Read on Twitter
How Conan the Barbarian Curbed My Anxiety: A Thread
When I was young I had terrible night terrors. A tall man with a hat at the foot of my bed, with all kinds of other shapes in the corners.
I had not idea what to do about it, so I did my best to suppress it.
When I was young I had terrible night terrors. A tall man with a hat at the foot of my bed, with all kinds of other shapes in the corners.
I had not idea what to do about it, so I did my best to suppress it.
I would try to force it out of my vision. Push it down and make it fade away. It slowly turned into a feeling of a presence in the dark, in the corner of my eye, and the occasional nightmare. But it always felt like it was still there.
Fast forward twenty years. @eigenrobot and @selentelechia watch Conan the Barbarian. Eigen mentions the OG Conan stories, and I check them out.
I love them. They're fantastic. I read all of them over the course of three days.
Conan's instinctive self-confidence is inspiring.
I love them. They're fantastic. I read all of them over the course of three days.
Conan's instinctive self-confidence is inspiring.
He reacts to his own, much more fleshy demons with a kind of instinctive grace and total commitment. He avoids them quietly or launches all-out death defying assaults.
The utterly primal attitude is so different from my own responses. So I study it.
The utterly primal attitude is so different from my own responses. So I study it.
I spend a lot of time thinking about what it would take for one's instinctive response to an overwhelming supernatural threat to be attack. I try to get into Conan's headspace. I contemplate the riddle of steel. I work out more than normal.
And then one night, wholly unexpectedly, I wake up screaming and on my feet. My night terrors are back. *Something* has manifested itself around a lamp. And I am attacking it. Every last pretension is stripped away, and I am punching my demon in the face.
I can't really tell you how long that went on for - probably not more than a few seconds. I felt the thing slip off into the shadows. Not dead - but gone for now. My hands are bloody from hitting the lamp the thing had been around. I am afraid, and at same time I feel strong.
The next few days are fantastic. Working out is easier than ever. I face up to a lot of my own fears - not just of external reality, but my own rage and anger. The anxiety is almost gone. It slowly returned over the next few weeks - I didn't *kill* my demons after all.
But the levels never reach quite what they were before, and in the two nightmares I've had since then, I ended up attacking and killing the monsters chasing me, which has never happened before.
I'll need some serious spiritual firepower to permanently kill or banish my demons, but this was a good start.
So: Go read Conan the Barbarian, to learn how to punch your demons in the face
So: Go read Conan the Barbarian, to learn how to punch your demons in the face
Some follow-up:
Some of you are probably wondering "Vogelfrei, do you think there are actual demons". Honestly, I only practice reductionism on things I can reduce. All I know is that prayer and punching seem to be more effective than understanding them "scientifically"
Some of you are probably wondering "Vogelfrei, do you think there are actual demons". Honestly, I only practice reductionism on things I can reduce. All I know is that prayer and punching seem to be more effective than understanding them "scientifically"
In terms of psychology, a very useful heuristic for trauma is the idea that people generate fixed fight/flight/freeze /fawn responses. Part of the job of this bizarre psychological stuff is to break up the fixations and let you explore new basic responses.
In terms of anxiety, another useful model is that people with anxiety are hallucinating predators everywhere. (For people who believe in real demons - they would obviously exploit underlying anxieties to manifest, so there's no contradiction here)
So some people are constantly being "triggered" into fixed patterns that then go on to color a lot of the rest of how they think and live. But you can change these things. It isn't easy, but you can.
The Conan the Barbarian stories are a *lot* of fun - you should read them even if you're not going to try anything similar.
Reading Mishima was very useful for helping me to understand the Ethos of immanence/action, and undergirded my success here.
Reading Mishima was very useful for helping me to understand the Ethos of immanence/action, and undergirded my success here.
And yes, while this story is strange it is also absolutely true.
Tagging some people who might be interested @erienneyoung @ChangKelong @nosilverv
