October 1st, 2008 §
Just because of some recent discussions I’ve had, I’m thinking about these things…
I choose truth over tact.
I choose independence over companionship.
I choose the hare over the tortoise.
I choose the mind over the body.
I choose ideas over people (whom, to be honest, I often understand – and dissect – as ideas).
I choose voice over silence.
I choose change over peace.
I choose comprehension over empathy.
I choose loss over anger.
I choose intent over action.
I choose loyalty over trust.
I choose the sky.
And winter.
Either path is both right and wrong.
I have never believed that you can have, or be, everything.
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December 5th, 2007 §
Rosemary mentioned in her comment on Avoiding depression… that it sounded manic. And it is, and I am. So I’m going to write a little about Bipolar Disorder. I could write a well researched post with citations and such to clarify and support or counter what I have to say but I’m not going to. These will just be my thoughts about it in relation to me. I know that there are a couple of you reading who know far more about it than I do so if I’m mistaken about something, please correct me. I apologise in advance for the gaps in my knowledge.
I have always had seasons. Ever since I was a child. I have seasons when I am extraordinarily sociable and seasons when I just want everyone to leave me alone. Seasons when I am completely oblivious to food and seasons when I cannot eat enough. There are times when I have to be doing things constantly, when I am extraordinarily productive and extraordinarily creative. And there are times when I have stayed in bed for weeks just numbing my mind with trashy fiction.
Because of this, if I ever answer a questionnaire about bipolar or psychiatric illnesses generally, it always comes up as a probable diagnosis with recommendations to see my doctor. I never have talked to a doctor about it because I don’t consider it problematic.
I see my seasons as my balance. For outsiders looking in it may not seem that way. The only difference between me and them is that my cycles have a different length. They satisfy their social needs, their need for introspection, their need for stimulation, their need for peace, their need for productivity, and their need for rest in snatches of time that suit life as it is composed today. Life as it is composed today does not suit me well.
But is that necessarily a pathology? Is that necessarily a disease? I am quite sure that I could easily obtain that label, but I don’t want it. The reason I don’t want it is not because of the stigma, or because I reject help. It is because I like myself as I am. While I could easily be said to exhibit many of the “symptoms” of bipolar, the trouble with psychiatric diagnoses is that they are necessarily subjective. (At the moment anyway: There are small advances being made.) In the current climate, for “spectrum” disorders especially, I think we are in murky water.
All we have to do is look at the rates of diagnosis for things such as ADD and autism and, yes, bipolar in children to recognise that there is some cause for concern. The borders of “normal” are shrinking. There is no longer any room for temperament.
This is not to say in any way that there are not people out there with real illnesses going undiagnosed or misdiagnosed and untreated. There are. Too many. But at the same time, difference is becoming less acceptable. Behaviour is becoming medicalised. I think in part this is because humans seek order and this global environment we live in is chaotic. I think in part it is because we do not understand that in genetics and biology there are no absolutes. It will be a long time before we know the full truth of the organic causes and effects of human behaviour, probably not in my lifetime, and because of that, I echo the sentiments of The Last Psychiatrist: At this stage “it may be worth, oh, I don’t know– conservative management?“
As I said, looking at the diagnostic criteria I could easily get a diagnosis. But I just don’t think that it is as simple as that. My temperament has always been such that I lose myself in the world of my creativity and my ideas. It makes sense that I would make up for lost time and meet my other needs in larger blocks. I have to catch up, refuel, before I go back to doing the things that are important to me, to my identity.
And there are lifestyle factors which have also effected my cycles. Studying and working as a cocktail waitress both involve intense levels of energy, often in bursts and the sustained effort of them both disrupts normal functioning. I have held down two jobs, night and day while at university full time. I have worked full time at an office job while waitressing nights. I have done back to back shifts of seventeen hours over and over again in hospitality, requiring enormous levels of concentration and creating an adrenaline high it is difficult to come down from.
Do I do that because of my temperament or has my temperament been shaped by it?. Do I do that because of my seasons, or do they create my seasons? Yes, it is possible that there are organic causes. Almost everything we are is a genetic expression. At the same time, there are many events which have occurred in my life which have contributed to lengthy highs and lows. And we do not have the knowledge to separate the two.
That makes psychiatry a dangerous business. The definition of metal illnesses and disorders largely social. Genes, contrary to popular understanding, are not prescriptive. Society is and we do not live in a tolerant one. Psychopathology is a way of systematizing behaviour, categorizing collections of symptoms. But how do we define what is a “symptom” and what is a character trait? Those lines cannot help but be drawn, even if collectively, subjectively.
I am not saying, of course, that this means all diagnoses are expectations of conformity. As I said, there are people suffering and there are people for whom diagnosis and treatment helps. I am simply saying that at the edges the line is very fuzzy and the line for me, in the absence of definitive science, is this:
Are my seasons destructive or constructive?
Do they impair my ability to function in and of themsleves or do they impair my ability to function because they do not suit society? My answer is that society and I are not a perfect fit, but we are not enormously at odds. Everyone functions best when their work and responsibilities are cycling in tandem with their energy levels. For some people, there is a natural harmony between the two. For others, it is more difficult to shape their lives according to their temperaments and I am one of them.
Perhaps someone else can answer this, but it seems to me that I cannot be ill if my patterns of behaviour, when able to be expressed fully, are regenerative. It is highly likely that there are organic similarities between the way my brain functions and the way someone’s with bipolar does. Just as it is likely that the same function can be created synthetically by lifestyle choices. But how does a person with bipolar feel about their seasons? Do they feel overcome by them? Do they shred up their lives? Do they have a negative impact on those around them?
I don’t know, but my seasons are not like that. It is when my life is most in harmony with them that I feel most like myself, that I feel most comfortable. And it is then that I am most likeable.
Of course, much of this is moot because at the moment I have no balance and I am clinically depressed. And I could be completely wrong. I shall see my doctor and have her check how everything is functioning physiologically. Rosemary’s comment was not off target and I shall seek help where it is appropriate. But if there is one thing I have learned in life, it is that I am most depressed when I have ignored my seasons.
I sleep like a bear, not a cat. I have to live according to my design.
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November 8th, 2007 §
Who can prepare for this journey? My rational, rational mind has a grip on me so I did. I wrote my warning post. I talked to Big Sis. And I ripped open a few boxes of books to grab what I could without creating a god awful mess.
They may not be the best, and they may not be my usual reading material (but what use is Camus right now?), they may even be “dumb”, but they are a start on getting my brain to use another mode of thinking.
And they are what I have.
Books For The Road
Andrews, Ted – Animal-speak: The spiritual and magical powers of creatures great and small, Llewellyn, 1993
Bolen, Jean Shinoda – Goddesses in everywoman: a new psychology of women, HarperPerennial, 1984
Johnston, Robert A. – The fisher king and the handless maiden: understanding the wounded feeling function in masculine and feminine psychology, HarperCollins, 1993
Mazza, Joan – Dream back your life: a practical guide to dreams, daydreams and fantasies, Perigee, 2000
Murdoch, Maureen – The heroine’s journey: woman’s quest for wholeness, Shambala Publications, Inc, Massachussetts, 1990
Nichols, Sallie – Jung and the tarot: an archetypal journey, Samuel Weiser, Maine, 1984
Raff, Jeffrey – Jung and the alchemical imagination, Nicholas-Hays, Maine, 2000
(Eve, thank you for your book suggestions. I will have a look for them and get them if I can.)
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October 3rd, 2007 §
There is a kind of woman I cannot respect. In fact, I loathe her like a cockroach. She is the kind of woman that takes one look at you then shuts down, clinging tightly to her man or muttering viciously in her friend’s ear.
I do not understand her.
I am not by nature a jealous person (although I have felt jealousy on occasion) and I am not a possessive person at all. Perhaps my lack of these characteristics limits my capacity for empathy, but the instant antipathies of some women toward other women and their active aggression based solely on looks are inexcusable. At least, I have never been able to find an excuse for it.
The Last Psychiatrist wrote an analysis recently of the research behind a Live Science article which has been getting some attention in the blogosphere, Eyes Can’t Resist Beautiful People. In it, he discusses these research results…
…women attributed good looking women’s success to luck, and less attractive women’s success to ability; but thought good looking men succeeded because of ability, not luck. Men did the exact same (respectively): good looking men succeeded through luck, good looking women through ability.
This is called the sexual attribution bias, and it’s negative, not positive– i.e. it is specifically about devaluing the good looking rival, not about making correct judgments about the less attractive. And it depends nearly entirely on what extent you think you are more or less attractive than the other person.
“Sexual attribution bias” might sound like jargon but it succinctly describes the reason these women I loathe call other women (and sometimes me) bitch and bimbo and slut and I will reiterate that most important point:
It depends nearly entirely on what extent you think you are more or less attractive than the other person.
What that means to me is that it depends entirely on your confidence in yourself.
Flying in the face of the contemporary wisdom from evolutionary psychology which gets so much coverage in the press these days, attractiveness is not universally quantifiable by measuring symmetry, or homogeneity or waist-to-hip ratio or menstrual cycles. It is not a limited resource handed out sparingly in our DNA. It is not immutable. Even the “plainest” woman can be stunning and even the most “beautiful” women in the world have ugly days; days when they slub around home in their pyjama pants with greasy hair and overgrown eyebrows.
Think about those women you consider most beautiful. Are they all “classical beauties”, or do some of them have “interesting” faces? Do you know what they look like when they are not dressed up, when they have no make-up on, when their hair hasn’t been done? Do they have dry skin on their elbows, shadows or lines under their eyes, breasts that hang a little lower than they used to, silvery stretch marks on their hips and thighs? Of course they do.
Think about your most beautiful girlfriend on her worst days, when what she sees in the mirror and what you see are completely different. Think about those conversations where she enumerates all her imperfections and you see them yet they do not detract from her attractiveness.
And think about that woman you know who has everything in all the right places but leaves you completely cold, that woman a man might fuck but wouldn’t bother giving a second thought to.
I have a friend who is a photographer. He told me a story about a gorgeous actress that he really wanted to shoot and how he had picked on another photographer who had worked with her several times because his photos were always flat. Why were the photos so bad when she was so beautiful? He met her while in California for Herb Ritts’ funeral and knew why within a couple of seconds: Because there was nothing there.
The quality of beauty is not dependent on the raw material you have been blessed with at birth. Consistently attractive women all have a certain sort of ease in the way they inhabit their skin: they do not all have the most even features or the most perfect proportions or the most flawless complexion. They have a magnetism which transcends their physicality, they have the ability to communicate their emotions powerfully and to make others feel recognised.
Even in photos, beauty is more about the content of our characters than some people realise. In real life, it is entirely dependent on it. Our perception of someone’s attractiveness changes as we interact with them.
In my experience the women who are hateful – the ones who talk nastily behind my back, or the ones who determinedly ignore me, or the strangers who say derogatory things over-loudly when I’m out, or the ones who literally slam doors in my face – are usually not physically uglier than me. Usually, their raw materials are on par.
Nonetheless, the woman who calls me a stuck up bitch or a whore before she has even met me is uglier than me and, unlike her, I have a real reason for my disrespect. The content of her character is not pretty.
I can understand insecurity, I really can. I had an eating disorder for many years. What I cannot understand is why some women project their insecurity onto others, why they invest their energy in resentment, why they relish cutting other women down. Even while my eating disorder was getting the best of me, I knew somewhere in the back of my mind that my focus on my appearance was a way of avoiding the real issues I needed to deal with. Even while I loathed myself, it was never in comparison to others. And I never took it out on others.
Again, perhaps my ability to empathise is limited by my character. I internalise, attribute blame or responsibility to myself. Some people externalise and attribute blame and responsibility to others. Both of these processes can be pathological but in the absence of human perfection, internalising problems hurts only you and when you conceptualise something as your responsibility, the concept of being able to do something about it comes along for the ride. Externalising, on the other hand, gives you permission to harm others while denying your own accountability.
It offends my moral compass.
It is also mind-boggling. Why do these women do this to themselves? It is so completely self-defeating. There is no explanation for taking pleasure in cutting others down to size, except to make yourself feel bigger but, like a dog raising its hackles, it is only a surface illusion. It begs the question, Why do they need to feel bigger? If a confident woman is a sexy woman, these women are way behind the 8 ball. Not only do they have no self-confidence, they lack the prerequisite for it: Self-awareness.
And self-awareness, in my opinion, is a moral imperative. I was taught that honesty is the most important, and the best, quality a person can have. Throughout my life I have come to learn that honesty is not about telling people the truth, it is about rigorously trying to know the truth. About yourself. It is only through that real humility and real pride that you can judge other people fairly.
I don’t expect everyone to like me – there are natural antipathies and I have as many failings as the next person – but women who hate me for my cleavage or my lipstick are cockroaches in my estimation. With my best understanding, I can judge them fairly as not worthy of my notice or my respect.
It has been a while since I have experienced this – I have been out of the loop socially – but when I move back into the city and see my friends again (including the ones whose girlfriend’s haven’t had a conversation with me in all the years they’ve been “the girlfriend”) I wonder if things will be different. I’m older now (34) and 10 kilos heavier, but I still take pleasure in playing dress-ups and I enjoy being comfortable in my skin (I’ve earned that!) so I don’t think things will have changed very much. I think I will still be on the receiving end of the sexual attribution bias every now and then.
But perhaps I am missing something. Perhaps the people who read this and the people who know me can offer an alternative explanation for why these women behave the way they do, one that excuses them. Perhaps I can yet be moved to empathise. Empathy is always preferable.
Tell me, who exactly is the bitch here?
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