My Inner Stories Finally Get A Grown-Up Editor!
And my inner child gets a long-overdue retirement
I just had a major operation. My prognosis is good, but it’s been bumpy travels. Hard times are always hard, that’s a given. But I’ve watched my mind make me feel much worse by ruthlessly piling on with stories from the library of despair.
Humans are instinctual storytellers. Our brains were naturally selected to scan the world for predictable patterns and then craft the findings into stories that tell us how things work. These narratives form the maps that guide us through life. When they are accurate, they’re indispensable, but when they’re not, they’re dangerous.
Our stories also create our experience. Unsurprisingly, stories of chronic misery make me chronically miserable.
My constant negative narratives did not arise without purpose. Without knowing it, they helped me better endure imminent emotional injuries when I was little and helpless. But now that I’m all grown up, there are much better ways to interface with pain and loss. Ways that deliver a superior present experience. Ways that took me a long time to learn.
There is a certain excitement in repeatedly imagining how perfect everything will soon be and how great I’ll feel when it is. But there‘s also a nagging anxiety even in those positive future spins. I’ve come to see that they are part of the same toxic, lifelong struggle to control my inner narrative.
I’ve spent my life either anxiously clinging to positive projections or being deluged by the negative ones. Over and over and over. I've finally lost my stomach for the seesaw. Thankfully, at the same time, I’ve realized how detrimental all of these narratives have been in matters of my inner life.
When I’m not being driven by the past to take refuge in imaginings of the future, I’m left to the present. To this end, I’ve been slowly learning to tolerate my feelings, which only exist in the here and now. Staying with them has shown me what they are and where they’re from. Placing my past in the past keeps it from overtaking the present.
It’s also helping me love and appreciate these disparaging and diminishing narratives as one of the few useful defenses my tender young self could craft.
Each time the medical news wasn’t good these last couple of months, I watched myself quickly spin the familiar story of my ill-fated perpetual doom. But, I’ve been noticing a burgeoning new adult in my mind who is not fooled by this vestigial neural noise.
With this new editor-in-chief on board, I have even been able to let myself feel self-pity here and there without falling captive to its perverse and obsolete story. I no longer need to remain in that story. Even more remarkable, I no longer need any stories about how I’m gonna feel later, good or bad. And that’s huge.
See more at www.OneComicAtATime.com.
NOTE: A special welcome to the many Dan Piraro fans who recently joined me! If you don’t already know Dan’s work, he is a brilliant and prolific writer and syndicated cartoonist of the long-time panel Bizarro. He’s funny every day, which is no small feat, but even more, he’s got an interesting, unique, and engaging mind as well as a deep humanity that you can enjoy in his writings at the Bizarro site, Medium, and in his graphic novel.
As always, David, you are like a frickin' mirror, reminding the everlasting inner child that they are not alone. The reminder that never goes out of date. Major surgery? Here's to quick recovery, and is there a character called "Major Surgery"?? I think I saw him hanging out with Private Despair and General Malaise. (Sorry, sometimes I can't resist "getting into the act.").
Another knock-out comic therapy session. I feel like I should pay you. You are so good at writing about and illustrating the fancies and foibles of human consciousness that it makes me hate you—in an admiring, jealous way.
That carnival wheel panel is terrific. And the bong on the school desk is brilliant. I could've used a bong in first grade, for sure!