Real Kato Blog: Yet Another Weird Thing

I've had a strange condition for as long as I can remember, and I've never figured out what it was.

Ever since I was little, I've had a difficult time with situations that require me to be very still, or to concentrate very hard.

I have distinct recollections of two such situations from my childhood.

One was when my dad was giving me haircuts. You would think that the bowl cuts he gave me would take no time at all, but for some reason, haircuts always required at least an hour of stony rigidity. Dad had me convinced that if I moved an inch, the scissors would instantly cut an ear off. So I sat there, terrified, as he snipped off three hairs at a time. After a little while, I started to get a powerful cramp-like sensation in my stomach. I could mitigate the sensation by taking deep breaths and stretching out my abdomen, but that was only temporarily effective. By the end of the haircut, I was dying to get up and just walk around for a while.

The other situation I remember was getting knots in my shoelaces. If I had to work out a particularly difficult knot, I would get that exact same cramp-like sensation. It was actually physically painful.

Dad always said that it was all in my head. I suppose that's true in the sense that my brain was causing this sensation to occur, but that didn't make the physical pain any less real.

To this day, this still happens. I get that familiar crampy feeling when I thread needles, when I solder circuits, when I have to write something very neatly, when I'm getting my picture taken... it's there all the time. It's not as bad as it was when I was a kid, and I've learned to deal with the discomfort. But it's there just the same.

Does anyone else get this? I always assumed it was just me, and so I've never talked about it with anyone.

Weird, huh?

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