Ah, another good morning and another self-diagnosis. If I had a kit, I would sell it and make millions until the lawsuits took it all away. I also make a hobby of psychoanalyzing myself. Whew, long word there, had to stretch for that one. These habits or hobbies are not limited to PTSD sufferers or even your garden-variety anxious folks. Not sure why they're called that. I've looked in my garden many times and never seen any anxious folks growing there. My anxieties and I visit a couple of times each day, but we don't stay for long. Something usually drives us back into the house: too hot, too cold, too windy, too many bugs, too much whining, who knows how these things get started; I blame my anxieties.
As my pack of yapping anxieties follows me back into the house, I take the opportunity to tally up a list of my life-ending woes. A stray pain or two in the chest is grounds for a heart attack diagnosis. An ache in the shoulders is cause for some other surgery. My mind is good at diagnosing these things, it considers itself among the finest of analytical doctors. The fact that I have only just finished an hour or so of running the hoe or hand tiller is forgotten as evidence not worth considering by this self-proclaimed doctor. The major problem with this homemade physician running around making its diagnoses of doom is that it occasionally gets something correct.
At some point in my first series of visits to the mental health counselor, my portable psychoanalyst began to suspect that I thought surgery was the answer to all my ills, real or imagined. The reason for this was that I kind of liked being the center of attention and that I was now using the wrong methods, namely my various non-specific medical woes, to occupy that spot in the surgical ward. My therapist said something intelligent like, "Hermm.." and then reported my self-diagnosis to his real mind doctors back at the mother ship. They came back with, "That is one of the most insightful things we've heard a patient say." Whoa! Score one for the knuckle-dragger in the patient's chair. Unfortunately, that only encouraged the phantom quack in my head to strive to match the feat. But how did the ancient and not quite honorable tradition of self-diagnosis begin?
Some years before back in the day, Aunty Diluvia lived across the cart path from her nephew, one Noah of the Big Boat. Aunty and her nephew enjoyed the occasional earnest discussion over subjects such as animal husbandry or weather, but mostly they loved each other and enjoyed their neighborly chats.
"Aunty Diluvia, we need to talk about your velociraptors again!" Noah greeted his aunt with an affectionate kiss, even though his tone was more exasperated. "They ate the unicorns and bicorns last night, and I think I may need to put the hippogriffs down. I'm supposed to take all of these animals on the ark you know."
"The what?"
"The big boat over there, Aunty."
"Oh, I wish you would take that thing and your beasts somewhere. It blocks the sunrise on my gardenias, you know." Aunty D. motioned to her pets lounging on the couch beside her. "Chiron and Belial were just having fun. They're still just cute little rapties, dear, won't you sit down?"
Belial gave Noah a toothy grin filled with bits of what looked like horse flesh.
"I think I'll pass, the ark needs some more pitching up near the top." Noah backed away from Chiron who seemed interested in his leg in a culinary sort of way. "I'm going to slam the door on these two if they don't behave around my animals!"
"The what, dear?"
"My beasts over there. Are you going to get packed up Aunty? The Lord says the rain will start any day. The kids and most of the ani...uh, beasts boarded yesterday."
"Oh, I don't think I'll be going, dear. My foot has a little infection where Chiron nipped me, and I'm probably going to need heart surgery any day now, and my friend, Esmelda, thinks her gall bladder is going out, and..."
Noah made his escape before Aunty Diluvia's entire circle of self-diagnosers could be cataloged.
Whether Aunty Diluvia and her friends actually began the bad habit of self-diagnosis is open to some historical debate. Some scholars say that Eve mentioned something about curing a tummy-ache with an apple before all hell broke loose, but others claim that is a mere gut feeling.
Have a great day, manage your pain, distract the anxieties, and laugh off the depression. God bless you!Bucky
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