One of the self help books I read recently talked about left brain versus right brain dominance. I'm probably going to slaughter the recollection but that's okay. Basically the author had had patients who were more or less detached from their body and their emotional states. The conclusion was that they processed everything through the left brain. The left part of your brain is the logical problem solver, and the right controls emotions, implicit memory, bodily sensations (I think). They were living their lives more or left using only their left brain, and had a hard time processing strong emotions, and had no bio-feedback at all. They would be unaware of how tense their muscles were for instance. They just paid no attention to what type of signals their body sent and at the same time had a hard time incorporating emotional elements into their thinking and even their memories. When pressed upon things like their childhood, they would give a brief summary and say things like "Oh it was normal. Perfectly ordinary. It was fine." but with a distinct lack of detail and a tendency to leave it alone at that. Whereas right-brained people would have more stories, richer in detail, fluid in narrative and more rich with emotion. Right-brained may not be the right word. People who had integrated their right-brain into their daily experience better.
"Left-brained thinker" more or less describes me. I have a very authoritative left brain that tries to micromanage my emotions and memories. Or organize them, dismiss them, whatever. They aren't allowed to simply be. Which is probably why I have such a hard time controlling my emotional states right now; I've never really learned to integrate them into my daily experience in a fluid manner. I bring it up though, because I can kind of see it in my writing too. In much the same way the author's patients could not recall memories in detail, so too do I have trouble writing with a good narrative and emotional depth. My thoughts feel like they come too fast, and too scattered. I have a hard time writing out a memory or a story with a rich description of the place and the emotions I or a character is feeling because I don't experience my life like that. I'm never really in ANY moment myself, letting myself experience what I'm feeling, really noticing the surroundings. And even in those times when I think I'm more or less present, it feels much more like the left brain cataloging and analyzing the experience, rather than actually being in it.
In any given moment, I tend not to be experiencing it honestly, but experiencing it as my left brain tells me I should, based on what's expected of me. And the expectations my left brain is processing my experiences through are rarely MY expectations. I think the baggage I carry around with me are, in part, these expectations. And I rarely live up to these expectations because they're nothing I want. They're stuff I've passively picked up from people around me. The expectations I judge myself so harshly for not meeting are mostly from the church I grew up in, my parents, the bizarre anti-feminine expectations of masculine culture even my most sensitive friends enforce to some degree, my job, and a bunch of crap I just MADE UP because I thought it might be the expectation of someone around me (I often find myself cringing at stores or at the coffee shop. Did that joke I make go over flat? Am I being obnoxious? What do they want from me? Sigh.). I carry all of those around with me and try to live up to them and judge myself harshly for not meeting them.
I find this extremely tiring. I'm tired of it. And I'm irritated that I've never developed a better sense of my own expectations for my life and then pushed back against expectations that disagreed with that. Of all the things I'm working on, this one is probably key. Among at least 2 other key problems :). 3. 3. Key problems, and an almost fanatical devotion to the pope.
Anyway, I'm going to work on paying attention to what I really want, and more or less discarding any expectation that has no place in my life (because I made it up, or it's really someone else's). This will probably cause friction with some people I know, but it can't be helped. I gotta live my life, not someone else's. If I can only figure out what kind of life I want to lead that is.
This is scary to me of course. If I just go about being who I want, it will likely turn people off. I'm going to have to retrain myself to consider this the ideal response, in that if they don't like who I am we aren't going to get along very well, best to recognize that and move on separately. And then have faith that who I am will seem appealing to someone at some point. I think this is the part I don't really, deep down believe, evidence to the contrary.
God, don't you love how this blog has turned to all drama, all day? I do. I chose the Soylent Green parody theme for a reason you know.
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