Contemplating the self
I’ve been doing a lot of navel gazing over the last few weeks, inspired by the loan of some books from a good friend. I’m exploring Cognitive Behavioural approaches to tackling depression and self esteem. I’ve thought about sharing the work, but it’s mostly too raw and personal. I’m normally fairly open here, but this would be a bit much like bleeding into my dirty laundry in public. I shall wait until I’m at the washing it stage!
All of our life experience is filtered through our perceptions and beliefs. Some of those, possibly a lot of them, are not consciously known to us. I’ve been striving for as long as I can remember to be as conscious about what drives me as possible, so it’s come as a bit of a system shock to realise how much I’ve been carefully hiding from myself for much of my life. That’s the first big danger of contemplating the self – there will be things you don’t like, didn’t want to see, were pretending didn’t exist. They may not all be awful things either, and that’s one of the most horrible ironies around using CBT methods to tackle depression.
Quite a lot of depression is underpinned by negative thinking, particularly about the self. A better sense of self may be the solution to finding happiness. Oddly enough, that can be terrifying. There are consequences to thinking well of yourself, as anyone who doesn’t probably knows. This is how we keep the monsters under the bed from sneaking out at night and eating us, metaphorically speaking. There may be other solutions.
It’s not terrible easy to have a good relationship with anything, or anyone else, if you do not know yourself, or cannot be honest with yourself. And the older and more tightly tied the knots in self awareness are, the nastier a business it is trying to get that sorted out. But if relationship is central to your druidry – as in theory, it is to mine – then the self put forward into that relationship, matters. It’s hard to hold honourable relationship with no sense of self. I have to recognise that accepting dishonourable treatment from others does not an honourable relationship make, for example.
There are traps, rat runs and pointy things inside my head that hold the inner boundaries of who and what I am supposed to be. I’ve been aware of them for a long time, but unable to get them out and look at them. I have believed them to be facts and unassailable truths. Today I got them on paper, and it became apparent that, in their many layers and circuits, there is absolutely no space for me to win. This is not some kind of private madness, cooked up on my own, it’s been carefully nurtured, supported and encouraged by others, not least because even I can see how easy it makes me to control. There’s a narrow bandwidth of acceptable behaviour: I must always be quiet, cheerful and of good disposition, make no fuss about anything, ask for no help, make no mistakes, and always be ready to run in and do whatever is required of me, at a moment’s notice, with perfect grace and good humour. I must give utterly, and ask for nothing in return. On reflection I am conscious that one does not demand such behaviour of saints, much less regular mortals. I am not, and never have been an angelic being, a superhero, an enlightened entity from another dimension, or any other kind of being that might, possibly, have a shot at being like this. But it’s been asked of me, both explicitly and implicitly.
If I am to flourish, some culling is called for. If I am to flourish, I need to do that culling gently, working in small and careful ways so that I don’t destroy myself in the process. I know already there is no way I can do this alone, and asking for help is one of the things I find intimidatingly difficult, so that’s a place to make a start.
In doing this, I am considering the possibility that a person (not just me) can change in the most fundamental ways. I am considering the possibility that a whole sense of self can be gently unpicked and rewoven. I have a feeling that if I can walk through this, it’s going to be a bit like having to walk very slowly through a burning building, but on the other side there is something, some way of seeing that is not at all like what I have now. Hopefully something I can usefully share.
