Listening is.
It's not often I find I'm able to engage with the mass media these days, it's not easy when you can't tell what's real and what's not. Even the News seems to exist to feed itself. But occasionally some nuggets will float-up from within my inner circle. Nuggets which actually make me stop and think, to re-evaluate my assumptions. Some show me just why I have to change. Some show me why I am the way I am. If I'm lucky I may even spot a validation of a supposition. Whatever the conveyed meme, however, such nuggets are, thankfully, never dull.
I was recently referred me to an article in a paper which falls into the validation category. It's an odd piece written by an ex-schizophrenic who is convinced it was all just hypochondria and panic-attacks; and that for him the classic multiple voices in your head symptom is part of accepted life when things get stressful. It's a symptom I can appreciate; although I'm pleased to say my voices are less inclined to shout these days.
It's a validation piece, not because of the author's opinion, but because it got me to re-evaluate my hypothesis that I'm suffering from nothing but advanced cyberchondria. It's true, at some point I probably was; though oddly it only started when a variety of stress related symptoms caused my Doctor to suggest I was leaning towards hypochondria. With hypochondria being a psychological condition I leaped straight in and started exploring the inner-workings of my mind.
The first thing you'd discover should you ever do anything similar is that trying to find a diagnosis for mental-health issues is like trying to find a black cat in an unlit room populated with grey cats. Unbelievably, this is a good thing, it's stops one from weekend bouts of some nasty imagined illness; which happened once when I unfortunately got inside the head of an unpleasant individual with a Narcissistic Personality Disorder.
After a brief revaluation I'm happy to claim it's not cyberchondria. There's some difference between finding a list of symptoms and convincing yourself it fits, and matching observed phenomena to such lists. Yet of all the research I've done I've still only found one reference to one of my odder abilities, in a subjective piece written by an individual trying to explain living life with Autism. The piece refers to the symptom as "Delayed Hearing" and mentions how stress can exacerbate the effects.
A classic example of this from my own experience relates to the events following my witnessing of a rather nasty, racially motivated, altercation outside the office one morning. The emotional impact of this incident left me reeling, almost in shock you could say. For the remainder of that day in the office, until I was called home unexpectedly, it's as if I was thinking through a thick fog, nothing said in my vicinity registered in my mind. I suppose everybody has experienced something similar, what is unique in my case - and that of the aforementioned author - is that a considerable time later such missing moments repeat themselves. In my case I was suddenly presented with the ramifications of exactly what was said that day. Rather an odd thing hearing a penny drop months after the event that dropped it.