Proportion and Insanity

Bill W defines insanity as "a lack of proportion and an inability to think straight" in the book Alcoholics Anonymous. Proverbially, you often hear people defining insanity as doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result. I would say this goes directly back to Bill's definition. 

A lack of proportion for me often means making small things big and diminishing big things by talking them down to small. For example, waking up at 3 a.m. filled with electric dread because I forgot to write a letter of recommendation that isn't even due until tomorrow and that will take me 10 minutes to write. That's how a small thing can cast a huge shadow on the wall and keep me from serenity. Then there's making light of losing a person who meant much to me, trying to diminish that experience somehow, laugh it off, mock my own romanticism, or worse, hack away at my self-esteem by ridiculing my weakness or longing. That is an example of trying to en-little the big. Both tendencies are fiercely out of proportion. 

It's only a flesh wound. 

I had a Facebook friend for a while who is now taking a break, a minister in one of the nice friendly Protestant denominations, who had an entire psychological framework for a dual typology: functioners versus feelers. I think he was going through a painful phase in his marriage and he identified himself as a feeler and his wife as a functioner. Of course, with a "healthy ego structure," we try to balance ourselves so that we are both functioners and feelers. And I think functioners and feelers find each other and in good times can be great mutualists. But when the shit hits the fan and we are faced with loss, I do believe those are the two ways that people often respond: feeling or functioning. Some people grieve by staying busy. My experience of grief is so overwhelming and paralyzing that getting busy is extremely difficult for me. I usually need a shit ton of cave time, hermit time, and outdoors time. Of course, being strapped to the dissertation and being disabled by my eye situation means, on the one hand, a lot of cave time, but, on the other hand, none of the solace of the desert or mountains or travel in general. This will lighten up, of course, but it has been a real lesson for me.

The loml is a 100% functioner, at least at this time of her life, at least in my opinion, which of course makes perfect sense, even if she weren't a Capricorn. She is mothering, working full time, householding, trying to reconsolidate her life and I guess her partnership after a disorienting and destabilizing 18 months. I bet some phase of functioning will arrive for me also, on down the line, as it usually does, but I need that subterranean spelunking first. 

I cleverly chose a spelunking image that is out of proportion

Which gets me to proportional responses. Marsha Linehan, the creator of dialectical behavioral therapy, which in spite of not having any of the nine standard indicators for borderline personality disorder, I still find very useful, developed rubrics that help proportionalize emotional responses to stimuli. Shoelace breaks? Probably not a useful cause of suicidal thinking and rage at the universe. Loss of an important person? Probably a valid catalyst for many different emotions, not to say that suicidal ideation or rage at the universe are proportional even so. I do believe people have difficulty with proportion, without suffering from any sort of personality disorder or emotional or mental illness. We seem to me to live in a culture that takes the most horrifying and terrible losses and realities and turns them into jokes, as we whistle past the graveyard. But then the most seemingly trivial experiences-- a delayed flight, a flat tire-- become epic sources of agony and outrage. Or- we trivialize the experiences that are directly at hand in our present life, but become deeply emotionally embroiled in the doings of the President or other individuals where we have absolutely no direct involvement or control.

Anyway as I mentioned in a post around New Year's, one of my intentional practices this year is to take myself seriously in productive ways. I am finding that this effort re-proportionalizes my experience of the world. An example of not taking myself seriously in a way where I should would be minimizing my suffering or making light of it, in order to feed my ego. An example of taking myself seriously where it is probably not productive would be to look at my 21 year old car and feel like a failure. Areas where it may be productive to take myself seriously would be in the craft and detail of my research and writing, or in my authentic emotional experience, or in examining whether or not some of my out of proportion emotional responses might signal a need for a medication change, etc. Self care arises out of a kind of regard for oneself, a seriousness about one's needs and a capacity for self-compassion and tenderness. Perhaps working with proportional self-seriousness will encourage a reframing of many of my priorities. I do tend to allow people to treat me like an option and even like so much garbage or at least like a doormat, because I am all too willing to relinquish my sense that I matter. But of course, this then leads to explosive assertions of my value later on, born of resentment and blame. 

The story in the book Alcoholics Anonymous that leads up to Bill's definition of insanity is in regard to a newly sober guy, Jim, who has been through the wringer repeatedly and risks losing everything- job, wife, family, life- if he drinks again. He blithely orders a whiskey mixed with milk for lunch, thinking that if it's mixed with milk it can't hurt him. Of course, he's out for another horrifying binge after that. So this is the lack of proportion and inability to think straight. If I think of the range of catalysts for my tumbling out of emotional sobriety in the same way as the delusional thought that "it won't hurt me if," that can help bring some proportion to my experience. If I take my experience seriously in productive ways, I start to understand more clearly that, oh yes, yes it will hurt me. This is just taking refuge in the present, but with some curb feelers, so to speak.

I feel desolate, bereft, dark, sad, angry and lonely. These are plain facts. I think at least part of the work now is to take myself seriously enough to work with these facts in wise ways. A part of this wisdom seems to me to be that there is nothing to be done. But another part of the wisdom is that there are things to be done. So, as always, knowing the difference is the crux of the biscuit.

Meanwhile the loml and I maintain a thread of connection, which I have never done before through a break up. Aside from a few ill-advised soul baring texts I have sent her, our exchanges consist mostly of texting memes to each other. There have been some days where the memes she send, always top notch, provide the only laugh of the day. I envision a story in the "human interest" (a hilarious phrase) section of some awful website 20 years from now that says "man and woman communicated entirely in memes, exchanging more than 100,000 over two decades."