Part 7e of Meeting the Voices in My Head and Searching for an Inner Adult
Ernesto Che Guevara – Graffito in the Harbour of Havanna from Pxhere
Revolution gives over to tyranny. Having won the right to untuck my shirt from my Simulated Parents, I needed to continue marching against my Simulated Peers or they would be the next oppressors. Usually people exert some independence, but get scared to be alone, so they fall into line with the next set of others that offers some safety. This new group then calls the shots, resulting in a new loss of independence, until another rebellion takes place.
Part 7d of Meeting the Voices in My Head and Searching for an Inner Adult
When I was in sixth grade, the Student Council succeeded in getting some parts of the school’s dress code revised. This was in 1968 and I guess the faculty couldn’t resist the overwhelming tide of change any longer, so they gave in this one little thing. I remember the excitement when the day came when everything would be different. The girls could wear miniskirts. Us boys could leave our shirts untucked. I got dressed that day with my shirt tail in so my mother wouldn’t yell at me but pulled it out as soon as I left the house. My shirt tails flapped freely all day long. This went on for a few days until my Rebel helped me prepare a little speech for my parents, saying this was a free country, I should do what I want, times were a’changin’, and there’s no good reason to tuck in a shirt tail. Finally, I got up the nerve to leave for school untucked. No one noticed. My Simulated Parents may have cared whether I tucked in my shirt tail, but my real parents didn’t.
Nature has a problem. It needs to stir the pot. It wants you to get out, take chances, spread your seed, and do stuff. Furthermore, it needs you to be a little different from everyone else, so the species can benefit from natural variation. On the other hand, nature made you a social creature. You cannot survive on your own. You must get along with your fellows to thrive. Getting along with others requires a level of conformity so that you can trust each other.
In other words, nature needs you to be both cooperative and independent, compatible and unique, to grow roots and to travel, to tell people what they want to hear and to be authentic. What do you suppose nature does to resolve these contradictions? It creates two opposing drives in you and expects you to figure it out.
In the beginning of your life, it was necessarily all about cooperation. All the inner voices developed early in your life, the Face of the Other, the Feelings, the Simulations, and the Critics, were all to help you get along with others. If you tried to live under their rule forever, everyone would love you, but you wouldn’t be you. You’d fail to live up to your own potential. You’d feel like a fraud on the outside and dead inside.
So, how does a person function in a society, while being authentically who they are? That’s the million-dollar question that you and I try to answer continuously all day long. The optimum point between being and belonging keeps changing; so, as soon as you answer the question once, you’ve got to answer it again. It is the job of the Rebel within you to make sure you don’t cave in and lose yourself too soon.
Here’s the problem though, the Rebel, like all the parts we’ve looked at so far, doesn’t think things through. It just rebels against the most likely target of the moment.
The mission of the Rebel is to claim certain feelings, beliefs, and practices as my own, distinct from others. It establishes the boundaries of the Self and assiduously patrols them. It guards my individuality and protects me from losing my identity.
Is my anger justified? Anyone who’s ever been angry believes it is. But anger can be terribly destructive and must be managed, say those who are not angry at the moment. Who’s right? Is anger worth keeping?
Ethical philosopher, Myisha Cherry recently wrote a book that describes the difference between righteous anger and the other kind. It’s titled, The Case for Rage: Why Anger Is Essential to Anti-Racist Struggle. Dr Cherry comes out in favor of certain kinds of rage against racism. I’d like to see if my rage can be justified when it’s against something else that pisses me off: my cable provider.
Chapter 7a of Meeting the Voices in My Head and Searching for an Inner Adult
Ernesto Che Guevara – Graffito in the Harbour of Havanna from Pxhere
Your head must be reeling with all the inhabitants of my mind I’ve introduced so far. How do you think I feel, with everyone chattering away, wanting me to do what they say? Between the Innermost Child, The Face of the Other, Firefighters, the Fuck-Its, Linus, Bots, Critics, and all the Feelings, includingShame, I’ve often wondered, where do I come in? Is there any room in my own head for me?
An Inner Critic will sometimes disguise itself as someone else to give more authority to the things it says. That happened to me once at the grocery store. I was happily browsing in the coffee aisle when a woman came near, choosing some expensive beans for herself. She moved with the poise of a dancer, dressed in elegant clothes, tastefully perfumed, and meticulously groomed. I had the sense she thought I was not worthy of inhabiting the same aisle as her. Not that she said so, for her manners were far too refined. One part of me agreed I was inferior. This part of me seemed to say, hail to the queen and, if it had its way, I would have bowed and paid homage. Another part of me resented her and proclaimed that, although I come from a humble background and have relatively crude ways, I’m as good a person as she; even better, if you factor in my lack of pretense.
Shame has such an important job to do, to protect me from rejection, that it spawns a horde of minions to do much of its work. These are the Inner Critics, who dominate a great deal of airtime in my mind.
As a writer and a shrink, I’m intimately familiar with the inner critics, both my own and others’. You might expect us to be natural enemies. Most of my clients come to me complaining about their inner critics and asking me to silence them. If only they didn’t have this voice in their head constantly demeaning them, they would be happier than they are.
A Reading of The Urge: Our History of Addiction, Part V
When I was growing up, some people in my life drank, but there was only one instance when someone’s drinking resulted in scary behavior. I grew up in the sixties and early seventies and considered myself a hippie, but drug culture passed me and my friends by. Addiction was not even on my radar the first time I attended an AA meeting, but that meeting changed my life.
A Reading of The Urge: Our History of Addiction, Part IV
My very first client when I began my career as an intern at a VA Medical Center’s Chemical Dependency Unit, confessed to me that he couldn’t stop thinking about having sex with little girls. He explained that heroin was the only thing that helped him resist that urge. Now that we were telling him to stop using heroin, he didn’t know what he was going to do.
Keith Wilson - Counseling 