Something about Swirls

Swirls is a metaphor used to describe the painful experience of feeling sucked into an empty space, a vortex, where initiative and energy are drained away, replaced by helplessness and despair, panic and anxiety.

This blog has several organising principles or themes to integrate the myriad thoughts, quotes, examples we have assembled over time.

One is the Super Ego, the internal judge which inhibits our autonomy and independence. The concept of an internal judge, or critical voice, goes with the 'internal saboteur' of Fairbairn which, like a parasite, seeks to undermine its host.  It imposes incorrect cognitions on to feelings, (like the child who believes it’s her fault her parents have split up, and is convinced from then on that she is ‘bad’). It leads to self destructive behaviours, and is mostly unconcerned if it goes down with its host.

Another theme is diminishment. The Swirl experience always involves feeling diminished, so that the person may 'give up'. This is when the internal saboteur triumphs. Giving up like this is a reversion to a helpless infant like state, but an adult in this state cannot easily display needs inappropriate to adult status. Those needs for support and understanding were age appropriate in the infant or child, but not now. To express them now is to be embarrassed and belittled, diminished and ashamed.

It may even be too difficult to say " I feel anxious right now ". So the internal saboteur is active and energetic in making its host passive, exploiting a perceived weakness in the host and taking power and initiative for itself.

Christopher Hitchens refers to his cancer as “ a malignant alien inside me....that will die with me".  Cancer and the internal saboteur, one physical one emotional, both parasites intent on destroying their host. Perhaps a swirl is one manifestation of this self destructive phenomenon. There is energy in the Swirl, in the form of suppressing vital feelings and potentials. This occurs at the individual level, in a group, and in society at large.