On this Thanksgiving holiday in the US, I want to express my appreciation to you, dear reader, for subscribing, following, and reading my posts. It’s hard to believe that it’s only been four months since I put out the first one.
As you may have noticed, my posts have been rather diverse, but I think there’s one underlying theme—a Type H approach to life.
I used to be an overly intense Type A. In this post I want to talk about that transition from a bit of an over-achieving ‘Arsehole’ to what I try to be now.
This is my way of honoring Thanksgiving, and of honoring all of you by sharing part of my own personal story of transformation.
They held up the mirror and boy, it weren’t pretty
Quick, do this exercise. List your five or ten all-time favorite films.
Now, analyze those films. Can you see any patterns in the films you like? Do they say anything about you?
I did this exercise twenty-five years ago during a program called The Artist’s Way. (I highly recommend both the Artists’s Way book and course for discovering and exploring one’s creative self.) The list I came up with shocked me because almost every film was a tragedy. Great movies like Dr. Zhivago and Cabaret, but dispiriting films nonetheless. Films that left you feeling depressed and impotent in the face of life.
Around that same time I met up with a friend to take a walk and railed away about how f*cked up everything in the world was. I went on and on about one problem after another, and how bad all the leaders were, and how everything was going to hell in a handbasket, certain that he was sharing my indignation and rage. After a while of this, my friend turned to me and said, “Wow, you are such a downer. I feel like slitting my wrists.”
OK, whoa. My friend feels like slitting his wrists when he talks to me? My favorite films are all tragedies? What the heck? This is just stupid b.s. … isn’t it?
The epic battle of Monkey Mind vs. Mister Priss
Of course, my conscious mind went into self-defense and self-denial mode and resisted the mirror that was being held up to my face by both The Artist’s Way and my courageous friend. “They’re just so wrong about me. I’m not a downer, dammit. I’m just a realist. I see things the way they really are.”
But the damage was done. The mischievous monkey that is my unconscious mind went into overtime mode unearthing examples of what a pessimist and cynic I was and lobbing them into my conscious mind. I’d been having nightmares about my parents’ deaths for seven years, my unconscious said. Nightmares in which I knew they were dying but could do nothing to stop it. Wasn’t it time to give those up?
What about your pathetic recounting of the exact same crap in every therapy session, my unconscious then asked? I had to own up to that one. In fact, I had to ask, why did I always gravitate towards narcissists and sociopaths who confirmed my view that people were arseholes, while viewing nice people as hopelessly naive rubes? I also had to admit how much it enraged me that all those nice people were doing better at life than I was—better relationships, better jobs, better life outcomes.
Then, insult of all insults, the literature on happiness and wellbeing came streaming forth, staring me in the face on every book rack, demanding to be noticed, and telling me in no uncertain terms the cost in health and career and relationships to be paid by people who looked at life through a negative frame. (I couldn’t just ignore this literature. I was a psychologist, for crying out loud. I was expected to know it.)
What utter and ridiculous b.s.!, my conscious mind, aka Mister Priss, shouted. You wish!, my unconscious mind replied with a grin of unbridled glee.
The turning of the identity tide
People do not give up their cherished identities easily, and naturally I railed at the findings of these obviously misguided academics and spiritualists and other happiness gurus. How dare they find my lens on life a debilitating one? How dare they find that I would actually be more prone to sickness and stymied relationships and early death compared to all those optimistic idiots?
I am pleased to report that I am now, for most intents and purposes, one of those optimistic idiots. I got tired of the nightmares, of talking about the same arseholes week after week in my therapy appointments, of watching other people be happy while I opted to find fault and mire myself in unhappiness and depression.
You know what really did it? That movie list. I was forced to take a good hard look at myself and admit that I didn’t want to be a Dr. Zhivago or a Lara. I didn’t want to be a Sally Bowles or a Brian Roberts. Instead, I decided that my new favorite film (at that time) was Tootsie, and that I wanted to be a Michael Dorsey who gives up his overly perfectionistic, critical, and overbearing ways to relax into life and embrace love and friendship and humor.
[Listen, you can’t go wrong with a Sydney Pollack film. I’m just saying. Not only did he direct, but he played Michael Dorsey’s agent. The Russian Tea Room scene alone is a major hoot. Watch it when you get a chance. The man was imho a genius.]
Back to our regularly scheduled programming, let me just clarify that I have not become one of those stick-their-head-in-the-sand optimists who refuses to deal with reality and instead lives in a Barbie-and-Ken everything-is-perfect world. Those people don’t have optimal outcomes either. Instead, I’m one of those optimistic realists, or reality-based optimists, who sees things as I think they are and yet chooses to focus on the positive aspects of the situation and on the potential for better outcomes.
Not on how f*cked up and hopeless things are. Which, as I know from past experience, is so incredibly easy to do. But which I now know is wrong, from both a spiritual and a chemical point of view.
Believe me, it’s all about the chemicals, babe
Let’s talk chemistry for just a moment. Daniel Lord Smail convinced me in his book On Deep History and the Brain that we humans over history have been defined by the chemicals we choose to flood our bodies with, and that these determine our overall experiencing of life. Think caffeine, chocolate, cocaine, nicotine, pornography, substack ranters, hugs from a child, the love of a pet, as a few prime examples. These have a direct effect on your biology, which in turn affect your thinking, feeling, being, and acting while you are under their effect. And newsflash, we are under their effect pretty much all of the time because, dude, food and drinks are classified as frickin’ drugs. No lie.
People who do extreme sports, serve in high-risk or fast-paced occupations (think first responders, the military, Wall Street traders), or seek out regular drama and conflictual relationships tend to be addicted to the adrenaline rush. They seek out a life on the edge as a way to have adrenaline surging through their bodies on a regular basis.
People who embed themselves in relationships with babies, animals, families, and home life or engage in spiritual practices like meditation and prayer are getting their oxytocin fix—the so-called “love hormone” that engulfs their body and makes them feel a sense of unity and oneness with other beings. They love to feel loved up.
People who seek out pleasure of various sorts—from sex, food, fun, work, games, you name it—are chasing dopamine, the “feel-good” chemical. They need a regular fix of pleasure. Most of us do this to some degree or another, using our preferred chemical of choice. (Mine is doing jigsaw puzzles, which gives a dopamine fix every single time you fit a piece. I am well aware that I’m addicted. No need for a lecture as someone has already attempted an intervention.)
Looking back on my Type A approach to the world, what I was doing chemically by being cynical and negative—in effect, perceiving threat wherever I looked—was triggering the stress response and flooding my body with the fight-or-flight chemicals adrenaline and cortisol on an ongoing basis. As I’m sure you know, this is extremely unhealthy and leads to a range of negative life and health outcomes.
On a spiritual level, I was rejecting everything that religions and spiritual approaches promise—that life is a gift and that we can, moment by moment, achieve heaven on earth. I was actively preventing the release of the love hormone oxytocin in my body by putting people into two categories—arseholes and rubes—and keeping all of them, everyone in my life and everyone who crossed my path, at arm’s length. The armor was firmly in place. I was at war with ‘life.’
The amazing effect of art and culture on who we are
As a child reared on television, movies, and books, I don’t think it’s surprising that replacing one iconic set of films with another has facilitated a transformation in my identity from Type A to Type H.
What is Type H, you ask? ‘H’ stands for humility and humor. Part of giving up the domination of my headspace by Mister Priss and giving Monkey Mind free reign was admitting that I don’t have the answers and that no human does. It is giving up the childish belief in heroes and saviors and admitting that we are not gods. As we can see, many of our leaders refuse to give up this belief and wreak havoc with their narcissistic bid for control and power. (See my posts on the Gaza war here and here.)
Humor is about realizing that the other side of the tragedy coin is comedy, that humans are inherently ridiculous creatures inflated with grandiosity and self-importance, and in recognizing this we can see beyond the veil to one of the most important attributes of the divine.
Or maybe I’m full of b.s. and this is all nonsense. It wouldn’t be the first time, and it won’t be the last. I promise. Take it as you will.
Humble humor sufficient to the day
If you want to read my Type H take on a grab-bag of topics to date, check out these previous posts:
On creativity
On spiders
On showers
On spies
On Chicago
On screaming
On my cat Ozzy (and here)
Need a Christmas present?
Know someone who enjoys fun fiction or loves classic rock? Check out my novels about 80s rock band Pirate here.