Above, as inspiration in your battle with the asshole voices in your head [AVIYH] that attempt to render your life not worth living, we have a medieval icon of the Archangel Michael kicking the devil’s ass. Angel = You. Devil = AVIYH.
Here’s an exercise you can use to combat the asshole voices in your head [AVIYH] and an example of how using it worked for me.
- Write down, or otherwise notice, exactly what all the critical voices are saying. (It will be a lot, and nasty).
- Keep score — Assign a score to yourself and one to the voices, by objectively describing what you are doing and what the AVIYH are doing.
- Be honest: Who wins? Who earns a greater score, you, or the asshole voices in your head?
After discovering that because of enrollment drops, program closures, and other issues, neither institution where I’d been adjunct instructor was going to need me next semester, I decided not to hit the pavements looking for work right away in January, but to take some time off to write. I’ve got some money inherited from Bob to invest in buying me some writing time, so I won’t starve to death or lose the house immediately.
I’ve had partial drafts of books lying around fermenting for years. I believe they could be useful to someone. Certainly, working on them, finishing them, and shopping them to editors will be useful to me, both to fulfill a personal goal I’ve had for decades and as a creative act, which benefits the Universe in ways I don’t even know yet.
It helps that I know Bob is cheering from wherever it is that he and my dad are listening to Stephane Grappelli jamming with Amy Winehouse. Bob believed in the value of creativity. He wrote a bunch of books, poems, and songs, and encouraged me in my own creative acts.
It was scary to know I’d decided — this is cool, I’m realizing that the idea was a sudden inspiration, which I trust very much, not one of those reasoned logical decisions that have made me unhappy and not paid off the in way common knowledge assumes they will pay off — not to immediately look for work, to give myself some time to write.
It was scary to tell people that my jobs had ended, and also scary to tell them what I intended to do. No one ran off screaming, or called the cops, or has quit speaking to me. I have a wealth of great friends, some of whom I’m related to.
So, at the beginning of my first day devoted to working on my writing, the asshole voices jumped right on me.
I sat down on the sofa near the window to write morning pages, which I’ve done for many years. [They’re totally worth it for me. Check out Julia Cameron’s The Artist’s Way for how to use this practice.]
I switched on the 10,000-lux broad-spectrum therapeutic light box I use to combat seasonal affective disorder and got out my notebook. I’ve got my light, I’ve got my coffee, I’m settled down to write.
Next to my coffee cup is an altar-in-a-dessert-plate: an arrangement of stones, feathers, and other sacred objects in a small plate. I’ve got a bunch of them all over the house. They’re beautiful and they help me stay mindful of my resources.
I rotated the altar so that the wand was pointing straight at me.
[I can see now that actually beginning something I’ve wanted to do for years and have been too afraid to do, and being mindful of my strengths was what triggered the asshole voices. Apparently they hate that].
Suddenly, I saw myself in a movie, and the director [the AVIMH] did not portray me in a flattering or even a respectful light.
I was a caricature of myself: an overweight, frowsy, self-indulgent, bourgeois middle-aged woman, powerless and desperate for meaning in her life, who was arranging some silly crystals on her side table.
[DAY-umn! That’s MEAN!]
Especially when what actually was happening, seen objectively, was this:
Here’s a person
- Who is still fighting back to regain her reputation, her career, and basically her sanity, by doing the next right thing moment by moment, not even knowing what that is. (Also by having a lawsuit in progress. But I’ve left that task to my lawyer).
- She’s confronting an ancient fear, inherited from parents and grandparents who lived through the Great Depression: that she’s going to immediately starve and her life be ruined unless she works in the first job she can get, no matter how little it might suit her.
- She’s confronting her mother’s belief that earning a living is miserable, abusive, and pretty much impossible, even with a college degree and a history of excellent work performance.
- She’s battling the family disease of depression, which is worse in winter.
- She’s grieving the loss of Bob, her B-Loved of 26 years.
- In spite of this grief, she’s also maintaining hope for the future, refusing to call him “the love of my life,” because she intends to live a long time, and who knows?
- She’s fulfilling a lifelong dream.
- One that that she’s been too terrified to attempt until now.
- She’s beginning a creative act .
- For God’s sake, by delaying the serious job search one fucking day, she’s not hurting anybody.
Here’s what the voices are doing:
- Seeing a woman drawing symbolic strength from fifty dollars’ worth of crystals she’s collected over the years, they’re trying to cut off her strength at the knees by ridiculing her effort as both desperate and futile.
- NOTE: Ridicule is cheap and easy. It isn’t based on reason or logic or evidence. Instead, it portrays the thing it’s trying to destroy as tiny and laughable, in the hope that the audience will not want to be associated with the thing it’s trying to destroy, because said audience/listeners do not want to be perceived as tiny and laughable.
So, voices, I’m rebuilding my life from the ashes. And you’re attempting to undermine my efforts.
Whose energies are more useful?
Which one of us wins?
Final score: The voices got soundly trounced.
They should NEVER have called my crystals “silly.”
Think UP! 