Chomping down the entire one pound bag of pretzel nuggets took most of the day, Wednesday, as I snacked my way from early morning until late afternoon. I was trying, and failing, to “catch the bear”, so I could go on-line to locate information for my alternative school project. The immediate project chore on which I am to be working might best be described as a Bullet Point Need Statement. It is to consist of a targeted population of children, in hard numbers, from which the school is to draw, reasons present schooling of the population is not meeting the needs of the population and reasons my school design would meet those needs. Now, the targeted population for my project is Special Needs; thus the Need Statement is to have the hard numbers representing the entire Special Needs population of the New York City, a break down of those being served by present public and private placements throughout the City and those who are not being served in any way at all and of disability, disorder and disturbance so it can be argued more specifically on how each disability, disorder and disturbance is being mis-educated and then for me to be able to argue the reverse for my school. Unfortunately, these numbers are not easily come by as at the moment I am unaware of any group which collects them and the City’s Department of Education guards very jealously such information. Besides, the total number of Special Needs children in NYC may be a number which does not exist anywhere. Yet, it is possible that with some time on-line I might generate leads on where I could get such information or, jump for joy, the information itself. But, I am required to take the step of going on-line for this purpose, and I am balking, big time, at doing this.
About seventeen years ago there was this colleague, a professor of far greater import than I, who had been fighting all sorts of demons for almost as long as I was at the time. He told me of a “lever” which moved his emotional predisposition to action from paralysis to action, and as one should understand, a positive emotional predisposition is the key motivator to all self-actualization. He said, paraphrasing, I feed the bear, order him to leave me alone and then I can get on with what I want to get done. Now, we’re not talking copious amounts of comfort food: he was talking a handful of grapes, a single Navel orange, a big Delicious apple. However, I have taken to things like pretzels, ice cream or cookies. While it certainly would be healthier eating fruit, it is the self-actualizing step, the voluntary act of eating, feeling the pleasure and fulfillment of the action, and of the food itself, which re-sets the emotional predisposition, which releases the paralysis. And, naturally, it is eating in proper proportions, such as a small handful of pretzels, four ounces of ice cream or four to six cookies which makes the difference between a lever and an act of self-sabotage.
I explain how the lever works though my sideways understanding of Freud’s psychology of Superego, Ego and Id where I substitute the concept of Parent for Superego, of Adult for Ego and of Kid for Id-where the Kid is divided into the Playful Kid, well adjusted, reacting appropriately, etc., and the Bent Kid, maladjusted, vengeful, over-reacting, etc. The Parent is filled with all the pre-and proscriptions of authority. The Adult is largely goal oriented, logical, deliberative, interpreting the world in proper perspective. The Kid is full of impulses, instincts, intuitions, positive and negative-of course, the positive belong to the Playful Kid and the negative belong to the Bent Kid.
Behavioral paralysis, the inability to do those actions one wishes to do, is a consequence of the interaction of Adult, Parent and Bent Kid. The Adult proposes an action which the Parent assigns as a pre-or proscribed behavior, a should or should not, a must or must not. Once the Parent defines an Adult action, the Bent Kid opposes it as the Bent Kid opposes all Parental authority. In the conflict between the Parent and the Bent Kid, the Kid triumphs, causing no action, or, worse, a self-sabotaging behavior, either way making the Parent impotent voiding the intended action.
The idea behind the eating lever is to generate the Playful Kid feeling of self-actualized pleasure from a range of food associated with pleasure to replace the Bent Kid feeling of vengeance stirred by the opposition to the Parent. Once the Playful Kid feeling takes over, the combined food pleasure and satisfaction of the self-actualized step, the Adult is enabled to put into proper perspective the Parental pre-or proscription, that is, weighing pros and cons in light of the action’s goals, which has the effect of breaking the paralysis and precipitating action. So, with a handful of pretzels purposely taken as a lever I can tell the bear to leave me alone, and get on with my school project chore.
However, in the presence of Depression, the lever works but less often. As was said to me by another friend, “Sometimes you get the bear; but sometimes the bear gets you.” Unfortunately, in Depression, the bear gets me far more frequently than I get it. Yet, I try whatever lever I can which might catch the bear. And I thought Wednesday, that with a handful of pretzels, I could tell the bear, the Bent Kid, to leave me alone and I could get on to what I wanted to do. Well, that day, the bear, the Bent Kid, got me, and instead of generating pleasure and self-actualizing satisfaction, the Playful Kid feelings, the Depression kept on feeding me more of the Bent Kid’s vengeance which I expressed by continuously going back to the bag of pretzels and just as continuously balking at going on-line for the required information. So, I never did go on-line for the information.
However, today I am not entirely paralyzed in that there are some activities my psychodynamic and Depression will allow me to do. Within the spectrum of what I want to do there are many actions including writing this post. What I call the trade-off lever gives me permission to do what I can, which if done with some frequency elevates a sense of personal power, the recognition I actually can get accomplished what I set out to do, and increases the “can do” spectrum, perhaps to include my on-line project research. So, now, I’ve “traded off” doing the specific school project chore to talk about the personal struggle of doing the chore. And, I suspect, I will be “trading off” further as I relate the history of the project in blog posts to come. And in so doing I will be not only telling my story, but also I will be re-setting my emotional predisposition sufficiently to occasionally chip away at the research, and at other elements of the school project itself.
In the end, which ever lever is working, at least I will be getting work done and, after all, getting something accomplished to someone suffering Depression is a big deal, a definite sign of moving in the right direction and of sustained movement out of the deep psychic hole.
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