The gift of time…executive dysfunction…narrative voice…what makes for safe spaces?
So I’m not going to spend all weekend working my ass off on writing class homework as planned, and I don’t know what to do.
(The assignment is to just destroy a beloved writer’s voice after typing in a passage of their work; I’ve done this one before and it was fine at first but became increasingly horrific and just…no. My whole body is reacting like it’s a cat being forced to take a pill. No.)
Most people: Yay!
Me: I need to figure out what I’m doing this weekend or it’s going to be two straight days of getting stuck in executive dysfunction mode and I’ll be miserable AND I won’t relax.
The ex was always trying to force me to go his speed, from controlling when or how much I worked, to when or if we did anything, to how fast we walked. (He’d power-walk to stay in front of me, timing it perfectly so he’d be like a foot ahead of me at all times unless I was literally holding his hand. It was too consistent to be chance. There was never enough time, at practically any level or in any context, for me to figure out what I wanted.)
Two basic lessons came out of my divorce re: not getting rushed to do things.
1) Giving people time and space is a gift.
Not only do I appreciate receiving it, but it’s just a hoot to tell people to take the time they need. Few people believe it at first–although I did reach out to a friend yesterday who went, “Oh! More time? Yes please, plus if we wait until after I do X I can tell you aalllllll about it!” Perfect.
I have learned that I have to check in on some people; they talk themselves into positions where they’ll go, “Oh, I shouldn’t bother De…” even though they KNOW I prefer to be bothered. Or they’ll think too much time has passed and it’ll be awkward. But my ADHD means that emotionally, no time has passed for me. I won’t remember what the fuck we were talking about yesterday (sorry! memory is weird for me), but I’ll remember how I feel for years, if not decades, and I won’t mind reconnecting NOW.
I have to be careful that I’m not the only person extending myself, because I always just assume that it’s my turn to do something or it’s my fault that it didn’t happen. But generally giving people time isn’t very complicated, when I’m doing a good job weeding out assholes.
It weirds some people out, though, when I act like no time has passed and I don’t have some kind of complex buildup of resentment about it. Which is also kinda funny.
“Hi, De, how are–” “HUG NOW.” “Glllk!”
If I don’t hug you when I first see you, it’s because I’m overthinking it: “Do they want to be hugged? I’ve known this person for DECADES and I know their favorite movie but I can’t remember their NAME oh god what if I have to introduce them to someone else…”
2) OH MY GOD I HAVE EXECUTIVE DYSFUNCTION ISSUES.
I often feel defeated by my own brain. If I push too hard, I can’t function. If I don’t push too hard, I can’t function.
So mostly it’s a game of pushing too hard, then taking a “break” by switching tasks until I’ve produced enough of whatever it is I need (dopamine?) to rest.
If I’m not careful, I don’t rest. I vibrate and don’t sleep. I start game after game of Sudoku and not only don’t solve them, but get to a point where I can’t make myself make any other moves. I read the same paragraph over and over again. Stuck. Fritzed.
Yesterday I fritzed out a bit.
I’ve been pushing too hard over the last week, trying to do three or four major difficult things at the same time. I couldn’t tell you how I know when it’s the right time to push hard on this type of thing, but I do. There’s a thing in my brain that goes “Ding! The stars have aligned across internal states and external events and it’s time to push hard on EVERYTHING” and I follow it.
You could call it flow state, maybe?
But because of the ADHD, I’m not just working on one thing but several things at once, each cross-fertilizing each other. Dots connect, parallels are revealed, and dominoes topple, not despite having too many things to process, but because of it.
I got a bunch of major stuff done and figured out over the last week. It was very cool. Still processing most of it.
Anyhow yesterday I ran out of juice and did a soft crash. I thought I was still in the middle of pushing hard, but one of the big things I was working on (safe spaces) got figured out, and my brain was like, “Welp, we’re not diverting resources for superbrain anymore” and the rest of the day was slowly realizing that I no longer had the wherewithal to do much.
So I spent most of yesterday trying to rest and failing. Two failed nap attempts! When I usually just go, “Oh. Time to nap,” lie down, play a round of Sudoku, and I’m out. People who have insomnia have my sympathies. I played a bunch of a fast-paced video game (Hades) and hung out with Ray, o my daughter of the witty banter, went for a walk in the rain, did a bunch of difficult reading, did yoga. Stuff that usually mentally recharges me. Dance breaks, trying to integrate some new stuff. I figured out how to do the float-across-the-floor thing by accident.
That is, I did all the too-much, too-fast stuff that I normally do, frantically, trying to get enough brain juice out of it in order to rest.
Eventually I did find something to help me rest, although not to nap, and was able to focus enough to eat something with some protein in it (although it did upset my stomach), then to get through this week’s writing class videos and nope’d out of the assignment.
I didn’t fall asleep until one, but then I slept through until eight.
This morning’s thought was : imagine having to be the ex and trying to figure out how to deal with me, while simultaneously informing me that neither of us needed therapy or drugs or treatment or self-investigation of any sort.
It cracked me up.
He must have thought at first that he had the woman of his dreams! Unable to do things in bad faith, unable to stop trying, willing to take the lion’s share of any and all effort, willing to reward him for just the barest scraps of effort, willing to assume any and all blame, never forgetting to love him. Intelligent, witty, talented, without a shred of self-confidence. Easy to exploit.
BUT.
HOW TO GET THAT FUCKING @#$% TO GO THE RIGHT SPEED. EVER.
I don’t know. Maybe I shouldn’t be laughing about it. It really wasn’t funny, even at the time. But it amuses me muchly today.
…
The smaller of the big things Imma talk about from this week is a brief note about “narrative voice,” something I was working on during the writing class. It’s a big subject but I don’t know how to talk about it yet so the note is small 😛
I love writers with a strong “storyteller” voice. There are lots of different author voices. I particularly love the ones who are like, “Once upon a time, there were three princesses, all of whom were not very good at it” and things of that nature.
But I’d been spending a lot of time trying to strip that out of my own work, because I felt like it didn’t fit with what I was trying to do. “Storyteller” voice and “being extremely close to the character” didn’t overlap in my mind, despite being what I loved–unless I was deliberately writing in an old-fashioned style, like with the historical fiction books I’ve written. In THOSE cases it was okay to use a storyteller voice, because that as just how authors wrote back then. But nobody writes like Dickens now, so…if I want to write contemporary fiction, I had to make myself stop.
UHHH.
Last week’s assignment was about sorting that out for my conscious brain. And then this week I ended up spotting in my current scene, and I *didn’t edit it out.*
Proud of myself.
…
The other big thing Imma talk about is figuring out what makes a safe space. I ended up yammering about it to a friend with some specialized expertise, until finally I came up with a rule of thumb that isn’t necessarily objective or subtle, but that I can use during a tense real-world situation.
What I’m about to say sits on top of a couple of months of focused brainstorming, and I just hit this understanding, so I may not say this very well! I do need to practice saying it, though, so I’ll give it a try.
A safe space:
–Is more than just a place where you don’t feel endangered.
–Is a place where you can lower defenses; you feel safe not having to burn the energy you need to be safe or normal or even really clear.
–Has to be understandable by imperfect people in imperfect, fundamentally uncontrollable spaces (i.e., by normal people in the real world).
–Has to be asshole-resistant, both in tending to push assholes out of the space without confrontation, and in providing a clear guide during a confrontation.
–Has to be clearly identifiable by participants with good intentions and a reasonable level of emotional intelligence; that is, a fucking asshole can’t get away with their usual bullshit there.
–Has to be soooo cleeaaar that you can know yourself whether you need to step away from a situation because *you* are the one who isn’t safe.
–Has to accommodate a metric shit ton of house rules that don’t need to be explicitly stated in order for the participants to know if they’re “good” or “bad” rules.
The real world is complex and confusing, full of poorly defined situations and relationships. How can I, myself, make those spaces safe? I am a reasonably intelligent, emotionally intelligent person who got “enchanted” into a shitty situation for decades on end. You’d think I’d have known enough to be safe without having to go to therapy first.
Which means my tools for creating safe spaces have to be amazingly resilient, easy to communicate, AND work for my weird brain.
Here’s what I got:
–A safe space encourages play over judgment.
–Often, playful interactions sound like “Yes/and…”
–Often, judgy interactions sound like “No/but…”
Let’s say your first reaction to those statements are “BUT THAT’S NOT SAFE WHAT ABOUT…!!!???!!!”
If so, would you say that you’re overly hard on yourself, just in general?
Do you ever really FEEL safe? Or more like you’re constantly being judged?
Uh-huh.
If you’re talking to a two-year-old and they’re about to do something dangerous, yes, of course you do whatever it takes to stop them. They are unsafe; the space they’re in is unsafe.
But when you’re explaining the danger afterwards, in a safe space, you don’t shriek at them (or rather you shouldn’t). You walk them calmly through the danger and explain why it’s dangerous.
Real-life example with Ray from when she was a toddler:
“Can I play with the stove?”
“Yes, as long as you only play with ME for now and remember that when the stove is hot, it can hurt you.”
[Both hold hands away from the burners, getting a little closer or further away to see what the limits of safety are.]
“Also, if you pour spices right on the stove with no pan, they just get burnt and smell bad. That’s why your cooking didn’t work before. If you want people to eat the food, you have to use a pan.”
A judgy interaction would have sounded like:
“Don’t put spices on the burner, stupid.”
“This isn’t good enough.”
“Why aren’t you working harder and doing more, with no extra resources? I don’t care if you’re overtaxed; you should be doing it and I don’t have to help you.”
“Because I said so.”
“Hurry up or I’ll leave you.”
“We have to do what I want because what you want to do is stupid.”
“You’ll never understand.”
“Why do you keep repeating the same problems over and over? Can’t we just move on?”
[Interrupts you.]
Eughhhh…I could go on. But let’s not.
It’s not that playful spaces are uncritical ones, and it’s not that playful spaces have to stay light and carefree. I’ve had all kinds of people call on me to tell me horrific shit that they have to tell SOMEONE, and I’ve always tried not to shut them down, but to encourage them to say more, to let more out, to sort things out verbally, to brag, to humanize themselves and others in the situation, to just be fucking angry and selfish about it.
Play in that case is “YES I BELIEVE YOU AND THIS IS HOW I FEEL ABOUT IT FROM THE OUTSIDE OF THE SITUATION. TELL ME IF I NEED TO GET A CROWBAR.”
Person: [Tells me horrific shit.]
Me: That’s terrible!
Them: It’s not that bad, lol.
Me: I know you’re strong enough to handle it! But jeeeeesus nobody should have to!!!! That is not right! And they’re trying to make like it look like it’s fucking normal! I am angry for you!!!!!
Them: No hitting. I just needed to vent.
Me: Okay. But let me know.
I want to say that…mmmmmost of my closest friends have had this conversation with me at some point, in some form or another. UGH. We all have things we shouldn’t have to be carrying, I suppose, which is why I’m working on the concept of a safe space in the first place. But it still just pisses me off: that we not only don’t expect to be reasonably safe, ever, but also that we don’t even know how to want to feel that way.
Midjourney’s idea of a safe space, with dandelions.
Daily walks in the Florida rain. The hat holds the raincoat hood off my ears so I can wear my wireless headphones with my phone in my waterproof (for-qajaq) fanny pack.
I call it a raincoat but it’s meant for, like, normal rain. I still get soaked.