FMC_ Demonic Engines (Website)

the

Demonic

Engines

of the unconscious mind

contents

WARNING:

This work is about me.

I know, I’m sorry.

I wish it was about you too.

The thing

An Ancient Deity

II.

DEMONS

What lurks beneath

III.

Survival instinct

SHAME, ANGER, and the will to live.

Your paragraph text

IV.

DELUSION

The dark lord PARANOIA

Rats

A personal case of possession

VI.

exorcism

An honest conclusion

The Thing

The other day I went and did it again. Just like I always do. You don’t need me to be more specific than that do you? We all have (at least) one:

“The Thing” that we are trying not to do and that, despite ourselves, we end up doing anyway. Come on don’t tell me that you don’t have one.

You don’t watch too much TV?

Maybe you are trying to avoid junk food?

Don’t lie. I know you have one.

Are you not flawed?

Do you not strive and falter like the rest of us?

I’d be careful talking like that. You might insult the God of Bad Habits. And when the GBH feels insulted he gets angry.

And well, you won’t like him when he’s angry...

BEAR WITNESS, MORTAL, TO THE GOD OF BAD HABITS!

WITNESS HIM AND TREMBLE!

IS THIS NOT YOUR GOD??

Hark! The Great One Speaks! Of what terrible cosmic retribution does he foretell?

The other day I went and did it again. Just like I always do. You don’t need me to be more specific than that do you? We all have (at least) one:

“The Thing” that we are trying not to do and that, despite ourselves, we end up doing anyway. Come on don’t tell me that you don’t have one.

You don’t watch too much TV?

Maybe you are trying to avoid junk food?

Don’t lie. I know you have one.

Are you not flawed?

Do you not strive and falter like the rest of us?

I’d be careful talking like that. You might insult the God of Bad Habits. And when the GBH feels insulted he gets angry.

And well, you won’t like him when he’s angry...

BEAR WITNESS, MORTAL, TO THE GOD OF BAD HABITS!

WITNESS HIM AND TREMBLE!

IS THIS NOT YOUR GOD??

Hark! The Great One Speaks! Of what terrible cosmic retribution does he foretell?

“you got a light?”

The other day I went and did it again. Just like I always do. You don’t need me to be more specific than that do you? We all have (at least) one:

“The Thing” that we are trying not to do and that, despite ourselves, we end up doing anyway. Come on don’t tell me that you don’t have one.

You don’t watch too much TV?

Maybe you are trying to avoid junk food?

Don’t lie. I know you have one.

Are you not flawed?

Do you not strive and falter like the rest of us?

I’d be careful talking like that. You might insult the God of Bad Habits. And when the GBH feels insulted he gets angry.

And well, you won’t like him when he’s angry...

BEAR WITNESS, MORTAL, TO THE GOD OF BAD HABITS!

WITNESS HIM AND TREMBLE!

IS THIS NOT YOUR GOD??

Hark! The Great One Speaks! Of what terrible cosmic retribution does he foretell?

...so about the other day, as I was saying:

I engaged in a behavior that I knew was destructive, that I specifically planned to avoid, that I thought I would be able to resist.

It seemed so simple: there were so many good reasons to abstain from this particular activity and so few to indulge.

All of the thoughts in my head lined up with the combined forces of memory, logic, reasoning, and will in a unified front prepared to battle any temptation that might arise. Trenches were dug, bayonets sharpened, locks loaded, and when the time came... I indulged without hesitation.

All of my thoughts meant shit.

Sound reasoning is no match for these habits that we carry: addictions, trauma responses, negative emotional spirals, etc. Logical thoughts are just images in the head: flat, cold, dead.

Written mid-July 2024, but the reader can be assured that as long as I have lived – and as far as I can tell as long as I will live – I have always done this “the other day.”

I’m not going to tell you.

I already told you: not gonna happen

For the last time: no.

Demons

The Unconscious can be thought of as a series of automatic processes that our brain and central nervous system conduct without us having to think about it. This includes things like maintaining body temperature, food digestion, and the healing of illness and wounds. Some of these unconscious processes, such as breathing, can become conscious if we pay attention.

There are also strictly mental processes running unconsciously. We can feel emotions and not know why until we think about it. Traumatic memories, addictions, habits of cognition, these demons exact unceasing influence over our perceptions and interpretations. They filter our experience of the world, coloring all we see in their own hue, changing our behavior, controlling us.

Even if we become conscious of these processes, being able to control them can elude our best efforts. Our Demons are alive. They have desires and preferences, likes and dislikes, personalities of their own. They don’t want to be controlled. They want their influence. They want power, and they have it.

When a child touches the stove, they don’t have to think about pulling their hand away. The body overrides the mind.

These Demonic Engines have burrowed deep into the body and act upon us with one principle, the same basic principle of all life-forms: self-preservation.

This can be seen even in more common emotional responses.

Have you ever been angry at someone, only to find out that you misunderstood them?

The rug is pulled out from under ANGER, but ANGER does not want to go away.

You can feel it inside of you thrashing around like a drowning man, searching for something to grasp onto, for another reason to justify its existence. ANGER is inside of you, not letting go, desperate to survive. It can be difficult to relax after that.

Or how about that classic cognitive distortion: how you can receive tons of compliments for your new haircut (“nice haircut,” “love the do,” “good work on that hair thing,” etc.), but end up focusing on the one negative comment (“wow, I didn’t know Stevie Wonder opened a barbershop”).

The SHAME you feel was not born of the insult. It already existed, lying in wait to rise from the smoky, subconscious underworld and assert itself in your conscious mind. Once there, it has you. All cognitive processes are now filtered through SHAME: thoughts, perceptions and interpretations all imbued with the ashen taste of SHAME’s cup. SHAME’s claws dig in and hold on, and anyone who has found themselves in this cycle can attest to how difficult this particular demon can be to shake off.

Can you really blame SHAME? Like all life, like us, it just doesn’t want to die.

I don’t get a lot of compliments, ok?

Survival

instinct

PARANOIA

Paranoia is particularly potent. The paranoiac interprets all evidence, regardless of actual content, as confirmation of the particular delusion that has hold of them.

Imagine a woman, let’s call her…Messica. Messica is driving her 1985 Pontiac Trans Am on the highway above the legally posted speed limit when she notices a cop car trailing her. After a brief moment of panic, Messica lowers her aviator sunglasses, brushes her bangs out of her eyes, and notices that it is not actually a cop car, but a Chrysler PT Cruiser. NOT being under the demon PARANOIA’s pernicious influence, her anxiety subsides, she lights another Parliament and continues operating her vehicle at dangerously high speeds, tipsy, to pick up her kids late from baseball practice.

Now imagine a man, let’s call him…Jake. Jake is paranoid. He is driving his 2013 Volvo C30 (the official car of the Twilight movie franchise) exactly 9 mph over the speed limit, in the right lane. He notices the same “cop car,” but he thinks: “PT Cruiser? Why would the FBI be following me??”

I used to have an irrational fear of rats. You may be wondering if this ever made me squeal and jump on top of a chair holding a broom like a weapon, and the answer is: countless times. Yes, yes, very funny I admit it. If you think that’s good, get this: at least once, I was also in fact wearing an apron. Laugh it up. But wait, this is the best part: it all originated from a traumatic experience where I almost died in an alley, alone in the cold winter, amongst the rats and garbage and bitter wind.

Shut up

You had me at bangs

So is she single, or?

lol

RATS

For years I had this primal fear. Seeing one outside, even at a distance, would send my heart into my throat and my stomach into my pants. Inside, in my home, I constantly saw them darting to and fro out of the corner of my eye. Every creak and crack in the wall was a rat, or worse, a whole mischief. Perhaps an elite mischief, like Ocean’s 11 (but with rats), each using their unique abilities to execute a flawlessly planned caper to break into my bedroom while I’m asleep and…

I never could figure out that last part. What could they possibly do to me that I would be so afraid?

I could easily beat a rat in a fight. It didn't matter how irrational it was: I felt threatened. Fear was in my body and it did not want to leave.

I wasted HOURS of my life trying to see rats that I “just saw” out of the corner of my eye. I would stand there (yes, with the broom) staring at the corner behind the couch where it went, where I know it could not escape without me seeing. Staring, silent, unblinking, heart racing, waiting, wasting time, wasting away.

Someone who hadn’t been put into park by a paranoid delusion desperate to justify itself might think after a little while: “I guess I’m mistaken, it definitely would have moved by now” and gone on with their night. All I could think was:

“It knows I’m watching. They never move when you’re watching. It wants me to look away. But I won’t.”

Tragically, I knew how crazy it was. Those first thoughts happen right alongside the paranoid ones. I would go through all the reasons that this was impossible:

A rat isn’t smart enough to play tricks. Even if it was, it can’t see you. Oceans 11 is actually full of plot holes and pretty unrealistic. Even if there is a rat here, standing here staring at it all night does nothing but make your life worse.

But the thoughts had no power over the accursed demon PARANOIA. It was he who wanted me to stand there, who wanted me to just see – just once – that he actually does deserve to exist. That his life has value just like mine.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rat#:~:text=A%20group%20of%20rats%20is,losses%2C%20especially%20in%20developing%20countries.

I PROMISE. Any rat out there: try me - I fucking DARE you

Look I said rat, not Rat-Spider. Anyways I got this back thing, the doctor said I really shouldn’t be fighting right now.

exorcism

Okay cards on the table: I’m not a licensed priest or mechanic in this state. I’m not trying to tell anybody what to do, and taking psychological advice from me is a bit like taking parenting advice from Messica, but for what it’s worth, that’s where I started.

These processes, symptoms, demons, whatever you want to call them, don’t exist for no reason. They are a part of me as real as any other, and they have meaning. I can’t bury or ignore them, and trying to out think them is a dead end. But when I approach them with love, with acceptance, with the recognition that they want what’s best for me same as I do, the way forward tends to open up.

Or, I don’t know, call a real fucking priest or something.