'When we look in the mirror, are we sure we know who we are?' David Wood
What if we all live a faith based life? A faith, a belief, that we will be alive in the future - tomorrow - that we will continue to function as we do now, until we don't. We assume that we will keep on breathing, indeed some concentrate on the rhythm, as in meditation. We assume that our bodily functions can be taken for granted, as if a benign being is looking after us, and it is safe to go to sleep because we believe we will wake up.
We always want to formalise a personal faith like this and turn it into a group process where, allied with others, we can feel less alone, and more secure as we sense their breathing and sing along with them. Established religions (and cults) offer an escape from atomisation and an awareness of the limits of biological life.
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But then, unbidden, comes the Mind Maelstrom - an attack of high anxiety and panic - a calamity that shakes my faith, because suddenly there is no protector, no loving parent, no companion. Instead, there is fear - that my heart will stop, that I will fall down, that a claustrophobic dream will become reality, that I will die and no one will know or care. It is like being sucked into Poe's maelstrom, a swirling vortex almost impossible to escape.
Without the self belief, the guarantee of continuity, I am helpless in an indifferent universe, immersed in Bion's nameless dread, facing imminent oblivion. The MM is like a psychotic episode, in which everyday reality is replaced by terrifying fantasies, agency is gone, and helplessness is there instead. It is losing one's mind, for a time.
(MM is a rapid switch from order to chaos. From one part of the personality to another. The parts can usually coexist because one is hidden, but when that suppressed part erupts, order and reason are replaced by fear and confusion.)
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The inexplicable crisis softens, then passes. I am still here. Enormous relief, and my personal faith about to be restored, but there is also a feeling of shame for having succumbed to melodrama.
I want to keep the whole episode secret. How could I explain a causeless crisis, with no evidence of it apart from pallor and tremor? No, it's a weakness that is better hidden and forgotten.
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It may be possible for a group, a community, even a nation to be assailed by a collective MM, so as to lose confidence and effective function. The UK, facing the loss of its protector, the EU, is now in a state of anxiety, panic, and shame. The trauma that is Brexit is hitting individuals and communities, and is the outcome of an upsurge of suppressed anger and resentment as the once an Empire now feels like a colony that has lost its sovereignty, and therefore its faith in itself.