# Tree Roots - Not an Arch



## yeah_yeah_yeah (Mar 27, 2007)

Hello

Something that might help you to visualise treating aspects of SA ...

The Arch Analogy










A lot of people give the impression that overcoming clinical Social Anxiety is like an arch - that *once you identfy the keystone and pull at it, the whole structure comes tumbling down* and you are 'cured'. This makes people look and look and wait and wait for that one solution - their keystone - which will turn them into that eloquent, charming, attractive person they know they must be to be happy. Its true that there may be one particularly thorny thing that produces the majority of person's problems - but if they have suffered for a while there is much more depth to the issue. To take the internet analogy - the thinking would be like if SAS went down, there would be no more community. Take away the 'hub' and the rest dies. But somehow the keystone theory does not work - that one quick tug in the right place just doesnt exist yet (sorry to use SAS as a metaphor for SA itself ... s'jus to make a point, yanno??). They might reason that they obviously pulled at the wrong bit. "Keep trying til you find the right one" ... but the 'arch' keeps standing .... and you may get frustrated beyond measure before you see real progress. Maybe you feel you cannot even try, burdened as you are with depression. Unfortunately then, the mantra becomes _"I want to become perfect, by doing nothing at all..." _ and you may believe that the world owes you an answer, a quick one that will not require you to do anything hard. At this stage, its only once the pain becomes SO SEVERE that you are motivated to act.

The Tree Root analogy










The above is a picture of actual neurons in the brain. You can see how they branch out all over, like a suburban road map. There is cross-branching, terminations, mutliple tributaries ... many many little paths that go off and form the very stuff of consciousness. Yep - right there, you are looking at the material of mind - the RAM chips, hard drive and CPU of the #1 Human Being.

When that Human Being becomes troubled, its as a result of patterns hidden in this tangle of neurons. Each single route of neurons can represent several memories or physical functions. There are further ones branching off which require the correct stimulus to be activated. When you start a program of recovery, you might take a chunk out of the middle left part of the screen. Thats cool - that bit of brain might be changed for the better. But it still may have another chunk off to the right that control some other feeling or symtpom. There may be 'back doors' back into the same reaction duplicated elsewhere. This is because the brain is a learning computer (to quote the Terminator) and each new experience creates new tangles and connections. To take the internet analgoy - it would be like distributing SAS across 4000 computers. One of our computers might fail, but the rest can still communicate and so SAS would remain. This is how it works in the brain - like clearing tree roots, you have to snip out all the 'bad shoots' before the SA withers away. Some shoots may have a smaller contribution to your problems, and in fact even after you feel better you will still need to keep a little look out. But if you do the job well, it will be more like a little spring de-weeding and regenerative flower-planting than a mass Tropical Jungle clearance ...  Alternatively if you don't start, the jungle gets thicker and thicker and harder to penetrate. Do nothing and deteriorate - or act and regenerate.

Clearing away tree roots can be a very long, time consuming job. You might go "Oh we'll just hack this big one and it'll be ok" - only to find that the damn thing grows back. "That damn root cutting did nothing. ITS ALL POINTLESS" you might shout - missing the point in the first place that the structure had remained intact anyway.

Beating Sa and depression is an ongoing challenge with no overnight solution. Once you realise that the journey to feeling better is like the roots, and not like the arch - you will be less prone to crippling frustration and anger along the road to getting better. The choice is to find the first step and take it - instead of hoping upon hope that your keystone is going to appear. The waiting time for a keystone may be longer than the Job time to remove the roots. Sitting in a waiting room, time seems to slow to a stop. Its dull. That man heavy breathing across from you gets really annoying and you wish that DAMN kid would turn his MP3 player down. Minutes last for hours.... But once you are in the middle of a Job, you tend not to notice the time pass - absorbed as you are in the process. Before you know it, you're done, and you have a nice new space to go and play in.


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