Identity

Thursday, November 15, 2012 by Melody Byrne

Hello poor, neglected blog.

The reasons for the neglect and the motivation for this post all come from the same place.

I'm having an identity crisis. A very deep, very personal, very destructive identity crisis.

Go me?

In all seriousness though, I finally reached an understanding of why this would be.

At the time of my last posting on this blog life seemed very different. Chris was about to undergo surgery and that was all that was on my mind.

I didn't yet know that I was pregnant. I didn't know Chris would be undergoing radioactive iodine treatment. I had no idea what was coming.

Now all of that is in the rearview mirror and I find myself trying desperately to deal. Crisis mode is *mostly* over and it's on to dealing with the future.

The fun thing about crisis mode is that while you're dealing with it you have no idea what you're doing to yourself. As you pare down life in order to deal with the shitstorm you don't realize what you're giving up and what you'll need to do once it's over.

Between being a wife, mother, expectant mother, housewife, dog owner and cat owner, I'd lost complete track of everything I am that is completely separate from all of the above.

There's an inherent danger in being _______'s _______. Chris's wife. The girls' mother. Baby's mother. Jayne's owner. Eva's foster mother/mistress (she is a dog after all). All of these roles are defined by some other living thing. And I'd lost sight of everything but those roles.

The problem with all of those roles? Success in them can only be gauged second-hand through the success of the primary subject.

Am I a good wife? Doesn't that depend on Chris, and isn't that best determined by him? Am I a good mother? How do I know without the kids? If one of the dogs won't stop barking, does that mean I'm failing, or is there something else involved?

Then there's the bigger picture. Who am I in the world? As far as 99% of the blogosphere is concerned my first identity is "Chris's wife". At the doctors I am "the cancer patient's wife". At the vet I am "Jayne's owner".

None of those are really who I am, or even scratch the surface. I've allowed myself to get to the point that I'm only known as _______'s _________.

Even in blogging and online I've kind of relegated myself to the same positions. I blog on Chris's blog, but it's still his. My involvement in the forum is secondary, not primary. Even on various social sites my involvement is only secondary. I go to club meetings where Chris is the far better known person and I'm still "the wife".

Granted this is at least partially because Chris has such a big personality and such a big presence, but still...

Where am I just "Mel"?

That's a big question, and the reality is that through a mixture of circumstances and personal choice I've made it this way. I've refused to spend the time and energy necessary to be "just Mel". When your life revolves around your family and your home and your job is your family and home, _______'s ______ is the default. Being known only for yourself is far more difficult. It's also impossible, honestly. There is no going back in many ways.

Just because I'll always be _______'s ______ doesn't mean I can't be Mel at the same time. I just need to carve out some room for myself. Focus on some things some of the time that don't revolve around or include the family. Focus on some things and some projects where the success of my efforts depends only on me and therefore can be measured in a way that is clear and makes sense. Make a name for myself in some circles where I'm known primarily for myself and not for my family.

I have tons of interests where I can do that. I have tons of things I want to get into but between circumstances and guilt I've avoided taking the plunge. I just need to take the plunge. Maybe then I'll feel like I exist as someone separate. Maybe.

It's worth a shot.

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One Connection I Never Thought I'd Make

Monday, June 18, 2012 by Melody Byrne

I'm re-listening to Uncertainty at the moment. Why re-listening? Honestly, I thought I would get more out of it this time.

I'm definitely getting more out of it this time.

In the meantime I'm still struggling with the Un-Fucking Project and its inherent difficulties.

One of the later chapters of Uncertainty goes over the inevitable point in a project when the temptation to quit is overwhelming and when the thought of quitting fills you with such relief that you're absolutely convinced you should give up. We all reach this point in a huge creative endeavor at one point or another and it can literally sink us.

Fields developed a test for knowing whether it truly is time to quit or if the sense of relief is from letting go of the creative angst. If it's letting go of angst it means the project isn't the problem, the resistance is the problem.

His very simple test is a visualization. Imagine its two years from now and your project has to come to fruition in all it's glory. You're reaping the benefits and you've accomplished what you wanted to accomplish with this massive outpouring of creative energy. How do you feel? Where do you feel it? Are you happy and contented?

If the answer is happy, contented, thrilled, and you feel it through your entire body, then the temptation to quit isn't because the project is worth quitting. The temptation to quit is instead from what Steven Pressfield calls the Resistance.

The Resistance is a very difficult concept to translate, but I'll do my best. It's actually better to think of the Resistance as an opposite. Take your calling, your creative endeavors, your very mission in life, that "thing you can't not do", and all of the hard work and delayed gratification that goes into every bit of work towards that goal.

The Resistance is the opposite.

The Resistance is what tells you your work is futile. The Resistance is what hides in your fears and tells you you can't possibly make it. The Resistance is what tells you to sacrifice tomorrow for today.

In physics terms, if creative energy is an object in motion, the Resistance is what attempts to make that object be at rest instead, and STAY there. It's ruthless and uses every bit of fear and uncertainty in order to keep us from progressing.

So in light of Fields' test I decided to sit down and run the test on my current projects and goals. Some of them required tweaking (the true goal was not what I first envisioned) but most of them survived this test.

One of the results though truly blew me away.

Sure "have another baby" and "get Chris healthy" and "get the kids back and healthy" ranked really high on the "want it so bad I can taste it scale".

They were nothing compared to "make myself sane and healthy."

Turns out what the Un-Fucking Project is designed to bring about is what I want most desperately in this world. To be in control of my life and my destiny and moreover, myself.

It's also the project I feel the most angst and resistance about, to the point of engaging in multiple levels and forms of avoiding the project including rationalizing, bullshitting myself, and outright avoidance.

I never thought to apply the concept of Resistance to the goal of making myself healthy and sane. But then it makes sense.

What greater creative endeavor do any of us have than creating our own life? What will ever top that act of creation?

Fortunately enough I already own Steven Pressfield's book which covers Resistance, The War of Art.

I've started re-reading the War of Art with a whole new appreciation for its meaning.

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On Life Purpose and Phobias

Tuesday, June 12, 2012 by Melody Byrne

I've decided to take up meditation.

This could be a very dangerous idea.

I've decided to take up meditation so I can gain more control over the swirling chaos which is my internal thought process. More specifically, I decided to take up meditation today because the hormonally agitated anxiety started getting to me.

Like most things I started looking for the "perfect" way to meditate. Like most pursuits of perfection, it failed.

Sigh.

Once again, I had forgotten that sometimes the answer is to just do it.

So I tried, with a modicum of success.

Nobody ever warns you about these things. That if you do X, you might unlock Y.

I carry all of my stress and my pain in one part of my body, my uterus. In chakra terms, when my uterus becomes unblocked, all of me becomes unblocked.

I'm a submissive in a long-term 24/7 relationship so I've gotten quite used to not doing my own unblocking. Problem is, the stronger I've become mentally and emotionally, the harder its been to get unblocked.

Grr.

I hoped meditation would help.

It helped a little too much.

Ever have one of those "aha" moments, when you realize just how much of a moron you've been?

Yeah....

So all of this blockage is coming out emotionally and I can see clear as day two things:

1. My primary purpose in life is to create, nurture, and grow.
2. I spend the vast majority of my life erecting roadblocks because I'm afraid of my primary purpose in life.

Fun, huh?

The really awesome part was recognizing that I'd avoided consciously associating the two because of the sheer simplicity of my life purpose.

As far as I thought, I didn't HAVE a life purpose.

Oh, I love to create. Love love love. But I'd always associated life purpose with something more tangible.

"Look at Sister Mary over there. She heard the call. She's dedicating her life to the church."
"Look at Ann. The only thing she's ever wanted to be is a wife and mother."
"I've always wanted to be a policeman."
"I've always wanted to be a doctor."
"I've always wanted to cure cancer."

Oh, look at them. How blessed they are to have a calling. Wonder what I should do?

Dumbass.


call·ingnoun1.the act of a person or thing that calls.2.vocation, profession, or trade: What is your calling?3.a call  or summons: He had a calling to join the church.4.a strong impulse or inclination: She did it in response to aninner calling.5.a convocation: the calling of Congress.Origin: 1200–50; Middle English; see call, -ing1
Synonyms 2.  mission, province, forte, specialty, field. 

          Calling (Mel's definition): that thing you must do, or else it fucks you up

I love to write. Never felt the calling as a writer, and I can't define myself AS a writer, as I don't wake up every morning thinking how much I need to write. Baker? Same thing. Artisan? Yep.

There is something I wake up thinking about how much I need to, MUST, go do.

Create. Nurture. Grow.

I've wanted another child for a long, long time. Can't do it right now but the pull is strong. I love all babies; human, animals, plants. I love them all.

I feel a compulsion to write when moved. I feel a compulsion to design, to draw, to piece, to photograph, to take rare elements and make something new from them.

So what if my calling is EXTREMELY vague. That just leaves more opportunities to fulfill the need.

..... and more opportunities to fuck it up.

Creation SCARES THE FUCK OUT OF ME.

It's what I must do. It's what I'm here for. It scares the fuck out of me.

Blame my dad if you want, and all of his talk about starving artists. Blame my tendency to rely on the opinions of others. Blame it on whatever. I'm afraid of putting it out there, because whatever I create stays in the world and then people can *gasp* pass judgement on what I've made. And then if they don't like it I'll just die.

It's a flippin' phobia. An evil, useless, detrimental, life-sucking phobia combined with a stupid fucking irrational thought.

And what do we do with phobias we don't want to deal with? Oh, just use everyday responsibilities and stupid excuses to keep away from whatever we're afraid of.

Huh. I guess a messy house might do that. If I've always got something "more important" to do (after all, "real life" is more important than the "luxury" of creation) then naturally I'll never get around to it.

Like I said, dumbass.

So class, how do you fight a phobia?

Exposure therapy.

Yeppers. Time to do some exposure therapy.

So now until I beat the shit out of this phobia I'll need to do two things:

1. Make something every day.
2. Show that something off one way or another.
3. Notice that the criticism does not kill me or otherwise destroy me.

Sound like a plan?

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On Fixing Yourself

Monday, June 11, 2012 by Melody Byrne

I am currently fighting through the middle of what could be charitably called a "life transition".


Heh. That phrase doesn't include any swear words. The way I'd really like to put it is at least 99% vulgarity.

I'm attempting to "un-fuck" myself.

The term "un-fuck" is very, very important. It alludes to the fact that due to how I handled my life mentally and emotionally, I managed to extremely fuck up how I handle myself and by extension, the rest of the world. Yes, there were outside circumstances; biology, culture, how I was raised, etc. Those are external factors and they strongly influenced how I dealt with my brain and my emotions.

But the reality is I still made a choice (even if the choices available weren't awesome) and fucked myself in the head and the emotions.

Accepting that I MADE those choices and CREATED the mental and emotional structure that followed does not absolve those influences from responsibility. It just emphasizes the fact that if I MADE the choices and CREATED those internal structures, I can DESTROY and REPLACE those structures that leave me mentally and emotionally fucked up.

Therefore, the quest to un-fuck myself. Could use the word normalize, but that doesn't work. No one is "normal" and no person is completely the same as everyone else. I could use the term "sanity" but that's also nebulous and open to interpretation.

No, the answer is not to chase a nebulous concept, because you'll never get there. The answer is to chase something not nebulous; something definable. So the quest is not sanity; the quest is to eradicate every way in which I internally fuck myself over.

Problem is, I do that in so many, many ways.

* * *

In order to understand what I'm doing, I need to back up a bit and explain the surface issues.

I have ADHD (attention-deficit hyperactive disorder), Generalized Anxiety Disorder, and an extremely high IQ (155 or so as of last testing).

ADHD is a congenital difference in the structure of the brain that leads to difficulty managing attention and focus    (look, a shiny!) combined with several other traits. It's structural, and chemical, and treatable. However, as of yet it's not curable. Let's not get into the concept of "curable", that pisses me off as much as "normal" does.

Generalized Anxiety Disorder is what it sounds like; anxiety over EVERYTHING. It's basis is a mix of structural (some people are more prone), chemical (ditto), and learned behaviors.

High IQ, once thought to be unchanging and entirely structural, is a mix of structural differences in the brain and practice using those differences. You can decrease or increase your IQ through using or not using your brain, but some people have an easier time due to being born with the structures that make it easier. For example, the kid with a naturally high IQ whose parents encourage (or don't prohibit) reading at an early age will find using that IQ easier than the kid who had no access to books at an early age. However, the kid with no access can increase their tested IQ rather rapidly once they learn to read and manage access to books themselves.

Of that mix of traits/conditions/whatever, there's a mixture of what is fixed (structural differences in the brain), what can be influenced (chemicals, neural pathways), and what I can outright change (learned behaviors).

In order to understand how I've decided to attack these issues head-on, it's useful to review my personal reading and podcast listening for the last 6 months:

Your Life Can Be Better (a book on ADD)
Believe it or not, all of these intersect.

The Get-it-Done Guy Podcast is what got me into podcasts in a major way. It also taught me the many small ways in which I can improve life, 5 minutes at a time. That's when I discovered I keep my attention better while listening to other people speak, preferably about real things. That led me to the Accidental Creative, which speaks specifically about setting up life so you can be your most creative. More Attention, Less Deficit is of course about ADHD, but less about the WHY and more about the HOW. So is Your Life Can Be Better.

Uncertainty is quite possible one of the best books ever, as it explores how to take the natural anxiety created by creative work and turn it into something useful. The Happiness Project is about exploring creating, well, happiness. 

These concepts all together can be summed up in one phrase: you can make yourself improve your life by improving yourself first.

The real kicker though was reading (actually listening to) How to Control Your Anxiety Before it Controls You back to back with Stuff.

How to Control Your Anxiety is written by Albert Ellis, who is somewhat of a well-know fixture of the psychiatric community. He is a psychiatrist who developed his own form of therapy for anxiety in order to treat himself for the condition. He came up with Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy, or REBT.

REBT is based on the theory that most unrealistic anxiety is caused by what Ellis calls "irrational beliefs" and therefore most anxiety can be treated or eradicated completely by replacing irrational beliefs with rational beliefs. Unlike most anxiety treatments that focus on "why" (tell me about your mother), REBT focuses on "how" the anxiety is triggered and treats the anxiety directly.

So directly after How to Control Your Anxiety, I listened to Stuff.

Oh boy.

I'm not a hoarder, but I do have hoarding tendencies I fight with on a continual basis. Stuff is full of the extreme examples of hoarding but unlike other books of its kind, it focuses on how the hoarders talk about their hoarding and respond to their hoarding. In that way, it does focus on "why" but it also uncovers the beliefs the hoarders have about their possessions.

Light bulb.

Here they were, a whole bunch of examples of people being fucked up by irrational beliefs, all laid out in a row for me to ponder. Some of the beliefs sounded REALLY familiar.

So the intersection of all of these things looks something like this:
Irrational beliefs needing to be replaced by rational beliefs +
Strategies for dealing with anxiety +
Strategies for dealing with ADHD + 
Strategies for increasing creative energy and controlling mindset +
Concept of creating own happiness +
Look how badly you can fuck up your life with your beliefs
= maybe I can change those things in my life that make me miserable by changing myself first

Thus, the un-fucking project.

WHY versus HOW

I'd been focusing way too much on WHY things were the way they were. Knowing why is very important; in fact most therapy focuses on why.

I'd really, really tapped WHY and had run out of its usefulness.

REBT's method is very simple:
1. Identify the situations that make you anxious
ex: public speaking
2. Identify the thought or belief that leads to the anxiety
ex: oh God I have to do this speech perfectly or they'll laugh at me and I'll be so embarrassed
3. Identify a rational belief that would better serve you and not make you as anxious
ex: I'd like to do this speech perfectly but it I don't I can handle the criticism and its no big deal
4. Replace the irrational belief with the rational belief through several methods

One of these methods is the dispute, where you show the irrational belief to be false on a logical and empirical basis, and detrimental on a utility basis.

Ah, utility. My new best friend.

Nothing, nothing has been more eye-opening than looking at my beliefs and behavior through the lens of utility. Is it useful? Does it help me or make things more difficult? Fuck right or wrong, does this FUCK ME UP?

Thus, the concept of un-fucking my mental and emotional processes. Not trying to "fix" me based on a standard. Not trying to reach "sanity" or "normal". Just am I helping myself or getting in my own way?

And if whatever I am doing doesn't work, what am I going to do instead?

* * *

So this has been my transition. Every time I come across a snag in my behavior that causes me issues, I chase that bitch down. Sometimes it's as simple as "I thought this would work better than it did. Oh well, let's look at what went wrong, why it went wrong, and develop another method".

Sometimes things don't work because I'm trying someone else's method and my mind doesn't work that way. Then I look at what the method attempts to accomplish then find another way to get to the endpoint that works for me. That means accepting the parts of my brain that I can't change and finding a way to deal. This is where understanding the creative process helps, because I'm constantly creating ways to do things that work for me.

Sometimes it's an anxiety or a bad reaction due to internal programming (once again something I did myself, therefore I can UNDO) so I chase the programming down and either replace it or toss it completely.

I've done my best to keep track. I've got tons of disputes saved on my computer. I'm trying to keep track of my work process and analyze it for what works. I'm doing my best to fix issues as they pop up. I've even created a subliminal message track on my phone (recorded by me and played at barely audible levels) in order to implant my new rational beliefs in my head (preceded by the all-important "I discard my faulty and limited framework and embrace my open and clear mind". No conflicting messages thankyouverymuch).

All of this is working. It's working to various degrees, but it's working.

I did not properly prepare myself for how much it would suck.

Why do people keep irrational beliefs and fucked up mental and emotional frameworks to begin with? Easy.

They get to be right.

Every time the self-fulfilling prophecy gets fulfilled, you get to feel justified. Whenever something is fucked up "because you're a bad person and deserve it", you get the warm feeling of being right and understanding the world. Yes, it's fucked up. It's still self-reinforcing and gives the brain a feeling of understanding the world.

Take that away, and you're adrift. There's not enough evidence to rebuild your understanding of reality (since reality actually exists somewhere other than your head now) and you no longer spend all your time being right. You now see all of the possibilities you blinded yourself to before, but now that you're not emotionally invested in how horrible or awesome you are you can see yourself for who you are. Now that you understand your every thought and action doesn't fundamentally change reality, you have to face your lack of control over the world.

Who you are right now is someone who is learning just what you are capable of, and just how far you've got to go until your competence reaches your capability and your ambitions.

Accepting that you can change your thoughts and behaviors, deal with the parts of you that won't change, influence the parts you can influence, and outright change the parts you can change, you hit a wall of realization.

There is so much you can do to improve, so much room to improve, and you are an absolute newbie with no experience.  You grasp that you can understand e=mc2, but first you need to learn to add and subtract.

That's where I am at this moment. The initial boost of understanding I can change all of these things has worn off and now I see just how much work there is to do before I see the huge gains I desperately want to see.

I'm eyeing the 200 lbs on the weight rack and knowing I can get there, but right now the 20 lbs I'm lifting is making me sore. Intellectually I know I'm doing the right thing but without the immediate reinforcement of success I need to force myself through every step.

So I've needed to rejigger my expectations and my milestones. 200 lbs is still my goal, but I've set interim goals at 30, 40, 50 and on up. I need my way-points, I need my encouragement to get over the fact that I'm sore and discouraged.

Plans are a constant part of life. I need to pull out and review my goals and processes and plans on a continual basis to remind myself why I'm working so hard and what my end goal looks like and why it will be awesome once I get there.

I'll get there. Maybe not immediately, but I'll get there.

I know this for sure: no matter how bad I feel right now, getting through this process will end much better than spending one more day gripped by depression and anxiety.

I can make my life better by starting with me.

P.S. As an aside, my dear husband is a fucking saint for putting up with this entire process, not trying to interject himself into the process, and praising my small accomplishments when he sees them. Thank you love.

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