Verdict Rendered...

So yesterday was my first session with Lori Paul over at SpiderLodge studios. 

It went well overall. 

Apparently my brain IS lying to me and I'm not a total waste. 

What I hear when I sing is not what the professional vocalist heard and my voice was described as 'lovely' when she was introduced to Kara. 

Yup... 

This has created an interesting situation inside my skull with a twofold benefit. 

- Every time my thoughts try to complete a destructive cycle, an echo of her comment is all it can find to replay and that kind of short circuits the spiral. 

- This short circuit to the comfortable (in terms of routine/known) habits my patterns of thought follow is drawing my conscious attention to just how frequently these spirals occur. 

That is proving to be a significant amount of time each day essentially spent bullying myself. Exhausting and severely counterproductive. 

Can't change what you aren't aware of and, now that I am aware, I can work towards changing those mental habits. 

For the immediate moment, it kind of feels good to actually have something to block the spiral with. 

Brain is still at war with me but I might just have won a battle for a change. 

Looks like I'll be going back next week. 

Also of note - 

Amaya came with and she was absolutely amazing. Lori called her the session's spirit animal (she was wearing a grey cat mask) cause, if it wasn't for her sensitivity, I likely would have succumbed to the panic that manifested when I heard the reverb of my voice in the microphone and the phobic urge to flee that followed. I HAVE fled from the sound of my own voice before but she grabbed my hand at just the right moment and held it through to the end of the song. The panic eased just enough to push through it and I didn't end up humiliating myself with an ugly crying dash from the building never to be seen again. That child gives me courage. ❤️

I'm hoping that, through exposure, we can entice Amaya to start singing again herself. She's stopped in the last year and that strikes me as a warning bell, based on my own lived experience. Fingers crossed, eh? 

Elephant has my tongue...

I'm working at getting my voice back. 

I may have mentioned it before. 

So, I keep swinging back and forth between starting to think I might actually be hearing some improvement and absolutely hating how I sound. 

Since there is no way to sing aloud without drawing attention if any one is within earshot, my avoidant arse is finding it challenging to practice regularly. I sing mostly in the van on my way to and from work and, occasionally, while on the job site. I secured a pair of bone conduction earphones to practice with which allows me to use vocal apps on my phone to record, save, and playback practice. What I hear through the playback feature is the hardest to handle; no music recorded (I play the songs on my iPhone with the headphones and record via the apps on my iPad), only my pitiful voice with nothing for it to hide behind. 

Tho generally in tune, I'm sadly out of pitch and I wind extremely easily. My asthma/emphysema messes with my ability to draw enough air quickly while the phlegm in the bottom of my lungs is unpredictable as it randomly breaks free and tries to suffocate me. Having a large glob of thick mucus come blasting through one's vocal cords while trying to sing can make for a thick uncontrolled sound or a violent coughing fit with whatever air is in my lungs (that I was trying to sing with). Any confidence I have in my voice, which I might build while driving, is stripped away soon as I listen to a practice recording. 

Muscle memory helps from time to time - every once in a while I manage a lateral breath (which is the trick that allows a singer to draw a larger quantity of air very quick between lines). It was an interesting moment, while singing Elton John's "That's Why They Call It The Blues" on my way home one morning last week, when I felt my ribs move laterally for the first time since I was 13. Bittersweet was my reaction, with tears in my eyes, as I remembered what that particular proprioceptive sensation was and how easily I used to do it. 

It's tough not to get discouraged in particular when I have ear enough to hear just how rusty my voice is. While not perfect pitch, my ear is pretty close... I likely had PP as a child but hearing loss does play a factor in creating a greater challenge to getting it right. I also am having trouble with the top of the higher and bottom of the lower octave... As I can remember hitting the notes in question back in the day, I suspect that I can, with work, reclaim at least some of my former range. The trouble is in keeping my enthusiasm for trying while the demons in my head -- hypercritical thoughts that are designed to wear away self-esteem -- wreak havoc. 

I think it's safe, at this point, to call my voice Alto in range. 

Therapeutic Journaling ... Part the Second

How do you learn to be normal? Fit in?

I honestly haven't a clue. 

I know that you're supposed to learn how as you grow from child to adult but what happens when childhood was sufficiently fucked up that you spent almost the whole thing in a state of survival... Riding the crest of a river's worth of adrenaline daily frantically trying to avoid the Rapids and faring about as well as your average Wiley Coyote. When early life experience is a series of traumas and most of it was spent playing Keep-Away from conflict sources... Well, least-ways those which were avoidable. The two most painful sources of trauma lived at home a with me. In my home neighborhood and at school, active avoidance tended to work well to keep me out of reach of my hunters. 

Let's be frank here - all that running away made for a lonely time and a constant diet of lonely times made for woefully underdeveloped social skills. 

I've had it said that I frame my words oddly, one person even used 'quaintly' as a descriptor to my attempts at conversation. I don't actually understand why anyone would be surprised by that... I learned to communicate through reading. After the singing, reading was my great escape - it allowed me to remove myself from all of it. Within the pages of a novel, even the Elephant could be temporarily evaded. I rarely had others to talk to, as a result I couldn't learn to converse. Conversation is an art and, to gain skill at said art, one kind of has to have other people to practice with/on. I read pre-scripted story based conversation. Makes for an exceedingly awkward time when placed in a situation where small talk is the social norm... lots of painful silences. 

Is it even possible to learn those skills so late in life? 

I'm not expecting to be able to be the life of the party but being able to hold a normal "small talk" conversation without running out of words and ideas surely wouldn't be too much to ask, would it? 

I've tried being more gregarious, trying to organize events or activities for folk to take part in or just trying to come out of my hamster-ball more. I always fail miserably... Invariably screwing up somehow and ending up wishing I hadn't tried. Giving the mess in my head a ton of fodder for self-torture as soon as the anxiety and depression manage to batter my defences down. 

But it's still just running away from possible conflict... Like most humans, I absolutely hate being alone 95-97% of the time but life has well conditioned my avoidant responses.

It is better to be miserable alone doing battle with the inside of my skull than to take the chance of adding the drama of others to my already overflowing fountain of stress. 

I can, most times, manage the poison pills that pass for thoughts because I've had a lifetime to learn what my reaction patterns are and the ways my chemically imbalanced brain goes on the attack. Other people, due to my having missed the chance to learn how to be friendly and social on a casual level, bring a level of chaos which is often distressing. 

My concept of friendship is idealized... Having been shaped not by actual experience with other people but by the concepts of nobility and steadfastness found in stories. 

My ability to make friends, downright stunted by the fear that motivates me into avoidance. 

My ability to generate misunderstanding, is astounding... 

Breakthroughs in medical understanding in the physical effects of early/childhood trauma on the developing brain means that my agoraphobia diagnosis is likely to end up changed. I demonstrate textbook signs and symptoms of Avoidant Personality Disorder complete with the associated disastrous childhood backstory and resulting C-PTSD as evidenced by the fact that I relive memories and become triggered by them instead of simply remembering the sequence of events. Unfortunately those Breakthroughs are recent enough that my toolbox of useful coping skills is severely lacking and will take time to build. Trial and error style, or course. 

I'm trying to approach the idea of having a personality disorder from the perspective that this need not be a progressively worsening situation. Because of their nature, phobias can be managed with great effort and persistence but they cannot be cured. I am and will always be acrophobic (pathologically and unreasoning terrified of heights) I can learn to moderate and control my reactions so as not to humiliate myself but the actual fear doesn't go away. A personality disorder, however, is a set of dysfunctional but learned behavioral patterns. As such, it ought to be possible to alter the actual reactions themselves... Dismantling the harmful behaviors 

And then replacing them with ...

With what? 

Hmm... It would appear I've circled back on myself to the beginning of this post.