Old Goals

I spent a lot of my teenage years wishing I could just be happy. All the time, I felt sadness and frustration and despair. I didn't have friends who lived near me. I didn't have many close friends at all. That has remained a constant in my life, but I have learned how to be happy at least. 

Not all the time, of course. That would be silly. Happiness would lose its meaning if it were a constant state. But I can choose to look at the world through a positive lens now. I can choose to find something to be happy about. I can reject the sadness that used to overwhelm me at times. 

My husband mentioned the other day that he hasn't met anyone else who self analyzes quite as much as I do. I like to look at myself and my actions and try to figure out why I did what I did. Sometimes that's a negative thing to do; it can lead to a spiral of guilt and self-recrimination. But I've learned over the years how to calm that critical inner voice. 

The voice isn't gone, but it's a lot quieter than it used to be. It used to be a much larger monster, one that spoke whether I wanted it to or not. Over the years, I've worked on slaying that monster, taking away its energy source, not feeding it. Many repetitions of the mantra, "I do not like the way this makes me feel," helped me to reduce the monster's food source. And the thought that if I were to hear someone talk to a friend of mine the way I was speaking to myself, I would be angry as hell at that person. Why should I treat myself in a way I wouldn't let anyone treat my friends? 

In my niece, I see similarities to myself at that age. We are, outwardly, very different. She is tall, while I am short. I love to read, while she is dyslexic. She's more outgoing than I am, in some ways more confident, especially in the city and with technology. But I think there are aspects of her inner life that remind me of myself at that age. 

I wish I could give her a shortcut. A faster way to get from the wreckage of the teen years to the happiness that I've found. But I know it's hard to see through that fog. And if you want to get out, you need to see that there's an out to get. To see that there are possibilities waiting for you in the future. Possible futures that include things you could never imagine. 

Like being happy. 

The Monster Expects Perfection

My brain likes to chew on things. I often find myself going over and over something that I said or did. Something that I'm not sure, on reflection, was done correctly or well or with the proper emotion. I can shut the chewing down for a while, but there's a tendency for my mind to sink back into those thought patterns, rehashing the past over and over again until I've convinced myself that I took the worst of all possible paths in my interaction. 

That's a monster. 

A voice popping up and criticizing my actions of the past. Nagging me to be better, to be more, to be perfect. An expectant weight of emotion. Inflicting suffering on myself mentally, but to what purpose? Is it like picking at a scab, only in my mind instead of on my skin? 

I don't think I'm the only person to do this, but it's not something that gets talked about a lot. 

My monster is an isolationist. It doesn't occur to the monster to push any of these feelings out and inflict punishment onto other people. Maybe that's a function of it being my monster. A function of who I am as a person. I'm not one to lash out, not very often. I more often lash in, punishing myself for perceived faults. 

I punish myself when I'm angry. I've read the phrase that anger turned inwards is depression, but I'm not sure if I quite agree with it anymore. I'm not depressed, and I doubt that I ever medically have been. I've just had lots of emotions, BIG emotions to deal with. And, over the years, I've dealt with these big feelings in various ways, some better than others. 

Sometimes I wonder what might have happened if I had been better as a child at suppressing my emotions. Would I have been better off? I would have been yelled at less, because I would have cried less... But I wouldn't have learned how to process those big feelings by avoiding them. I mean, I'm no expert at processing them now, but I have strategies. 

Like, I know that I get irritable when I'm hungry. I fully embrace the term hangry, because I've felt it in my bones when backpacking. Knowing that, I can acknowledge that the emotion is coming from a physical need, and isn't a response to the situation that I'm currently in, or the person I'm currently with. Same thing if I'm frustrated or upset; I try to recognize what the cause is instead of either punishing myself or, on occasion, lashing out. 

It takes time to develop that sense of recognition. Time and self awareness. I've been trying to more fully develop my self awareness as I've dealt with the IBS diagnosis. After all, if a physical need can turn into an emotional state (hunger leading to hangriness), then surely an emotional need can turn into a physical state. Our bodies and minds are intertwined. So by being more aware of my emotions and what I'm doing with them, I might be able to reduce the impact of my emotions on my body. 

The Role of the Squire

When it comes to slaying the monsters within, no one can fight for you. It would be great if you could get someone else to fight your monsters for you - so much easier! But the moment someone else tries to be your Champion and slay one of your monsters, you will become defensive and actively fight against their efforts.

Why?

Because they're your monsters. Part of their function is to convince you that they are you, an integral part of you without which you cannot function. The only person who can discern them and slay them is you.

That doesn't mean that you can't get help when you set off to slay those oh-so-personal monsters. In fact, I highly recommend having support when you intend to monster slay. But the support is external. Like, someone to carry your gear, and help you put on your armor for battle. A squire, if you will.

The role of the squire can be pivotal. While not everyone needs or has a squire, when you have one, you can take more leaps, because you have that support to rely on. You just need to remember that the squire is not there to fight the monsters, let alone slay them. The squire is there for you, yes, to support you in your slaying journey, but you are the slayer.

A squire should be able to provide support, care and love. An example of support is discussing tactics and reminding the slayer when they’re starting to stray into a downward spiral. Care and love are pretty self explanatory; when we know that someone cares about what we are doing, and that someone loves us no matter what, then we can be more confident about slaying those monsters. Because your squire won’t let you stop being who you are. 

The squire provides grounding. A link between the self that you are and the self that you wish to be. 

A squire is a cheerleader, and always on your side. 

But they cannot do the work. 

Squiring someone through monster slaying is like helping a friend study for a test. You can drill them, study with them, recommend various tips, tricks and techniques. But when it comes time to actually take the test, you cannot help. You can’t even watch.

The reward is in the results.

In the slaying of monsters that will allow slayer and squire to have a deeper relationship, without monsters getting in the way. 

On Monsters: Emotional-Physical Connection

When we experience emotions, we react physically. It could be argued that the physical state of the emotion is the emotion, but I won’t get into that here. Here, I want to look at what can happen when an emotional state that we don’t like gets tied to physical feelings that we do like. This is one of the ways that our monsters feed, by creating a feedback loop that pushes us to seek out (or simply not suppress), emotional states that don’t benefit us. It could be that those emotional states hurt ourselves or others, physically or emotionally. It could just be that they don’t create anything positive in our lives, perhaps contributing to the kind of inertia that can prevent us from doing what we really want to do. 

So, let’s look at a state of rage. 

Rage can feel powerful. The adrenaline flows, and our perceptions of the world change with that chemical influence. We feel clarity in the height of the rage. Rage allows us to lash out physically and verbally. There is a power in letting go of civilized restraint. 

What then, would be the responsible use of such power? A righteous rage could be posited. But that is not a monster. Because monsters don’t come when they’re needed or called. They are always there, and always looking to power up and take control. 

Is it our responsibility as adults to master our monsters? I don’t feel like I should use the term adult here, because it is clear that many people do not control or even acknowledge their monsters, regardless of age or supposed status. Awake? Evolved? Both overused. To attain self-mastery? Feels a bit pretentious. 

Let’s take a moment to work over some semantics. If one is unaware of their monsters, then they are Shadowed. An awareness of monsters brings one to the level of Caved. And that would make those who master their monsters Outsiders. This structure plays off of Plato’s cave analogy. 

Then we move to, the responsibility of Outsiders is to master their monsters. 

The responsibility of Cavers is to bring their monsters into awareness. 

The Shadowed aren’t aware of any responsibility. They act without regard to that responsibility, allowing monsters to run rampant as they please, thinking that it is merely an expression of their own personality, rather than a monster. They tend to be entrenched with and possessive of their monsters, no matter how much pain they bring. 

Are there people without monsters? 

There could be. I won’t say no to this, but I think it would be a very uncommon life that would result in no monster formation. No twists in the perception of reality, no painful coping mechanisms caused by pain? 

My husband told me about kicking the dog. Take the prototypical heteronormative family. Dad goes to work. Bossman yells at Dad. Dad can’t respond in kind to the bossman, so he goes home to yell at Mom. Mom can’t respond in kind to Dad, so she yells at Sonnyboy. Sonnyboy knows he can’t yell at Mom (tried that one before!), so he kicks the dog. 

Each one is taking in pain and passing it on. Does that make them feel better? Short term, yes, in the immediacy of the action. After that, not so much, as passing on the pain does nothing to address the cause of the pain. Without awareness, the vicious cycle continues, generation after generation. The monsters hurt us at the same time that they convince us they are helping us. Because that's the emotional pattern that we learned, imprinted from a young age, in this scenario. 

Back to the rage. By itself, it is simply an emotional state. It can exist without being a monster. In such cases, it is an emotion that is entered with control and used. Released. No exaltation of the emotion. No reveling in the high of it. A tool in our box. 

If your emotions are tools in your box that you use, then the monsters aren’t free to use you. Or use your tools. 

Monsters are malformed emotional patterns. Emotional patterns that do not feel good/enjoyable, but that we "can't" seem to avoid falling into. We fall into them because they are habits, and because we are unaware.

Is it the responsibility of Outsiders to help others to become aware of (their) monsters? 

We hold onto monsters, keep them fed and sleek, because we feel that they are a part of us, an integral piece of our personality without which we would cease to be ourselves. So we suffer. We feed ourselves to our monsters and wonder why we’re so tired. We make the same mistakes over and over, because that’s what our monsters have convinced us is the only way. As long as we stay Shadowed, they are unobstructed. They thrive. 

“That’s just the way I am.” 

“That’s just the way they are.” 

We infantilize others when we insist they cannot change. We infantilize ourselves when we insist we cannot change. Growth and change are fundamental parts of being human. We are born, we grow, we change, we acquire monsters and let them ruin our lives. Humanity!

Acting like there’s an expiration date on yourself (or others) for change, is a surefire way to never grow or learn again. 

To cut yourself off from The Experience of being alive. 

Monsters are a part of The Experience, but they limit us, by their nature. Monsters keep pulling us back to what we've done before, while there is so much more to The Experience, beyond the hamster wheels that the monsters want to run over and over again.