Thoughts about my Mind, Part 2

For the last couple weeks, I've had ridiculous pain in my neck and shoulders. It started as a stiff neck, turned into something much worse, and has since subsided into simple sore muscleage.

I was at the psychiatrist and she gave me a muscle relaxant to take at bedtime. Oh. My. God. I can't remember the last time I slept as well as I did last night. I had so much more energy, focus and cheer.

It's easy to think of the mind as a computer, but I recently though of an extension to that analogy. Between the hardware of biochemistry and neurology, and the software that enables us to do all the things we do is the operating system. What I think of as the OS, Jung would have called the personal unconciousness, our personal myths, world view, values, our beliefs about the world and the way we fit into it.

It's sometimes hard to explain therapy to people. Most people don't get why the stuff in my head that doesn't work for me just can't be turned off like a peice of bad freeware. But therapy is more like sorting out a problem with the operating system. Figure out the problem processes. Replace the missing drivers. Uninstall the junk. Reinstall everything else. Dig up those obscure configuration options and tweak them til the damn thing works. Tweak. Reboot. Tweak. Reboot.