i made a pretty obvious Freudian slip last night in
i was making a comment that one of the worst things that happened to the males of our species (culturally) is when grief was linked to weakness. what i wrote, instead, was “when shame was linked to weakness”.
this was a pretty telling slip up on my part. i was raised to be ashamed of an outpouring of grief. that shame was tied to a reinforcement that to cry was to be weak – stoicism was the path to masculine idealism. to let something phase you was to be weak.
i had a male role model who seems unassailable, and raised me to be tough as nails. i had a female role model who encouraged the full spectrum of emotional outpouring, and has suffered from depression for decades. what i find almost comical is that my father’s alcoholism is the vent to relieve the pressure. my insomnia, and the accompanying nightmares are mine. there was a time when i wondered if my migraines were part of that cycle as well, but i don’t think that is necessarily so, as they have been a constant across a wide range of psychological/emotional strata.
my stints with depression have been dealt with largely though repression or transference. i can push through trauma and loss by focusing on other people’s problems, solving other people’s issues, and making sure that i am the glue holding together other people’s shells. i can get through it by being self destructive. if you ignore something hard enough, it grows in, rather than blooming out. despite all my self-control, and the way i have analyzed so much of my internal workings, i can still be struck by something hits me from beyond my line of sight (theoretical or otherwise). sometimes these things impact me much more deeply than i would normally allow for if i were in control of the stimuli. weak points never really go away, no matter how much you plaster over them.
i made a post a few weeks back about fear. i think my repression of grief is tied to my lack of concrete fear. i can wrap myself up in a cocoon of rationalization against anything front-and-center. the things that i fear are huge overarching ideas or happenings – issues where the will of an individual are about as meaningful as a stubborn grain of sand fighting against the incoming tide.
frustration abounds in my life, and has for as long as i can remember. i used to express frustration through self-destructive behavior, or just outright cruelty. since recognizing this pattern, i’ve learned to be as patient as a stone. my main weakness is anger, and its big brother violence. between repression and genetic predisposition, i have a huge capacity to damage others and myself physically. it is a pattern i have read historically in the path of my line, and seen in its many psychological and genetic iterations in my living family. i have been very cautious about avoiding this cycle for many years now, certain situations notwithstanding. it takes a lot to make me angry, and when that threshold is cleared, it often takes me days to regain composure.
i’ve always thought of grief as the sister of anger. she lulls you into relief in the face of an overwhelming event. my higher-order processes always leave me with a feeling of guilt after an expression of grief. the animal-human in me is cleansed, the computational-human in me is ashamed. part of this link is the aforementioned connection between grief and weakness. part of it is my own damn fault – the governing rules that i’ve made for myself, which allow no true satisfaction unless effort is put in to getting the satisfaction. grief is like a free ride – you get to release pressure with no real cost aside from others seeing you are in distress. i’m not good at it.
REM says everybody hurts. that song/video had a big impact on me when i was younger. all emotions, for the most part, are universal across the spectrum of humanity. how we express them is what makes us unique.
i guess my point is, i’m the kinda guy who cries alone, on the rare occasion that life finds a way past my heavy psychological interference.
on a way lighter note, i got my first paycheck a few minutes ago. lets hear it for an increase in the standard of living.
