Learning to play the monkey game

I was actually quite successful in life.

I attended higher education and eventually built a career as an IT administrator in a large corporation.

Then came burnout, mania, and psychosis.

I started thinking a lot about life. Through a combination of psychotherapy and conversations with AI, I gradually arrived at a rather unusual conclusion:

It’s all monkey business.

You have to play the monkey to understand the other monkeys.

So much for my higher education.

This whole alpha-and-beta behavior seems to stretch across the globe. Social hierarchies, dominance, competition, and the constant struggle for recognition.

Social media makes it even worse.

Every single day, there’s another round of monkey business. Someone makes a claim, often without providing a single source, and suddenly the monkey battle begins.

Perhaps you simply have to become the alpha monkey yourself.

Make some outrageous claim. Make some noise. Get attention.

The monkey game isn’t limited to younger generations, either.

Just look at all those people driving around in their SUVs. To me, they’re typical monkey status symbols.

And beauty is another thing that seems to blind people. Sometimes, beneath an attractive appearance, you find exactly the same monkey business as everywhere else.

As I said, perhaps you have to become a monkey to survive among monkeys.

Although there’s another side to being a monkey: it can actually be fun.

I enjoy karaoke myself. Sometimes it’s perfectly fine to let go, make some noise, and simply have a good time.

But sometimes I wonder whether my own psychosis was also connected, in some way, to the pressure of this endless monkey game.

Was I raised to value structure, logic, and rational thinking, only to find myself struggling with a world that often seems to operate according to completely different rules?

Thinking about this can drive me crazy.

Perhaps some people simply see all of this as part of the natural order of things.

For me, however, there are deeper layers beneath it all: theology, philosophy, and other forms of wisdom that have shaped the way I look at life.

My own monkey level, if you will.

So, people, get ready for the monkey game and all the monkey business that comes with it.

It’s waiting for you out there.

Just don’t lose your head.

Unfortunately, I’ve done that a few too many times.

Monkey Business was originally published in My Mental Journey on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

I only really started thinking more deeply about my mind after my first psychosis.

Although, unfortunately, I wasn’t spared from having more psychotic episodes afterward.

By now, though, I’ve started to believe that my mind is also somehow “random.”

Sure, it gets fed with whatever I take in throughout the day.

The things I see, hear, read, and encounter in “the world.”

But sometimes, my mind just switches.

I’ve spent quite a bit of time thinking about “quantum consciousness” — simply because I have a lot of time on my hands.

And my therapist has also told me that I should “talk to the voices.”

Although that can be quite exhausting sometimes.

So there I am, talking to “the Illuminati in my head.”

Usually about religion and things like that.

Or my mind switches to the “world stage.”

Trump, Putin, Zelenskyy — whoever happens to be on it.

And then, suddenly, my mind switches again.

All of a sudden, I feel threatened by “the Mossad” again.

Although, of course, all of this can simply be happening inside my head.

My “random mind.”

As I said, it has been fed with information.

And somehow, it creates all kinds of connections from it.

That doesn’t mean I have no control over my mind at all.

I can observe my thoughts, question them, and sometimes consciously steer them in a different direction.

But sometimes, my mind simply jumps somewhere else.

Somewhere along the way, it can get pretty dark in there — with the Illuminati, the Mossad, and all the other things my brain comes up with.

But what can you do?

There I am again, sitting with my brain, wondering what it’s going to come up with next.

Having at least some control over your own mind isn’t a bad thing.

My many psychotic episodes have certainly taught me that.

But at least my brain isn’t boring.

It always gives me something new.

So, at least, it never gets boring.

(Translated from german)

My “Random” Mind was originally published in My Mental Journey on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

More and more, I get the impression that I am surrounded by highly evolved predators here.

Even back then, during my burnout, the world had already “knocked me down.”

At work, they would always come at me with their strange “Morse codes.” I had no idea what nasty thing they wanted from me this time.

But that’s how the game works, in this fucking carousel.

Actually, you would have to know everything here. The “new Alpha.” Equipped with all the knowledge of the universe.

It gets into my head. My stomach hurts.

Somewhere, I have my “physical limits” too.

“Highly evolved predators.”

Just like my mind, which sometimes seems to be “drenched in black.”

Black like the universe.

Or nature:

Eat or be eaten.

I am convinced that these mechanisms are still inside human beings.

Am I alone again, in the land of the “highly evolved predators”?

I am supposed to behave correctly. That’s what psychology tells me.

But will I be torn apart by them?

By the “highly evolved predators.”

How am I supposed to know everything when it feels like the world has “shit all over me”?

All the dirty tricks. The manipulation.

Am I already becoming an “autist” here, just to be able to calculate all of this?

Am I back “among the predators”?

And do I have to “fight my way through”?

At least I still have the “old philosophy” in my head.

I used to be a predator too. I played my own “dirty game” once, before I ended up getting burned by it.

That’s why I try to distance myself from the predator.

But sometimes it just feels like being back in the land of the “highly evolved predators.”

You try not to drown.

And keep your head above water.

Highly Evolved Predators was originally published in My Mental Journey on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Does it tempt me, like the serpent?

I have no idea how much of the old theology people are still consciously aware of today.
Or the idea of being “blinded.”
The old “throwing sand in someone’s eyes.”

Although it seems like everyone here is chasing the dollar.
Everything for money.
For the cash.

Truth gets twisted.
We manipulate wherever we can.

And I sit at home,
inside my “safe four walls.”

All around me:
“Planet Terror.”

Like some ancient prehistoric world.
Volcanoes.
Wild animals.

Somehow, it seems like everyone has it in their blood.

Maybe we should teach children more about the dangers of this world.
About how people can manipulate each other.
So they don’t walk blindly into the trap.

“Planet Terror” — 
that was a movie once.

And yet, somewhere in my subconscious,
I have always thought of planet Earth when I heard that title.

Maybe because Earth sometimes feels like “Planet Terror” to me.

Don’t go under.

That’s the motto here.

The planet has hit me hard too many times already.
And yet here I am, sitting with obesity and depression,
still trying to preserve my good spirits.

Like a small light against the chaos.

In the end, I suppose we all have to make it through this place.

That’s just how it is.

I keep a healthy skepticism.

I trained myself to have it over the course of my life.

I used to be naive, too.
But maybe that’s what this planet does to you.

Still holding on to the hope of “paradise.”
Or whatever may come after this.

And I keep looking forward.

Planet Terror was originally published in My Mental Journey on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

They start picking on you at school.

Then it continues in the working world.

Pointless deadlines.
Misunderstanding.
Bullying.

The “Asshole Planet.”

But somehow, it has always been like this.

Slavery.
Murder and violence.

Even though things are supposedly “getting better” compared to the past.

With my mental illness, though, I mostly stay at home.

I’ve simply had too much of the “Asshole Planet.”

And sometimes it feels like I’m being ruled by “assholes.”

A new scam in my inbox every day.

From the Asshole Planet.

But, as I said, it has probably always been this way.

“Stop making such a fuss!”

That’s difficult when you have a mental illness.

Pressure can trigger psychosis for me.

Not even my own family always understands that.

Again: the Asshole Planet.

Maybe that’s why some people eventually turn into “assholes” themselves.

Who knows?

Am I surrounded by “assholes” again?

Then I guess I have to “keep my spirits up.”

Otherwise, I’ll eventually just disappear into myself.

But perhaps the trend really is toward more reason.

You can still remember the “old assholes.”

Even so, you have to stay “on your guard” around here.

That’s simply part of living on this planet.

Anything else would be rather foolish.

So perhaps it’s better to hold on to the good things in life.

Maybe as a counterweight to “the wild.”

Just to preserve a little bit of decency.

On the Asshole Planet.

The Asshole Planet was originally published in My Mental Journey on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Back when I was burned out, I also got negative comments.

“Why do you look like that?”

I just looked depressed.

At the time, I was living with my father. I would sit in the basement and smoke one cigarette after another.

Eventually, I noticed that simple things could bring me back down.

Like a stone.

I could focus on the stone and somehow felt that I could “realign my energies” and get myself back up again.

For a while, I even walked around like the “personal Jesus.”

(Admittedly, I was still taking Ritalin at the time, and my obsession with “energies” also pushed me into a manic phase.)

What followed later was a psychosis.

But the whole idea of “energies” didn’t leave me.

Even though I was still accompanied by the mania for some time, with my “energies” shooting way beyond the target, I kept developing my “stone technique.”

Today, I use the stone more as a neutral object.

For example, when something around me becomes very sexual and I still have to function, I think about the stone.

The neutral object.

Something I can focus my attention on.

It allows me to create some distance from the stimulus and redirect myself.

And it works surprisingly well for me.

Sometimes I even get reactions from other people like:

“Perfect.”

Maybe that’s because my masking has become pretty good.

Although I also suspect that some of this might be autistic.

I’ve heard the term “high-functioning autistic” before.

I don’t have an official diagnosis, but my psychiatrist suspects that I might be autistic.

Maybe I am.

Maybe I’m not.

I’m not even sure anymore if I want another diagnosis added to the list. I already have enough diagnoses.

But I’m keeping the stone trick.

I can understand that some people become sexual themselves when they’re in a sexual environment. That’s human.

But I had to learn how to create some distance from those kinds of stimuli.

For me, the stone was a way to do that.

It’s a strange world where we’re constantly bombarded with sexual content.

So I think about the stone again.

The neutral object.

No magic.

Just something I can focus my attention on.

And maybe that’s the actual trick:

Not every energy you perceive has to become your energy.

You can take a step back.

Maybe someone else can make use of such a simple strategy, too.

In the end, we’re all just trying to find our way through this world.

And whatever helps.

My Masking with the Stone was originally published in My Mental Journey on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Maybe the world has always been fucked up?

When I think about the “old days.”

With all their wars.

Or when we were in ancient Rome. Slavery. People fighting in the Colosseum.

A fucked-up world.

And I keep catching myself having the same thought over and over again:

“This fucked-up world.”

I can get angry about the war in Ukraine.
Or about Trump.
Or sometimes even about science.

This fucked-up world.

I’ve already written about how I sometimes perceive the world as an “insect world.”

That’s pretty fucked up, too.

Will the world ever get better?

Who knows.

At least people are working on it in different ways. On different problems. With different ideas.

I guess I have to more or less “swallow” that.

Because you simply can’t make the world right for everyone.

Maybe that’s why the world will always remain “fucked up” for some people.

Maybe it’s somehow in our roots.

If I think about that “insect world” again.

The world would be a little less fucked up for me if my mental illness had been taken into account more.

But then I had this conversation with an acquaintance who was complaining about secondhand smoke.

And suddenly I was back to this thought:

It’s a double-edged sword.

If nobody pays attention to my mental health, why should I, as a smoker, pay particular attention to other people?

My therapist reminded me of the principle of “turning the other cheek” in that context — half jokingly.

And there we are again:

This fucked-up world.

Like I said: You simply can’t make it right for everyone.

So here I am again, back in this “insect world,” somehow fighting my way through it.

Even though I suffer from depression.

And even though I keep falling back into this spiral where I think:

This fucked-up world.

The strange thing is, I don’t even really know what I want myself.

Maybe more money.

That would at least make some of my worries smaller.

And then I keep fighting my personal battles.

Maybe that fight never really dies.

Maybe it’s simply part of it.

Part of this fucked-up world.

This Fucked-Up World was originally published in My Mental Journey on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

The first figure that appeared in my mind at some point — I think I was about six years old — was a little “Jesus.”

Somewhere “in the upper left corner of my mind.”

I used to have these kinds of “signs” in my head, too. A circle, or something like that.

Even though I always felt more drawn toward the “lower left.”

In my mind, that stood for being grounded.

For “good virtue.”

But I can also put my mind “on black.”

Perhaps that was already there before I had really processed anything in my mind.

In the darkness.

Of my mind?

For a while, I became interested in “karma.”

My mind somehow translated karma into the image of a blond boy who was very connected to nature.

I have no idea why my mind does things like that.

Probably just associations.

Although that “karma guy” never seemed particularly well-disposed toward me either.

At least that’s how it appeared in my mind.

Voices in my head.

Like the Illuminati in my head.

They somehow also “emerged from the darkness.”

Like a “dark playing field.”

My mind.

Sometimes I switch my mind back “into the darkness.”

Just like that.

Before anything has happened.

As if I were resetting my mind.

Back to its original state.

To the “core,” as you might call it.

But my mind can also be a “colorful playground.”

The opposite of black.

With “all the voices of the world.”

My therapist always advised me to talk to the “voices.”

As part of my treatment for schizophrenia.

But that can also be exhausting.

So I switch my mind back to “dark.”

Into the “zero state.”

At least that’s how it feels to me.

I often perceive many people as “dark.”

AI keeps telling me not to see people that way.

That people have both sides.

But I still struggle with that a little.

Maybe I simply see too much darkness.

I don’t know.

My mind.

With all its acting.

With its “dark impulses,” which I have spent a lot of time thinking about.

Even though people don’t really talk about those things.

But we know they exist.

“Against the darkness,” I have my affections during the day.

Light.

And music.

Without them, everything would be far too bleak, I think.

In the Darkness was originally published in My Mental Journey on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

It’s not enough that people judge you everywhere.

You also have to have the “right face.”

Then you can get through life “just fine.”

If you don’t have it, you get labeled.

And if you eventually become overweight out of frustration, people laugh at you for that too.

This fucking society.

And yet, I always tried.

I tried to approach people in a friendly way.
I tried to make things right for everyone.

Today, I think that this can also be dangerous.

If you constantly adapt to other people, constantly think about what they expect from you and how they see you, you might eventually end up exactly where I did:

in burnout.

Because the problem is this:

People always find something to criticize.

You can see it especially well on the internet.

You can post something, and someone will inevitably find something negative to say about it.

Sometimes I wonder:

What are people actually looking for?

The angel?

I can handle criticism.

But when you get almost nothing except criticism, ridicule and negativity, it eventually becomes too much.

And the older I get, the more I come to the conclusion:

Maybe I should simply care less about society.

I adapted for far too long.

I spent far too long trying to fit into other people’s expectations.

And eventually you start asking yourself:

What for?

In the end, people will label you anyway.

Society has seemed pretty superficial to me for a long time.

Maybe at some point you just have to stop giving a shit.

I don’t know.

But that’s how I’m trying to live now.

I bent myself into shapes for other people for far too long.

And in the end?

For nothing.

Because when people judge you, they forget one important thing:

They have no idea what is actually going on inside another person.

They see a face, a body, a behavior, a sentence — and somehow think they can judge the whole person.

Maybe that’s simply an old human problem.

We judge.

We categorize.

We form opinions.

And then we move on.

For me, it remains this image of a “fucking society.”

Sure, someone could say:

“But you get a pension.”

Yes.

But I’m still almost convinced that social pressure and the way I spent years trying to function contributed to my burnout.

And then came the psychosis.

In the end, maybe you get some help.

But society keeps running its program anyway.

Judge.
Categorize.
Adapt.
Function.

Maybe that’s the real thing I’ve learned:

I spent too long living according to society.

Maybe I should go my own way instead.

Listen less to the “voices of society” in my head.

And listen more to my own thoughts.

Not because I suddenly know everything better.

But because I eventually want to find out

who I actually am when I’m no longer constantly trying to be the person everyone else wants me to be.

This Fucking Society was originally published in My Mental Journey on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

After the psychosis, my life felt like a “fucking nightmare.”

Not only because of the “devilish visions” I had during the psychosis.

But also because of everything around it.

Being restrained. Medication. Other mentally ill people.

And then I was judged for things I couldn’t even control.

For the “voices in my head.”

I still hear them today, despite the medication.

Although I won’t deny that the medication can also keep me stable.

Still, life often feels like a “fucking nightmare.”

Atrocities. Wars.

Simply the misery of the world and the darker sides of humanity.

My life — like a fucking nightmare?

I often sit at home and listen to music.

The rhythm makes me happy.

For a moment, I feel alive again.

And then I go on social media.

And it continues.

People attacking each other.

And they don’t seem to be able to stop.

“Like a fucking nightmare.”

I think I was happier as a child.

I don’t know exactly why I feel different now.

Is it because of the psychosis?

The medication?

Or simply because of the world itself?

Maybe it’s a mixture of all of it.

But most of the time, my life really does feel like a “fucking nightmare.”

The horror — just like the psychosis.

Maybe all you can do is try to keep your head above water.

Not let every piece of bullshit get to you.

Knowing where your boundaries are.

You can’t change the world.

You can only choose what you expose yourself to.

And where you invest your energy.

But that’s something everyone has to decide for themselves.

Like a Fucking Nightmare was originally published in My Mental Journey on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.