Introspective vomit ahead
Proceed with caution
***
For those of you who have been following along at home, I am trying really hard to work through some shit right now. I even have a workbook. (Yes, you read that correctly. That is, in fact, a thing.)
And actually, that’s what’s giving me a problem right now. Don’t get me wrong, it’s an excellent tool and I’m glad I put on my big girl pants and gave it a decent try, but this next chapter is giving me a complex.
It’s about coping mechanisms.
Now, the thing you need to understand is that ‘that one thing’ wasn’t the only thing that landed me in the mental quagmire in which I exist on a daily basis--not by a long shot. My house was not the easiest environment in which to grow up, and a goodly number of my coping strategies started there. The options were figure out how to survive, or...well, I guess that was the only option, really.
The thing that’s giving me pause is this; if I unpack and pick apart all the ways I bolster myself to get through the day, the week, life, I’m not sure what’s left. I have no idea who I might be without all these layers of protection. I’m like one of those Russian nesting dolls, except that last one is a total mystery. She’s safely tucked away inside all the others--so safely that I don’t even know her.
I’m going to go vaguely Descartesian for a moment. “I think, therefore I am,” right? Well, I know I exist and how I exist based on a miles-long laundry list of things I do to keep myself intact. What happens if I rip the bandaid off? Will I disappear in a shower of glitter and entrails? Poof into oblivion? It puts me in mind of a passage from The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy:
"The argument goes something like this:
'I refuse to prove that I exist,' says God, 'for proof denies faith, and without faith I am nothing.'
'But,' says Man, 'The Babel fish is a dead giveaway, isn't it? It could not have evolved by chance. It proves you exist, and so therefore, by your own arguments, you don't. QED.'
'Oh dear,' says God, 'I hadn't thought of that,' and promptly vanished in a puff of logic.”
My therapist assures me that I will not, in fact, cease to exist if I parse out all of the things that I do to keep myself from coming completely unglued. Obviously she’s right, because science, and obviously I don’t really believe that I’ll turn to dust and blow away if I do the healthy thing and take a proper look at how I cope, but...it’s hard, ya know?
To begin with, there is a certain stigma attached to the concept of the coping mechanism. It’s something you do to help yourself through something unpleasant, but because it’s stemming from the survival instinct it’s not necessarily thought-out and can ultimately be just as damaging as whatever the unpleasant thing is that you’re trying to cope with in the first place (though likely in a completely different way which doesn’t make itself apparent until much, much later). In the moment, it’s a matter of preserving yourself. When it becomes a way of life you’re going to have to do an awful lot of work to undo it.
Before you ask, yes, there is such a thing as a good coping mechanism. Most of us employ them.
I had a really stressful day at work, therefore I am going to have a long bath and a glass of wine.
I’m sad for XYZ reason, so I’m going to listen to my favorite song and have a silly dance party all by myself.
I can’t deal with reality right now, so I’m going to read a book/watch a movie/play a video game.
Self care, amirite? These are all pretty reasonable things to do when something is bothering you.
The problem is when they become more hurtful than helpful. Some people purposely injure themselves. Some people cope with food; binging and purging, or not eating at all. Some people seek reckless thrills. Some people turn to pills or the bottle.
If you’re me, you simply shut down. You close the roads. You block everyone and everything from coming near you. You build a no-man’s-land between yourself and the world, because you are the only thing you can control. You watch things happen from behind the bastions.
I can see you out there. I have been assured that not all of you are made of bees. Some of you are made of lovely, fluffy clouds. Some of you are the embodiment of a basket of puppies. Some of you might even be trees under which I can take shelter.
But I’m stuck over here in this tumbledown tower with about sixteen miles worth of dirt in between me and the barbed wire, and that dirt is so full of mines and complex booby traps and tiger pits that have been there for so long I’ve lost the map. I don’t know if I’m supposed to cut the blue wire or the red wire.
And that’s without all the rabid attack marmots patrolling the place.
But all of those pits and traps and mines and marmots make up most of what I know about myself as a person. Is there even a person left underneath all of that, or has she been snuffed out by years of suffocating self-preservation?
Honestly, I’m not sure if I really want to know.
Also, who the fuck thought that rabid attack marmots were a good idea?!
Oh.
That was me.
Well, shit.
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