If I could pull a golden thread from this piece, it's the difference between accepting how we are and accepting that we can't accept that.
I feel like this week alone, I've had many invitations to consider how I am that some would consider unwise. Examples: my compulsive need to be of service, my need to outwork everyone, my unfailing belief in true love and undeniable devastation when it doesn't happen, and so many more things.
In conversation with a member of my team this week, she asked me to just tell her when I want her to do certain tasks instead of me just doing it all. My response: "I can't do that. I am not wired that way, and that wiring is not going to change. I don't want to constantly have to burn energy self-reflecting to correct for that. I just need strong people around me to pick what they're going to do and be done with it."
That felt kind of like a form of acceptance. I can accept that this is how I am. Instead of trying to inner work myself into something different, I'm choosing to A) surround myself with people who have complementary strengths to offer and B) being clear in my agreements and commitments with them.
That belief in true love thing, though - that I'm having a hard time accepting right now. So I'm working on accepting how I can't accept myself in this. I think that challenges accepting ourselves point to the places we suffer the most. I imagine that's also where we need the most care.
Until there is a wiser path, accepting that I can’t accept this is the only reasonable place to be. Everything else is fighting what is, and that’s the white-hot center of the suffering bullseye.
Thank you for being here and for contributing a verse.
Professor Damon is the most useful character you've ever created because he's the one you can't get rid of. The knower who shows up uninvited smashes whatever vulnerability you were building and then dares you to defend his presence. Even I have a version of this. Most of us just let him/her win and pretend the essay was always supposed to sound like a TED talk LOL. You let him show up, then wrote about hating that he did.
Intellectualization. (I actually went down a rabbit hole recently)
It's one of the classic defense mechanisms, originally cataloged by Anna Freud
The IFS (Internal Family Systems) therapists have a more specific name for it. They'd call Professor Damon a manager, haha.
That's why the essay feels like it's fighting itself. It is. I love it. Professor Damon and the vulnerable writer are both on the page at the same time, and neither one wins. Your essay is honest because it is.
Geez, you have a way of making a person feel seen. I am not looking for a solution, not in this piece at least, not as it’s published. I appreciate that you got that from reading it.
The school of parts I currently attend, although I have trained under Dick Schwartz, uses slightly different language for parts. What IFS calls managers, in the Aletheia school we call them proactive parts. We call firefighters reactive parts. Same basic map.
Thank goodness opine is a word, I’ve been looking for it from opinar in Spanish and doing a very roundabout translation.
You can’t set the things down, all that will happen is you’ll pick them back up again and they’ll have gained extra weight from their time on the floor. Or perhaps I too, only know how to be that way?
On the upside, I opine that when I feel like it’s chaos, many people see me as productive. I don’t opine that’s better though 🤣 chaos inside or out? Jolly inside or out?
Thank goodness, indeed. I mean, that’s just my opinion.
Yes, or worse. I’ll just pick up new somethings.
This is the view I take: What people are seeing in you at such times is the proactive protector parts in you doing what proactive protector parts do. They protect the softer parts of us from feeling something by getting to work managerial style.
People mostly like our proactive protector parts. They’re the parts of us that get us promoted.
Now our reactive protector parts? Reviews tend to be mixed. My alcoholic part was a reactive one. He was loved and hated, depends on who you asked at the time.
Dear Professor Damon, as it turns out, I have a cognitive engineering solution for your issue with "holding." This sensation you describe results from cognitive drain as you try to hold a bunch of items in your arms, which can turn into a complex balancing/coordination act, or alternatively as you try to keep track of a bunch of ideas or priorities in your mind. The simple solution is to write down things on to-do lists. In the spirit of full disclosure, I start every day and often end the day as well by reviewing these lists and writing down everything I want to do, with square boxes so I can scratch them off later, and personally I prefer to use blue or black roller pens (sometimes felt tip pens), although I was using a red pen the other day because all my other pens had gone missing or out of ink (don't worry, I bought some new ones). Also, I write down these lists in carefully selected notebooks from my favorite store in town, often with butterflies or dinosaurs or leopards on the cover (once I had a notebook with a Totoro on the cover, which was a favorite for obvious reasons). Once you write the task down, the burden of holding it in mind diminishes, and when you complete the task you get to scratch it off (for the "dopamine hit" according to clueless neuroscientists). Now, there is a deeper reality at work here, which I'll share with you confidentially -- there is no "being," only action. We are nothing but our lists. There is no need for "self-identity" beyond the list. For example, this morning I wrote down, "Professor Posner to explain the power of to-do lists to Professor Damon." Give me any perceived problem that you or one of your clients faces, and I can reduce it to a list. And then there's no need to "hold" it.
At least that's the theory. Give me a try -- throw something my way......
Thank you. I appreciate you taking the time to read my essay and contribute your experience with what it’s like to hold so much.
I also appreciated your description of the ways you select your notebooks. I recently shift from ruled paper to sketchbooks, mostly because that was what I could find in wire-bound, vertically organized in an A5 format. What I didn’t anticipate is how satisfying it is to write on quality paper with a good pen. I try not to use the word addicting when what I mean is something like habit-forming or alluring, but damn. This is the good stuff.
If I could pull a golden thread from this piece, it's the difference between accepting how we are and accepting that we can't accept that.
I feel like this week alone, I've had many invitations to consider how I am that some would consider unwise. Examples: my compulsive need to be of service, my need to outwork everyone, my unfailing belief in true love and undeniable devastation when it doesn't happen, and so many more things.
In conversation with a member of my team this week, she asked me to just tell her when I want her to do certain tasks instead of me just doing it all. My response: "I can't do that. I am not wired that way, and that wiring is not going to change. I don't want to constantly have to burn energy self-reflecting to correct for that. I just need strong people around me to pick what they're going to do and be done with it."
That felt kind of like a form of acceptance. I can accept that this is how I am. Instead of trying to inner work myself into something different, I'm choosing to A) surround myself with people who have complementary strengths to offer and B) being clear in my agreements and commitments with them.
That belief in true love thing, though - that I'm having a hard time accepting right now. So I'm working on accepting how I can't accept myself in this. I think that challenges accepting ourselves point to the places we suffer the most. I imagine that's also where we need the most care.
Thanks for this, as ever, brother.
Until there is a wiser path, accepting that I can’t accept this is the only reasonable place to be. Everything else is fighting what is, and that’s the white-hot center of the suffering bullseye.
Thank you for being here and for contributing a verse.
Professor Damon is the most useful character you've ever created because he's the one you can't get rid of. The knower who shows up uninvited smashes whatever vulnerability you were building and then dares you to defend his presence. Even I have a version of this. Most of us just let him/her win and pretend the essay was always supposed to sound like a TED talk LOL. You let him show up, then wrote about hating that he did.
Intellectualization. (I actually went down a rabbit hole recently)
It's one of the classic defense mechanisms, originally cataloged by Anna Freud
The IFS (Internal Family Systems) therapists have a more specific name for it. They'd call Professor Damon a manager, haha.
That's why the essay feels like it's fighting itself. It is. I love it. Professor Damon and the vulnerable writer are both on the page at the same time, and neither one wins. Your essay is honest because it is.
Geez, you have a way of making a person feel seen. I am not looking for a solution, not in this piece at least, not as it’s published. I appreciate that you got that from reading it.
The school of parts I currently attend, although I have trained under Dick Schwartz, uses slightly different language for parts. What IFS calls managers, in the Aletheia school we call them proactive parts. We call firefighters reactive parts. Same basic map.
In other words, you’re speaking my language.
Thank you, Neela.
My tech brain is always trying to debug things, so I took your cue as permission to leave the screwdriver in the toolbox for once. 😄
Happy Thursday Damon
Thank goodness opine is a word, I’ve been looking for it from opinar in Spanish and doing a very roundabout translation.
You can’t set the things down, all that will happen is you’ll pick them back up again and they’ll have gained extra weight from their time on the floor. Or perhaps I too, only know how to be that way?
On the upside, I opine that when I feel like it’s chaos, many people see me as productive. I don’t opine that’s better though 🤣 chaos inside or out? Jolly inside or out?
Thank goodness, indeed. I mean, that’s just my opinion.
Yes, or worse. I’ll just pick up new somethings.
This is the view I take: What people are seeing in you at such times is the proactive protector parts in you doing what proactive protector parts do. They protect the softer parts of us from feeling something by getting to work managerial style.
People mostly like our proactive protector parts. They’re the parts of us that get us promoted.
Now our reactive protector parts? Reviews tend to be mixed. My alcoholic part was a reactive one. He was loved and hated, depends on who you asked at the time.
I wish I could get promoted based on my real personality not the one I developed to survive corporate but…
Right. Parts eventually demonstrate their limitations because they're not the whole.
Dear Professor Damon, as it turns out, I have a cognitive engineering solution for your issue with "holding." This sensation you describe results from cognitive drain as you try to hold a bunch of items in your arms, which can turn into a complex balancing/coordination act, or alternatively as you try to keep track of a bunch of ideas or priorities in your mind. The simple solution is to write down things on to-do lists. In the spirit of full disclosure, I start every day and often end the day as well by reviewing these lists and writing down everything I want to do, with square boxes so I can scratch them off later, and personally I prefer to use blue or black roller pens (sometimes felt tip pens), although I was using a red pen the other day because all my other pens had gone missing or out of ink (don't worry, I bought some new ones). Also, I write down these lists in carefully selected notebooks from my favorite store in town, often with butterflies or dinosaurs or leopards on the cover (once I had a notebook with a Totoro on the cover, which was a favorite for obvious reasons). Once you write the task down, the burden of holding it in mind diminishes, and when you complete the task you get to scratch it off (for the "dopamine hit" according to clueless neuroscientists). Now, there is a deeper reality at work here, which I'll share with you confidentially -- there is no "being," only action. We are nothing but our lists. There is no need for "self-identity" beyond the list. For example, this morning I wrote down, "Professor Posner to explain the power of to-do lists to Professor Damon." Give me any perceived problem that you or one of your clients faces, and I can reduce it to a list. And then there's no need to "hold" it.
At least that's the theory. Give me a try -- throw something my way......
Yours in caffeine, P. P.
Thank you. I appreciate you taking the time to read my essay and contribute your experience with what it’s like to hold so much.
I also appreciated your description of the ways you select your notebooks. I recently shift from ruled paper to sketchbooks, mostly because that was what I could find in wire-bound, vertically organized in an A5 format. What I didn’t anticipate is how satisfying it is to write on quality paper with a good pen. I try not to use the word addicting when what I mean is something like habit-forming or alluring, but damn. This is the good stuff.
Again, thanks for being here.