What if we were many (inside)?

The idea of us having two faces or two sides is pretty common (and fascinating). A part of shadow, or a “the contrary of me, inside me”, anything schizophrenic…

So maybe we really have “another me” inside us. Most of the time, the idea says that the other one is very different. A quiet person has a tyrant inside. A mean human has a shy kid hidden in their head. Etc.

Sometimes it’s funny to extend and combine. For example, take the couple Lennon/McCartney, the tortured intellectual/happy fellow genius songwriting couple of the Beatles. When you read a little more about them, you see… the contrary.

Well, OK. Then you pull the string and ask some questions :

• When does the other one come out?
• How? Who triggers it? Why?
• What is needed? Music? Events? Alcohol?
• What if we all fall in love with the one who can see inside us? Who says “Hello you’re interesting” to everybody else they find inside?

 

Because yes : What if we were many (inside)? What kind of dance is it? It’s a metaphor, OR COURSE, but what does it show?

What if someone inside, hidden and protected (of course, protected!), one day takes the lead?

What if someone inside is suddenly missing, dead or sick or weakening?

What about three? Four? What if it was an accurate way to talk about us? Therefore what?

 

Thanks for reading!

 

Both Sides NOW

The “Part of Shadow” according to C.G. Jung : an investigation

“What’s the point?” : Anhedonia, a reduced wanting

I needed to be in my fifties to hear about this concept of “anhedonia“, a diverse array of deficits in hedonic function, including reduced motivation or ability to experience pleasure. (Wikipedia).

Inability to experience pleasure, but also reduced

1. motivation
2. anticipatory pleasure
3. consummatory pleasure

Well : the wanting and the liking are reduced. A big lost of interest!

This preliminary itself is interesting : it’s NOT depression. It’s just what we call in French “à quoi bon ?” : what’s the point, what’s the use, what good would it…, etc…

Association with boredom, a will to stay in bed, a will to sleep all the time! You can feel this even without being sad!

If one makes, in a good movement, an effort – like me with this article – one will stop very soon, because… what’s the point, right?

It’s sometimes a bit surprising, because in the past you LOVED to do it, right?

Then there’s probobly a seek for… oblivion. Video games? Stupid sports? Alcohol?

It can be helpful, after all, and more if you feel guilty! (because in our societies, one has to be busy, right?).

Anything vain will maybe help, like driving your car in the night, anywhere, for hours, with music.

And there are the old tricks : call a friend, get drunk, pick up a randombook, listen to some music, trance (go dancing?), shopping. It can work!

But most of the time, you don’t care about all this anymore… either!

Of course here I don’t talk about “major depressive disorders”, where you stay in bed crying or in catatonia for months.

No, it’s just the “not in the mood now”, a social detachment, random indifference…

We’ve all been there, right? Our mind like a Steve Reich music…

I am also convinced it can be linked to a loss. When you’ve been at war, for example, you’re into a “mode”, and then when you’re home you’re just… not bored, but not valued, not understood, alone, and you don’t understand what people do anymore. And lifting weighs seems suddenly… what’s the point?

What happens after a break up?

Wiki says : “There is no validated treatment for social anhedonia.”. Voilà !

I just found another word to explore : “Avolition”.

How do you deal with that? What if it becomes a constant mode? How to get out?

For me :

• I do a little step anywhere. It can trigger…
• A good book. There’s no better trick.

Thanks for reading!

Freud, Jung, Symbolism and Fellini

I read some Freud and Jung a lonnng time ago, and I kept ideas from both brains, how sex energy climbs into action, politics, arts – or whatever – from one, and synchronicity from the other, for example

These days I read a lot about Fellini’s movies, and in an interview I read what he said about symbolism in Freud and Jung – so I imagined I could offer it to you now; here it is :

1. For Jung, symbolism is a way, a medium likely to express an intuition for which one can not find a better expression. Therefore, for Jung, the symbol is a way to express the inexpressible, even though ambiguously.
2. For Freud, a symbol is used to replace something which is likely to change, which is therefore impossible to express, and which one has, consequently, to forget. The symbol is a way to hide what is forbidden to tell.

 

Hmmm?What do you think, and where to apply this distinction? In a poem? A painting? A story? What are the archetypes, here? Is it a matter of choice? What about the “symbols effectiveness”? To whom?

 

Thanks for reading!

 

 

Rifle Shoulder Switching & other Aiming Transmutations

Some guys are astronauts, some other astronomers, right?

Someone who wants to be an astronaut, because of an accident or bad vision, has to give up, he’s sad, what’s the meaning of life, etc.

He must aim differently. Use what he learned to work in the boat industry. Become an engineer or a scientist, to help organize, calculate or help the guys in the rocket.

I read this phrase recently :

One does not do what they WANT to do, but what they CAN do.

Now think about how many times we have to do this in life…

It can be the simple “lower expectations”, but it’s often richer, or more complex.

We have the whys : why do we have to change our aim? Change? Interruption? Surprises? Betrayal? Death or dearth? Did you fail an exam? A breakup?

Then the hows : is it an instant modification based on instinct? Is it wanted or piloted by circumstances? Do you need help? What about the nature of the coming change? Is it about intensity, complexity, a change of nature?

Something, then, is bending.

In French, to say “to change your tune” or “to change tack”, we say : “Changer son fusil d’épaule” – something about Rifle Shoulder Switch.

What happens inside? Disillusion? Bitterness? New steam? Relief?

M. Yourcenar said something like :

There’s a relief in the deep of each powerlessness

 

You’re a conversationalist but your best friend disappeared in a love affair with a Belgian mountain climber? Blog the possible chats’ ideas!

You’re a painter but you lost both arms in a paintbrush accident? Teach your art to young people!

 

I put this again : What about the nature of the coming change? Is it about intensity, complexity, a change of nature?

Do you know examples?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Intervene in Groups

In two consecutive days, I learned things about groups. This coincidence puts me on alert (of course). Here’s the result :

ONE

Currently reading Dr Yalom’s autobiography. He tells how he began to work with groups, as a therapist. To train and to learn in University, he joined a 8 days group therapy, sat in a middle of a dozen other people. The psy came in and told the group something about they won’t talk about the past but “the now only” – which is obviously stupid – then she kept her mouth closed. Silence.

Yalom, also there as a watcher of course, saw it coming, a blossom, from silence, of different bursts. Each people had their own way to react, from “Fine!” to “Come on!” to silence, to “She know what she does…” to “You’re manipulating us!”. Then the therapist had like a whole bunch of little trees in front of her, which grew up all by themselves, from a single sentence. Then works with that.

TWO

I talked yesterday with someone who’s a member of an association of “out loud readers“. Of course it’s interesting! You want to know why, and what does one learn in a such place, etc.

He told me the coach was really great, because VERY directive. One person begins to read out loud in front of the assembly, until she squarely interrupts them, give them instructions to follow – beck and call. Most of the time, instructions given are surprising, though clearly made to disturb and break patterns : one plays as an actor, one is slow, or shy, one is grey neutral. Boring.

She orders to whisper, to walk while reading, to be mean or frightening, even if you read a French XIXth Century love novel.

THREE

See me coming? Yalom writes than one of the powers of the therapist comes from… he gives his attention to the patient. I love to think it’s the one secret of all this article. The coach, in a group, pays attention to you. That is a present, and a very powerful thing, in a world where nobody really pays attention.

It’s one of these things which shocks you when you grow up, when you realize that in society, at work, in family, in many circles or conversations :

Most people let you talk waiting for their turn to talk.

They don’t really care : they want their turn.

Thus the simple knack from Dale Carnegie : LISTEN to people. Listen to them really. Then you’ll get smart questions, then listen more.

 

What do you think about ONE and TWO styles of group leaders? Give a small seed then listen and use what you catch, or give strong instructions which will disturb or break patterns? Can this second style be used in therapies?

Thanks for reading!

 

 

 

Complementary Partner?

When you’re young, you like simple, you like big statements. “Life is sad”, or “I’ll find my prince”, or “I wanna be an actor”.

Some people stay there, it’s why they love categories. They REALLY think they are INTJ – and if you say that sometimes you are also an INFJ, they say you don’t understand the concept. They use boxes and labels. For themselves.

Big question I had when I was in my twenties : “What’s better, to find a complementary partner or a same as you partner?”.

With easily guessed consequences :

1. If you marry someone like you, it’s easier, you party together, you love the same movies and musics, and your sex life is paradise.
2. If you marry someone not like you, it’s a mess : quiet vs loud, classical music and hardcore rap, reading in bed and motorbiking in the mud.

After all : BooksTeaCat, SportsBeerDog & their Social Interactions Necessities

Then you grow up and you live and the constant rain of complexities, disillusions and surprises end up to your upgrade : it’s A Matter of Levers – simplicity is senseless.

As we are moving forward in our days, we change, we plug to possibilities, we have many speeds, many joys, many powers and weaknesses, we have many intensities, and feelings.

(And it’s the same for your partner, silly!)

Whoever your partner is, the result is a mess, right? So what? That’s life! Amor Fati!

Oh snap : When you hate someone and 3 mn later you deeply love this person

1. When your other is a lot like you, it’s great : my lover is a cat person, a book lover, a quiet person, and she has no car (oh this is perfect!) – we evolve in the same aquarium. And I can write or take photos as much as I want!
2. When your other is a lot NOT like you, good. Why did you choose this person? How do you dance? Isn’t complementary perfect? Don’t you like to read alone when your spouse kills ducks in mudfens? Don’t you have a friend to talk to when your lover is a man of zero words? And also don’t we all need to be disturbed?

What’s the secret here? To stay yourself, of course. Not to bend too much, at the risk of losing your inner light…

Mmhhhhh…

“Opposites attract, but similarities bind”. Is that true?

The “Let’s make it a dance” tool says this : “When it’s difficult somewhere but you have to insist and you have to stay in the system, just accept and absorb the difficulties – and invent a dance. Your dance. It’s a mess, but you can dance it, smile, and climb the stairs”. And ignore the others. Nobody can understand your own dance. It’s a secret.

Sorry, this article is a mess, tant pis. I don’t even know where it went. Hence, I found a picture of my Eliette playing watergunning (or squirtpistoling) with a friend, voilà.

Bonne journée ! Thanks for reading!

Everything that goes wrong goes right

Are our Fears camouflaged Desires?

Empathy – and words linked to it

Empathy? I wrote an article about having too much of it : The “Too Much Empathy” Syndrome

The ability to feel (or guess) what another person is feeling, believing…

We thinkers like to examine it, but I realize there aren’t so many books about it.

My first idea is it’s because it’s a big-deep quality. It’s like being dexterous or green fingered, and being clumsy. You can’t, really, change that.

1. One can not develop their empathy.
2. One certainly can not make someone develop their empathy.

My second idea is that though we all have, built in our deeprofound mind, a prehistorical dose of empathy – some people only, then (education? culture?) can develop the flowers of empathy from it, some others don’t. It’s dry. That’s it.

Another word? Attention. If you have empathy, you watch people around you, your kids, your love – you have a like perpetual computing algorithm which “guesses and reports” what probably happens in others’s heads. You read them continuously.

Another word? The decentering process. To have empathy you have to decenter. The next word is selfishness, then.

Another word? Relational Intelligence. A dance between a dry empathy which we need to understand the others’ intentions and feelings, and a warm empathy which is deeper and linked to love.

Maybe one can develop the first one? A rational empathy, is it possible?

Then it leads to empathy as a tool, in management, teaching, or therapy. It becomes, then, a… lever (or a leverage, which one’s the best?).

How to we detect a lack of empathy? How does empathy rejoin the love of stories? And what about “types of conversations”? Where and how does a lack of empathy become an… asset? What about justice, or police? What about mother/baby? And father/baby? What is vicariance, and how is it used in pedagogy? What is the “pleasure to help”?

A teacher who has empathy knows how to interest his class, then he has their attention, then they learn…

Thanks for reading!

Ohh I found a book on my shelves, “A History of Empathy”. I’m on it, OK?

The wish for mentor

Mentor sounds good. It’s not a guru – where you feel it’s toxic, too much, manipulation. It’s not a guide. It’s maybe in the middle…

It’s not a muse, nor an authority, it’s not a coach, not your parents, or disturbers.

I’m reading Irving Yalom‘s autobiography, where he tells his constant need, during his growing life, for a mentor. An adult person who would have “detected” his uniqueness, his talents, his whatever makes one special…

Then, this person would guide you a little, would show you things you should know, and would probably tell your parents (who aren’t aware, of course).

It’s a cousin-pattern of many things, linked to Types,

• like the teacher who unblocks you with a single phrase,
• the uncle who offers you a magnifier (or a telescope),
• the best friend who marks/scars you forever with a single innocent observation,
• the soul-mate lover who disturbed you so much you’re reconfigured in the whole of you, or almost.

Wishing you had a mentor is almost a Type in itself : overthinkers, introverts, shy people, book lovers, quiet seekers.

Everybody needs attention and understanders (and I think it’s why some love stories are so intense), good conversation lovers, listeners, good askers. Here, it’s something else, right? Not sure…

Every other helper I listed here can embody the role of the Mentor… one needs. Someone who gets you, even in a 2 seconds sentence,

1. points you out to others
2. shows you possible paths (doors, windows)

 

Well, we should NOT need that, but… we do what we can!

Have you met a mentor? Have you been a mentor to a kid? Should you? How?

 

Thanks for reading!

The Dreadful Need of Weakness

I read somewhere that Beckett talked about “l’affreux besoin de faiblesse” – the dreadful need of weakness – we all have inside.

When you’re 18 and you have to write about this idea in philosophy course, you fulminate against the teacher, right? But this morning I found it really… arousing.

It’s different if you think about yourself, or about… someone else.

Our need of weakness, when it becomes a necessity to let go, or to choose closure, loneliness and quietness : no events, a life all bland. Can I say “eventless”?

Or when you give in to your flaws : love of good food, or cigarettes.

Vocabulary :

1. Postponements : procrastination as a need of weakness. “To hell with it”, as a need of weakness.
2. Lies : because we don’t want to deal with consequences. When we say what the other needs to hear… to have peace.
3. Drifts : waiting time, hands over reins… just to see what happens? Or for the pleasure to see decisions made by others? Or to witness how something will crash…
4. Relapses : stop smoking, but…

 

Other words?

And why this need of weakness? To regroup? To stop? To be looked after?…

What do you think? When does it happen? How do you detect and accept it in other people around you?

Thanks for reading!

 

 

 

“Intentions vs Dispositions” & Widenings

ONE

Bourdieu explains this concept (which is a GREAT dial to watch) in his conferences about Manet.

To make is short, he says that when an artist “makes” something (a movie, a painting, etc), audience and critics talks about his/her INTENTIONS.

As if artists knew exactly what they do and the impact their work will have!

Kundera said that sometimes he receives a thesis written by a student about his books, and explains that he had no idea all these ideas were in them !

TWO

Bourdieu opposes Intentions to Dispositions. Manet’s work is not “a crystal clear intention to have this impact”, but it’s more like a bouquet of tendencies, an aggregate of his childhood, his education, training, his time, his friends, his changing or searching personality, his work too, the building of it, etc.

THREE

I think we can watch this pattern, widening it to human relations in general. There, it plugs to the second agreement. People don’t do thing with big “intentions” towards you, but they deal with their own dreams and values, linked to you or not.

FOUR

It’s linked with the idea of Umberto Eco & the Open Work, and Intertextuality (“the meaning of a text does not reside in the text”). In short : the audience reacts, but they probably don’t get the “intention” of the author (if there’s one). The audience builds its own system of reactions, according if necessary to the imagined, supposed “intentions” of the author.

Same in life, right?

FIVE

Disposition is the “tendency of”, the trend. A human being will is a complex system, a changing aggregate. You watch, then, the… Propensity. The natural tendency to move this way, to act that way.

You have no idea how a scandal it’s been for Manet’s work : Le Déjeuner sur l’Herbe, and Olympia. Bourdieu smiles : maybe someone asked the painter, one evening in spring, on a terrace in Paris with a beer “What do you do this day?”. “I paint”.

SIX

“Haecceity” !

Endless Amendments : Reality

SEVEN

We’re not islands, but we are, in a way.

Intentions do exist, yes, but for ourselves. I love this example (from Kundera again) : the intention of knowing.

CONCLUSION

Watch someone act (crazy or not). Understand it with dispositions (the whole system this person is in, education, wounds, life, milieu, changes, desires), not with intentions.

 

Have a great day!

 

 

 

 

Endless Amendments : Reality

There’s a tree, in front of you, while you walk.

Perception. Your eyes send images to your brain. “It’s a tree”.

In a second, you brain has the image, thus the word and the concept linked to it.

You brain has a powerful tool : Analogy.

If it “looks” like a tree, thus you decide it’s probably one. Then you watch and fix, adapt.

Analogy is pretty good for representations, drawings…

If you hear something behind you, your brain computes immediately a 3D-Map of what is probably there. Then your turn around and your eyes fix, amend the “reality”.

Successive drafts, like instant sketches…

Endless Amendments…

 

Yes, it’s splitting hairs the French way, to imagine dials. Donc :

1. What if a word was a tack? And a strong one…
2. What happens when our senses send us something else than the tacked word?
3. How do we know that all these are the Letter A?
4. Who are those who think with preconceiveness?
5. Why am I wary of words (as labels)?
6. What are hallucinations?
7. Why should we train ourselves to endless improve, enrich, amend what we think we know?
8. What is movement, here? Haeccity?
9. What is to plug with possibilities and propositions?
10. What does “She’s mean” mean?
11. Really?

 

Have a great day!

 

 

 

When you don’t manage to console someone

“Quand on ne parvient pas à consoler”, we say in French. This alone is a problem to translate. “Parvient” is from the verb “parvenir”. Dictionaries translate it with :

• To succeed
• To manage

But it is NOT that meaning. It is not a “success” (with what, a medal, a fanfare?) to console a crying person (it’s not fixable). And “to manage” (organize, control, etc) has little to do with listening to a terribly sad somebody.

So there’s a word lacking here. A mixed of “to reach”, “to achieve”, “to manage with invisible wills and means”, “to get through”…

 

Achieving comfort of somebody’s grief or sorrow need a whole harp : listening means, empathy, silence, freedom, focus, acceptance and maybe conversational skills…

Becoming a father I learned that children have terrible grieving moments. Despair which comes from the heart, in the deep. Kids need security, and when they are afraid to lose it, it’s terrible. It’s one great joy when you console your child, in front of a tree moving in the wind, or during a walk, or on a chair. Listen, talk, look, hug. As a mother, a father, you need to be here, and you find your own ways.

 

When I read books about self help, or psychology, or mental care, I’m always very interested by a passage or a chapter about “how to listen“. Specialists think about it very closely (maybe I’ll write about this alone, one day).

Sometimes, you don’t manage to console somebody. Grief and sorrow… Because…

• It’s unconsolable
• You’re not ready
• You’re too close
• You are tired
• You are annoyed by it
• You’re overwhelmed
• You’re sad too
• You don’t understand
• You’re not strong enough

 

Sometimes you think you fail. Even if we can’t talk about communicating vessels, you’ll catch a part of the sadness.

Well, I think the main thing is the fact… you’re here to listen, right? If we think we didn’t manage to comfort the other one, maybe we did. A little. Because we were there.

 

Have a nice day!

Instagram : teladipinta

Seeing to Finesse amid Chaos

There are many levels and kinds of chaos. You can be in the middle of a furious battle or a sales assistant in an overcrowded store near Christmas time, it’s chaotic.

There’s a dial to watch on every agent working in mayhem. From 100 (“I use my skills and I understand & master everything in my field”) to 0 (“I give up, I crash, I cry, now fuck this shit”).

It’s interesting to watch the cursors and levers (“I activate”) and dials’ needles (“I see what is happening here”), between efficient overactivity and sarcastic sloppiness.

In this blog I already studied three different states :

1. “Staggering State” & Observation Amusée du Chaos
2. The “Titanic Octet” state : stop panicking & arrange twinkles
3. The Hummingbird Tale

 

Ernst Jünger (German) was in continuously bombed trenches during WWI, and he was reading Léon Bloy, an angry French author, and noticed how the birds were back to singing, slowly, after a night of explosions.

Seeing to Finesse amid Chaos is a state of mind. It’s a security inner mode. A way to keep safe and calm when a part of you wants to scream. It’s to restore a Middle Age painting in one besieged city. To order, in December, a single book about the letters between a musician and a philosopher in the middle of piles of cardboard boxes full of best sellers. To study the youth of Goethe in a city ravaged by plague. It’s a long conversation about Pondichery, India, next to an overexcited screaming foam party…

Stay safe!

Have a nice day!

Photo : B. Plossu

 

When your imagined map doesn’t fit with reality…

If you meet someone online, or even if you talk on Skype with a friend you know “in real life” but you never went to his/her home, your brain… works.

Your brain draws a map of this person’s apartment, or house.

According to the informations you have, you can NOT prevent your mind to invent “the other person’s place”. You’ve been there, haven’t you? Well, errr : nope.

You can hold two pictures of a room, or a complete Skype “Hey, do you want to see my place?” wandering : your brain does it : it builds a set of images and a map, it builds the light, the mood, the size of all of it.

Then…

One day you GO there. And this is disturbing. This porch, these lanterns, this mirror, this corridor, this carpet, this bathroom : you were all wrong, right? It’s different.

It clicks. You brain literally swallows the environment. It is trained to do it!

Now, you’re back home. And you have TWO memories of this place. Ah ah! So there!

The place you imagined. And the place you saw for real.

These are two different things!

OK, this makes us think, right? It’s a set of questions…

Our mind is constantly imagining what “will happen”, how this “will be”. Then, in front of reality, it… “fixes” it. It works in real time : if you hear a glass crashing on the floor behind you, your brain draws a whole decor, a scenery of “what I will see when I turn my head”.

What is disillusion?

Can you do that for a whole culture? A whole country?

What can we do, or study, with this knowledge? What if you were writing a movie? What tension could you use? More : what will your brain do with the first, imagined place, once you know pretty well the real one? Is it vanishing? Is it useless to keep it? Why? What if you studied the differences between what you expected and reality? What does it show about your brain?

What if you’re a couple and you both imagined the place you will be for a holiday, from a set of five pictures on the web? Would you talk about it, once you’re on site? I mean… about the differences of… the differences of what you imagined?

OK, I’ll have one more glass of wine before going to bed 🙂

Thanks for reading!

 

 

Dowsing Reality in my Head : What is “Emotional Reasoning”?

You feel an emotion, so you think it “proves” something is true, this is called Emotional Reasoning. Wikipedia gives a good example of that :

…even though a spouse has shown only devotion, a person using emotional reasoning might conclude, “I know my spouse is being unfaithful because I feel jealous.”

This is a good little clockwork to watch and to take to pieces, right?

Of course people use this concept as a negative thing, a flaw, a disorder. Path to depression and all…

You have to think about Reason :

“Reason is the capacity for consciously making sense of things, applying logic, establishing and verifying facts, and changing or justifying practices, institutions, and beliefs based on new or existing information.”

We all know that, and we also know that within the informations we gather (facts, things we see, informations, things people say), our emotions have a power : they color all of these, in bright light or in shades of darkness.

So if I understand well, Emotional Reasoning is a disorder, when we narrow reason only on emotions. OK.

I need my readers. Help! This concept triggers questions and subtleties. Could this be a positive thing? Where do you put the instinct, in this process? How can reason and emotions weave together to make a strong tool? Can an emotion trigger a seek of informations? And what about the fact that new informations would braid with feelings, instinct and therefore emotions to help us draw maps for living? Where is the balance to find? How to wring a disorder into a power? Imagine your have this disorder : does it prove that if you feel something is true… it’s not? Mmhhh…

Sorry for my wobblenglish…

Thanks for reading!

 

From Quarrel to Joust : Elevation process

When your couple needs to fight, you argue. You can stay at reptilian or prehistoric levels : you scream, play flying plates & slamming doors, scream louder, or you can try to move the cursor up.

If your quarrelsome mood – oh what a great word! – needs to unfold, there’s are some wrong ways up like becoming sarcastic or using bad faith, stupidity or violent communication (one define the other : “You’re like your mother”, “You’re lazy”), silence icy treatment or using poor innocent third parties (the kids?).

I propose to rise from these low levels of arguing. Of course you can use Reason. If you know Transactional Analysis you can begin to dissect your communication and try to put it on “Adult -> Adult” mode. That’s OK! Think. Or ask a intermediary (not your mother-in-law!) to play the diplomatic card.

My purpose here is to imagine another “Right Way Up” : Jousting. It’s a change of mood. You fight… with a smile for the other. It’s a sparkling competition. Emulation is the key. It can become a game. You can really invent rules like : “You can’t speak until you waited two minutes in silence after I did, I’ll do the same”, or “Argue on both sides of a table… with pen & paper” (find your own rules).

Jousting is a clever way to quarrel. It’s like when you play chess with a friend, emulation is the key. You want victory but you help your opponent to climb too.”Right Path Up”. Finding solutions… and at the same time satisfy your need to fight. Joust!

 

Of course if you read my blog you know that there’s a pattern here, a tool for other situations : Elevation. When and where (and how) do you realize that you’re on a low level? Gaiety? Entertainment? Sex? When you’re in a useful place but you should maybe stop, think and push a lever. Which lever is it? Subtlety. Right?

This pattern is described here : https://afrenchtoolbox.wordpress.com/2015/08/07/a-matter-of-levers/

Thanks for reading!

 

Instagram : such_a_pretty_crazy

A Way of Being in a Hole : Inventing Dawn

There are many ways to deal with depression, darkness, and feeling you’re stuck in a hole. You can cry alone, find someone who can help, you can complain, you can stay silent, you can think, you can fight to find your light, you can try to invent sparkles, you can be sarcastic, or become crazy, you can feel hope, or despair, you can wait, you can kill yourself.

Or you can invent your dawn.

Well, yes, it’s a feeling, or a decision, I don’t know. You’re in your dark hole like a forgotten filthy dog. Maybe you receive (or invent) your calling – it’s time. Maybe you just decide to move not your ass but your spirit.

You clean your sky from old squeaky moral rules, from guilt. You clean the pessimism. You want to increase your knowledge like a minstrel, a knight, a free spirit. Your refusal is joyful. You can almost guess and feel some new delights.

Rebirth. Convalescence. Regeneracy. Transition. A smell of new territories and above all : a new way to explore.

Jump out! You go girl!

Thanks for reading. Have a nice day!

 

 

Signs of Bad Signs : our shades of narcissism

DSM (Manual of Mental Disorders) Labels are frightening. You read the list and you’ll find you have ALL disorders. You’re bipolar, antisocial, autistic and narcissistic, haha, and probably crazy enough to be locked away from society. All of us. All in prison, voilà.

You’ll probably agree that we have all at least a little percentage of every disorder, right?

Today I wonder if I’m not a narcissistic. And all of you in the same basket, so there!!

Wikipedia says :

“Narcissistic personality disorder (NPD) is a personality disorder (…) characterized by exaggerated feelings of self-importance, an excessive need for admiration, and a lack of understanding of others’ feelings.”

Well, we all need to have this, OK? Cut the “exaggerated” word and here we are : as long as I didn’t reach the oriental “no ego” state, I need to feel a spoon of self-importance to stay happy, I clearly seek approval in many moments of my life, and if I know I’m often too empathetic, there are moments I don’t get other people, their choices seem sooo weird at times…

So I’m 25% narcissistic, is that it, Doctor?

I googled and found terrible things on the web, from “happiness blogs” to therapists articles and I copy/pasted a few ladles of sentences for you.

Une “personnalité narcissique”, c’est terrible! I hope you’ll never meet this kind of person, they seem to be a MESS :

• They want to be in control and if they can’t they are nasty and biting
• Perfectionists : “you’re never good enough”
• Put others down : nastiness as a sport – they have to win – “I’m better than you”
• “You’re just……………” add here any definition. Labeling you.
• Pedestal someone to hate someone else (hey, that’s tricky!)
• Fear of love and other emotions, all of them are “drama”
• “You have to change”
• “When things go wrong between us, it’s always your fault”
• Introverted narcissists : hypersensitive, defensive and anxious
• “You don’t understand me”
• Grandiose projects (which lead to crashes, dramas, failures)
• Never really open (control!), they forbid themselves to be vulnerable
• Seek appreciation, deserved admiration
• Selfish
• “Make some efforts”
• Use others to entertain
• Never wrong, never his fault, “externalize blame”
• “You’re too sensitive” (a label, again : “YOU are”, never “I am”)
• Use others to get stronger then trash them – “take advantage to people”
• Accusing others of what they do (“She’s unstable, grandiose, she’s bipolar“)

Oh my. That’s worse than DSM! Run, boy, run!

Thanks for reading. It’s summer!

My Secret for Abandonment Syndrome

Abandonment issues are so common that I wonder why it’s not studied at school !

Well, you know it by heart : “I constantly feel frightened that people I love will leave me”.

And well… they do!

Lovers or friends, they leave you. Their choice!

That’s life, but you’re destroyed, angry, and in panic. At some point, it’s almost ridiculous, right?

Lise Bourbeau wrote a book about this wound and other wounds from childhood. She says that abandonnic people (“les abandonniques”, this is the way we call this tribe in France) protect themselves with any kind of dependency (addictions, difficulties to be alone, need of approval, etc).

You already know what is abandonment (or else Google will help you). What I want to share today is a secret a good friend of mine (she’s 60) told me one day.

She said to me that after each break-up she was so dying sick that she decided one day to see a therapist.

After a year she said to him that she was OK. He smiled and answered “No you’re not!”.

She needed three more years to get it, to understand the secret in the deepest of her mind. She said to me something like :

“Abandonment is a scar, a wound so deep that you never heal, you will never heal, ever. So… when I’m into the turmoil of a break-up, I just watch how the pain invades me, how it burns inside my chest. I recognize it. I say “Hello, pain! Do your stuff, I know you”. It burns you, just feel it. There’s nothing you can do, little man, nothing”.

Four years therapy to understand this. This is Ninja!

Bonne journée !

#Gifted Adults are not always “gifted”, they just operate differently

The problem with words : they put labels on you. If you’ve been “gifted” in your childhood, you’re pretty sure that you’re “gifted”. But are you really? Where and how?

There are plenty of colors, nuances, gradations, in many directions, in your gifted personality.

No you don’t find “two types of humans : the gifted and the non gifted”, right? It NOT only a IQ thing…

Take the whole brain engine, get closer, watch it. Gifted people can be :

• Funnier or darker.
• Faster or slower-deeper.
• More sophisticated or simply shining.
• Craving conversations with other gifted, or isolated.
• Big picture or mini-details seekers.
• Learn differently, exploring or thinking.
• Artistic or not at all.
• Intense or lost.
• Introvert or the contrary.
• Independent or leaders.
• Controlling or easy.
• Lazy or big workaholics.
• Anxious or happy.
• Successful or in living in ideas and patterns.
• Organized or messy-messy.
• Etc. Etc.

Almost each of these lines could become an article !

I like to think that gifted adults can be “more intelligent”, but it’s not necessary. They are all different! They… operate differently, that’s for sure. And they evolve, too.

It can really be a problem in society, sometimes. I remember this example in a company, given in a French book written by B. Millêtre (“Petit guide à l’usage des gens intelligents qui ne se trouvent pas très doués” – “Little guide for intelligent people who find they’re not that skilled”).

A big meeting : a new big project is exposed. 95% of the audience who consider things in terms of causes and consequences – “If this, then that” – will nod (or they are angry if it’s more work for them, haha). But there’s always one or two guys who will raise a hand because they immediately detected the flaws in the new organization. They see patterns, structures, they can almost “feel” the forces in play : the Big Picture. And of course, they will be taken for a pain in the neck.

Gifted is not necessarily socially gifted, right?

Have a nice day!

JP

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