Ego and shadows and other good stuff

So, I’ve been mulling over this pacifist thing some more, and I think my shifting relationship to nonviolence as an ideology is part of a larger process in my life of unwrapping myself from various identities to find out what’s underneath. Jung would talk about our shadows, Thomas Keating our true self and false selves, and Buddhists would talk about ego and detachment, but whatever you call it, we all have an image of who we think we are – and who we aren’t.  Some labels we choose, and some we are given.  There nothing wrong with that, since we all need to have some idea of what we’re about.

But something does go wrong when we get wrapped up so tightly in these identities and labels that there is no room left for anything else. We start rejecting anything within ourselves that contradicts who we think we are or that supports anything that might connect us to who we DON’T want to be.  “I can’t possibly be doing emotional violence to someone else because I am a pacifist activist! Therefore, you cannot call me out on my emotional manipulation and general ass-holery.”   “I’m not like those moron fundamentalists over there, so I cannot possibly be demanding utter, unquestioning obedience to my personal ideology and labeling everyone who disagrees with me as immoral and/or stupid. I’m a progressive, dammit!” 

I’ll give an example.  Last week I had my bi-monthly appointment with my shrink – something my HMO requires if I want to keep taking the happy pills.  My appointment was at 9:00 a.m., and I was back home by 9:52.  I HATE seeing the shrink.  It puts me in a bad mood for the whole day – and sometimes the night before. 

It’s true that he is not conveniently located, and I have to drive 40 minutes in morning traffic to get there and then pay for parking, but the appointment itself is relatively painless –10 to 15 minutes every two or three months going down the depression & PTSD symptom list from the DSM-IV while he makes no eye contact, types things into a computer, and says “I see” to everything I say.  I hop on a scale to see if I’ve gained or lost weight, he tells me to make another appointment on my way out, and we call it a day. It’s not that big a deal - except that I still really, really hate it.

Despite that fact that I’m not crazy and never was, I nonetheless spent most of my life semi-convinced that I was crazy, and secretly terrified that one day the bottom would fall out of my world, and I would go irrevocably, utterly, and psychotically insane.  I won’t go into the roots of all that, but it’s been one of my biggest barriers in therapy – and it’s why it took me so long to try it in the first place.   I don’t want to be one of the crazies. I don’t want to be one of “those women” (my personal shorthand for those who go from drug to drug and therapist to therapist for years and years and years and never seem to get any better), and I resent anyone who has any kind of power to judge my mental health or give me any kind of label. 

You can see how this can be counter-productive in a therapeutic relationship. In my attempt to run away from an identity I don’t want, I end up assigning all kinds of power to people and situations that they don’t actually have. Really, as long as he’s still willing to authorize my refills, who cares what the shrink thinks about me?  I’m fairly certain he has to read my chart before I walk in to refresh his memory about who I am, and I doubt he has time to have much of an opinion about me one way or the other. And if I take Zoloft for the rest of my life, so what?  It’s one small pill per day and $10 per month.  Do I really need to waste so much mental energy reminding myself that I’m taking a low dose, and I’m definitely going to go off it eventually, and I still believe that psychotropic drugs are over-prescribed, and on and on and on.  It’s all WAY more energy than the situation actually requires.

Reality is complicated, and mental illness is complicated, and having one or two or six official DSM-IV diagnoses doesn’t have to define me or anybody else.  Clearly, I’m still working on my need to disown the whole “crazy” label in my head, but at least I’m unwrapped enough now to know that I’m expending unnecessary energy fighting against it.

I’m still in process, but I’m getting better at figuring out what’s ego and what’s me.  First I had to unwrap myself from the activist/savior complex.  I have (mostly) made my peace with the fact that I am not a revolutionary – at least not right now.  Maybe I will eventually move back into a more activist lifestyle, but I have let go of the need to be Save the World Activist Woman.

I am (mostly) at a place where I don’t have to define myself as spiritually in or out: I don’t need to be a Christian nor do I need to vociferously declare my unbelief.  I can leave space for my deep connection to Christianity and recognize the ways that it has formed me, both positively and negatively.  I can also simultaneously seek spiritual connection and wisdom wherever it can be found, without worrying whether I’ve gone over the boundary line.  (Some would say yes, some would say no, and that’s okay.) I don’t need external validation like I used to, so I can just be me, trying to connect to the Divine the best way I know how. Certain religious places and people aren’t a fit, and there are some practical ramifications of certain theological positions, but that doesn’t strike at the core of my identity the way it once did. 

I’m making progress on detaching from my “under-achieving and fundamentally defective human being with a dark-hearted soul” label, but that one will be a lifelong journey.  As for the “damaged survivor” label – I’m working on letting go of that in little pieces. And I imagine that there are still a few labels so tightly wrapped up in my ego that I don’t even know they’re there yet – and that’s okay.

All that is a very LONG way of saying that I’m learning that embracing my shadows without judgment is easier than trying to avoid them.

Comments

[Phyllis Mathis]

Christy,
It warms my heart to be witness to your process lo these many years. I can so relate. Thanks for keeping us in the loop from time to time.

and p.s. I prefer to call it "ass-holiness"

[Heather]

I never did comment on this post, but I read it and really like it, and feel like I need to do some similar journey internally. I'd like you to be my spiritual director.