“You’re Too Smart, That’s the Problem”
This is a phrase I’ve often heard. It can sound like a joke, but to the “I” of today, it sounds like a clinical diagnosis. During a recent counseling session, I told my therapist that thoughts were pouring out of me in excess. He cautiously mentioned the concept of Flight of Ideas. Not a string of meaningless thoughts, but an overflow of associative leaps and connections—a state where the speed of thought outpaces the speed of speech. While logic is maintained, the ability to control the tempo is lost. It is a category of manic thinking, but it has also been my familiar way of living.
How the System Known as ‘I’ Overheats
Since childhood, I have read contexts to survive, suppressed my emotions, and repeated the cycle of interpretation and prediction. A child who learns that emotions are powerless strengthens the analytical brain instead. A child who learns that empathy is dangerous survives through objectification. As a result, I became someone who is always “awake,” overflowing with thoughts, yet emotionally delayed or numbed, and whose execution is either excessive or paralyzed. My thoughts are usually logical; in writing or speaking, I rarely show any logical discord. For this reason, it felt difficult to view my state as “manic,” yet the imbalance in executive function was clear, and I could not deny that this state of overheating was breaking my ability to function.
How Is the Brain Currently Differentiated?
To put it in medical terms, I am likely in a state of hypo-activation in the limbic system and medial prefrontal cortex (the areas responsible for emotion), and hyper-activation in the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC), which handles thinking and control. Emotions are disconnected or blocked. The circuits for judgment, prediction, and analysis run incessantly. Executive function is sometimes overactive, sometimes completely stopped. Emotional stimuli are dissociated, while cognition is excessively amplified.
This is what I call a “High-Functioning Dissociative Structure.” High-functioning dissociation is a survival strategy of the brain: it severs the connection to emotions or physical sensations to stay alive, while over-developing verbal and cognitive circuits as a substitute. This is a common pattern among trauma survivors, particularly those suffering from CPTSD (Complex Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder).
An Unreadable Book, Closed Senses
Not long ago, I closed a book after failing to read even the introduction. It was because of a scene where the protagonist was being abused by a grandmother. Some would see that scene and feel anger; some would cry; some would be unable to forget it. But I simply cannot read it. To me, it is not information; it is a threat. The brain circuit that accepts that sensation closed its doors long ago. My survival system is built that way. Emotions and senses are dissociated, while thought and analysis are extremely activated. The speed of the writing, speech, and thinking produced by those circuits is sometimes sharp, sometimes excessive, and ultimately remains as a wound labeled “function.”
Is This Recovery, or the Deepening of Illness?
I do not know if I am currently healing or merely reconstructing my pain. As I begin to use my emotions bit by bit, the circuits in my brain are reconnecting. However, that connection is simultaneously strange and painful. I have lived feeling secure within the structures created by my intellect, but those structures were also a prison built to suppress my feelings. While I am slowly emerging from that prison, I have decided not to try and deny the prison’s existence entirely. I cannot erase the fact that it was the “safe zone” that kept me alive.
This Text Is a Self-Diagnosis of My Condition
I do not want to end on a hopeful note. My functions have not yet recovered. My executive power fluctuates, my thoughts are too many, my emotions are sometimes too distant and other times too sudden. But I have come to realize one thing: behind this entire structure of overload, there was my survival. And that structure is now, little by little, being questioned. While those questions are sometimes painful, they are also the starting point of reintegrating myself.
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