Dr. Sarah Marusek

I do not want to be alone right now.

The only reason why I need to socially isolate is because I feel exponentially worse than anybody else is able to understand.

As this has also been true my entire life, it fills me with rage.

And now that I am almost stripped to my facial injury, exposing the summation of all of my lived trauma, my reality creates such a state of distress that my body goes into an extreme panic whenever I socialise.

I am frightened that I will be misunderstood and have a seizure.

Of course, I have always been scared of what misunderstandings do to my body, but I previously had the monster’s strength to help control myself.

Normally I am a wonderful fawn, losing myself to please others.

But without the monster’s integrity, my body is in an absolute state of terror.

Why? The pain in my nervous system is so intense that my monster will still not allow me to fully access the pinched nerve in my cheek.

However, by now the scar tissue down the vagus pathway has almost completely broken down, which was also the backbone of my monster.

This means I am less in control of my nervous system as I continue healing.

I have never felt so incompetent.

Today is the shakiest I have been in weeks and my art reflects that. I no longer even know how to calm my system down.

Oxygen still hurts. And the monster really hates ice baths at the moment; it is like a wrestling match every time. Even exercise is difficult and forced.

The monster does not want to die!

I constantly say out loud to myself ‘I know that it hurts,’ hoping my body will finally feel safe enough to just let everything go.

I even created an ‘eye can’ glass mosaic on my fridge.

My right side needs to show the monster that I can let go. Drawing it is definitely helping, but I do not know how to feel safe in this world.

When I was a baby, the pain of my pinched trigeminal nerve could not be addressed by anybody, as they did not know it existed.

I want to remind you again that trigeminal neuralgia is also ‘the world’s most painful known medical condition’.

I had a baby’s brain so when my stomach problems pulled on the injury, my body simply did what it had to do to protect me.

The monster rooted in my vagus nerve.

Because it has grown with me throughout my entire life, it has become trapped like some kind of internal vortex in the vagus pathway.

This pathway includes our heart, lungs, stomach, liver and intestines. But it indirectly connects with other parts, including the ovaries.

Basically, all this means that the vagus pretty much controls us.

Aspects of polyvagal theory help to clarify a bit. Conceptualised by Stephen Porges, the theory explains why we respond to life in certain ways.

Especially, why are we scared in safe environments?

Porges theorises that the nervous system is involved in three adaptive behavioural strategies: safe, mobilised and immobilised.

Safety is the parasympathetic ventral vagal system.

Mobilised is the sympathetic nervous system; our flight and flight.

Immobilised is the parasympathetic dorsal vagal system, or freeze and fawn.

Importantly, we cannot control these:

These adjustments occur automatically, often outside of conscious awareness, and influence how we feel, think, and relate to others.

Porges uses the concept of neuroception to describe ‘the set of neural processes that continuously evaluate cues of safety, danger, and life threat outside of our conscious awareness.’

I actually prefer the term preconscious here, because our bodies are drawing on a shared, universal knowledge.

In any case, neuroception is influenced both by our internal states (safety, mobilised or immobilised) and our environments, including other people.

In this way, it ‘functions as a continuous surveillance system that evaluates risk and guides autonomic regulation’.

Lodged in my vagus, the monster hacked my neuroception, helping me to navigate most of my social life in the immobilised behavioural strategy without anybody ever noticing.

Because my nervous system is always scared and in pain, my environments are always threatening, no matter how lovely you are.

And I am a really nice person. Just not as nice as you think I am.

I have been unable to stick up for myself my entire life.

This is why I research the oppressed!

I can identify with the underdog.

It’s even why I chose to live here in Wales, without any family or friends.

I should be proud of this achievement, tricking you all for so long. But I do not want to have a monster inside of me that forces me to be alone.

So here we go: ‘I know that it hurts. But I can let go…’