One of the most fundamental thing we can do is to communicate.
Nobody but oneself sees the world through their own eyes:
You cannot see what I see; you are not aware of my thoughts.
All you can possibly know is what I communicate to you.
If you don't pay attention, then the message is lost.
If you don't understand, then the message is lost.
If you don't want to know, and just want me to 'be normal', then the message is list.

# Methods
Two approaches I have tried are diagramming and typing.
I can type my thoughts and inner dialog. I can type at a pace
which would seem odd, irregular, and awkward were I to use
my voice. I can pause, for each word, for each character.
I can type words, and then go back and change them,
until what I see matches what I want to say.
These things are not possible with speech.
Moreover, I spend far more time typing on a keyboard
than I do actually speaking, or writing with a pen.
So typing is fluent in a way in which speaking
and typing are not. 

Then, when it comes to using
a pen, the major advantage is that the pen can do
things that placing characters one after another
in a text editor or word processor cannot. I can
write words anywhere on the page, an draw lines between
them, and pictures where it helps. I can draw words
any way I like. Thus these two—typing and diagramming—allow
me to convey much that I cannot with 'conventional'
modes of communication such as speaking and handwriting.

But of course this looks odd, and all too often
looking odd is seen as the problem: my attempts
to communicate what the Maze ordinarily doesn't,
end up being seen as signs of mental illness. Moreover,
as I'll write elsewhere, to try and break free of 
the Maze leads to a lifting of the anxiety which
makes the Walls, and that freedom leads both to
an emotional high, potentially with psychosis, 
called mania, and a world to which I am not adapted, 
and cannot adapt fast enough. I don't
like living in the Maze, but can't simply jump
out of it. I must learn my way out, and there is
no clear path available to do that.

So, in short, to communicate, I can often convey
things, to those who will listen, via typing
and diagrams, things which my voice cannot.

# Therapist
To communicate, there must be someone on the other end.
A therapist of some kind, maybe an art therapist,
maybe a music therapist, maybe a counsellor,
provides an environment in which it feels less
risky to venture outside your shell. Like a timid
tortoise, it takes time and trust to do that.
Unless and until I can trust the person and the
environment, Potential Anxiety walls me in. Few,
outside of those paid to do so, have the time
to listen. With no guarantee that time will be
given, over a long period of time, it seems
fruitless to even begin the task of trying
to open up. Thus I don't. Not with family,
not with any professional other than a therapist
with a significant number of sessions available.

The trouble is, each time I try to open up,
if it goes nowhere, it gets labelled as
'tried and failed', and then yet more Walls
are erected. Walls that are hard to break down.
And so the Maze grows. Searching for avenues
to open up which don't result in Walls growing
is a hard search. But the search goes on.

# Art Therapy
One avenue that has been explored is [art therapy](art).
I find that the main use for it is time and space
with a listening ear, some pens and paper,
and space to just place things on that paper,
see how thoughts may be arranged. A lot of the
diagrammy things you'll find here are the result
of time spent with an art therapy student while
in hospital. Others are more recent, but in the
same style. While actually drawing or painting
pictures can be enjoyable and rewarding, it doesn't
actually *communicate* much of what is going on
inside. And what is going on inside is what is
important, not whether or not I can make something
pretty with paper and pencil or watercolors.

# Typing
While not considered a standard kind of therapy
in the way that 'art therapy' is, for someone
who is relatively solitary, spends far more time
with computers than with people, and uses a keyboard
for hours per day, typing can be a very therapeutic,
yet 'odd' way of communicating. 

I imagine the rise
of social media has changed that a lot: people are
often happy to say things on social media that they
wouldn't dream of saying in everyday conversation.
That can be a problem: trolling and hate speech
are all too easy to throw out there. But the
freedom that can result from not having to speak
your thoughts within a normal conversational
context can be very liberating. 

The 'odd' thing
is akin to an actual mute, who cannot use their
vocal chords, communicating by typing into a computer:
you speak normally, if that is how you are comfortable
communicating, as I can hear just fine; but I type
and you read and, crucially, I do not use my voice
to express words. I cannot hear my inner dialog
if I speak, and often it is what that inner dialog
is saying that needs to be communicated. 

When I speak,
it is not really me speaking, but my [Facade](/facade). It takes
time and effort to bubble thoughts up from my internal
dialog to the point where my voice can speak them.
Yes, the Facade is practised, to the point where I
appear articulate and quite capable of communicating
'normally'. 

But that is an illusion: the Facade
is quite capable of appearing articulate; it may
appear that I am communicating just fine, and that
you are understanding me just fine; but it is
just that, an illusion. Unless you can actually
perceive my inner thoughts and dialog, unless
you actually know what I wish I could say,
as compared to what I actually say, without
that extra bit of hidden information, you cannot
see the massive discrepancies between the two.

And the more important the subject matter gets,
the more Potential Anxiety constrains me,
and the harder it gets to communicate things
that I wish to, should, or must.