I had a pretty good revelation with my therapist yesterday that I’d like to share along the chattering monkey line.
Now the monkeys are there, and will be. But when they’re yelling at me I never really felt like I understood where that came from, and now I think I do.
I’ve spent a life time of coming into the movie half way through, and having to piece together the beginning by what I’m hearing in the now. In other words. I’m distracted, then I realize someone’s been telling me something important, or a teacher in school has been trying to teach the class…I was busy wondering what ever happened to the band the Wallflowers, because Bob Dylan’s son was the lead singer and the bass player is really awesome in that band…..and blamo…I just realize, I should know what’s going in but I don’t. So while I may be proficient at catching up and figuring out what I’m supposed to be doing…and now that I’ve practiced it *drum roll* actually saying “hold on, I missed something, can we just go back for a second and repeat.”…..I really wasn’t growing up. And thus I’d get into “trouble” “sean never does this, Sean always does that” I’d feel like I let someone down because I didn’t meet their expectations, which of course was impossible because, I never knew what the expectation was in the first place.
Phew…sorry, that was a hard paragraph.
Anyhoo, So now I’m in my 30’s and my survival tactic has been to just try to presume what everyone’s possible expectation could be and then try to satisfy them. When things don’t go my way, or when things are really upsetting to me, but not really upsetting to others, I am left confused and wondering if I’m from another dimention. Which of course I am, by choice. My chattering monkeys chirp and dance about with all these expectations that I can’t possibly meet and then point and laugh at me when I get frustrated because I can’t possibly meet those self-imposed and unrealistic expectations.
When my chattering monkeys work for me has always been when I was in the moment. I’m not frustrated at where I think I should be or feeling hopelessly unable to be where I think I should be. When I quiet things down, it’s because I’m right here, right now. And suddenly I’m in the same dimension as those around me and the monkeys start working for me instead of against me.
I’m sorry this is a long post, I didn’t have time to write a smaller one. I hope it made some sense, I’m just excited about this discovery and will keep you up to date with how it’s going. I’m also running late. So….umm…
Thanks for listening.
