Ghost Knife
July 2, 2018 10:14 AM   Subscribe

“Sometimes I feel a knife floating above my right shoulder. I know it’s not real, but I want to know what it means.” cw: intrusive thoughts

Ashleigh Young writes: “Most nights before I fall asleep, and sometimes during a quiet moment in the day, I can feel a knife floating above my right shoulder. It’s a distinctive knife, with a broad blade and a generous handle. A good knife for cutting up a pumpkin. Still, for a sharp, pointy object, it’s nebulous; I can’t tell exactly what shape it is. As it floats meditatively I feel a slight pressure. Then the knife begins to stab the side of my face.”
posted by roger ackroyd (13 comments total) 17 users marked this as a favorite
 
(Halfway through reading thoughts): this reminds me of Donnie Darko.
posted by nikaspark at 10:18 AM on July 2, 2018


This is a very good article about knowing that your brain is doing something odd and injurious to you, but not knowing why or how to stop it. Which is one of the most frustrating things in the world, I tell you what.
posted by mudpuppie at 10:29 AM on July 2, 2018 [12 favorites]


Having intrusive shitty thoughts is okay. Making them into something more than that? That’s where the line gets blurry into not okay.

Parable time:

In 1991 when I was 17 I went into an inpatient care facility for 8 weeks. At the time I just knew I needed to go into inpatient, I knew I needed to be committed. In order to do that I had to commit acts that would ensure I ended up there.

So I did the needful, and ended up in an inpatient care facility.

Eventually I let on to my team of psychologists and psychiatrist that I had, in my words “faked being crazy” in order to be committed. And that I felt guilty as hell for doing to that to my family, wasting insurance resources etc, hospital space, etc.

My psychologist looked at me and “doing everything you did just to be committed to a psych ward is actually pretty fucking crazy so you ended up in the right place”.

All that to mean, if you think something realatively “normal” is wrong, and you escalate that to beyond a certain point in order to convince mental health professionals that no, something is actually really wrong, then something may be wrong with you that requires mental health professionals. At least that was my case.
posted by nikaspark at 10:37 AM on July 2, 2018 [14 favorites]


https://www.thecut.com

Naturally.
posted by happyroach at 10:38 AM on July 2, 2018 [1 favorite]


It me! Except for rather than a knife, I "forget" the bottom half of my face at home when I leave the house. The physicality of the feeling is bananas. Also +1 to the "anticipating seeing dead animals" thing.

Having finally sought help recently - I was starting to wonder if I was schizophrenic - I was diagnosed with OCD. Which I initially just didn't get, my undertanding of OCD being focused on the compulsive behaviors. I saw an episode of 60 Minutes or something when I was younger with Marc Summers, the host of kid's game show Double Dare, talking about his struggles with OCD. I remember him talking about him lining up the fringe on the edges of rugs so each strand was perfectly parallel, stuff like that. I am a slob and shameless half-asser - no way I can have OCD. That it could be, as the Dr. put it, "heavy on the O, hardly any C" was totally news to me.

So, thanks for sharing this. "Emotional self-harm" - that is so spot-on. It's the first I've heard another person describe experiencing it, and it feels like such a relief.
posted by Ennis Tennyone at 11:13 AM on July 2, 2018 [8 favorites]


I also have pure-O. This is very brave of her to write about. I don't do it much, because it's so, so difficult to explain to lay people that you are having these thoughts without actually being a monster who is ready to snap.

I truly wish I'd known I wasn't one when I was a kid, when I was afraid to be too close to knives in case I should stab someone I loved. That was also around the time that I had a fear of swallowing small metal objects, especially needles or pins -- but anything would do. If I noticed a pile of coins, for example, and later on couldn't be sure that they were all exactly where they'd been when I first saw them, I could end up in tears. My mother was able to tell me that she had felt something like that when she was young, and she was very kind about it. But I was afraid to tell her the worst of the thoughts.

When I was in college, medication largely cleared them up, and therapy swept up after them. But they'll come back, especially the ones that might have some kind of basis in objective reality. I believe that a family history of anxiety and OCD explains a whole lot of behavior that my great-grandparents' generation didn't have words for, and a whole lot of self-medication, too.
posted by Countess Elena at 11:18 AM on July 2, 2018 [7 favorites]


I used to have a problem when I was younger, when I'd go to a play or musical and be possessed with the awful thought that I might just stand up and start yelling shit at the stage. Not even anything in particular, just something loud and obnoxious that would disrupt if not ruin the performance. It wasn't until later that I realized that I was projecting my own stage fright (at least of being the focus of attention, or even in a small musical group; I was fine in large groups and have greatly enjoyed performing with them) onto the performers on stage, and just horrified and horribly anxious on their behalf that some rando--like, say, a lightly-socialized little punk like me--could just stand up and ruin all their hard work, not to mention becoming the focus of attention myself, which was the last thing that I wanted. (And feeling anxious, wanting to get it over with.) It's much the same as when I am on some high point looking down; the fear isn't from the thought that I might fall accidentally, but that I might jump.
posted by Halloween Jack at 11:18 AM on July 2, 2018 [2 favorites]


Oh, also, I wasn't pure O, but those particular intrusive thoughts--jumping and heckling--didn't have any particular rituals associated with them to relieve the anxiety, as many of my other fears did.
posted by Halloween Jack at 11:22 AM on July 2, 2018


Yeah, I have diagnosed OCD like crazy (ha ha get it) complete with really intense intrusive thoughts that led me as a teenager to believe that I was a dangerous psycho. Still a major and inconvenient part of my life. I don’t think I’ve ever had it broken down into anything as specific as “pure,” but all the stereotypical OCD symptoms are there. It is really funny how OCD manifests, because I’m also a total slob, but I’m super, wildly obsessive and compulsive about certain things. It’s a highly specific chaos.

Anyway, this was interesting. I’ve never experienced something like that knife, but I can broadly relate to the same underlying feelings. It’s really funny to be exposed to other people’s experiences that are similar, but not quite the same as yours. I did a workbook once with some examples of people with OCD, and i remember getting to one and thinking “wow, Mary is crazy!” and laughing because it was literally 30 pages into this book and that was the only example I hadn’t been able to relate to completely. Of course “Mary” wasn’t crazy, it was just funny to maybe see what my obsessions might look like to people who can’t relate.

I just started watching Turner and Hooch on Netflix, which I’ve never seen and I guess is about a kind of OCD guy. I was like “this is a totally unrealistic depiction!” because he touched the top of a muffin instead of very carefully holding it by the paper, as I would. But then I saw that he was going to give it to a dog, and I was like “oh, ok, that makes sense.”
posted by shapes that haunt the dusk at 12:14 PM on July 2, 2018 [3 favorites]


This might be totally off-base, but I immediately connected the description of the imaginary knife to the way my husband describes his cluster headaches. He says that it begins with a sensation of pressure around the eye on one side, and then progresses to feeling like he is being repeatedly stabbed in the eyeball with an ice pick, lasting for about an hour. For him, anxiety can be a trigger for the headaches.

It isn’t entirely clear to me whether the author actually feels the physical pain of being stabbed by the ghost knife. If so, then I have to wonder if it could somehow be related to a cluster-headache-like situation.
posted by snowmentality at 2:14 PM on July 2, 2018 [1 favorite]


....I want to know what it means

First of all, cancel your dinner party
posted by thelonius at 2:19 PM on July 2, 2018


Holy fuck. Just holy fuck. I have a spinal cord injury and because of the degenerating bone around said cord, I sometimes end up with intercranial pressure. This can do weird shit like make my eyes suddenly blurry, or make me forget words, or get forgetful, or just stop abruptly while talking and then pick back up a few minutes later (like an absence seizure, but without an actual seizure.)

But one I have been afraid about is that my brain keeps on this loop of racial slurs, absolutely horrifying words to me, words I have never, ever said aloud and which make me sick just to contemplate. And they play on this loop in my head, louder and louder, until I am *afraid* I'll start screaming them. I actually confided this in my best friend, and told her if I ever actually SAY one of those words out loud, that she'll yank me down and shut me up.

I was afraid it was a sign of permanent brain damage setting in. Or early-onset dementia.

But holy fuck. This happens to other anxious people. This happens! To other anxious people! I'm in fucking tears, here. It's not just me; I'm not losing my mind!
posted by headspace at 6:08 PM on July 2, 2018 [17 favorites]


headspace's comment illustrates the problem with what you might call the quasi-Buddhist approach to intrusive thoughts that the article mentions--that is, the idea that you could accept that there really is no such thing as the unitary self, no boundary to be intruded over, and so nothing to resist. It's a creepy but bearable thought if you're imagining being stabbed; it's beyond awful if you're imagining stabbing others, or other horrible other-harming words or actions.
posted by praemunire at 7:00 PM on July 2, 2018 [4 favorites]


« Older Please Reserve a Table for Two, at 8 pm Thursday...   |   Osaka's Flamethrower Street Food Chef Newer »


This thread has been archived and is closed to new comments