“He’s the kind of person who falls over and is happy that physics works as it is supposed to.” – someone on the Internet
Everyone has problems. Some might have adopted a handy “can do” attitude which gives them resilience and makes their challenges seem like little spoiled puppies – sweet, slightly annoying and completely harmless. Others like to describe their issues as terrible monsters that are unbeatable and are going to hound them forever.
All of my problems so far have been caused by one of the two reasons: (1) stupidity and (2) serious underlying issues. I also have seen the combination of both: stupid insistance on avoiding resolution of the underlying issue. And sometimes the stupidity was pleasant enough to make it worthwhile.
The underlying issue is something that needs to be discovered, it can be addressed as I increase my efforts to find it, with a little bit of luck and perhaps technological advancement. My influence over stupidity (or my ego) seems to be slighly more immediate, but less obvious.
Mindfulness
One of my favourite tools is having an excuse to stop and reflect. It is almost as if I forced the avalanche of thoughts to pause for a moment before I decide which ones I would like to continue. While mindful performance of daily tasks is not my thing, I like having activities that can’t be done in any other way than slow: meditation, yoga, journaling, walks in the park or therapy. The idea is to observe my inner world without judgement or pressure. Minimising the amount of information flooding my consciousness in a given moment lets me feel and see what’s important. The mindful practice of developing self consciousness can be used to develop meta-cognition – the ability to think about the way we think. Needless to say, this is the exercise of connecting – has to be done sober.
Cognitive errors
There is a range of traps that I can get myself caught in. My beliefs are limiting me, distorting my cognition. That is the case when my thoughts for whatever reason don’t match my reality. Humans repeat such mistakes often enough that scientists outlined a few of them, so that we can look critically at ourselves and punish ourselves for doing so… only kidding, there are better ways. But addressing them may makes life easier. Some of the cognitive errors include: filtering, polarized thinking, generalisation, jumping to conclusions, personalisation, fallacy of fairness, magical thinking, blaming, emotional reasoning, global labeling, always being right, heaven’s reward fallacy and many others.
Shadow self
The shadow contributes greatly to all cognitive distortions, as described above. This concept itself has been developed in great detail by Jung, and many others after him. Repressing parts of myself, denying myself some feelings that are only natural – that is a recipe for internal and external conflicts, as it distorts my perception. The more I deny my own qualities, the more I project them onto others and the more those features bother me. The good news is – everyone has a shadow. Integrating the shadow on the other hand provides an opportunity to create a solid feeling of self esteem, necessary for healthy functioning.
This is where my “stupidity” territory ends and we march into “serious underlying issues” zone.
Shadow is one of the main reasons for addictions. Substances help us contact our lost and repressed selves and until we learn how to establish that contact sober, we use those substances for manageable functioning. Then the addicts have one more feature – distorted feeling of self esteem, as all of them are selfish. And lonely. Which is tragic, as a great share of the society seems to be made into addicts. Fortunately, our culture is slowly changing.
Narcissism – a specific form of addiction.
All addictions originate in trauma and emotional loss. The same can be said about narcissism – not a new thing, but gaining a lot of attention recently, in reputation-obsessed Western societies. Narcissism is like the game – you may not know that you have it and the more you think it is not your problem, the more likely it is, it is. Narcissists are masters of denial. They might not even be aware they are lying – “A fraudster who believes he is a noble is a psychopath.” While narcissism is treatable, the majority of narcissists never get into the therapy room and stay there unless ordered by court. Their social usefulness is short-lived, but it takes time before they admit their issue to themselves.
The core of narcissism is a disconnection from emotions and feelings by use of defense mechanisms. The only expressions that happen to them are fury and sentimentalism. The narcissist suffers from the lack of the aliveness brought by intense feelings, so he needs and seeks power to make up for that lack. The body is an instrument of will, chronically tense and without the alive feeling. Like many other things in their lives. Again, their self esteem is rather low, compensated by fantasies of grandiosity and addiction to admiration of other people which feeds the vision of the self. While they have the infantile perception of the self (black and white thinking included), their manipulation skills are supreme.
Both narcissism and addiction fall under the category of serious underlying issues. I think both are some form of escalation of stupidity. Both are caused by disconnection, originating from the initial childhood hurt, with under-developed feeling of self and lack of healthy self-esteem. Breaking through denial into healing, or even admiting we need help is hard – that requires something to balance it off, like adherence to a healthy set of values. First step towards recovery – dropping the grandiose fantasy of self-sufficiency – is a sign of maturity.
That is where long-term therapy proves to be helpful. Immediate tools such as ayahuasca, while giving hope due to their empathy-increasing qualities, are believed to be inefficient, as to access the wound, the narcissist has to let go of the grandiose image. However, there are other methods such as yoga, bioenergetics or meditation of kindness. With a bit of work, they can help our brains grow even in the areas we are missing. That brings us here, to showing up every day:)
