We Need to Talk about the Toxic Behavior

Note: This post contains spoilers for Stranger Things season 3, Spider-man Far From Home, Avengers Endgame, and The Good Place through season 3. So many spoilers! Guard yourselves

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“This is so well done,” I say, leaving the movie theater. In my head I can already imagine discussing it with my students in class. A few days later, watching Netflix, I frown. “This is so badly handled.”

When I decided to watch Spider-man Far From Home the same week as I watched Stranger Things season 3, I did not imagine there would be any type of overlap. Imagine my surprise when I watched two very different depictions of the same type of toxic behavior. Two classic abusive patterns presented to me. Unfortunately, one was extremely well handled and the other, was a complete accident.

Last chance to abandon this ship because here come the spoilers.

One of the patrons at the theater where I saw Far From Home left saying he wished he

Promo Shot: Spider-Man Far From Home

did not know Mysterio was a villain before watching so that the slow reveal would have been more effective. I disagree. The part of his character I found so arresting was knowing he was evil and trying to figure out what his game was.

Mysterio is a classic abuser. So pitch perfect was the writing that I could have used his scenes to teach about gaslighting in my psych class.

The term gaslighting comes from the movie Gaslight, a the golden age of Hollywood masterpiece. The story revolved around a man who slowly convinces his wife she is losing her mind by causing things to happen and then denying them, including flickering the gaslights in their home. Now the term refers to a specific type of emotional abuse that aims to cause a person to doubt themselves. Mysterio gaslights the entire world, faking tragedies so he can be the one to save them. Even within his own team, he threatens the lives of his villainous staff and blames them for his violence toward them. He literally says they are making him act the way he is. In the most classic example of this type of manipulative abuse, he slowly ingratiates himself with Peter Parker. He slips into the whole that Iron Man’s death left and makes himself into Peter’s mentor. He then continually undermines Peter’s sense of self. He encourages him to give up superheroing, to only focus on his own needs. He destabilizes Peter and alienates him from Nick Fury and the rest of SHIELD. Then when the gig is up, he turns and lashes out. He uses all of Peter’s fears against him in the illusion world and ultimately blames Peter for it. The “If you left good enough alone” speech being a classic “I’m hurting you but it’s your fault technique”. Mysterio is a textbook abuser.

The thing is, Mysterio is intended to come off this way. There is a predatory nature to him that grows as the story progresses. He is Captain Gaslighting, the toxic person that can often show up when we are vulnerable. A warning to us all.

The other depiction of toxic behavior came from the newest season of Stranger Things. I

Promo Shot: Stranger Things

loved the season, but it was not flawless by any stretch. The main failing being the transformation of Hopper from hapless burnt out detective to really shitty and toxic Dad. I loved Hop in season 1, but the character in this season is unrecognizable. He is toxic masculinity condensed and bottled. He yells at everyone, throws things around, and when push comes to shove he resorts to threats and physical violence. He scares Mike out of dating El. Mike, a child.

The Hop from seasons 1-2 was a man who fought for those who were weaker than him, he went up against the bigger people who used violence to gain submission. The Hopper of seasons 1-2 would have probably fought the Hopper of season 3.

The worst part of this is, his behavior is handled like he’s just being his usual messy self. The darker aspects of his character seem wholly unintentional and thus entirely unexplored. Considering the way the rest of the season explored toxic masculinity (with Will not fitting into other people’s mold and Nancy facing off against sexual harassment), his story could easily have fit in with the theme. It could have been handled. Hop could have received some redemption in this arc. But that would have required acknowledging the difference between messy and toxic.

Even Hop’s posthumous letter did not save the character for me. As sweet as El finding his words could have been, it was overshadowed by the fact that he never gave her this letter. With Joyce’s help, he wrote out his feelings in a healthy way, but in the moment, he decided to be abusive. He kept the positive words, literally, tucked away. So her finding it only after he is dead really memorializes that he chose to treat her badly. Compare this to another aspect of Spider-Man: the Iron Man arc. Iron Man too was a messy father figure. He often yelled and repeated the mistakes of his own father. Iron Dad frequently failed to express his emotions. The difference? No one is more aware of Tony Stark’s problems than Tony Stark. He expresses to Peter (in Homecoming) that he is struggling with his father’s poor parenting, but that he’s trying to be better. In the end, he leaves behind his EDITH glasses to Peter with the words “To the Next Iron Man,” his posthumous offering was also one of love, but it was not something Peter found by mistake. It was given. Tony Stark was full of failings, but he was honest and he often got it right too. Sadly, Hopper was much more Mysterio than Iron Man.

Promo Shot: The Good Place

So, Hop did not get his redemption this season, but what if it turns out he is not really dead because this is TV? Well, it’s going to take a lot of work on the writers parts to win me back over to team Hop, but it can be done. I know this redemption arc could be done well because I have seen it done in the very best possible way. In the Good Place, Michael is slowly revealed to be the villain. He gaslights, he manipulates, he is literally a demon sent there to torture the main characters. But he begins to change. Slowly over the seasons, Michael gets his redemption arc. He has to learn to face his toxic masculinity and privilege.  He learns to have feelings and empathy for others. The humbling and ultimate rebuilding of his character remains one of the most moving things on TV. He is a literal demon, but his flaws are not treated as jokes. He’s recognized for what he is, and thus change is possible.

Yes, true believers, just like in therapy, the first step to a good redemption arc is fully acknowledging the problem. If the Duffer brothers want to fix the full turn against Hopper, they have to first admit that he was an asshole.

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Recommendations:

If you want to learn more about gaslighting and how to spot it, check out the National Domestic Abuse website.

An Uneasy Dream of a Better World

This is not one of those posts where I tell you I learned how cruel the world could be in November 2016. I knew the world was cruel. My tiny screaming body came out of the womb terrified. I was anxious and OCD right away, and I never once believed the world was safe. As a kid the boogeyman was something out of a news special, being born in the early 90s when several high profile kidnappings were all the news. In 2001, I was nine. America went to war and my natural hyper-vigilance felt justified. The fear based messaging aimed at teenagers worked wonders on my anxious brain.

Then I went to college and my anxiety took on a decidedly liberal bent. I learned about systems of oppression and marginalization that were foreign to me, a kid who grew up in conservative and evangelical circles. I started recognizing some of the things happening in my life for what they were: sexist bullshit. To say I went from confused and scared good Christian preacher’s kid to angry feminist is unfair. I was confused, scared, still a Christian, no longer a kid, and an angry feminist at the same time. “Make sure you don’t let it make you bitter,” my father said. It was an insensitive response he would no longer endorse, but a fairly prophetic warning. Sometimes I am bitter. Sometimes paranoia and cynicism are a pretty good defense mechanism, but they are not a constant state for me. I find myself wavering between bouts of believing everything will go to shit and having hope. I do believe things can get better. Sometimes, I believe it because I actually feel it in my soul. Sometimes, I believe it because I have to. Because otherwise, what is the point?

So 2016 both surprised some part of me that hoped for better and confirmed the suspicions of the part of me born believing everything will get worse. I have spent the last several years angry. Not only angry, I have felt joy and happiness and sadness and so many other things too, but always a little angry.

With my shift in perspective, the pop culture I found myself able to stomach changed. I had to stop watching Veep. It felt too real and also not bad enough at the same time. Sometimes, when I needed a break from everything I watched mindless shows like Teen Wolf or Riverdale. Things I could sink into and forget for 40 minutes before going back out to do something, anything out there in the world, but there was a part of me that wanted something else. I wanted shows/movies/books that got what I was feeling. I was looking for a mix of painful reality and hope.

Enter: One Day at a Time

One Day at a Time Promo Shot

The Netflix revival of an old sitcom came onto the scene, apologetically Cuban-American, Queer, and progressive. It tackled mental health, the struggles facing Veterans in this country, addiction, racism, homophobia, sexism, and fear of the current political landscape while being a show that never lost it’s heart. It was real without steering into bitterness.

One Day at a Time Promo Shot

Tomorrow is the 4th of July, a holiday that recently leaves me feeling cold. Every time I walk into Target to a barrage of red, white, and blue, something inside myself curls up. It is hard for me to muster anything but frustration or outright pain. I feel far away from the child who used to sing “God Bless the USA” as a solo (yikes).  Yet, there are moments when One Day at a Time manages to stir my heart in ways most things cannot anymore. In a beautiful character arc, Lydia, the Cuban grandmother of the family, and their Canadian landlord, Snyder, decide to become American citizens. There are discussions about what it means to become part of a new country, and how hard it is for the grandmother because it feels like letting go of her home. The central episode involves her and the landlord both getting their citizenship. Lydia then hangs an American flag curtain in front of her room. It is powerful to see this Cuban American family framed by the flag.

 

The show never shies away from the harsh realities of America post 2016. There is an episode about dealing with racial slurs and one about the queer couple on the show experiencing homophobia. The family frankly discusses politics and the pain that the current administration does to marginalized people. Yet, there is always an air of hope. A belief in something beyond the terrible current moment and past legacy of this country. There is a belief that there could be something better.

Book Cover: Red, White, and Royal Blue

For book club this month, my friend picked the book Red, White and Royal Blue by Casey McQuiston. It is a fluffy queer romance that had me genuinely laughing out loud throughout. The romance was lovely and captivating, and it was fun to read a heartwarming story that felt like being wrapped in a big soft rainbow blanket.

The thrust of the story focuses on the son of the US president falling in love with the youngest British Prince. Through their romance, there also unfolds a fascinating political story. The book is almost an alternate recent history, offering up a 2019 where there was no Trump presidency. Instead, we had our first woman president. With that, her family in the story is biracial, Latinx and white. The book suggests, what if our world but a little bit better. Then it tells the story of the second election with this president running against a Trump like figure. It has the characters wrestling with the soul of who America is. It asks, who would give up this possible world over something like private email servers?

It was heartbreaking and beautiful and hopeful and sad. I found myself on the edge of my seat waiting for fictional election results. I found myself feeling hope.

The book was pure fiction, but not in a way that made it mindless escapism or admonishing preachy finger-wagging. It was a call to action, a reminder of what could be if we keep pushing to be better. It was not a perfect America. Bad things still happened, causes were still lost, but there was something different. There were people who kept hoping and used that hope to keep fighting.

This 4th of July, I cannot find it in myself to be patriotic in that firework firing, hooray shouting, over the top loud kind of way, but a part of me is starting to think that patriotism is a lot like love. It does not mean mindlessly celebrating everything about a country anymore than real love means not seeing flaws. Patriotism as the characters on One Day at a Time or Red, White and Royal Blue would describe it means hoping that the country can be better. It means not taking the L, but continuing the fight.

Book Cover: Exit Stage Left: The Snagglepuss Chronicles

If our hopelessness leads us to inaction it too is a type of complacency. It is agreeing that this is the way our country is going to be, with children in cages and school shootings so frequent they don’t always make the news anymore, we give up any chance of changing any of it. As Mark Russel wrote in the Exit Stage Left: Snagglepuss Chronicles graphic novel (yes a shockingly moving and political story given that it was based on a 1960s children’s cartoon) “In life  you do not fight battles because you expect to win. You fight them merely because they need to be fought.” Hope and continuing the battle does not mean  being assured everything will work out. I don’t know that things will get better, but I believe they can, and hope they will. And I believe most of all, we cannot stop trying.

 

 

 

 

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Recommends:
Speaking of One Day at a Time. Watch all of it! It is a great time to catch up before it return for its new season.

While we are talking politics, I cannot recommend enough Ronan Farrow’s book War on Peace. It is an amazing deep dive into the way our country undervalues peace work in favor of a military approach. It is however the book that my therapist stared pointedly at when I mentioned not being able to explain my recent bout of depressed moods, so read with that caveat. It is hard to stomach.

Book Review: Loki Where Mischief Lies

Book Cover: Loki Where Mischief Lies

Title: Loki: Where Mischief Lies by Mackenzi Lee

Release Date: Fall Release (Sept 2019)

Rating: 5/5 Stars

Read as an Advanced Reader Copy from the American Library Association Conference

Representation includes gay, genderfluid identity, and pansexuality.

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Non-Spoiler Review: (see below for longer, spoiler filled review)

Loki: Where Mischief Lies is the perfect blend of humor, mystery, and genuine emotions. Lee explores the ideas of toxic masculinity and identity through the lens of Asgardian family drama. If you are a fan of Loki from the comics or the movies, this novel fits in well with either continuity while bringing new depth to the character.

There are few characters better equipped to explore the ideas of identity and queerness than Loki, and it is exciting to see those sides of him take the forefront. The story also includes Loki solving mysteries in Victorian London and all the unimaginable fun that could come from those exploits. The book is engaging from start to finish and has a truly unpredictable plot. I laughed out loud and genuinely cried. I give this book my full recommendation.

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Spoiler Review: Major plot twists will not be spoiled, however, if you want to go in as unspoiled as possible, stop reading here.

I cannot recover from how happy this book made me. I have loved Loki as a character since the first Avengers movie, and since then I have done a number of deep dives into the Marvel mythology and Norse mythology in general. There may be a Loki action figure beside me as I write this. So, the minute I found out that Mackenzi Lee was the person tackling this story, I could not wait for it to be in my hands. To say that I started out with high hopes might be an understatement, and yet it still exceeded my every expectation.

While in the comics and in Norse Mythology, Loki has always been a shapeshifter that switches gender at will, few have ever explored what that means for his self-identity. This book on the other hand, addresses Loki’s queerness explicitly as his identity comes in conflict with his father Odin’s idea of the Ideal Man (a note here, Loki uses masculine pronouns for himself, and thus I will also). Thor is Odin’s paragon of masculinity: tall, muscular, thinks with his fists. Loki prefers scheming to fighting, is slight of frame, and enjoys using magic to change the color of his nails. His favorite item in the story is a pair of high heeled boots. His identity also comes up against the rigid ideas of Victorian London where he meets an ostracized gay man named Theo. In one particularly good scene, Loki declares himself the “Enchantress” leading to confusion when the Londoners explain that this is a feminine name. Loki does not see any conflict there. He remains, not what people think he “should” be.

The theme of identity continues through the ongoing crisis of the book. Is Loki doomed to be the villain? Lee explores the question of whether Loki ever had a choice in the villain he became. If Odin and the whole of Midgard (for the uninitiated: Earth) already treat his turn to evil as a bygone conclusion, what can he do to be the hero? It is a complicated and deeply emotional exploration of the character. He is no simple black-and-white bad guy, and in this novel, the tension in his character is given the room to breathe it deserves. The psychology of identity presented in this story is incredibly well thought out.

The London crew, known as the SHARP society, that Loki goes to Earth to help also deserves all possible praise. Mrs. Sharp is a feminist icon set in contrast with the prudish Victorian society. She brazenly wears pants and solves mysteries despite being a (Victorian gasp) woman! Theo serves as a perfect counterpoint to Loki and acts as his Watson (and perhaps something more, but I leave this piece for you to discover, readers).

If you do not know the Marvel universe, the book sets up the story and characters in such a way that this can easily be an entry point. On the other hand, if you are already shouting Excelsior and dissecting the Easter Eggs in Endgame, the book has a lot of great details for you to enjoy including one that counts as way too big of a spoiler to say here, but everyone who reads Loki can be excited to gasp about when it happens. The story can easily be read as a prequel to the first Thor movie, and sets it up effectively. If you enjoyed the recent comics run of Loki Agent of Asgard, this is definitely going to be right up your alley.

Already clocking in at just over 400 pages, I wished the story was twice as long, yet it felt totally satisfying. I found myself luxuriating in the writing style and characterization. In case I have not already made it abundantly clear, this was one of my favorite reads this year and a book I plan to return to. As my Lord of Lies would say, I am burdened with the glorious purpose of making sure that this September you do not sleep on this title.

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My Body Connection

I always thought of my body as a vessel to carry things from one place to another. In college, it was a vessel to take my brain from place to place. In church, it carried my soul. In relationships, my body took my heart to each person. It was no more a part of “me” than my car. It was utilitarian, and I treated it as such.

I carry more weight on my body than the doctor recommended size. My weight goes up and down a little bit. I was my skinnest the summer I worked at at a children’s camp, racing around to prevent catastrophes and keep a gaggle of children from wandering off. Mostly, I hover around an average.

I do not necessarily think I am ugly or pretty. There is something decidedly average about me. I have put on makeup occasionally, but mostly I do not wear it. My hair is something that happens to me, a mess I do little to control.

Sometimes I forget what I look like. That is the level to which I have disconnected from my body. Sometimes I catch a look in the mirror and go “Oh.”

I am not kind to my body. My skin wears excema, it is dry and often cracks because the OCD in me tells me that germs lurk in every crease. Usually, a few mysterious bruises hover around my legs and arms because I walk into walls and trip up stairs on a regular basis. I do not exercise as frequently as I should. After all, my body is something that carries around the real me. It is a tool. Isn’t it? Isn’t it?

A perspective shift began, as so many revelations in my life, with a beautiful piece of pop culture.

Promo shot: Queer Eye

With Queer Eye, into my TV life waltzed Jonathan Van Ness. I listened to him talk about how caring for ourselves in physical ways matter. I remember him telling an overworked father that taking even just five minutes to care for his body would be revolutionary for him. More recently, in the Queer Eye book, JVN (as many refer to him) wrote about how learning to care for his own body changed his whole perspective on himself.

The way we treat ourselves physically matters.

My body is more than a physical tether, keeping my spirit weighed to the ground. My body is a part of the whole that is me.

I called my friend, a wonderful and supportive human that was with me from day one of grad school, and told him I was going to start blow drying my hair.

Interestingly, it was another set of pop culture best friends who inspired my most recent body connection.

Promo Shot: The Try Guys

The Try Guys on Youtube are a group that started on Buzzfeed and now run their own media company. They make amazing videos that are hilarious and often powerful. I even show them in my psych classes from time to time. They did a video on facials. For the most part, it was funny, but something struck me. Watching them try out skin care launched a violent fit of OCD. I suddenly became obsessed with the idea that the skin on my face was horribly dirty.

Jenny Lawson in Furiously Happy talks about realizing that bacteria lives on her face and becoming fixated on the idea. As someone with OCD, I fully grasp this problem. The video suddenly had me looking in the mirror all the time and realizing for the first time that I had blackheads. Even though they were not terribly noticeable, and until that moment, I myself had barely noticed them, they felt like giant blaring signs on my face. This is what OCD does in your brain. It latches on and amplifies everything.

I had to rush out and get blackhead skincare supplies. For several days, this became an obsession and a compulsion. I needed it to be better immediately.

But, things settled down in my brain. They always do, and suddenly I realized that underneath the obsession, there was a healthy reality. My skin did deserve care. I started putting in a careful routine, untwisting it from the knot of compulsion and instead actually caring for the skin on my face. My skin looked so much better, and with the hair drying, I suddenly realized that it felt good to care.

I always dismissed such things as unnecessary vanity, and in so doing, I became less and less in my body. I was a ghost possessing my own form. So, changing that up and allowing skincare, hair care, and physical self-care to be important to me has been an active revolution. I am starting to feel like I live in this body, that I am at least in part this body. I am my body’s and my body is mine.

It is still an uphill battle to make the habits stick. Some days, I still feel that old pull to worry that caring is vain. Sometimes I still get surprised by who stares back from the mirror, but more and more I am allowing myself–even my physical self–to be a priority. More and more I am allowing myself to mindfully fill out the whole of my body.

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Come back next week for another dose of Existential Wednesday!

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If you want to read more about Purity Culture and the way it damaged so many of us, check out Damaged Goods by Dianna Anderson.

I also recommend wholeheartedly everything Queer Eye and everything Try Guys! These two sets of friends are lights in the world.

In a Cosplay State of Mind: Interview with Ghostiee Muffinn

We met at Baltimore Comic Con. It was my second year taking my niece. Both her and I have social anxiety, and transforming into our favorite badass women of the superhero world makes us become more outgoing. We walked around the con getting pictures with other cosplayers. She and I gasped out loud when we saw one particular cosplayer come walking across the sky bridge. Decked out in armor, carrying the mighty Mjolnir, there she was: Thor.

Photo: Ghostiee Muffinn as Thor and me, as Mockingbird. Photo credit: @rickcurrrier32 on IG

As long time readers of my blog know, I am endlessly interested in the intersection of mental health and nerd culture, so when I saw a post about this very topic on her instagram, I reached out to Ghostiee Muffinn herself for an interview.

Chris: What do you want [my readers] to know about you first off?

Jess: Hi! I’m Jess, however my online cosplay alias is Ghostiee Muffinn Cosplay. I’ve been cosplaying and attending conventions for 4 years now, and hope to continue! I cosplay almost everything; video games, comics, movies, you name it! Outside of cosplay I attend college and serve [wait staff at a restaurant].

Photo: Ghostiee Muffinn as Ezio from Assassins Creed. Photo by: @casey_mcnaughton on IG

Chris: How did you get into cosplaying? What is your cosplay story?

Jess: One year out of the blue I asked my friend if she wanted to attend Katsucon, I think it was 2015! She had planned to go to otakon, but things fell through so it inspired us to give it a shot. We loved it. It was so much fun crafting our first costumes, and it just became something we wanted to continue! Now, I can’t imagine myself without this hobby, I put hours and lots of money into it!

Chris: What does cosplay mean to you?

Photo: Ghostiee Muffinn as Glaceon from Pokemon. Photo by: @papercube on IG

Jess: Cosplay means the world to me! I’ve met my best friends through cosplay, so close that they are like family to me. Cosplay is my creative outlet, I lead a busy lifestyle and it allows me to cool down through art. I hope to keep pushing myself to craft greater and greater projects.

Chris: What is your life as a frequent cosplayer like?

Jess: It can be stressful, in 2018 I have completed 7 new cosplays and attended 5 conventions. The previous year I had only [attended] 2 conventions and completed about 3 cosplays. I would be lying if I said it didn’t sometimes get stressful pushing myself more and more. Yet, I wouldn’t trade it for anything, while it keeps me busy it keeps me determined. I continue to meet amazing people and learn more about my craft. It can be strange finding the balance between the cosplay world, work world, student world, and social world— yet when those worlds collide (especially social and cosplay) I wouldn’t trade it for a thing!

Chris: On your Instagram, you talk about feeling like cosplaying different characters makes you feel strong. Can you talk more about that?

Photo: Ghostiee Muffinn as Thor. Photo by: @griffin_studios and edited by @kosplaykreationz on IG

Jess: Cosplaying different characters absolutely makes me feel strong—empowered. When you look up to or admire a character, there is hardly a better feeling than becoming that character. It’s like becoming the one who you admire, you begin to admire yourself. Additionally, not all projects are easy! Completing a challenging goal is good for the soul, it induces learned self esteem!

 

Chris: On this blog, we talk about how nerd culture intersects with mental health. What connection do you see between cosplaying and mental health?

Jess: I absolutely can see how cosplay connects to mental health, good and bad. For me, cosplay gives me pride and pleasure when I debut something new I had been crafting for months. I previously mentioned learned self esteem—when one gains confidence through accomplishment— cosplay is my source of learned self esteem! It gives me something to look forward to in dark days. However, it is undeniable that cosplay can be a stressor. Have you heard the term “con crunch”? It refers to that month before a con when cosplayers go blind, seeings stars, trying to finish all their cosplays by the con deadline— usually without sleeping! Cosplay can induce stress, but it can also serve as stress relief to craft after a long day. I would consider it a very healthy hobby!

Chris: What do you wish people understood about cosplaying?

Jess: I feel there are several misconceptions around cosplay. First— it’s not just several adults that never outgrew dress up. We are adults having fun, we are crafting, making friends, staying young, and embracing our unique hobby. Many cosplayers such as myself create cosplays from nothing, so we pride ourselves in our creations! Secondly, there are many types of cosplay. One of the categories, lewd cosplay, I feel gets a bad name. Our motto is cosplay is for everyone, to deny anyone as a cosplayer because they are wearing less is rude and wrong. Similarly, the cosplay world should be a happy world, void of harsh remarks. We are all different skill levels, so we must always embrace all cosplays as “good” rather than “noob” cosplays.

Photo: Ghostiee Muffinn as Jason Vorhees. Photo by: @s1price_lightworks on IG

Chris: Can you tell us about the cosplay community?

Jess: I love the cosplay community, I’ve mentioned that almost all of my close friends come from cosplay—and hold true to that. I’ve met people I consider family. I feel the cosplay community is a supportive and healthy community, nerds helping and supporting eachother! It’s my favorite community to be a part of.

Chris: Is there anything else you want my readers to know about your craft?

Jess: I see cosplay in my future, and I am grateful for everyone who has supported me along the way, I couldn’t do anything without the kindness of others, and I couldn’t imagine myself without the cosplay world.

Photo: Ghostiee Muffinn as Jessica Rabbit from Who Framed Roger Rabbit. Photo by: @notsoprophoto_photography on IG

Thank you to Jess for telling us her story. Check out her work on instagram @GhostieeMuffinnCosplay and on facebook Ghostiee Muffinn Cosplay. You can also contribute to her craft over on Ko-Fi.

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Welcome back to the new season of Existential Wednesday. If you enjoyed this interview, worry not, there are more to come. And if you want more walks through existential crises, pop culture, and mental health, come back every Wednesday!

 

Blogtober Day 21: Deepest Fear Part 1

What are you most afraid of?

I was lecturing on the topic of availability heuristic to my class a few weeks ago. The

Promo shot: The Meg

availability heuristic is a sort of shortcut our brains take, where if we hear about something often, we believe it is common. So, we hear about murder and violence on the news (because “if it bleeds, it reads”) and we start to believe that these things are more common than they are. This holds true, even if the evidence is fiction rather than news. I told my class, this is also why we fear sharks more than texting while driving, even though one of these things is far more dangerous (hint: texting).

 

As I talked about the irrationality of fearing sharks (who are more likely to be killed by people than to kill people), I felt my pulse quickening. It was difficult for me to even look at the screen. One of my savy pysch students pointed out my reaction. “Somethings going on with you more than just sharks being scary.” Sometimes my students are annoyingly observant.

I am terrified of everything ocean. Open waters scare the ever living hell out of me. So

Screen cap: Gravity

does space for that matter. The movie Gravity was my absolute nightmare and I could not even sit through the trailer.

 

You see, I know exactly why these two things terrify me. Maybe you can already guess, faithful reader? Here’s a hint, it has to do with the fact that, as previously written about, one of my most common returning nightmares is being in the back of a car with no driver.

Control.

Damn do I love the illusion of control. I know, it is an illusion. There are some choices given to us in life, and some we have no power over. I was born with privilege other people do not have, and there are those with a lot more privilege than me. There a great many things in life we have no control over–like death, our birth, who our families are.

But, I have OCD and I like to pretend. When my father got sick with cancer, I washed my hands so frequently they turned raw. Why? I thought if nothing else, at least I could make sure he did not catch another sickness while trying to heal.

The problem is, the open ocean with its endless depths full of creatures and potentially some we do not even know about yet, robes me of any belief in control. The idea of being out on the water where anything could happen. I feel my heart rate spiking just as I type. Space is the same way, if you float off in space you are gone. They are big, powerful forces of nature that want to kill us. Okay, oceanologists and NASA scientists (do I have any of you reading? Because that would be neat!) I hear you complaining that the ocean and space are not trying to kill me. Alright, I hear you, I just don’t believe you on a cellular level.

I like to pretend control is a thing I have. Also, have you seen the ocean? It’s huge!

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PSA: I may be scared of sharks, but they are a valuable part of our world that we, humans, are doing a lot of damage to. Check out the work the Shark Trust is doing to keep our waters full of these amazing, beautiful creatures.

Blogtober Day 16: Nightmares

I turned the steering wheel, but it was too late. The car went headfirst into another car. I heard the crunch and screech. Then I shot in bed panting in terror. This was two nights ago. I have never had a nightmare feel so violently real.

You see, I am not a visual person. My memory is mainly audio. I can remember songs as if they are playing back in my head, so my Mom nicknamed  me Jukebox. She loves saying a random word and seeing if I can pull out a song that contains that word somewhere in its lyrics. The side effect of this is, I have a terrible time visualizing things. Even my dreams are often hazy and lacking in colors, but not the other night. It is midterm week, I have Ph.D. applications coming due, and a thousand projects happening at once. Out of this Tsunami of anxiety, my brain conjured an impossibly full 5 senses engaging nightmare of horror. It was so bad, that the next day, when I drove down that stretch of road from my dream, I felt myself growing twitchy.

The second most vivid nightmare I ever had, was a reoccuring dream that came to me over and over again as a small child. I was in my home, walking up the stairs when everything came alive. The floor, the doors, the walls, grew mouths that were gapping and trying to eat me alive as I ran. To this day, I feel a chill just writing about those dreams.

As someone with long term insomnia, I have experienced a waking dreams. As a teenager, I was sitting in my room. I felt the weight of exhaustion but was too keyed up to attempt sleeping. Then a woman in a long white dress, with long straight black hair, stepped into my room. My heart accelerated and…she was gone. A ghost? Maybe you think so, but I am pretty certain she was a waking dream. I began to take my insomnia serious after that moment, and I have never seen anything like that again.

Another common nightmare for me is I am in a car that is flying down the road. No one is at the wheel and I am in the back seat, scrambling to get control. Yes, I know. You do not have to be Jung to analyze that one. Hello, OCD, my old and faithful friend reminding me that I am most terrified of losing control. I see you, we all see you.

What good are things strange expressions of fear that paint our sleep? Truthfully? We don’t know. Dreams are an area of discussion in psychology. While some therapists analyze them others think they are meaningless, or biological processes that just happen. In all honesty, there is no consensus on what function they serve.

What we do know, nightmares are more terrifying that any horror movie. So, happy Halloween and…pleasant dreams?

 

Blogtober Day 4: Corn Mazes

 

 

Corn Maze stockphoto: iStock

I went to a corn maze when I was 13. One of the mean girls, a group that truly ripped off the Plastics from Mean Girls before the movie happened, told me it was a haunted maze. I spent the whole time waiting for the scares only to find none-existed. She just liked my terror.

We navigated the maze. It was a church youth trip back when I was still trying to believe this group would work out for me. Truly, the most scary thing about the trip was my own denial about how poorly matched the group of us were. The leader, a kind woman that willfully believed the best–even of her own daughter, the cruelest of the pack–tried to lead the way. She asked a teenage boy how to get out, because after hours of wandering, it was dark and we were clearly very lost.

“It’s that way, trust me,” he said, and literally laughed. I told her that this seemed like a rather dishonest way to respond, she told me that Christians are supposed to trust people.

We got so much more lost.

By the time it was close to closing, we escaped through what was definitely not an intentional exit and met the road. We walked down the highway back to the starting line where we met the older teenagers. I was tired, dirty, and slowly beginning to realize that bonding exercises would not magically fix pettiness. And that the adults were not taking me seriously if it did not fit with their idea of reality. I think this is one of the moments that lead me to psychology. It was one of the moments that led me to ask why each person in the equation acted the way they did.

Why were those girls so cruel?

Why was their mom so deceived by it?

Why did the boy lie?

Looking back, that was just one of the disasterous trips I took with that group before I gave up trying to make it work. There was a truly horrifying day at a skating rink. There was a van trip somewhere, but it was that Halloween in the corn maze that finally set me on the path to releasing myself from a desire to please them.

I let them go, which was its own kind of fear, but on the other side, I met better people. Good people who treated me kindly, and we had Halloweens I remember only with fondness. I remember dressing up, I remember candy, I remember laughter. Holidays have a way of digging up memories, the good and the bad. Each a part of the story of the holiday inside my narrative.

I want to go to a corn maze again, to break past the one bad memory and fill it with good ones. I want the name of corn mazes linked to good things again. Maybe I will go again soon.

-Existentil Wednesday

 

 

Blogtober Day 1!

I really hate this, I say, curling up on myself as I listen to people tell their stories of being haunted. The Spirits podcast was playing an episode where people wrote in their stories, and I was growing increasingly creeped out. It occurred to me more than once this was a bad idea. Afterall, my massive anxiety and insomnia love to tangle up with any spooky material I consume to produce bumps in the night to wake me up right as I am going to sleep. I am already mentally calculating whether I have Xanax to take for sleep tonight if my brain decides that my room is haunted (very unlikely, though not entirely without true believers as you will see tomorrow).

You see, I am truly weird about fear.

I am in no way an adrenaline junkie. Roller coasters are made by the devil, I keep telling people who seem not to believe me. I really did try to give them a go, especially as my older brothers are obsessed with coasters and we have been several times to Hershey

Photo of Lightning Racers at Hershey Park from their website. Aka the ride I almost passed out after.

Park (the chocolate themed wonderland with shockingly scary rides). I went on one, that allows children starting at about 8. I was already almost an adult. It was horrible, but I was always the one who wanted to prove herself to her older brothers so I went 4 times. By the end of the final ride with me insisting I was fine, my parents made me take a seat on a nearby bench because I was so pale they thought I was going to pass out (fainting, the occupation of Victorian corsette wearing ladies and me. I’ve passed out a truly astounding number of times for a real person and honestly pushing it even for a fictional character). The Tower of Terror drops? No way in hell. I was thrilled when my brothers had kids and suddenly I could “escort the kiddos to the children’s rides” and let them roller coaster. I get to be an awesome aunt and escape my own nightmares? Score for me.

So, scares that involve my body being moved in any way are not great. I am also deathly afraid of closed spaces and they are in no way fun.

I do love haunted houses as long as I am surrounded by friends. In which case I will begin laughing hysterically (literal use) the entire time like a cat purring when they are scared (cats do this, look it up). I feel a similar way about haunted houses as I do most scary media. I love what I can handle, but I have a hard line. There is scary media I adore, and there is scary media that triggers my anxiety and leaves me a mess for way too long afterward. It is really hard for me to articulate to anyone where that line is and often it comes down to, I can just tell.

For me, it is a careful balancing act. I like to feel that tingling of fear. I like to get chills (or the giggles) from a good scare, but it has to stay shy of the line of true terror. Terror is not fun for me. I live with near constant high anxiety. My baseline for anxious feeling is well above people without a diagnosed mental health disorder. This means that I have a lot of nervous energy. Often it is freefloating, a term which means not attached to a cause. I sometimes feel anxious for no circumstance based reason. Proper scares me can help me burn off that nervous energy and provide a focus for it. So one minute I am feeling anxious, then that anxiety is aimed at this scary movie instead of roaming around inside my head for a long lost deep dark memory to drag up. But, the moment that I tip over the line and get too scared, I feel sick. I get lightheaded and pale. Another episode of insomnia will be pending come night time. The memory of that fear will last. Adrenaline does not feel good inside my body.

So, I love Halloween. I love the whole season because people like me, with a desire for mild scares and a love of the morbid, can dig into the friendlier side of the celebration. It allows me to fill my life up with cob webs and candy corn like a child, and put on spooky (but not overly scary) movies or TV shows. For a woman who loves the creepy, what a time it is to be alive! Join me this month of Blogtober to celebrate the creepy, weird, morbid, and a touch scary stuff that floods our lives in the best way during my favorite month of the year! I will be posting shorter something every day leading up to Halloween. Sometimes it will be briefer blog posts, others it will be top 10 lists, other times it will be something different entirely. Won’t you come along for the ride?

Happy Haunting!

-Existential Wednesday

Mindful Anger and the Iron Fist

Note: Spoilers for season 1 of Iron Fist follow

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To prepare for the release of Iron Fist season 2, I revisted and caught up on the first season. I know there was a lot of dislike for the show when it came out. I am not here to argue against that, merely to say how it spoke to me. I came at the show backwards. I watched the Defenders first and fell for Danny Rand and Colleen Wing from that show, then went back to their solo series and absolutely loved it.

His mindfulness spoke to me, and so did his anger.

In recent years I came to mindfulness based therapy from two directions. I began

Screen cap: Iron Fist

learning it in class, and I ended up with a therapist who practiced it. In the series and in the comics, the Iron Fist stories are based around the same Eastern philosophies that these therapies are built from. Watching the show reminded me of my journey, and it reminded me of battles yet to be faced.

In the first season of the Netflix series, Danny has seen a lot of trauma. He loses his parents, suffers a number of betrayals, and is raised by warriors who craft him into a living

Screen cap: Iron Fist. (Photographic evidence of Claire being done with his shit)

weapon at the cost of having a natural range of emotions. The Order of the Crane Mother (or as I like to call them, the Order of the Emotionally Repressed Men) raised Danny and his blood brother, Davos, to believe that emotions are weakness. It does not take long before Claire, played masterfully by Rosario Dawson, sees through the mask of emotional control and calls it what it is: repression. Danny and Davos do not “master” their anger, as both of them have been led to believe, instead they bury it inside where it festers like an infected wound, poisoning them through and through.

Unrecognized anger has a way of doing that.

I did not lose my parents in a plane crash and I certainly do not have billions of dollars for anyone to steal. I also was not raised by warrior monks, but I was raised in a patriarchal society. Women in our culture are taught, sometimes explicitly but often implicitly, that their anger is unacceptable. Look at the way Serena Williams is treated versus the way her male counterparts are treated. Women are made to bury anger in the name of politeness. We must bury it in the name of submissiveness. We must bury it because “angry women are not attractive.” We must bury it or risk being accused of being hysterical. On the recent episode of the Hysteria podcast, the hosts discussed how there is a long history of men labeling women as crazy when we show too much emotion. In fact, it used to be a diagnosed condition thought to originate from the uterus. I remember an important man in my life who saw the empowered woman I am now and balked. “Why do you have to be angry all the time?” he said. The message was simple: your anger is unacceptable to me, and worse, I liked you better when you did not speak your truth. I, like Danny Rand, was taught that the only path to respectability was through crushing down my anger and burying it away. I was taught that anger is irrational.

I shout into the universe a thank you to that segment on Hysteria for reminding me that being angry at the state of the world is the most rational response I can have right now.

Yet the drive to bury anger is strong, especially in women raised in patriarchal cultures. This drive is so recognized in psychology that we are taught to look for the signs of hidden anger in our clients. We are taught that for women, anger may wear a mask of sadness or anxiety. It could be so buried that some clients may not even be able to name it. For me, it is not only anger over the state of the world, there is also an anger burning in me over the personal hurts of my life. I have felt the sting of betrayal, some large, some small, some undoubtedly unintentional. All painful. These are the angers I bury the most.

Danny over the course of the season finds his anger growing. As more truths are

Screen cap: Iron Fist. Danny meditating

revealed and more betrayals unfold, his anger begins to take on a physical force. It steals his focus. Even when he tries to meditate, which is necessary to harness his mystical powers, he is thrown off by the weight of his anger.

This is because anger, like a certain hard to kill villain in the show, does not stay buried long. It waits in the dark for a moment of weakness. It waits for one more wound to be inflicted, and then you snap. From the outside, it can seem like a dramatic overreaction because the smallest thing might be the breaking point, but for you it is a long history. It is layers and layers of hurt. At least it is for Danny Rand, at least it is for me.

Screen cap: Iron Fist. Danny in K’un Lun.

Without balance, anger is a pendulum swinging between burying anger and completely being overtaken by it. It is the most vicious of cycles. This is what I learned from my therapist, as we sat in his office and I learned cleansing breaths. Despite what the fictional warriors in the hills of K’un Lun would have us believe, anger is not the enemy. None of our emotions are evil, nor are they good. They are merely messengers, telling us that something is wrong. Anger is the real response to injustice, global or personal. We should be wary of anyone who tries to silence our anger, because whether they mean to or not, they are telling us to ignore injustice.

My therapist helped me see that hiding from my anger was not the answer, but giving myself entirely over to the feeling was not it either. The middle path, the strike for balance, in this case was Mindful Anger. Acceptance and Commitment Therapy is based on the idea that we do not fight against what is bothering us, but instead, we accept it. Through acceptance, our mental health problems can loosen their hold. For me, learning to sit with my anxiety has been the biggest step toward freeing myself. I did not remove my anxiety, I am not cured, but I can live with it now. He tried to tell me that I could face anger the same way. Unfortunately, this amazing therapist finished up his time as a graduate student intern during my tenor at this clinic. He had no choice but to leave, and I am sad to admit, I let some of his lessons leave with him. I did not carry on learning to sit with my anger, learning to process it. Instead, I buried it back down for another time.

It may sound like a gimmick when I saw that Iron Fist helped me realize how much I needed to revisit this issue, but I promise it is not. Truly, watching Danny fight his anger,

Screen cap: Iron Fist. Danny and Harold

become overtaken by it, and eventually learn to find some balance with it coincided with a time in my life where anger was rearing back up. Maybe it was also because the hurt that I cannot seem to overcome was from a betrayal by a trusted mentor figure, much like Danny’s ultimate betrayal by his father’s best friend, Harold. It is challenging when someone feels like family to us causes pain, because betrayal from such a quarter causes a very distinct pain.

I can hardly remember a time when this person was not in my life. Much of my life was shaped by her. For a while, I did not understand what caused the change from closeness to animosity. In training to be a therapist, I learned that often when one person becomes healthier, unhealthy individuals in their life get angry. This, likely, is what happened to us. Therapy started for me, and growth began. I was no longer the malleable people pleaser she wanted, and if I am honest, I do not believe she cared for the strong woman I became. At first, I still believed the relationship could be fixed. I fought with her, tried to gain back her affection, tried to make her see my side. Then I stopped, then I shut it all down. When we saw each other, I became cold and distant. It was easier than facing another barrage of insults, judgements, and verbal abuse. I grabbed hold of every piece of my anger, laid it down like bricks until I had the strongest wall. My anger was the only thing keeping my safe.

And so it remained until I finished the last episode of Iron Fist, until a simple (if delightful) Netflix show reminded me that anger would sooner or later put out my light. I know well enough the path to forgiveness. First, I must allow myself to fully feel the pain. That is where I am on this day, trying to let myself sit with the anger, trying to undo the wall and lay bare the wounds.

It should be noted that when I say forgiveness, I do not mean reconciliation. Too often

Screen cap: Iron Fist. Danny and Colleen meditating.

these things are conflated. I do not see a path of reconciliation with this person. I have no desire to let her back into my life. Forgiveness is something for me. It is the process of first feeling and then releasing the anger because I deserve to live free. It is not for her, and she may never know. Forgiving her is a gift to me.

So, I close my eyes and let the anger rise up. It is scary. It feels overwhelming. It will not overwhelm me. Little by little, I step out of my anger and down the path toward freedom.

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Interested in more pop culture and anger at the patriarchy? Check out Existential Wednesday next week

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Recommends:

Want to learn more about Mindful Anger? I recommend trying Mindful Anger: A Pathway to Emotional Freedom by Andrea Brandt.

Interested in knowing about the steps of forgiveness referenced above from a psychological perspective, check out the research of Everett Worthington who spent his whole career studying forgiveness as a way out of the prison of trauma because he felt close to being overtake by anger himself.

Finally, interested in some great Iron Fist comics? I recommend the Power Man and Iron Fist series from 2016. It is a lighthearted story with lots of friendship and laughs.

If you want the darker side of the character, try out the Immortal Iron Fist arc from 2008. It is an uneven story, but overall captivating and a pretty great companion to the Iron Fist tv show.