Two blog entries in one day! You lucky people.

The topic of intellectualization came up in Psych 1200 today, and it is a topic which has vexed and perplexed me for a long time, so I thought I would take another stab at it tonight.

Because I am too impatient to wait till tomorrow.

From my very first therapist, I have been told that one of my problems is that I intelldctualize everything. And the problem is not that I disagree. Far from it. Hits the nail on the head, as far as I can tell.

The problem is that intellectualization is something I learned to do at such an early age that I can’t see it. I can’t (thus far) tell when I am doing it. And I have a hard time even imagining any other way to be.

And yet, at the same time, I can sense… I can FEEL… that there is something deeply wrong with it. Intellectual pleasures, even intense ones, are a cold and lifeless thing. They can entertain, they can explain, they can even legerdemain, but they cannot sustain. Real, physical pleasures, as well as vitally important social pleasures, are needed to make life worth living.

Otherwise, yours is a kingdom of ice, snow, and death, surrounded by hundreds of miles of lifeless tundra.

(Hey look, water imagery. Are we still doing that? )

Back to the subject at hand. I know there is this great and mighty wrongness in me. I can sense the parts of me that are missing (for now) like you can feel the gap where a tooth should be. Part of me yearns to reach out and connect with people, but there is a tired old wall of ice between me and them.

So, I intellectualize. I analyze. I synthesize. I test. I explore (intellectually). I ponder. I think. I write.

These are the things I feel confident and comfortable doing. When it comes to matters purely intellectual, I am confident to the point of arrogance. Going back to school has really thrown that into stark relief. As I made obvious in a certain story I wrote recently (which I can’t seem to find…. ), I have never met anyone qualitatively or quantitatively smarter than me.

But the thing is, that’s purely intellectual horsepower. It makes me good at school, not life. I’d rather be good at making myself really happy.

I keep straying from the topic. It’s a hazard of the creative mind. We follow chains of connections, not straight lines.

I think I keep shying away from the topic because it’s so hard for me to grapple with. How do I tell if I am intellectualizing something that should be dealt with more emotionally?

Perhaps the cognitive key is to try to catch that feeling of icy cold preservation that comes with turning a feeling into an idea or into data. I definitely remember that feeling. It can feel quite wonderful. Instead of being upset by something, you instead become fascinated with it. And it creates the illusion of having solved a problem when all you did was put it on ice and study it without doing any of the (I swear to god, I just typed “intellectual” when I meant “emotional”, FREUD YOUR SLIP IS SHOWING) emotional work necessary to actually deal with things.

Hence the legerdemain. The intellectual intellect can make things disappear, but they’re not really gone. They’re waiting. And it can distract you with puzzles and games and other bright shiny things, but the emotional bills are still piling up. It can even convince you that you never need to deal with emotional issues, because you can just stay in the ice palace of your intellect, where nothing can ever reach you.

Not even sunshine.

So maybe that is what I will do. I will look for the ice. I am not sure what happens after I find it, but the solution to any problem begins at awareness. I don’t know what happens when you interrupted the brutal truth machine mid-task. I can’t say I have ever done it before, that I know of. I honestly don’t know what happens next.

Ideally, it would open the way to dealing with my emotions directly, and free me from all this ice and snow. That would an emancipation of epic proportions. I would finally experience the springtime.

But that is likely going to be a long and painful process. Transformation is a lovely (and oh so efficient) but I fear that some of us are simply too cautious, too fearful, and too excessively in control of their emotions to manage it.

Another thing we dealt with in class today was some studies that showed both that we are born either bold or timid, AND that parenting can move the monkeys more toward healthy responses.

In one study, done with monkeys, they took timid baby monkeys and gave them to bold, calm mothers. This had a great effect on the monkeys, who become bolder and more confident and better at making friends with other monkeys their age. But during times of great stress, the timid monkeys reverted to their timid ways, and freaked out.

Now, I am the shy son of a shy mother. So in that sense, I never stood a chance. My father has never been a stable or reliable force in my life, and that left mother.

Except, not really, because she wasn’t there for me when I was a kid. The bold young monkeys would explore freely and go quite far from their mothers, but still showed a need to know their mother was there for them if they needed them. They would periodically glance over at their mothers, or go back to Mama for a quick hug, but otherwise they were as free and bold and rambunctious as they could be.

The timid monkeys, on the other hand, clung to their mothers (literally) and show signs of great distress if separated from their mothers even for short times.

The determining factor was the attitude of the mother. If she was calm, the timid monkey was calm, and bold. Bold, in fact, as the ones born bold. But if the mother was fearful or unreliable, the timid baby was not only timid and afraid to explore, they had trouble getting along with the other monkeys as well.

I think, in those monkeys, we see the secret to that fundamental sense of safety I have been talking about.

Before I went to school, I had my awesome babysitter Betty, who was definitely not shy or timid. Result : I was a happy, charming, somewhat outgoing kid.

But then school happened, she went away, and I reverted to my timid-monkey ways. And that started a whole downward spiral of social rejection causing me to withdraw further into myself, which only lead to more social rejection….

Basically, I am one messed up monkey.

Once more, I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow. Ish.