Inward Self and Expressive Self

My friend did not share because he would have been performing. I started in performance, and then came to speak more softly, from a vulnerable part. Are these parts of me in conflict?

There is a part that is a performer, that revels in attention and applause. I made an acrostic from my name with affirming words: I have authenticity bravery integrity grace anger intelligence Love. On stage, I affirmed myself. Then I spoke from a softer side, only to say that I can speak from that. Then I looked round the hundreds in the auditorium, and acknowledged their applause, delighting in it.

A one-word title can reveal aspects of these parts of myself. They are vulnerable part and Performer. Neither is inauthentic, just because it is not the other. Each is expressing part of my true self.

I love an audience. I want to inform, entertain, and be appreciated. So I write here. That part of me can seem confident, though in childhood it was shamed out of consciousness much of the time. In ACA, we see the true self or inner child as crushed behind a people-pleasing façade, so it is easier to identify it with that part which speaks softly from a vulnerable sense of communicating my feelings. The Performer in me, enjoying rapport, gains in confidence as it gains practice. It too was crushed, in fear, when I was a child.

ACA values speaking from Self because generally we have crushed our inner Selves. The group gives a space where Self can be nurtured. I want to heal the wounds of Self. I want to please others without sacrificing Self. We might imagine the Performer is part of the façade rather than part of the True Self. It feels confident where the vulnerable bit is not, it feels extravert where the vulnerable part is introverted, masculine when, speaking from the vulnerable part, my voice goes higher and it feels feminine.

When I named other parts Stretcher and Protector, I reconciled them. I hate conflict, and work for reconciliation among other people: I may be able to reconcile parts of myself. Each are acting in my interests as they perceive them.

Perhaps, under it all, I am both vulnerable and confident, introvert and extravert, masculine and feminine. I want a place where that vulnerable part can express itself and play, and Performing has value too. ACA might call the Performer the Inner Teen. Just because they appear so different, does not mean they are in conflict.

ACA gives a space where the vulnerable part may be nurtured, perhaps more than the Performer. The Performer is still Authentic. Nothing I do is inauthentic. It may be hurting, blind, or desperate. It may be suppressing certain aspects of myself to meet more pressing needs. It may create conflict in myself. But it is all Me, all the flow of the biological process I call Abigail. Some of the atoms, some of the ideas are different from last week and a lot are different from twenty years ago and it is still given these names. And some of the things the process does surprise or distress parts of that process. Those parts may judge those acts or thoughts, and produce condemning words.

Condemnation is part of my process understanding itself. The process, I believe, grows and adapts. It is my experience that great distress- trauma- freezes responses, locks away alternatives which might be valuable at another time. The strongest judgment and repression comes from traumatised parts.

There is a Performer, which entertains, persuades, communicates. There is a vulnerable part, which feels feelings deeply, and can express feelings. Both are loving and creative, both authentically Me. I will nourish and cherish both. I seek balance of all my inward parts.

Writing

I want to be read. More than that, I want to say what I want to say, and for that to be read.

Ursula Le Guin took my breath away, again. Is there anything of hers I have not read, where I might find such wonder? I consider buying Orsinia. But then, I want to read Miki Kashtan, Sarah Peyton, Bonnie Badenoch, and I have two volumes of Le Guin short stories not all of which I have read. After a moment of wonder, I was frantically scrabbling, and now pause.

In “Solitude”, a woman of the Ekumen goes to a planet as an anthropologist. She sees the society as broken from a high technology world to subsistence living. She despises it. But her daughter, growing up in that society, sees its value and wants to stay. It is collected in The Unreal and the Real volume 2, and The Birthday of the World.

I have read it before, and what I remembered of it was the daughter fitting her society and not wanting to go back to her mother’s world, morality and understanding. There’s something like that in episode 2.6 of World on Fire on the BBC, and I found myself completely with the daughter, even as I found the daughter’s morality repulsive. What speaks to me now in “Solitude” is the idea of becoming a person, an individual, rather than one of “a people”, a society. Your thoughts, feelings and actions are your own. People still co-operate: women live in villages together, singing the songs of the culture so that children learn. Men live separately, and women visit them for sex, sometimes intending conception, but do not pair-bond, as “magic”, influence on another, is so despised.

I find the story utterly beautiful. What is this world, and how do people see it? How do they write it, and could they be mistaken?

I could write about the story. Here is my blog. I could, fairly easily, get something published in The Friend. I am still scrabbling, though less feverishly. Possibly, as I grow spiritually, different parts of the story speak to me. That might be worth saying. Or, Look, Look, Ursula Le Guin is wonderful! Would I include The Dispossessed? The moon Anarres has a radically egalitarian society, of interest to Quakers.

On the blog, I quickly put out something on what the Constitution of the NHS says, and what the Consultation does. It’s quite technical, of strong interest to trans people. For what to say in the consultation, I await Robin Moira White’s suggestions.

Also on the blog, I am writing this, to get my thoughts in order. Yes, I could journal. I like the idea of saying it in public: I imagine people cheering me on, or possibly criticising. I can part-form a thought here. For anywhere else, I want it fully cooked.

I want to say what I want to say, and for that to be worth saying and worth reading, and for that to be read. I want it to be compact, to say as much as I can in the 600/1200/2000 word limit of The Friend. I judge other articles there as not saying enough for an article, having an interesting thought which could be developed more in that space, though I do not judge the editor for printing them.

I have not sent anything to The Friend since December. I had a few thoughts, and started writing, and had doubts about what I wrote. Is it ministry, is it something Quakers need to hear? One thought could be ministry and I am not sure I can express it well enough, it does not seem to flow. An article on Le Guin could please and inform Quakers, and that might be enough, and I should really research it if that is what I want to write, rather than just go from my mere delight.

I want to write more about relational neuroscience and spirituality than that one Friend article, and would have to delve deeper into sources, probably primary sources. I have other things to do- becoming a person, my thoughts feelings and acts my own. That’s why Le Guin so grabbed my attention, why I want to read about relational neuroscience more deeply before thinking of writing it, why I want to read and do more ACA. I was at the ACA meeting yesterday. It is about becoming a person. My feelings are obscure yet horrific to me: I want to go through emails and do what I feel would be good to do, an email evokes a feeling at the edge of consciousness and I am frantically avoiding it, through avoidance activity. That needs my patient, loving attention. What pain is so great I must avoid it like that, at that cost?

I have things to say now, and want them heard and read, and have other things to do.

Eight letters

Eight letters can be so powerful.
They bring us together. They give pure joy.
I love you.
Add any more, and joy turns to misery.

Add D.
I loved you.
the world crashes down.

It is torture to say I might love you, or I could love you.
If someone says, “I would love you if-“, run.

I might have loved you.
I will always love you.
Goodbye.

I really love you.
Really? You expect me to believe that?
I really love you
screaming into the gulf opening between us

I do love you
though my actions say I don’t.

I still love you
I can’t trust you
I can’t let you hurt me like that again

I love you, But.
Don’t do that. Don’t be that.
Be my fantasy.

Even the eight letters can be a burden.
I love you!
Stay with me!

Add- anything?
I love you
I see you
I care for you
I want you
I need you

Waterworld

I have never seen the lakes this high (Thursday 4 January)

After the Monster

I had a deep conversation in which my choicest inner critic lines came to mind, and I spoke them. I told how anger sometimes comes to consciousness in me through thinking of past events which have made me angry, and my inner critic says, “You should have processed that by now”. Or I show signs of emotion, particularly distress, and my inner critic says, “Stop play-acting”. Or I hear of someone suicidal, think of my own chronic suicidal ideation, and my inner critic says, “Your suicidality was never nearly as bad as hers”. It draws comparison, to make me or my suffering appear less.

“You have a horrific inner critic,” says my friend.

The thing is, though, it does not feel that way now. The words cross my mind, and I can speak them, apparently dispassionately. There’s something of reminiscence in them, as if my inner critic and I were chatting about the past rather than what concerns her now, or it was a well-myelinated path, rapidly demyelinating. The pain is mostly gone. It’s what my inner critic would have screamed, but now says conversationally, without the belief.

This is a blessing. The inner conflict is not nearly as bad as it was. I can begin to process the horror of that inner conflict. My recovery continues.

The inner critic line “Stop play-acting” makes me draw a rigid distinction between feeling and emotion. Feeling is something I feel, without necessary outward manifestation. Emotion is something that moves me, producing a physical reaction- tears, a clenched jaw- without necessarily being conscious. My feelings should be private, I think, information for me, not something others can read.

It depends what they do when they read it. “We will stand against them!” shouts the orator, raising his fist, and the crowd cheer. Or, someone cries, and others rush to console them, and take away the wicked source of misery. Or, I show anger and that is a sign I am a threat, and bad, and to be defended against righteously. Or, I cry, and others feel incomprehension and aversion.

I do not want to show feeling. I tried to suppress it, but that produces an inner conflict: the emotion pushes back and will not be suppressed. Or, I am unconscious of it, and physical signs of anger or grief communicate to my surprised consciousness as well as to other people, trying to pull me out of comforting denial. Or, I am so good at swallowing tears that while my body sobs I am dry eyed, which others conclude is evidence of play-acting. So instead I want to contain it, hold it, as in this beautiful explanation of anger (facebook share) but still not to express signs of it. I see tears as evidence someone is trying to suppress grief, but failing to hold it within.

I want my feeling to be valuable to me: as perception or information, or as energy. I want grief and sadness as a way to recover from traumatic events, as the alternative is being imprisoned in them by rage or resentment. Alongside this I need to keep developing the wisdom to distinguish the things I can or cannot change- or, what is worth my energy to try to.

With my inner critic driving me, I could be very caring of others, wanting to help with their woes, or I might judge them, want to drive them, as I judged and drove myself. Someone crying does not necessarily mean that she is denying her grief so it must fight to show itself. Unselfconscious emotion can be beautiful, as well as dangerous.

Self-acceptance now

I don’t want to save the world, just myself. I suppose if I were crowning a career of achievement and courage with a Nobel peace prize this year I might, just, believe I am a good person; but then I would be a different human being.

Metta meditation again on Sangha Live, and someone types in the chat. How dare she distract me! The meditation shows me my difficulties with kindness and relating, as well as my tendency to leap to conclusions and rationalise: my anger is because I demand the same “control” and “perfection” from others that I seek in myself, I think. But, why explain? I am irritated; very well, I am irritated. There is the experience; the challenge, to feel loving-kindness; and me, feeling, judging, rationalising.

I cycled to the supermarket, and stopped by the side of the road to eat my first ripe blackberries of the year.

There were 20mph winds and a heavy swell on Monday, and I went to swim. It is hard to get in, as the waves knock me over: I spend some time sitting on the stones, getting pushed around by the waves like a rag doll. Then I move in determinedly, jumping to try to stay vertical in the breakers, and am soon out of my depth; then, the swell lifts me so usually my head is above water. Sometimes, I need to push down. Getting out, I am tired, and someone comes over to see if I need help. “You alright?” he asks, giving a thumbs up. I am glad not to need to be heard, but give a thumbs up back. It is exhilarating: who would need a rollercoaster when they can do that?

I swam to have swum: to preserve the self-image that I am a person who likes such things. I wanted to know I could do it. There were a few others in, but not many. I wanted the experience. I wanted to test myself.

At St Pancras, a man had the score for a Chopin nocturne so creased that he needed me to hold it up. I could not play the prelude, as I had not been practising. Returning, the two young men were there again: one played a solo transcription of Rachmaninov’s second piano concerto, second movement, then a different prelude.

I miss chatting on the train. I don’t, usually. On the bus, a young man had a bulldog, which he told me he had got today. It panted more than once a second. He hugged and pacified it. I scratched its neck, and wished him good luck.

In a rock pool, we saw sea snails and one tiny swimming thing. We walked along the base of chalk cliffs for two miles.

I don’t want to save the world, it’s too difficult. I discussed politics at the Quaker meeting, and articulated Clear and Sensible views I have spoken before. I walked in Pride, and faced it. Sometimes I don’t eat meat for a whole day. I consider these actions are a worthwhile use of my time. I am not judging myself by achievement. Instead, I seek to love myself.

I am paralysed if I care more about managing denying or suppressing my own feelings, or about my aim, than about what my action might achieve. As I learn to love myself I act more effectively.

Pain and privilege

The security guard stands three feet away, his back to the pillar. The uppers of his shoes are nondescript; the soles look supportive for running. The jobcentre is open-plan. There is a row of desks on my right, about ten yards away. Two women sit silently while a man between them holds forth on the useless, ridiculous stupidity of the claimants, affecting a defeated, confused whine. “This one, right, he had a date, and he was like, ‘Oh, my anxiety…’.” He goes on to another story he perhaps heard from a police officer, talking about a useless member of the public making a complaint but unable to give necessary details. This time, he is the reasonable, dismissive police officer- “So, what do you expect us to do about it, then?” His audience give little response, but he needed none.

I thought of saying, “Look mate, I know the clients can be irritating and you might need to let off steam, but could you do it where we can’t hear?” I was just psyching myself up to walk over and challenge him when the women walked away.

I am at IVFDF, so aged about twenty. In Scottish Country Dancing men and women make the same basic moves, but can do so in a masculine or feminine manner- emphasising power, or grace. Now, men on one side of the room are told to rush across to the women on the other, to get a partner, and rather than stopping to the side of a woman I do not know I cannon into her. I apologise, and she says, oh, it’s alright, in an amused tone. I am there: I feel the embarrassment and confusion of the adolescent now.

One thing I find valuable in the GC movement is that it teaches women to enforce boundaries, after they have been inculcated with male privilege and their need to be supportive and deferential. I just don’t like that it’s a boundary against me. There are words I can use- the boundary is cis privilege, so bad. And I am sensitive to privilege: do I feel more able than these women to hold forth and be heard? Have I male privilege here?

I have a deep conviction of my own worthlessness, that where there is confrontation I am bad and wrong and should be held down. This comes from childhood and produces perfectionism. It could just be that I find rejection normal and fitting, because familiar. Acceptance is weird, even threatening.

So to be safe I come from ego, and my voice is deeper, and I seek Rightness as protection. We will follow the rules and be safe. I am aware of the other people. I protect that sense of worthlessness which must be held below consciousness because it is unbearably painful.

If I can be in self, aware of that pain but not overwhelmed by it because I let it be rather than trying to suppress it, I feel vulnerable but am more resilient. I am more aware of the other people there. I practise this. There is so much baggage, so many old experiences where the feeling is suppressed so unprocessed, vivid, able to tear me from here to there in the misery of the moment. At any time the pain might overwhelm me, so I isolate, and spend a lot of time numbed out scrolling the internet.

The way to release the pain is love and understanding, for myself, then for others. Then there will be no place for privilege, but space for everyone’s needs.

My last Swynnerton for a bit: Mater triomphalis.

Being and seeming

I want to be, not to seem. I want to know myself without a veil of words getting in the way. I want to accept all of who I am, rather than to block and suppress parts. All this sounds very wise and mature.

Then I thought, I want to live, even if I get dementia. But the symptom which really terrifies me is disinhibition. As various nasty things cross my mind sometimes, I don’t want to voice them.

So there is something censoring me. It is unconscious. Possibly there are thoughts I do not become consciously aware of, leave alone act on. That is part of the “I” or “me”, the process, the animal called Clare. Inner conflict is unavoidable. One clear “me” to “know” is not what there is. And being not seeming is a matter of honour, but there are parts of me I don’t want others to see.

I want to believe I am a good person, and I want to survive. I want to be able to kill someone if I have to and dispose of the body (I wondered, what is the most repulsive and unimaginable thing I might need to do?) And I want not to be plagued by thoughts of murder when I need not, or to tell people my occasionally murderous thoughts.

I can’t not be. Here I am, sitting in a chair, typing, being. Then I will cook and be at the same time. I may spend some time silently cogitating or ruminating, during which time I shall be, a whole human being, breathing and changing whether I want to or not. So there’s this part of me which thinks in words and speculates about the future and regrets or dwells on the past and perhaps I could just be my whole self and not be stuck in that part too much except it too is part of me and I can’t just shut it off, and if I did I would not be all of me, being.

And there are times I have done or said something without consciously knowing I would, beforehand.

And as I age and build life-experience, I build up an idea of how to respond in particular circumstances. As a child I had to learn lots of things which are now automatic, including how to walk. Speculation and visualisation might help with the things I have not done yet. Steering a car, I had to concentrate before I could do it automatically. If I want to “just be” rather than consider, think and speculate all the time, I might stop myself from learning anything new. But if I speculate too much (am I doing that now?) or doubt myself too much I get in my own way.

“Just being” is flowing like water, therefore wise and good, or it is “fast thinking” as opposed to slow thinking, a habitual thing which is less effort but produces cognitive biases and is therefore bad.

Nothing will ever be simple or easy, except the things that are, and no clear unambiguous exceptionless rules- to speculate or not to speculate- may be drafted. I stand by the first three sentences of this post, though I have pulled them apart and refuted them in the following paragraphs. They might point towards an ideal which might benefit me.

Monarchs of Brighton

Seagulls. Rulers of all they survey.

In flight, they are beautiful.

In bars, they are masterful.

Just, don’t leave your belongings unattended.

The gentle art of pebble-stacking

takes a great deal of concentration

Who says there aren’t important things to do on the beach?

Or at the station

Or in the Pavilion gardens?