jeffy

First, the test: ( survey says... )

I wonder if it's common to have as little clue about what's going on in your own brain as I seem to have.

My shrink had me do the empty chair thing again. This time he made me use first person on each side (I was tending to speak from my integrated pov and narrate for these parts.) We got some serious fear talk from logical comfortable self. These descriptive tags are becoming cumbersome. Let's call comfort-seeking logical left-brainy self Jack, and spontaneous creative flighty right-brainy self Algie (pronounced like algae, short for Algernon. Yes, I did see The Importance of Being Earnest last night, why do you ask?)

So, Jack is afraid. He's afraid of what might happen if that flibbertigibbet Algie gets in the driver's seat. In particular he's afraid that the very comfortable little life he's constructed will be destroyed and he'll be subjected to uncertainty, discomfort, inconvenience, and other calamities. If you detect somewhat of a mocking tone, you are quite perceptive. I think that's coming simultaneously from the integrated me who sees what a mess Jack has made of things with this avoidance approach, and from Jack himself who is using it as a self-deprecating "ha ha only serious" way of trying to deflect attention from just how terrified he is of all those things.

In response to this, both Algie and Shrink basically pulled a Dr. Phil and said, "How's that working for you, Jack?" The answer of course is that it sucks. But it sucks in a way that Jack understands and feels in control of. It's a safe suckage.

So we tried to negotiate with Jack and suggested that maybe Algie could have just a little bit of peril. We could see how it goes. But Jack was all, "No, it's too perilous!" Actually he was more like "Sure, I guess we could try that." And then under his breath, thinking we couldn't hear him saying, "right after hell freezes over." If Jack knows anything it's how to put stuff off until it goes away.

Shrink suggested putting Algie to work coming up with a proposal for something to do that Jack can accept as manageably perilous. Of course that's kind of using the solution to my problem to find the solution to my problem. Of course that's just Jack trying to get me to confuse the map with the territory. There isn't really anyone named Jack or Algie in my head, they're just labels on behavior patterns, and slippery ones at that. And much as I'd like to think that Algie's been locked in a closet all this time, it'd be more accurate to say that Jack's been distracting him with shiny toys all this time. Algie's still not tired of the shiny toys. But I'm tired of feeling like I have no control over when playtime is.

So I've been trying to take different approaches to the problem. On the bus this morning I drew pictures of some of the different pieces of my life, trying to see if right brain had any insights to share. There might be something there. I need to ponder it some more.

It's frustrating because it seems like the answer to all of this is straight out of the Nike playbook: "Just do it!" And maybe I'll get to that point. Something like that happened when I had problems my sophomore year in high school, and after a while the process of trying to fix it became more annoying than what the problem was trying to avoid and something just snapped into a more acceptable configuration. I'm trying to keep myself open to something like that happening again. Not expecting it, but not resisting. Meanwhile, trying to work on through.