Анна Давыдова-Городецкая – Ouroboros or the world inside out (страница 6)
I mentioned that my path to understanding my psychological processes began with one sleepless night. But I had countless such nights, often having difficulty falling asleep and frequently waking up at night, only to fall asleep again 10 minutes before the alarm clock.
Now I'm awake, lying down. The apartment and the street are quiet; nothing frightening is happening, and yet I can't fall asleep. What's stopping me? It is this continuous flow of disturbing thoughts, these agonizing dialogues in my head that hinder me. They create that inner noise that wakes up the brain, not allowing it to sleep. Just when I am about to fall asleep, suddenly some thought comes again, and the brain starts working idly, trying to solve a non-existent problem. I shared my thoughts on this matter with a friend, and this is what she said:
I know how difficult insomnia is and how many different medical preparations and systems are created to combat it. But try, when going to bed or waking up at night, to stop the stream of consciousness by an effort of will. Try not to think about anything, focusing on your own breathing. You will not notice how you fall asleep. At least for me, this method was the most effective.
Anguish
I wrote earlier that the bulk of my emotional discomfort was caused by difficulties in personal communications, lack of stable attachment, and bouts of hard-to-control anguish.
A bit of chronology: In the summer of 2019, I had a very vivid, incredibly realistic, and therefore well-remembered dream. I was approaching my entryway and felt uncomfortable because the door looked different from what I was used to – it was wooden and without an intercom, like those from Soviet times. I went inside and saw different railings, elevators, and paint on the walls. Everything indicated that this was the past, around the mid-70s. I went up to my floor, approached the door of my apartment, and realized that nobody knew me there. The first owners, still young, lived there, and there was no point in talking to them. I went downstairs, walked towards the neighboring house, and tried to figure out what to do because I had no documents, no money, and no idea how I got there or how to get out. Besides, my son was waiting for me in the present and probably wouldn't wait for me, so I had to warn him that I wouldn't come home. I took out my phone, dialed my son's number, and he answered. I said, “Sonny, I'm in the past and I don't know how to get back". At that moment, the phone in my hands turned to dust. I tried to figure out what to do and concluded that the only person who could help me was my mother. I needed to get to Minsk, find our house near Station Square, and I thought I could recognize it in my dream. I realized that she wouldn't believe me because I was 45, her daughter was about 2–3 years old, and she herself was about 25. I also realized that I knew the past and the future and could convince her that I was her grown-up daughter. And we would find a way out. That's when I woke up. I was surprised by this dream but generally didn't give it much thought.
In the summer of 2023, after another unsuccessful attempt to build a relationship, I actively listened to online lectures by various psychologists, which led me to realize that all my problems stemmed from childhood.
Six months later, I suddenly realized that during those sleepless nights, which happened quite often, I was engaging in auto-aggressive attacks on myself for being the way I am and for my life being the way it is, rather than what it could have been if I had been different and acted differently in various situations.
At the end of June, I had a dream about a dragon-lizard, and I began to analyze my every emotion with the persistence of a gold digger who had stumbled upon a gold mine, constantly asking myself why I felt the way I did at any given moment.
Finally, in August 2024, I had a quite neutral dream in which I was walking home alone on the street in late fall. I woke up with an unpleasant feeling centered in the solar plexus area, which I recognized as a familiar oppressive longing. I habitually interpreted the dream as suppressed pain from loneliness. But as I analyzed my sensations, I suddenly realized that it was a feeling of hunger. Upon reflection, I concluded that the feeling of hunger and the feeling of loneliness and rejection in my psyche are so closely connected that they are, in fact, difficult to distinguish.
It was then that I finally decided to question my mother, despite her active protest. She reluctantly told me that, despite a normal birth, I was brought to her only after 10 hours. I was weaned at 9 months of age and sent to my grandmother's house in another city the same day. For the next few years, I saw my mother only twice a month on weekends. Thus, the meaning of the dream I had 5 years ago became clear to me! It was my mother who helped me understand why my psyche was organized in such a way, why I had been suffering from rejection and loneliness all my life, searching for situations where rejection would be overcome, making unsuccessful attempts to find a mate, and why I suffered from night hunger that I could not recognize and confused with loneliness.
I believe this anguish of mine comes from infancy when these feelings were triggered simultaneously – the baby was hungry if lying alone and feeling rejected. Accordingly, as an adult, at night I dream about hunger as anguish, and during the day I perceive anguish (each one has their own, for their lost “paradise,” for their illusory dream) as hunger. By satisfying hunger, we temporarily alleviate the longing. But since this feeling is immense, we have to eat a lot, and the effect of eating is short-term.
So why does this irrational feeling of anguish arise?
Essentially, loneliness/rejection and the resulting anguish is an infantile fear of starvation. “If I'm not alone, but with someone who loves me and doesn't reject me, that means they'll feed me, and I won't die” – that's what the infant thinks. This is what an infantile person thinks on a subconscious level. An adult can feed themselves; they are oriented to the real feeling of hunger and satisfy it. The infant is oriented to the feeling of loneliness as a fear of death and satisfies this feeling with the help of food, which is widely available and excessive in our time, or by constantly searching for a partner, and when a partner appears, by total fusion with them.
The anguish I experienced in the dream, which turned out to be physiological hunger, was very similar to the sensation that haunted me for many years in waking life and which I identified as pain from loneliness. This anguish stems from the combination in the infant psyche of physiological hunger and the feeling of rejection, frozen forever, like a gnat in amber, in the ouroboric structure. It is the anguish of the infant who has been expelled from the womb and deprived of the breast, that is, rejected. This infantile anguish arises from the impossibility of returning to the womb, where it was warm and nourishing, from the unrealizability of this illusory dream. Essentially, it is the consequence of auto-aggression, by which the person punishes themselves for rejection.
The ouroboric personality is always lonely because it lacks empathy, views others consumeristically, and cannot connect with anyone on a deep level, yet it suffers from loneliness. In short periods of love, anguish disappears, feelings burst into life, and there is a sense of reality, bringing the joy of being. But then inevitably comes alienation and coldness. And again, loneliness, and again, anguish.
This is why I identified my anguish, with which I began the narrative, as loneliness. I constantly need someone whose resources I can access, a partner through whom I will achieve my dreams, defeat loneliness, be loved and protected, and, on a deep unconscious level, return to the “fullness” of the illusory “paradise” of the mother's womb.
This universal anguish permeates the entire existence of the ouroboric personality and is weakened only when there is a chance to realize the illusory dream, i.e., when a “dream embodiment” appears.
The one who will achieve a dream
In the ouroboric structure, there is no love or empathy, but there is idealization and a desire to possess a person who seems (it is an illusion) to the actor as someone who can help achieve what is desired. This desired thing varies from person to person – love, fame, power, money, status, stability, relationships, family, health, children, etc. These desirable things are the components that make up the Reference Image. Personally, I have always dreamed of stability and high social status.