake
As I got older,
I realised that there were no real winners
And there were no real losers in psychological warfare
But there were victims and there were students
And the more intensely that the light shone,
the darker the shadow it cast
And I must not forget, we must not forget
That we are human beings
The contrast between who you are as you’re healing and who you were up until then will only grow the more you heal. And it should. It’s okay that your light will cast a darker shadow onto your past. It’s supposed to. And don’t forget: You are the student of your own psychological warfare. You are here. Learning. You are soaking in the fervent belief of this community that you are hope, and hope is you.
And you are worth all the joy and fulfillment you could possibly want.
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