Well, it's been a long time since the last post (happy new year, and all that crap to you). I wish I could say that I've been busy, but the truth is that I've been playing Shine On You Crazy Diamond on guitar just about every day. Yeah, it's a pathetic excuse, but at least it's true. Anyway, I broke my top E string earlier, which brings me here, with a rather different tone to the other posts.
This came up last Tuesday in a Biology class. We started a new unit, and we began with the heart and blood. All very well, four chambers of the heart, blood carries oxygen and food etc. around the body - nothing particularly mind-taxing. Then my teacher puts on some video to end the lesson. It was one of those "real life" stories, that are supposed to explain science at the same time. Anyway, the story was about some kid who had a genetic disease that wrecks the muscle tissue that he had got off his father. Then we were told how his father had died from the disease - his aorta (largest artery in the body) had split. Upon hearing this (and the lead up in the video), I go from a relatively healthy state to feeling extremely faint, and spend the break which followed the lesson trying to cool down.
This didn't bother me too much, my cynical nature could discount it as a coincidence. However during the next lesson on the Thursday, my teacher brought out a pig's heart, and dissected it. I thought nothing of it beforehand, I'd seen blood and gore before without any ill-effects. Yet again, however, I felt faint. I did a bit of research that night, and apparently this is a symptom of haemophobia.
Except I'm not afraid of blood.
I can write this blog without any ill-effects. I feel fine, despite the fact I'm picturing both events in my mind, empathising the blood element to try and provoke a reaction. Even when I feel feint, I can still comprehend what's happening, and realise that it is, as a "phobia" states - irrational to fear it. As I saw the heart come out (until I had to stop watching because I would feint had I stayed any longer), I was not afraid, and to be honest, I was looking forward to seeing it get opened up and seeing the different parts interacting. But some unconscious part of my mind decides I'm not allowed to do this.
What puzzles me most, however, is how can someone whose whole belief begins at rational thought, develop something so irrational sub-consciously? I'm no psychiatrist (and far from it), but it seems to me that there is something more going on in my head than I had previously thought.
I know I'm probably stating the obvious, but this really has been a bit of a wake up call for me. How much control do we really have over our minds? Is there anyway the conscious part of the brain defeat the sub-conscious in determine how we act and react?
Can we change?
Sunday 27 January 2008
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