Turning the punishment on myself
And then transforming punishment to protection
I’ll start this by saying I don’t want to write this newsletter. I have had so much resistance to writing anything for the past two weeks. Now, some of that is because my fatigue has been through the roof. I’ve averaged 10 hours and 15 minutes of sleep per night this week and Apple has given me several warnings about changes in my activity levels. But another reason I’ve been avoiding the blank page is because I told the Punisher part of me that I don’t want to punish others in thoughts and actions anymore, and it turns out my Punisher does not want to retire. She has been giving me everything she has in the past few weeks, and it has not been fun.
She has me half convinced that anything I type out and publish will be garbage that will kill the brain cells of everyone who reads it. Let’s hope she’s wrong and this doesn’t bring brain damage to you. I’ve wanted to write an article on the topic of: angry people are hard to deal with, but they have so much pain that needs to be expressed. How can I learn to feel safe when others are angry? But instead, I’ve been obsessing over my past and all the ways I let people walk over me, thinking, “how could I possibly think it could be a good idea to have compassion for everyone??? Remember when you forgave your first boyfriend and then ended up pregnant? Remember when you felt bad for that boss and worked extra hours and ended up burnt out? Remember when you gave an inch to your ex’s ex-wife and she took a mile? Don’t be a fool for this forgiveness and compassion bullshit and protect yourself by staying hard”.
And she does have a point! I am worried that I will be taken advantage of if I don’t keep very rigid, severe boundaries. How can I possibly learn how to combine boundaries and compassion? And how can I get my Punisher to back off?
I watched, for the first time this week, Doctor Strange and the Multiverse of Madness. Slight spoilers to follow. In this movie, Wanda Maximoff is the villain. She has so much grief from so much loss and she’s determined to use her powers as the Scarlet Witch to live in a different universe where she can be mom to her two boys. To do this, she must kill someone who has dimension traveling abilities and then kill the version of Wanda in the new universe so she can take her place, plus anyone who tries to stop her. As I watched her, I thought with horror that this is likely who I would become if I developed Scarlet Witch abilities. The thoughts I have when thinking about what I wish I could do to people who have wronged me are villainous. The thoughts I’ve been thinking about myself have been villainous. I’m so angry, but as I watched the Scarlet Witch chase Doctor Strange and his companions along a tunnel, I remembered that the whole point of giving up punishing is to avoid becoming a zombie-like anger demon. I don’t want that for my soul.
So what’s the solution? How can I protect myself and not let others treat me like a doormat, but still have compassion for them even if that’s what they want to do? I think the answer might be to write up a new job description for my Punisher. I want her to look out for me, because the world is, to a degree, a dangerous place to live and I do need to protect myself.
As an aside, while I’ve been trying to distract myself from my thoughts this past week, I’ve listened to some podcasts where “spiritual” men discuss the need to give up fear in order to be healthy. And this is where I need my Punisher to pop up because, my dudes. Fear is an essential and important emotion for good health. It’s a captivating thought that I could develop a spiritual practice, shed my trauma and then be happy and healthy. But the world has dangers, and I need to be alert to them. Also, it would be amazing if more men took the time to learn about the realities of living life as a woman (or trans person) before lecturing on, or joking about, fear. Listen to Saoirse Ronan!
Anyway, my Punisher was quick to call these guys asshole losers and think about all the ways she would punish them if I was the Scarlet Witch. I’m glad she piped up, because I was becoming seduced by the idea of giving up fear. I did need a nudge to remember what reality actually looks like and why I can’t, and shouldn’t, give up fear altogether. But I don’t need to spend hours – or even minutes! – thinking about how they’re dickheads. That part of the job description needs to be removed.
Perhaps step one is to rename the position. Instead of Punisher, she can be Protector. Instead of using shaming language like “he’s a dickhead” or “I’m a loser” she can use language that focuses on the actions and decisions people make. “His choice to tell people not to feel fear is rooted in privilege and actually dangerous for the majority of people on the planet” and “I’m learning how to listen to my body and my energy limits. I missed a signal, but now I can add it to the data I have and use it to make decisions in the future to prevent crashes from happening”. She does like to talk a lot as Punisher, so asking her to use more words to be more precise with the problems and dangers should go over well?
As Punisher, she really wanted to be in charge of “Kate” as a whole, deciding on my thoughts and actions. But I want to make it clear with the new job description that she is a senior manager, not CEO. I get to make the ultimate decisions. Of course, in true emergency situations she can pull rank and make me run, fight, scream, etc, but we do need to become clear on what is an emergency and when I can take time to consider the situation.
My Protector will be put on a team with my Compassionate One. The Compassionator? Compassioner? It’s interesting that we have the words punisher and protector, but not compassionator. I’ve just learned that the -tor ending makes the word an agent noun, which means the agent (person) performs the action of the verb from which the noun is created. Is our culture so devoid of compassion we haven’t had a need for this agent word? It will probably catch on about as well as fetch did, but I am going to try to make compassionator happen!
Anyway, my Protector will communicate with my CEO when she finds trouble, but she will also give the information to my Compassionator who will then send out compassion to both me as a whole and whoever is involved in the situation brought forth from the Protector. Maybe just in thoughts, depending on the person and the situation. She can call in my Thinker and Brainstormer if it’s particularly tricky to give compassion to try to view the situation from another point of view.
My Protector and Compassionator can also work together to create an action plan to present to my CEO that prioritizes meeting my needs. I think this might be the answer to my worry about being taken advantage of people who don’t have my best interests in mind or heart. My Compassionator can give compassion to others – “Gosh, that must be so stressful for them to not have enough workers to finish the project on time. I bet they are feeling shame and guilt and anger and worry for not budgeting enough time and/or money for the project and it’s really hard to feel those emotions”. My Protector can assess the situation in the context of threats to my health – “If I stay up all night to finish this report, I will have a sleep deficit, I won’t have completed the day’s body repair work, I will be at an increased risk of getting sick and burning out, I will be neglecting my relationships, and I will be altering my circadian rhythm. If I agree to do this, it will be at great expense to my wellbeing.” My Compassionator can bring compassion to me in the situation – “this is a hard situation to be in. I want to be a good team player and I don’t want others to be mad at me. I don’t know what the consequences will be if I don’t finish the report – could I lose my job over this? But I also want to take care of myself and my health. If I say yes to this, it might be harder to say no in the future. If I say yes to staying up late to finishing this, I won’t be at my best tomorrow. The amount of work I’ve been given for the project, on top of my other job duties, is too much for one person to complete and I deserve to be treated as a human, not as a robot. As a freelancer, I don’t get paid sick leave and I don’t have disability insurance, so I really do need to be cautious with my health. If I keep up this pace, I might not be able to work at all. I need to make my own safety net, but that’s really hard to do when I both need to rest and take care of my bodily needs, as well as work to save up enough money for an emergency fund. This is really hard! I don’t think there’s a perfect solution, but I do need to speak with my employer, who is actually my client since I am not an employee, and renegotiate my contract to something that is more humane. I am a human, not a robot. And that is lovely, not shameful. If they don’t agree with that, they aren’t people I want to work with”.
Somehow, I’ve managed to write all these paragraphs and I think I even came up with a new way of thinking about the different parts that make up me that will be helpful for me on a practical level. I do need to read the book on Internal Family Systems to see if there is advice on how to work with the various parts in a healthy and sustainable way. I think that would be helpful.. If anyone has any thoughts on what they would add to the job description for my Protector, I would love to hear from you.