The Manic Defense System : Friday's With Filar 0074
There’s a lot going on. Everywhere - and for everyone.
For those that read this blog, your life, very similar to mine, is more than likely in the top 20% of people in regards to financial stability or even not so serious real life problems.
You see, we don’t have to feel the pressure of trying to put food on the table for 3 kids while working three jobs going paycheck to paycheck, but rather our biggest problem is student loans or how much someone pissed you off at the stable job you have.
There are overflowing amounts of homeless people, hospital beds full of sick, all time highs of obesity and drug overdoses.
But we complain about how the cat scratched our couch again, the wrong fruit they put in our acai bowl, that work emails keep interrupting your morning pilates class, or that we ran out of nyquil and resort to whiskey as a proper solution.
This has become our new norm. These stupid, very insecure issues that we think are life altering have masked over the true basic fundamental levels of contentness in our lives.
At least they have for me.
THE MAIN IDEA 🙇🏼♂️ :
Over the past three or four years ive become a self proclaimed workaholic. I have been driven by the idea of constantly doing more in return for more other things : more opportunities, more reach, more impact, more money, more everything.
And it’s worked.
BUT, and its in caps for a reason, during my hundred and eleventh episode of burn out (I’m not actually counting, but its probably up there in count), I’ve recognized that my consistency in saying ‘yes’ to things has been a very big source of burn out.
When I think about how I structure my days, I fill them to the absolute brim - theres no hour unaccounted for anymore. The times I go for a run are blocked off in the calendar. The times I cook dinner are pre-mapped out in the evening. The to-do-list is written both digitally in a google doc and on physical paper. Even as i’m currently accomplishing “write blog for this week”, its 9:30pm and i’ve spent the majority of the day staring at this screen checking things off my to do list.
And the real reason behind doing all this is…
because its a coping mechanism.
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There is something called ‘Manic Defense’ which was introduced by Melanie Klein in the 1940s.
“She enriched the Freudian conception of mania by adding the idea of the subject's feelings of guilt concerning the disappearance and destruction of the object. The manic subject tends to downplay the power of the object, to disdain it, while at the same time maintaining maximum control over objects. Manic defenses are typified by three feelings, namely control, triumph, contempt.
In clinical practice, the notion of manic defenses has suffered from the rise of a psychiatric approach that tends to sideline any consideration of psychic conflict.”
My interpretation or translation of this all is i’m doing a bunch of shit to mask over real things I struggle with in my life.
The word manic, gets a negative stigma associated with it. But curiously enough, by definition (I mean if you google it) it says “showing wild, deranged, exciting and energy” which I interpret as overall positive. I would even associate with my behaviors using most of those words - - maybe swap out deranged with ‘unique’.
But boiling this all down to real brass tacks here. Why the fuck am I saying all this?
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I’ve reached in my life now where I don’t need to prove anything to anyone but myself. Which is an amazing place to be - to exist, to live, and to thrive for the simple pleasures of self gratification.
It’s why I like pushing myself to the limits. Its why I thoroughly enjoy trying new things that I never thought previously possible.
But in doing that, I feel like I’ve developed a mask over my life. That same Manic Defense System is currently casting a shadow over my life. I’ve really lost touch with the simple things. The appreciation of time, not tomorrow or yesterday, but today - has been burred by all the things I say yes to. Each time I fill my cup with another idea, help someone else out, say yes to supporting another event, the visibility of the ‘right now’ moment gets further and further away.
So this is my call to action: to take a step back, breathe, appreciate the sunlight hitting my face this morning, look around and be grateful for how I feel and what I have, and then… I can keep going (just maybe at a different pace).
We’re not running anyone elses race - were running our own. And that tempo can and should fluctuate at different moments in our lives.
For the past four years I’ve been sprinting.
Today, I need to to take a walk.
Tomorrow, we’ll see.
Good things,
DF
