My Left Shoulder Blade Is Possessed By a Minor Demon

Observations on unspecific stress 😈

A man suffering from headache in the form of devils, by the prolific 19th century British cartoonist George Cruikshank (1835)

It happened suddenly, two or three weeks ago. I was just going about my normal daily life, when I felt the demon enter my body. At first I didn’t think it was a demon; many things can happen inside a body, and most of them are temporary and of no consequence. But then the demon stayed. He is a small demon, so it’s not like he’s overwhelming me or taking control or anything of the sort. Yet I feel him. Not quite constantly, but almost. He moves around and then settles in a body part or another. He has been in my throat, in my legs, and in my right eyelid. But his favorite spot is my left shoulder blade. He often nestles there, and when he gets agitated, I feel a throbbing, rapid twitch.

The demon is stress. He is not the kind of stress that appears in anticipation of a specific event, like a job interview or an exam or a high-stake personal conversation. He is, rather, the kind of generalized stress that indicates that something is not quite right, yet won’t tell you what that is. In fact I suspect that if I knew the exact cause of the demon’s presence, he would immediately lose most of his potency. He would evaporate into a wisp. Demons are feeble; they are not made of flesh. They are easily defeated, once their weak spot is found.

George Cruikshank really enjoyed representing various aches and ills as demons. Here’s foot pain due to gout

But I have not found this one’s weak spot. It’s not that I don’t have ideas. Rather, it’s that I have too many. Unable to figure out what, exactly, I should excise from my life, I am instead learning to coexist with the demon. And every now and then, some muscle in my left shoulder blade goes twitching — medicine calls that “fasciculation” — as a reminder that he’s around.

Most people’s problems come from either their romantic relationship or their professional life. My relationship status is basically ideal, which leaves work as the most likely culprit. Indeed, the stress began a couple of weeks after I started working more hours, which is about as strong a hint as it gets.

But there are issues with this hypothesis. One is that I wanted this. Working full time, and accordingly getting paid more, was an appealing proposition, especially since I like my work and until now it hadn’t been very stressful at all. Last winter, I remember noticing how the people I work with are very chill, and how I had a lot of flexibility with my time, and how this was a generally great situation. Could all of this change suddenly just with an expectation of working more hours?

Of course, the stress might simply be my fault. For reasons that I won’t explain but that are related with the possibility of improving my work status, I put a standard of performance on myself that I then failed to uphold (according to me). This was entirely my own doing, and in retrospect, was probably dumb, though it made sense at the time. Still, having realized that and stopped caring, the demon of stress hasn’t left.

More Cruikshank, here about the cholic (or colic), a pain of the intestines or other hollow tubes

Might the cause be something not work-related? Perhaps the cause is, well, this blog itself? When I was writing the post from two weeks ago, I noticed a flare in demonic activity as I switched tabs in my browser towards those that are blog-related. There we go, I thought, mystery solved. My fears had come true: the blog had ceased to be a fun and light thing, and has become a stressful chore. Perhaps it was time to consider changing it up. Stop caring about my 2.5-year weekly streak, even though it is a point of pride. Pride isn’t a great thing to cling to.

But again this explanation makes little sense. I’ve been able to run this weekly blog for 2.5 years without it ever becoming stressful. And even if it were actually stressful, because I feel the pressure of having more than 1,350 subscribers or whatever, that still seems good? Giving up partly on wholly on the blog seems like it would make my life worse, no matter how I cut it.

There are other minor sources of stress I could accuse. Practicing for my choir concert and managing the organization. Finding a tenant for the apartment I rent out, and maintaining the place. Getting enough exercise despite being very bad at enjoying exercise. Reading the news. Finding myself bad at using Twitter these days. Lacking any sort of clear career plan.

Yet none of these things seem to be very stressful by themselves. I’ve been dealing with them for years. The demon certainly doesn’t feed on any of them alone.

If no single cause is to be found, then the most likely answer is that it’s a combination of them.

This is kind of a boring answer, though, because:

1. It’s always the answer. Everything from nutrition to social problems to climate change is caused by some kind of complicated mix of factors that interact with each other.

2. It doesn’t really help with fighting the demon.

The most likely scenario for what happened to me a few weeks ago is that, attracted by the promise of more money and a potential promotion, I began working more, and put more pressure on myself, which led me to have less time to write, which made me less confident that I could write quality posts, which made writing posts less fun, and also at the same time other random slightly stressful parts of my life got less attention, and eventually all of it, piled together, reached some required threshold for demon attraction. which the demon was attracted and made its home in my left shoulder blade. The demon didn’t make its home in my shoulder blade for a specific reason; it loves the whole oeuvre. It regales itself on the new steady state in which my life has settled following some disturbance.

The disturbance could be an indigestion! Maybe!

In theory, I could undo it by going back, or by cutting off some slightly stressful task to get below the threshold. I’m fortunate enough that my stress is due to my own choices rather than external circumstances, and also that I have a lot of control over the exact shape my life takes.

Still, it’s not clear what I should cut off. I want all of those things! Possibly there’s one or two things that I don’t “truly” want (“working full time”? “owning an apartment that I need to perform maintenance for”? “singing in that choir and having to practice”?). But what does it mean to not want something that you think you want? I feel like I could pick something to cut off almost arbitrarily, and the demon would leave, and then I’d think I‘d made the right choice — but if that’s true of any choice I could make, how do I actually pick?

Ironically, I am not too stressed about my stress. I’m not really “meta-stressed,” one could say.

Maybe that’s a sign that the demon is about to leave. When I began writing this essay three days ago, the shoulder blade muscle twitching was as present as ever. Today I don’t think I’ve felt it at all.

If that’s true, then that’s good news. But it’s also a not-very-actionable result: I don’t think I did anything, other than talk and write about the stress. I don’t think I learned anything about exorcising demons.

Maybe that’s just how it goes, and also why I’m not meta-stressed. I know, since I’ve had various episodes of such stress over my lifetime, that these things don’t last. Sometimes some random change in your life makes it all go into higher gear, attracting a demon into your eyelid or throat or upper back, and then a couple weeks later, some other random change restores the balance. The correct action is no action. Tolerate the demon until he’s bored and leaves on his own.

Do not wait for the demon to leave on his own if it’s a toothache demon, though. (This is still Cruikshank.)

On the other hand, a potentially horrifying conclusion from my recent experience is that, for many people, the demon never leaves. They live so far above the threshold all the time that even if they take out something stressful, they remain stressed. They have toxic spouses, unfulfilling work environments, tons of random obligations that they should just stop caring about but can’t. And so they cope. They drink, and watch TV, and smoke, and play video games, and go to meditation retreats. They develop addictions. They begin worrying about mental health to an improbable degree. They take anti-anxiety medication.

I suppose I’m lucky to have rarely needed these interventions. For many people, the minor demon that’s been haunting me would be a far better companion than the powerful devils who utterly control their lives.

Those people probably shouldn’t just wait for the devil to leave. But as to what they should do, I defer to professional exorcists mental health specialists. If they want my unqualified advice nonetheless, my minor demon and I will be right here. Or, with any luck, it’ll be just me and my perfectly still, non-twitching shoulder blades.

An ill man next to his empty hearth tormented by the miseries of life; presented surrounded by assorted chastising demons, by George Cruikshank (1835) — perhaps the most appropriate one to represent unspecific stress!