Being Here: Weekly Reflections on A Personal Journey
Weekly Tuesday Reflections on my journey towards a computational model of dissociative amnesia
For almost exactly a year, I’ve been working steadily towards building a computational model of a mechanism that I believe is responsible for dissociative amnesia. This project emerged from a desire to understand my own body post-trauma as I struggled with symptoms that were right on the awkward cusp of a massive stigma in psychology. Nobody had the answers for me so I sought out to find them.
I started with next to no knowledge of neuroscience nor computational modeling. I’m now building a Hopfield network. The journey has been joyful but arduous, requiring every ounce of my passion and dedication. As I finally near the end (I think), I’ve decided to write a weekly reflection of where I am and what it has meant for me.
The last stretch of this project has felt slow, surgical, and methodical. I have spent the last three weeks breaking multiple Hopfield networks apart piece by piece to understand exactly how every line of code works together. I realized that to build what I was searching for, I would have to add a line that would make my Hopfield network act opposite as to how these neural networks are originally intended to. That has meant really getting into the nitty gritty of the programming and understanding the essence of Hopfield networks.
A seasoned computational neuroscientist might find this task quite simple, but for a beginner it has been a real labor of love.
As I approach a year of steady, unpaid work on this project alongside a busy life, I’ve felt quite depleted. My year as a master’s student is coming to an end. I’m working hard to revitalize new projects at my job. My body feels heavy and ready for a break, and I’ve been yearning for the end of this long stretch of time in my life. On the other hand, I’ve been able to step back and appreciate the miraculousness of being in a position I envisioned one, two, even three years ago. My journey in London started very simply, as a hostel volunteer, working an unpaid internship and nanny jobs. I was yearning for a route towards understanding my strange disorder that no one seemed to be able to agree on. Now I live in a nice flat with my cat, I’m soon to be a graduate, I have a remote job with a cushy title, and I have brand new language for myself - high arousal. Suppression. Inescapable stress. I’ve built up not only myself, but a body of vocabulary. And it feels really good.
The problem is that as good as my mind is at recognizing that this shift has occured, my body is slow to catch up. It feels heavy and jittery. I reflected today on how in all these years with all these changes, it never felt like my body really got the memo that things were new and different. What I wanted was to feel okay again, like I did pre-trauma. But it very often feels like my body is in exactly the same place that it has been since then - anxious and over-aroused.
I started this journey in a lot of ways to escape the suffering that I was feeling. I felt like I was in a cage and I just needed to be out. Seeing my experience as valid and scientific has healed me in ways I cannot even begin to explain. It has allowed me to see myself as somebody intelligent and worth listening to. It has helped me see a future for myself where I had a place. But the mad dash for the exit has been physically difficult. I’ve been yearning for the freedom of a publication that would give me the breathing room I’ve been looking for. I’ve been excited to finish and internally dreading all of the hard work that is still left.
Today, I took a second to sit in a sunny park and drink a hot chocolate. I reflected on how frustrating it feels to see yourself receiving everything you want around you and still always pushing for the next step. This journey has been magical and honestly cool. In a lot of ways, it’s felt even fantastical. I moved into something I cared about so much faster than I expected and the future is bright. I reminded myself today how badly I just wanted to be here at one point and asked myself if I could romanticize the process a little bit more. I know this is one of those things I’ll look back on and miss one day, just like I miss those days in my old dingy apartment with the nice breeze that came through the window, and just like I miss those days struggling with my mental illness back in New York City. I’ve been trying to remind myself not to see the future as an exit door, no matter how bad the struggle feels sometimes or how exhausting the work can be. In fact, it would probably get at the root of the issue in a different way.
So this week, the goal is to find some special way to romanticize my life amongst the busy feeling and the burnout. I usually have a great vision for the future but a pretty grim one for the present. I think that’s exactly what I need to change
.
I also want to take some time to rest and process where I am. Even an overwhelmingly amazing thing is still overwhelming. I’ve been shocked at where I’ve gotten and I have no idea where I’m going next with it. The power and the incredibleness of this journey has been something I haven’t stopped to marvel at enough amidst my striving for the end. My body deserves a break to catch up to my speedy mind sometimes and wrap itself around everything that I’ve done and everything that might come next. I’ve found that we very often neglect our bodies in hopes that our mind will do enough work for the both of them.
Right now is already more than enough. That’s my motto for this week.