Rising Strong.

I just finished reading Rising Strong by Brené Brown. I’d seen Brené on Oprah a few times, but I was especially drawn to her Super Soul Sunday episode where she talked about her book, and specifically about shame.

There are things that bugged me about Rising Strong. Mainly the language she uses to list steps to dealing with your emotional processes. I find it too cutesy and it irritates me. Overall her work on emotional intelligence and effective communication is great, I just think it’s done a disservice by over simplification in order for it to be approachable. I feel like the book needs more meat.

Her work is interesting though, as are some of the points she brings up. 

The following quote had me add Alias Grace to my goodreads list:

When you are in the middle of a story it isn’t a story at all, but only a confusion; a dark roaring, a blindness, a wreckage of shattered glass and splintered wood; like a house whirlwind, or else a boat crushed by the icebergs or swept over the rapids, and all aboard powerless to stop it. It’s only afterwards that it becomes anything like a story at all. When you are telling it, to yourself or to someone else.

- Margaret Atwood, Alias Grace

There's something about narration these days. I find myself narrating section of my life, or internally describing myself and situations in lyrical language. It's odd. I have found though, that the blog has helped me a lot. It's been successful for what it was initially meant for, as a record of sorts. As a way of externalizing my frustrations and fears. But it's also been more than that. It's been a little part of me. I've written from memory, I've chronicled, essayed, some of what I do is part book review and lit review from what crosses my path, but it's also had creative pieces. It's had free thought word associations. It's had dreams cast out onto paper - where I can get them out of my head. Stories and patterns help.

Robert Burton, a neurologist and novelist, explains that our brains reward us with dopamine when we recognize and complete patterns. Stories and patterns. The brain recognizes the familiar beginning-middle-end structure of a story and rewards us for clearing up the ambiguity. Unfortunately, we don’t need to be accurate, just certain. (79)

It's the satisfaction of a film like Momento. It's the satisfaction of a job well done. A period. milestone. A benchmark. A check-list. Boy do I love a check-list.

Jonathan Gottschall examines the human need for story in his book The Storytelling Animal. He explains that there’s growing evidence that “ordinary, mentally healthy people are strikingly prone to confabulate in everyday situations.” Social workers always use the term confabulate when talking about how dementia or a brain injury sometimes causes people to replace missing information with something false that they believe to be true. (81)

Gottschall argues that conspiratorial thinking “is not limited to the stupid, the ignorant, or the crazy. It is a reflex of the storytelling mind’s compulsive need for meaningful experience.” (83)

One of the many ways we can dip out of the norm and into too much. What is it about narrative? What is it about wanting an explanation to everything, wanting to understand it all? We stand guilty of it as an entire race! 

What part does the ego play in understanding, or thinking we understand something to our satisfaction? What kind of entitlement comes with that? Why does it comfort us so much? Does getting lost in trying to explain and understand help?

James Pennebaker, a researcher at the University of Texas at Austin and author of Writing to Heal, has done some of the most important and fascinating research I’ve seen on the power of expressive writing in the healing process. In an interview posted on the University of Texas’ website, Pennebaker explains, “Emotional upheavals touch every part of our lives. You don't just lose a job, you don’t just get divorced. These things affect all aspects of who we are - our financial situation, our relationships with others, our views of ourselves, our issues of life and death. Writing helps us focus and organize the experience.” Pennebaker believes that because our minds are designed to try and understand things that happen to us, translating messy, difficult experience into language essentially makes them “graspable.” (87)

Language is indeed a mold in-which to smush the complex ingredients of our ego, our id, our dreams, our context, and ultimately our intangible experiences. So much happens to us in a moment, in a day, in a lifetime. If what any of us want is to minimize discomfort and pain while we're here, it makes sense that we'd want to understand what it is that causes us pain and discomfort, in order to possibly avoid it in the future.

If there is one thing that failure has taught me, it is the value of regret. Regret is one of the most powerful emotional reminders that change and growth are necessary. In fact, I’ve come to believe that regret is a kind of package deal: a function of empathy, it’s a call to courage and a path toward wisdom. Like all emotions, regret can be used constructively or destructively, but the wholesale dismissal of regret is wrongheaded and dangerous. “No regrets” doesn’t mean living with courage, it means living without reflection. To live without regret is to believe you have nothing to learn, no amends to make, and no opportunity to be braver with your life. (210)

This section of Brown's work I appreciated significantly. For a while in the 90's there was a lot of "no regrets"- t-shirts and pop culture paraphernalia. As I got older, I got increasingly irritated by them. I've always felt regrets weren't necessarily negative, as long as you understood them. Brown expresses what I feel well here, since reflection is a large part of the last few years of my life. I do regret situations where I was shitty, or blind, or disconnected, but I am also able to look at those times and understand why I did what I did or said what I said. She quotes George Saunders, in a 2013 commencement address at Syracuse University:

What I regret most in my life are failures of kindness. Those moments when another human being was there, in front of me, suffering, and I responded. . . sensibly. Reservedly. Mildly.” (211)

Brown goes on:

I believe that what we regret most are our failures of courage, whether it’s the courage to be kinder, to show up, to say how we feel, to set boundaries, to be good to ourselves. For that reason, regret can be the birthplace of empathy. (212)

I think regret can indeed lead to empathy. As can most difficult, painful emotions. Courage can be hard. Even little pieces of courage. It seems some days all I can do is just minimize my interaction with the world in order to hold on to what little energy I have. For some, just getting out of bed is courage. I've had those days. I've had years of my life, lost to a cloud of disinterest and introversion. 

Brown also has a few paragraphs on nostalgia I found interesting. For a while, during the worst parts of my depression, nostalgia was a big part of my shame triggers. It was a lie though. It seemed glossy and young, happy and energetic, but there was also frantic bits, bits I feel in my guts when I sit with too long. 

It's so easy to romanticize youth. Perky tits. Hormones. The energy. I had so much god damn energy. So much naive hope about - everything.  

I can understand why nostalgia has become such a cultural cliché - the prom king and queen, the "good old days" - because it's an easy place to go to - a memory. And if we aren't careful, of course we could re-visit that place with rose-tinted glasses, but if you do have the propensity to look a little longer than is comfortable or to dig a little deeper than is (seemingly) necessary you revisit those memories and you notice the little things. The discomfort here and there. The limitations. The assumptions we made. How we didn't know any better. How dumb we maybe were. How much hormones made him seem greater than he actually was. How location and context made friendships happen. How much you had to learn. How naive you all were. But we now know better, don't we? 

Brown quotes The Great Beauty, a film by Paolo Sorrentino:

"What’s wrong with feeling nostalgic? It’s the only distraction left for those who have no faith in the future.” Nostalgia can be a dangerous distraction, and it can underpin a feeling of resignation and hopelessness after a fall. (243)

I think this actually further compliments what I was saying about my own experiences. I was deeply depressed, and a nostalgia trap made sense. I had no hope for myself or the future, and if what I was feeling was shame and frustration, it makes sense to then explain that shame and pain through blaming myself for how much I fucked up what was.

I think Brown's work could be helpful to a lot of people, and in a lot of different situations. She discusses her work with corporate spaces and teams. Implementing effective communication strategies can really revolutionize a corporate culture. It's an ongoing issue in nearly every place I've worked. To varying degrees of shittyness. 

She talks about the stories we tell ourselves, and how we interpret situations in ways that are often skewed in just an infinite amount of ways. How our interpretations of any given situation can be totally different than that of our partner in that situation. 

Throughout her examples, honesty and a conversation work wonders. This isn't news to me, but I can understand how her research can be considered revolutionary to those less feely, especially in a corporate culture. 

It's a lot of work, to be aware of how you're feeling, your reactions (both verbal and non-verbal) and your interpretations. I guess it's through practice that these things become habit. And I hope more comes of this kind of research because I'd like the terminology of emotional intelligence to become part of our everyday vernacular. Effective communication changes everything. It can diffuse so much.

I walk away from Brown's book with something she uses often throughout Rising Strong. She uses specific language to talk about interpretation: The story I am making up is ...

This acts as a took to facilitate conversation with a friend or loved one, openly. It's not accusatory, it's a peak into someone's brain. She uses personal examples, as well as professional ones.

In my experience, being direct about these things, in a loving way, has totally diffused situations that were uncomfortable or potentially unpleasant. Especially when it comes to my mother, who tends to be passive-aggressive and huff loudly instead of using words. I've yet to use it with friends, since we see each other so little these days it's not been an issue. Overall my friends are pretty supportive and great anyway, we're like, pretty emotionally intelligent (ie: depressed). lol. 

It becomes difficult when processes are so different. Someone needs to cool off where someone else needs to think about things where someone else wants to mind-vomit all over you. Being a person is weird. It's hard you guys! Why are we so neurotic! 

Anyway, check out Brene's Brown interview with Oprah on Super Soul Sunday if you can (OWN shows are hard to get online), if you're into it, check out her book. 

Inside / outside.

I wrote part of this as a writing class exercise. I decided to post it here, because it's true, and has some interesting bits to it. 

A. is very sweet. She’s good hearted and has a helpful nature. A. can also be a hot mess. She doesn't own the term. I've worn it for a while. My late teens and early 20’s were a cacophony of ugly-crying and deferred decision-making.

The worst of it came when my high school best friend decided to become a Jehovah's Witness in order to be with her boyfriend. I was a tattooed, pierced, vegan atheist. I attended Kingdom Hall with her to show my support. Eventually the only times I saw her were if I went to church with her. It became a battle to hang on to her, but it was a battle I engaged in willingly for longer than I should have. After losing my dad at 13, losing someone intentionally made no sense to me.

Post-high school friendships are odd. There’s just so much possibility in them. You could meet any other person and like them and spend time with them. We have cars now. We can set our own schedule. We can make our own dates and judge for ourselves what’s appropriate. No more friendships based on your neighbourhood or their geographical proximity. My high school time was spent with a few girls and a large group of guys. Good guys. Funny. Charismatic. The type of guys who could recite SNL dialogue on Monday and would stay up all night with you to study for an exam. I was a tomboy who loved our girl/boy sleepovers. A few parents understood platonic friendships were possible. We’d spend the night laughing and being ridiculous in a way hardly experienced in the self-censoring and sensitivity of girls. Boys’ll fart on your head without a care in the world.

Our movements forward lead us elsewhere. They were at bars and clubs, enjoying casual sex. I was in a basement bedroom, surviving my depression through a self-imposed hermitage. As my entrenched friendships from high-school began to decay I looked to school. I wasn't in a good place, struggling, I told myself if I went to school, at least I was doing something productive. I no longer recognized those who knew-me-when. They were filled with so much promise and excitement. I was not. I felt college was meant for me, for others. Here I could hear things I’d never heard. I could disappear into the walls and just absorb.

After university, I was navigating panic attacks on top of my chronic depression, so naturally I was loads of fun to be around. I figured the best way to avoid my life was to go back to school. A. and I met in technical college. We were both studying graphic design. She signed up for a service where a classmate acts like a sort of official nag, reminding you of homework and critical deadlines. I was that nag. We gradually spent more time together, bonding over the fact that we weren't born in the 90’s like most of our classmates.

As I got to know her, I learned her accent was from Nova Scotia and that she was new to Montreal. One afternoon after class I visited the condo she shared with her boyfriend. The condo was perched on top of a large, red-bricked building by a large public market. It was fancy. I was instantly impressed by the place. It was the nicest place I’d seen in the city for someone my age. There were no milk-crates anywhere, it had art on the walls. There was a guest room. When she lead me into the light-filled space we were greeted by two spastic jack russels. I love dogs, so though their energy was frenetic and overwhelming I was happy to pet them and babble encouragingly to them about their assumed goodness.

Over the span of the next two years we became increasingly close. Her boyfriend was rich. He had summer homes and a winter ski retreat in the mountains. We gladly trekked all over the province to babysit his family dogs in the lap of luxury while they were off, being rich internationally. We’d show up at his parent’s mansion with a menagerie of dogs and relax. It always took a few days for me to adjust to the level of comfort and grandeur that apparently had existed near me all this time. Was being rich common?

One summer we headed out to the coast to a sea-shore house that was over 100 years-old. We brought my brother’s discerning schnauzer Jack along for the trip. Every-time we sat quietly, appreciating the ocean air and breeze and A.’s frenzied dogs would run into the room Jack would look at me worriedly and sigh audibly. On the drive home the dogs were relegated to the back seat with A., Jack—over the span of 20 minutes or so—slowly squeezed himself between the driver-side door and driver’s seat in order to eject himself from the undesirable company. Jack was onto something.

Having enjoyed this mystery boyfriends many vacation homes, I was glad to finally get the chance to meet him. A. and I walked into a small café near her condo. It was small and familiar, seemingly filled with regulars. We were the only women, and I read the space as being a popular hangout amongst gay men. I made my way to the counter and was met by a smiling barista. He was slender and blonde, well coiffed and at ease, flicking a towel onto his shoulder as he pushed a coffee over to A. We all exchanged pleasantries until I received my order, at which point he pointed out how happy he was to finally meet me.

I was faced with an interesting dilemma. How to discuss with a friend, the seeming gayness of her partner. As we walked I made it clear that relationships take all forms. Sexuality is a spectrum, as is gender. People want and need different things. Monogamy isn't for everyone. When I broached the subject of her partner, she confirmed he was gay and that his family disapproved so she felt he asked her to move in as a beard. She casually talked about how she slept with whoever she wanted, and how she was seeing some of his married friends I felt for both of them, he for needing to lie to his family, she for being away from hers, desperate for a tribe of her own. I was uncomfortable with all the lying though. Seeing married guys, knowing their wives, not caring about outcome or after-math. She was so nonchalant about all of it.

A few weeks later we went for drinks. A. got very drunk very fast and left with a stranger. On Monday she asked what happened, casually referring to her propensity towards getting black-out drunk. I filled her in the best I could, and worriedly asked her if this happened a lot. She laughed it off and told me not to worry. I did anyway.

She eventually left the red-brick condo with good light, and I helped her find a place and get situated. The following few months involved a lot of sex with guys, while dating other guys. I was constantly worried and dreading her phone calls. She eventually got pregnant and it was unclear who the father was. Her drinking started and ended that problem.

It was at a friends wedding where her drinking lead to an early night in for her, and an enjoyable, joy-filled night for me. I reflected on that afterwards, friends pointing out they would rather I be present for various social events since she couldn't be trusted alone. She wasn't my drunken baby. I began resenting her. I had a lot of guilt about this. She was kind and very sweet, but she was so comfortable lying and putting herself in harms way, I was perpetually worried for her in ways she would never worry about herself.

One day I received a call from A. while driving. I let it go to voice-mail. Safety first. I listened to it once arrived at my destination. It was an easy going message about this one dirt bag and then there was this other dirt bag. I rolled my eyes. I didn't return her call. I texted her and told her I needed some space. That summer, I pulled away from A. Shortly afterwards she moved back to Nova Scotia.

I don’t like the way things ended between she and I. I guess I also don’t like that it had to end at all. I don’t regret the split - but I regret the indirect route it took. Sending a text message was lame. I don’t really see what I could have said that would have suitably answered any question she might have had whilst making it clear she’s free to her life and the way she wants to live it. It just became very hard to watch. She is everything I am not, and it’s always very hard to let go.

I often dream about her. They’re always nightmares. When I heard she had a baby I dreamt she showed up at my house with it in hysterics. I still have good memories about her, but usually, when I think about her, it’s with anxiety in my chest.

Lately I've chastised myself for the way I've thought about her. Sure, she’s a hot mess, but so am I. With her, it’s all on the outside. It’s evident. Externalized. She lets it out, and lives her life. With me, it’s all internalized. It’s all still there, it’s just recycled within me. I'm constantly in pain, I just don’t know how to let it out. I look at her with a hint of envy because at least she has that release. I long to cry. To sob. To completely spend myself through tears and gasps. To yell and scream. To slur curses. I don’t do that. I sit. I dwell. I remember. I fret. I long. I romanticize. I hate myself. It hurts. Nearly all the time.

I don’t know if it ever really gets better. I'm in my early 30’s now, and it just seems like I'm getting a knack for the language of it all, but that’s about it. Nothing is getting better. The struggle continues. I'm constantly disappointed by life's refusal to get any easier. What’s the old cliché, life, nobody gets out of it alive. I don't want to get out of it alive, but I'd like to live it as something more than as the walking cursed. 

You had me at Owl Turd (Hitler is the worst).