Origin: shadow work and schizophrenia

Yoga practice

The elephant in the room

So…, the elephant is in the room.

How come I’m exceptional at observing shapes, and not colours?

To be clear, I know my basic shapes and colours, don’t get me wrong. My issue is that while the shapes are perceptible to me, light and colour boggle my mind.

I only see the rainbow colors, and I do not at all identify with the rest.

Somehow, color has become empty and irrelevant in my life!

Schizophrenia in my life

I’m a chronic patient of schizophrenia. Is it possible that research on psychotic disorders could shed light on my predicament?

Is illness negatively impacting my perception of colour and thus my overall experience in the physical world? 

Yes, actually. And significantly so.

As a person with schizophrenia, my brain is neurodivergent.

This means that I’ve had to deal with poor language skills in the past.

Also, it means that I tend to think in abstract terms.

The upside to the illness is that I actually have heightened creativity and a tendency to make unusual associations.

In other words, I have a unique interpretation of the physical world compared to neurotypicals.

The ups and downs of schizophrenia

Abstractly, for example, I can see symbolic meaning in everyday objects, such as previously when I would think Hollywood movies were speaking directly to me.

Or, when once I associated the large wooden cupboard in my dining room with stagnancy, and therefore promptly tried to tear it down (much to the dismay of my mother).

Creatively, however, I make connections and see patterns between unrelated objects.

Even recently, I consciously caught myself comparing my dining chairs at home to a four-legged house pet.

As far as I can tell, my family does not see our formal dining set that way!

I’ll admit, schizophrenia is a limiting illness.

I do not know how other schizophrenics like myself deal with their language deficits (writing is an endless hassle for me), or their delusions and hallucinations.

What brought schizophrenia into my life?

But recently, after understanding how schizophrenia could impact colour perception, I became interested in the one important question:

What prompted the illness?

My emotional blunting, limited facial expression, inability to cry, and my tiring monotone voice?

Could there, by chance, be a single significant event that prompted all this unpleasant behaviour and detachment? 

The answer is yes, certainly:

My previous hobby of compiling a personal dictionary.

Here’s the full story.

The dictionary: a brief history of the culprit

Between grades 11 and my first year of university, I became deeply immersed in English.

That is, I started to develop an interest in memorizing word definitions, which I copied verbatim from various sources on the internet.

I suspect this was a result of taking a challenging English class beyond my ability in high school.

This particular English class was surreal for me, because I was a newcomer student to Canada, and my English was poor. 

Unfortunately, I lacked experience in this hobby and the critical insight to research the important details before I began.

Without any real idea what I was doing, the process of improving my vocabulary became destructive.

I’d copy and paste tedious definitions from Google.

I overlooked the recommended and correct way of carrying out the task,  which involves creating subjective and contextual meanings for new and meaningless vocabulary.

These definitions, copied from the dictionary verbatim, carried no real meaning beyond the literal and denotational.

In other words, I rote-memorized tens of thousands of meaningless abstractions, while foolishly trusting that I understood everything.

Significant brain research indicates that continued subconscious abstract thinking can lead to delusional thinking and hallucinations in the physical world. My personal experience supports this research.

Enter the delusions and resolutions

In grade 11, after engaging with my hobby for months, my psychotic delusions started. 

These delusions continued even during my first year in university, and culminated in total failure and retroactive withdrawal. I had no other choice than to drop out of my program.

That’s when I began to suspect and question my hobby. 

Then, I was a lot more involved through the hobby.

I’d spent about three years reading books in one hand, with a piece of paper and a pencil in the other ready to collect words.

As a result, I ended up accumulating a staggering amount of vocabulary.

With hundreds of pages of words on my laptop, I was running out of time and energy to keep up.

Managing these words and thinking about them daily served to only drain my energy.

So one fateful morning, I woke up and deleted everything. 

Less than a month after the event, my mother began to suspect mental illness and to seek psychiatric support on my behalf.

The funny thing is, I did not even realize I was seriously ill.

When I finally met my psychologist, she decisively diagnosed me with schizophrenia.

With treatment and no compulsive activity, my condition began to improve rapidly.

Enter my interest in symmetry and art

But for odd and suspicious reasons, in university, I developed this rigid  attention to symmetry.

Somehow, I became transfixed to the idea of symmetry, and began to sketch symmetrical fonts I never knew I could do.

In one particular discussion with my roommate in residence, I developed the deep conviction to invent “a perfectly symmetrical font so that I could write with perfect symmetry.”

As a result, later when I dropped out and returned home, I began to look for symmetry with even greater intensity.

I worked quite consciously to reach my goal, day and night.

It was during my first month living at home that I finally stumbled on the sequence of numbers from 1 to 108.

I then arranged the numbers into a twelve by nine grid and created for myself a unique style of art that absorbed much of my wakeful hours, ‘till this day.

That event marked my transition from being obsessed with abstract vocabulary to suddenly perceiving only rigid structures, shapes, and symmetries in real life.

Early on as an artist, I barely understood that colour might exist in the physical world.

What is my art about?

My art is primarily about numbers and symmetry, not colour. I rarely employ colour in creating my art. Even when I use colour, I don’t use it for aesthetic reasons.

I have no understanding of colour theory, and only work with solid, monochromatic, colours. This is just a practical choice, really.

My art is non-representational, meaning that it’s abstract rather than realistic. That is, it does not attempt to depict life with realism.

I use numbers and lines of symmetry to depict structured symmetry, and my colours only serve to this end goal.

But now, I wonder why is this the case?

So…, why has color eluded me?

Why has colour eluded me?

Due to a thorough reflection, I have come to accept that abstract language in the dictionary likely reinforced (or caused) abstract thinking and detachment from the real world.

And how do I feel, you might ask?

As a reader, you might wonder how I feel, whether I regret what I did. 

The truth is, I have no regrets about anything I’ve done in my life, including the voluntary decision to seek to improve myself through language.

Really, there’s no real reason for regret.

My research was cautionary: despite strong support that this shadow work is plausible, science shows that schizophrenia is often due to the complex interplay of environmental and genetic factors. 

But if you’re like me, then you know it’s impossible to know decisively if anything is to blame.

If even a lesson exists here, it’s that shadow work by itself cannot reveal the entire truth. 

There will always be past traumas and experiences to unpack, if you dig deep enough.

And if you fail, you’ll discover your sister’s or your brother’s traumas to process.

Take the wisdom, if you choose: It’s not particularly terrible.

Conclusion

That said, however, I believe the dictionary taught me many other valuable lessons.

I subconsciously honed the ability to recall English words quickly, how to spell out words, and the ability to love reading.

All this observation has contributed heavily to my ability to continuously improve my self-awareness.

Persistent reading nurtured my ability to immerse myself into everyday life.

Through conscious awareness and exploration of colour, for example, I know that I also can label and precisely distinguish between different colours intuitively.  

That’s all I know, and all I ever needed to know.