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Dalton
Roberts |
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We have a habit of thinking we are just one person and it makes us inefficient and sometimes downright dysfunctional. So remember that you are not just you. You are many yous.
How can not seeing that you are many yous make you inefficient? The main reason is that you cannot call on all your yous unless you are fully aware of them. The specific you needed to solve a situation may be one you are not aware of. You will inefficiently deal with the situation because you have lost contact with the best you for the job.
How is it that not knowing all your yous can make you dysfunctional? My personal psychiatrist, Dr. Zigmund Frogg, explains it this way: “Not all your yous are nice guys. As you know them and bring them under the control of your awareness, you can make them behave. If you become unaware of them, that doesn’t mean they cease to exist. You have merely shoved them in the closet of your subconscious. They will get out now and then and splash paint all over your walls. They can even throw some hand grenades.”
Where do all these yous come from? Some of them come from stages of your life. For example, you were once unable to walk. You could not feed yourself. You could not talk. You made little goofy noises all day long and giants stood over your little helpless body breathlessly listening for just one intelligible word. For months you kept them waiting in vain. Then one day you said, “Mama” or “Dada” or “Baba” and the giants leaped gazelle-like around the room and shrieked with glee, “Did you hear him?! He said Mama! He knows me!”
The truth was you didn’t know her. You were more like a parrot than a human at that point. You had just heard “Mama” so many times you finally echoed it back.
Surely I don’t need to remind you that you once lay around in diapers 24 hours a day. Freud and other famous psychologists agree that the way we were trained to shuck those diapers created some potentially pestersome little inner yous and mes.
Do you think that was merely a stage and that particular you no longer exists? No, that you is still with you and will forever be with you. If that little you was abused, you will be hearing from him/her in some unpleasant ways.
Surely you see that your psyche houses the Diapered You, and the Babbling Gurgling You, and the Teenage You and yous from all the stages of your life.
That’s not all. Some of your experiences create other yous. If you had a bad case of acne in puberty and were made fun of, the Belittled You is still hanging like a bat in your belfry ready to give a knee-jerk response to perceived slights from others. If you had a painful divorce long the way you may have an Angry Divorcee hanging around, ready to distrust others.
The good news is that all those stages and experiences also created some positive, wonderful, successful yous. It’s important to locate them with your awareness.
Writing in Heron Dance, Ann O’Shaughnessy tells us how to know and make peace with all our yous: “It takes great love and compassion to revisit my younger clumsy, lost and naďve selves. But I went back and embraced all the Anns I found there. I coaxed my darkest selves from their secret hiding places. I met them one by one, said hello and held them. Who I really am is all those selves – the whole ragtag group of me lining up for acceptance, waiting to be fully woven into this colorful tapestry of me.”
The ragtag group is our team and we are the quarterbacks. If we know our team well, we can call some good plays.
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