In the last post, we talked about the State of Flow and how people are their most creative, productive and happy when they are in this state.,
However, everything has its dark side.
How is this different to what many gamblers refer to as being “in the zone” when they are playing the poker machines or when young people are playing video games? They experience being so deeply immersed and absorbed in the process of playing that they become oblivious to their external surroundings and to space and time. It is a trance-like state that researchers have labelled “dark flow”.
As far as our brains are concerned, flow is like a drug. Powerful neurochemicals are released. The experience itself is what rewards the action, not the consequences. This is usually a benefit but not always. Chasing the flow can become addictive and can make it difficult to cope with the mundane activities of daily life. It is also one way that some of us try to relieve low mood, anxiety and mind wandering.
Nichole
Nicole was an ex police officer. For many years she was involved in investigating childhood abuse cases, many of which were horrific and hard to come to terms with as a human being. She was scarred by the experience. She begged to be removed from the child investigation unit and assigned somewhere else. She was told to just wait and to hold on as her skills were needed in the area and she would be relieved as soon as possible. She kept pushing through but realized that she was burning out and unable to function. The relief did not come. She had a breakdown and could not return to work.
On top of her diagnosis of PTSD, she also talked about the moral injury she suffered within the police culture. Not being heard or supported, being left to fend for herself even after she had told them many times that she was not coping and ignoring her cries for help.
It has been said that PTSD is not a mental illness but a mental injury. A normal reaction to an abnormal situation.
Nicole was anxious and depressed. Her mind kept going over the details of many of the cases she worked on. She was unable to sleep. But the anger she felt about how she had been treated by the police was her main complaint. This became a moral injury. She ruminated on it constantly. Rage emerged as a consequence of her thoughts. She would often say that she could not get out of her own head.
She started to drink excessively to calm her mind enough to sleep. She started to gamble. It provided a respite from her thoughts. As she said, “When I’m there, nothing else exists or matters. I get a break from myself. I don’t care about anything else. Time goes by and I’m just in the zone. I drink, smoke and gamble like there’s no tomorrow. And there is no tomorrow.”
The unhappy and troubled mind’s attention is locked in by the machine. The riveted attention induces dark flow and the player is free for awhile.
Rather than accepting flow as a natural consequence of our activity, which leads to personal growth, we can be chasing dark flow to relieve symptoms. As with all addictions, after awhile we no longer get the same rush. We need to increase the stakes to get the same thrill. It explains why gamblers bet more and more money in order to experience the high of dark flow.
It is also trying to get the reward without the hard work. It has been estimated that in order for the flow state to occur, we need a background of mastery in our field with at least 10 years of training and experience. Trying to get the fix without the hard work leads to the experience of its other side, despair. Even with hard work, chasing the flow for its own sake has disturbing side effects.
While we are seeking a state where the self is gone, we can also lose control over our context. It is one thing to be lost in a state of composing music, writing poetry or executing the skills of dance or a sport. These states either have a natural ending or we are left with a meaningful reward. But in gambling or gaming, the rewards are not there in the same way and in gambling especially, the losses can be disastrous and rather than contributing to our happiness, it leads us down the path of dark despair.
To have the state of flow bequeathed on us as a result of hard work, attention, dedication and direction is one thing. But to chase this state for its rewards through addictions is trying to cut out the middle man. And as already said, the middle man - the ego - is still necessary. It needs to voluntarily surrender to the experience of the whole. Not be flogged into submission while we try to fly the plane without a pilot. The pilot needs to come along for the ride. Otherwise, we will crash without it doing its job. The ego has a place, and we cannot operate functionally without it. It just needs to know its place.
As we have seen, many of our problem behaviours are actually misdirected attempts at attaining a blissful state away from our own thinking. Many forms of mental illness are an attempt to escape an unbearable inner or outer reality. Drug and alcohol addiction is an attempt to loosen the grip of the mind and allow a free-floating state. Gambling is an attempt “to be in the zone” and escape from ourselves for awhile.
Similarly, love and sex addiction is about chasing the feeling of “being in love” which obsesses our thoughts and gives us relief from our usual thinking. In effect, we are seeking relief from our own thoughts and the limited and limiting experiences they offer us.
