Is compassion the key to hacking your addict mindset?
A lot of what spurred active addiction for me was disconnectedness.
I mean, if we’re being honest, it still spurs my bad sober behavior.
You know what I mean? The feeling that you’re oh so separate from everyone and they’re judging you? That they’re out to get you? That maybe even life is out to get you? It’s so easy to get to that place. (I’m there at at least one point, every day.) Once you get the scolding voice from your childhood following you around, serving as the somber soundtrack for every step you make, it’s tough to silence it. It’s tough to even remember that it’s there. We just come to convince ourselves that our dismal inner voice is us. That it is truth. (Versus the Frankensteinian monster it is – of opinion pieces someone else issued us when we were more impressionable.)
After a time, we come to expect that everyone – not just the people who said it in the first place, outta their own self-loathing – is thinking those negative things about us. Then again, some of us get that voice via horrible happenstance. Things we incurred long the way. Sure, there are innumerable ways to gain that same, malevolent inner voice. But – whatever it was – when you’re programmed to believe something, it’s an easy mentality to rest on. No matter how destructive it is.
The problem with getting comfortable with that mindset, though?
Well, once you enter the world, that person (the self-loathey unhappy one) is the person who interacts with others. And half the time you don’t even realize you’re acting cold. You’re just trying to survive these social interactions unscathed. But you know how that comes off to others? Cold and callous. See, they don’t know about your deep seated insecurities. Or that that’s why you’re kinda standoffish. They don’t know that you were emotionally victimized early on. That you survived an assault or war. They just see your hackles raised and respond in kind. It’s nothing personal. It’s just that when you seem either scary faced or scared, the natural reaction’s to feel scared, too. Your expression represents a threat. So peeps unconsciously reflect it back.
The problem is, when you don’t even realize the vibe you’re giving off, you just assume they’re being douchey to you. The truth? They’re actually mirroring your snarl. A lot like those above dogs. (It happens unwittingly a lot of the time, via these things called “mirror neurons”.) In fact, speaking of dogs, this happened to me the other day. I was in the midst of grieving my shih-tzu’s death. And, in an effort to go through the motions of living, I left home and did my daily routine. Now, even though I wasn’t crying, I had a social zone of inhibition around me like an antibiotic pellet plopped in bacterial agar. No one wanted near me. And, sure, part of me wanted to say “The whole world’s against me; why are these people such arseholes when I’m having such a bad week?” But another part of me realized something, too. (Granted, not til I caught my own reflection in the loo moments later and wondered why a disheveled, escaped war prisoner was staring me down.) People weren’t confirming my worst fears about life and humanity being after me. They weren’t mean mugging me. They were mirroring me and my crazed, dazed, and distant countenance. And that led to yet another epiphany.
This was me. This was me on my worst day. I – who’ve become generally jovial once around strangers – now look like the bad guy. I look like the douchebag who just barks out his coffee orders without making eye contact with the cashier. I look like the self centered snob with a bad case of RBF. And, to my mom, I looked like the kinda arsehole who yells at the woman who gave her life because her dog’s is over. We never like to remember these moments. We want to forget them. Bury them away. They’re not representative of our “best selves”.
But, you know what?
These things are crucial to cling to.
Why? Because the next time you’re getting yelled at or patronized or dehumanized in some form, the tendency’s gonna be to say, “What an arsehole.” Which is fine. He or she’s being one. But he wasn’t born one. That’s not who he is every day. He has a whole life. There’s just a thorn at the center of it ATM that’s making him take it out on you. And, haven’t you done that before? When you lost someone you loved? When you beefed it out with your boss and got fired? Haven’t I? When my dog died? When the school of my dreams I worked so hard to get into rejected me?
“Wasn’t that me?”
It looks so different on the outside, doesn’t it? When someone else is wearing it?
It sho’ nuff does. But it’s been all of us at some point. And the idea’s not to run away from these facets of ourselves – or other people when they’re displaying them. It’s to lean into both’ve them. That said, I’m not saying that the key’s to tell Hulkasaurus Rex, “I know how you feel.” (That’d piss me off. It does every time, in fact. All it tells me is that A.) you’re a know it all and B.) you think you know me.)
No. It’s not to tell anyone anything. It’s to ask.
Ask the question:
“Are you okay, man?”
The trick is, you have to mean it. How? By relating. First, internally. (Which is a lot easier to do when I remember those touchtone phone robots that put me on eternal hold and misinterpret everything I say and piss me off just thinking about them.) And then, externally, by asking the person what’s going on. (Without going into your own sob story.) And that’s the difference between some feigned, saccharine pity party and genuine compassion. With the former, you’re trying to get something out of it. You want them to either stop being a douche or maybe you want to feel superior or make them like you. With compassion, contrarily, you’re trying to connect by relating.
Quick protip aside… Make sure it’s more like this:
And less like this:
And why the eff should you want to connect with D-bag McGee?
Good question. Here’s the answer: Because D-bag McGee’s not always warranting that moniker. He’s not that way all the time. He’s still human, born from the same star sharts as you and I were. He’s got pain. Somewhere in his brain or body, that dude’s straight up suffering. Just like you do sometimes. And if that feeling of disconnectedness from humanity – of loneliness – is a top contributing factor in active addiction or any of the bad habits that make any of us cling to unhappiness, then guess what? Connecting’s an optimal way to help quell it. We must just remember. By remembering that we too have our douchey moments, we can recall that that broody mood we see on someone else is just a mask. And we can ask a compassionate question that just might get the connective convo ball rolling.
Anecdotal case in point to end this already too-long article?
I do this all day long in my P.T. clinic with pissed off people in pain.
(Put me on that recumbent bike again and *you’ll* need therapy!)
Granted, I get paid for it – but I do it all day.
And I always thought they obviously left looking mentally better than when they walked in because, duh, were a place of healing. They’re working on healing injuries and stuff. But the more I work there, the more I realize that’s not so. People without any painful injuries come in there too. They’ve got Parkinson’s or balance issues or whatever. No pain. But they’re still pissed off. Because dysfunction sucks. And you know what? Even they leave beaming. Why? I didn’t know for a while. All I knew is that I went home at night happy. I was tired, but happy – because they were, and I played a part in that transformation. Despite my fatigue after a 9 hour day of work, I don’t want to use. I don’t feel like giving into abusive bad-habit behavior, either. I feel fulfilled because I make grumpy people happy all day – that hadn’t been when they hobbled in. Then, one day, it hit me. I get why these people egress P.T. with grins. It’s because that clinic’s probably the only place where they have someone genuinely look them in the eye all day and ask in a non-perfunctory fashion, “Are you okay today, Bob?”
Imagine if we did that with every douchey mood we encountered.
Maybe we could all go home happy, clean, and serene – instead’ve disconnected.
