Com101 – A Caricature of our Emotions

I’m going to be direct with you, this section is a mind hack.  I’m going to show you how to take control of your emotions using an imagination trick.  Our imagination is a powerful tool that can work for us or against us.  As we will cover in this series, our imagination can turn a simple discomfort in to a reason to freak out, blame, and attack the people around us –especially the ones closest to us.

Take “worry” for example.  Worry is our mind simply trying to protect us from possible future danger.  However, worry can easily go too far as our imagination is used against ourselves to spiral out of control on things that may never happen.  Worry is a form of mental practice.  We practice over and over, how we will act when things go wrong in some imagined scenario?  Worry can turn into a script that our subconscious will carry out later.  We fall to the level of our training.  If we use our imagination to practice getting on stage in front of others and messing up a thousand times, what do you expect will happen when we step on stage in real life?  Our unconscious wakes up and says, “oh, I recognize this.  I know what to do.  We’ve been practicing this for months,” and we carry out what we’ve been practicing.  The result?  We mess up on stage.  Then our “stage-fright”, something our imagination made up and practiced relentlessly, is suddenly very real.

In this section, we are going to explore a simple way to use the human imagination for our own benefit rather than letting it run the show with things like worry or anxiety.  We are going to meet worry and anxiety head on in our imagination and transform it.

Personally, I am a skeptic.  I don’t believe in superstition or magic.  I believe in the scientific method and trying things for myself.  Previously, I dismissed the use of the imagination as a big waste of time or a bunch of spiritual hippy nonsense.  Having hung out with many hippies and spiritual folk in the Burning Man community, I still firmly believe that much of it is uneducated nonsense as people let a powerful tool, the human imagination, run wild without taking a moment to respect it.

As a skeptic, I believe horoscopes seem to come true because of the power of the human imagination combined with the simple concept “we find what we’re looking for” or “what we focus on multiplies.”  The same goes for hexes, curses, or even blessings.  An idea is injected into our imagination and our imagination cycles on it, practices it, start looking for it, and helps it become true.  It’s just like worrying about stage fright only this time we’re worrying about our horoscope or the precise words of the hex someone claimed to have sent in our direction.

This little imagination trick that I’m going to share with you is a simple tool and may sounds silly.  It’s still powerful.  There is no magic and no woo-woo spiritual hippy stuff here.  If you try it, I believe, the results will be self-evident.  However, you might have to just get over yourself if you get stuck on how silly it is.  In the past, I know I would have dismissed it, or even skipped a section like this as complete BS.  Now I’m finding myself writing a little section intro to wake-up my younger self and anyone who may be in the same state of casual, dismissive resistance.

In short, the imagination is powerful, let’s use it.  Don’t take my word for it, just try it out for yourself.  Permission yourself to be silly if that that’s not your norm.  Here we go.

When worry is running wild in my imagination, I give it a form and a name.  I purposely create a silly caricature of the fear, anger, anxiety or whatever it is.  Then I call it out by the caricature’s name.

I learned this trick from friends and then later saw it used in Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor’s book, “Whole Brain Living.”  She describes the various parts of our brain as being four very distinct characters in our minds who have different jobs as they each try to help us navigate the world in specific ways.

One of the four characters in Dr. Taylor’s book is responsible for worry and our, often childish, emotional freak outs.  She calls this persona, “character 2.”  In my opinion, Dr. Taylor’s character 2 parallels the motives and priorities of the human ego very well.  Dr. Taylor suggests visualizing the four characters in her book as whatever they tend to come up as in our individual imaginations.  They will appear unique to each of us.  We can also give those unique personas names to match.  It’s a powerful way to understand what they are attempting to do for us and interact with them.

Before Dr. Taylor’s book, I’d previously had various friends talk about visualizing and naming one’s own ego or scared inner child as a means to understand and interact with it.  My marriage counselor used to recommend this as well.  Of course, back then, I thought it was BS and I only half tried it which gave me half-assed results.

Our ego is a wonderful thing that is always trying to protect us and alert us to danger, both real and imagined.  This is a very important job.  The problem is, 99% of the time, my ego is worried about completely made-up stuff, like getting into an argument with my boss at that job I don’t even work at anymore.  However, that other 1% of the time, my ego alerts me to something real and helps me navigate a tense situation.  That 1% of the time, the ego earns its place in my mind.

For me, the purposely silly character I see in my mind’s eye that personifies my ego, is Bert, from Sesame Street.  It’s surprisingly powerful and delightful!

Recognizing my ego as a separate entity means I can detach a little and observe it, listen to it, talk to it, and direct it.  This ability is quite powerful, especially when “it”, is Bert, a frigging Muppet.  As soon as I realize, “I feel sad.  It’s a 3 out of 10.  I feel scared.  5 out of 10.  I feel anxious.  5 out of 10.”  I instantly see Bert in my mind’s eye being melodramatic and freaking out.  Bert is crying crocodile tears.  He’s running around beating a pot with a big wooden spoon trying to get everyone’s attention.  He’s oh-so-scared and anxious!  He’s making a big scene in his apartment with Ernie.  It’s classic Bert behavior and I see it on stage being told in a classic Sesame Street or The Muppet Show style.  There’s even a laugh track in my mind’s eye.  It’s not serious at all and probably even funny.

For me, the best part about visualizing my fearful emotions as being embodied by Bert is that it is always instantly followed by Ernie’s calm, loving voice.  “Hey, what’s the matter Bert?  You look scared and anxious.  That’s okay, Bert, we’ll figure it out together.”

It’s important to be gentle with ourselves, our ego, and our emotions.  Our emotions are never “bad.”  They are only trying to send us a message of “hey, pay attention to this.”  They are trying to keep us safe.  Some of us were taught to silence our emotions, yell at them, or even shame them.  I know I was.  What if we were kind to them instead?  How would that work?  What would that look like?  I found, it looks a lot like Ernie when he’s being sincere and caring for his best friend.

Ernie would never tell Bert, “You’re stupid for feeling scared.  You’re such a spaz, Bert.  You’re always over reacting.  You should just get over being anxious, and stop being so ridiculous.”  Those words would be an invalidation of whatever Bert was going through.  We wouldn’t want someone to say those things to us, would we?  Hopefully we wouldn’t say them to someone we love.  Yet, how often do we say these things to ourselves?  When we talk to ourselves in this manner, that is toxic self-talk, also known as negative self-talk.  If you do this to yourself, make a commitment to stop and start doing the opposite.  If you do this to others, make a commitment to stop and start doing the opposite.  Gently catch your negative words and redirect the negative feedback into a statement of acknowledgment and then gratitude.  I’ll give an example of this in a moment.

Getting back to the little skit that’s playing out in my mind’s eye.  Bert is freaking out.  This tells me something’s up.  I have one or more warning lights on my internal dashboard.  When I say to myself, “where am I at?”  I often see Bert overacting.

Ernie enters and says, “Hey, what’s the matter Bert?  You look scared and anxious.  That’s okay, Bert, we’ll figure it out together.”  I follow Ernie’s lead and I chime in like a narrator.  “Bert?  Hey buddy, how’s it going?  Are you all worked up again?”  Then, every time, I see Bert stop dead in his tracks like he just realized what he was doing, he looks down at the pot and big spoon in his hands that he’s been sounding the alarm with.  He realizes instantly that he might be overacting.  He looks right at the camera and gives a big exaggerated Muppet shrug with his hands up in the air while a “womp-womp” sound plays in the background and the audience chuckles.

I say, “Thanks Bert.  Thanks for watching out for me.  Thanks for always trying to keep me safe.  I appreciate you.  I’ll take it from here.”  Then Bert says, “alright then,” with an awkward pause, “I a, I guess my work is done here.”  He puts down the pot and wooden spoon.  “I’ll um, I’ll leave you to it then.”

Notice that I thanked Bert for freaking out.  I treated him like my buddy.   I thanked him for watching out for me and I appreciated his efforts.  That’s what I meant by validating our emotions and being gentle with ourselves.  I gently thanked him for doing his job.  To be clear, overreacting is the ego’s job.  For me, overreacting is Bert’s job, and he’s done it beautifully.  Then I thank him for it.

After I appreciate Bert for clearly alerting me to whatever he’s feeling, I let him know, “I hear you.  I’ll take it from here.”  That’s where my emotions tend to drop by 50% or more.  My logical brain basically just told my emotions, “hey, I hear you and I’m going to do something about it.”  Then my emotions don’t need to alert me anymore so they tend to dissipate.

When Bert is sounding the alarm about nothing, I still thank him.  “Yes Bert, if I was going to travel back in time, I would totally have to navigate my old boss with those snappy one liners you just came up with.  Thanks for keeping me safe.  Also, I’m not ever going back there, so you don’t have to spend any more time on this scenario.  Thanks again.  I’ll take it from here.” 

In a case like that, Bert would probably, look surprised.  “Wait, you quit that job?  Really?  Like 5 years ago?  And you moved to another city?  Oh.”  He looks down at the pot and big wooden spoon in his hands, “Oooooh.  I see now.  Nevermind.”

What does your little protective voice look and sound like?  Who do you want it to sound like?  If it’s something scary, turn it into a puppet or a cartoon.  I have friends who tell me they’ve started imagining their ego’s voice as super cute anime characters, internet memes, or a cute younger version of themselves in pajamas.  Just about every comedy show has an anxiety-filled character who overeats.  Maybe start with your favorite movies and shows.  Also, who’s the loving, calming voice on the show?  They might be a great example of how to gently talk to yourself in those moments.

Here are a few examples to help spark your imagination:

• In Disney’s Monster’s Inc., Mike is always freaking out and Sully is gently hearing him and there for him.
• In Marvel’s superhero movies, Black Widow lovingly interacts with a worked-up and irrational Incredible Hulk.
• In Winnie the Pooh, Rabbit or Piglet might be freaking out while Pooh calmly engages them.
• If you are familiar with anime, I have a friend who imagines a chibi (big-head little-body cartoon) version of herself who is freaking out and overacting in her mind. Then she then interacts with that caricature version of herself the way a mother would lovingly and inquisitively engage with an overwhelmed child.

Now that we’re more versed in seeing our emotions and how they can try to run the show, rather than letting our story take us for a ride of chasing false needs, we can focus on the real needs not being met.  In the next section, we will dig in to translating those core signals behind Bert’s latest freak-out.  From there we can find our unmet needs.  ~Danny