6. Dark Side

I wanted to title this busic Dark Side and Vulnerability, but I was afraid that then no one would ever use it. In truth, I didn’t want to go there myself. Re-examining my fears of being vulnerable because of my disability was one of the most difficult things I have ever done. My whole self-concept was built on overcoming my imperfections and keeping any vulnerability under wraps.

My physical vulnerability was deeply buried below the childhood mandate never to seek help. Likewise, any emotional vulnerability had been surrendered to the belief that if I showed my real feelings, I would be teased even more. But I took on the task because I knew that my fears of being imperfect and different were at the root of my inability to live in the present.

So I created this Dark Side busic. Both contingency theory and personality cross training had convinced me that any characteristic, no matter how beneficial it appears, necessarily has related weaknesses. My ego-mind wouldn’t want to see those negative downsides because they would disrupt “my story” of who I had become. 

The method that every ego-mind, including my own, uses to keep a person’s positive self-image intact is projection. Projection is the tricky technique the mind uses to keep any dark side hidden.

Let me show how projection works with a scenario. Suppose someone is a superb developer. Could be a website developer, art show developer, or ad-campaign developer. Anyone whose skills lie in throwing Jell-O at the tree and hoping that just some of that Jell-o might stick and give new ideas about how to get something done. That person would necessarily be good at open-ended thinking and flexibility. However, the skills needed for closure and putting little pink ribbons on the final product (the skills needed by, say an editorial copy-editor) not so much. So those characteristics would become part of the person’s unseen dark side.

Now comes the projection part. What will bother that person in other people will be those negative characteristics that he or she can’t see in him or herself: loosey goosey inattention to precision. Other highly creative individuals who follow the motto “Shoot, ready, aim” will really get under that person’s skin. And when said developer makes a negative comment about another person’s lack of exactitude, it will be a clear example of the pot calling the kettle black, i.e. projection.

 I, like every other human, couldn’t see my own dark sides or my tendency to project them on others. But armed with the belief that seeing those dark sides was key to gaining access to the present moment, I threw down the gauntlet and began my search.

I started by examining the positive traits associated with my ego-mind’s need to prove my abilities. While I still wanted to be known as responsible and reliable, I could see how carrying those traits too far could be dangerous…. Though of course, I didn’t think I did that. I was just doing what needed to be done.

Here’s what I eventually decided must be true about my need to Prove my abilities:

• My Story’s Perspective – Loretta is always extremely responsible and reliable.
• The Overshadowed Perspective – Loretta could possibly become petty and pushy in her efforts to complete all tasks with excellence. And the word that best combined the traits of petty and pushy was bossy.

I followed a similar line of reasoning with the positive traits associated with my Pleasing characteristics.

• My Story’s Perspective – Loretta is always cheerful and caring.
• The Overshadowed Perspective – Loretta could possibly become Pollyannaish and placating.  And the word that combined the traits of Pollyannaish and placating was phony.

The words bossy and phony had such negative connotations that it was absolutely impossible for me to see those traits in myself. So I took to the thesaurus and looked up bossy with a slant toward phony.  The word I found was patronizing. And, much to my distress, I had to admit that I had been called that in the past, more than once.

The example that solidified the dark side of being patronizing as part of me came when I was getting my masters in psychology from Columbia. In one of the courses, we were asked to do a role play of an interpersonal interaction. I don’t remember the specifics of the role play, but I do remember what the person opposite me responded after my first remark: “Don’t be so patronizing.”

I was momentarily stunned. The trait was not a result of the circumstances of the role play, since we had just started. And the trait couldn’t have developed in the relationship, since I had never spoken to this person before. The trait of being patronizing had to reside somewhere in me and how I came across.  And, no surprise here, the one trait that bothered me most in other people was being nicey-nicey AND self-righteous, aka patronizing.

I wish I could tell you that all I needed to do was to acknowledge the existence of my disowned traits of being bossy and phony, but I knew that wouldn’t be the case. In order to move past those patterns, I had to take a chance and go deeper. That’s where the fear was. I had to risk exploring the fear of vulnerability that I had denied all my life: fear of my physical weakness and emotional sensitivity. 

Once I was really willing to explore my fear of my physical weakness, I saw that I sometimes hurt myself trying to do something in a way that looked “normal.” And it wasn’t just that I came to recognize the pain as it happened. It was that I would know an action would be painful, and I would do it anyway. Likewise, I would take on more than my share of the responsibilities, in ways that were bossy, but most importantly, disregarded my own physical needs. Thus, in trying not to appear vulnerable, I often put myself at risk and became even more vulnerable.

As I explored my fears around showing any emotional sensitivity, I came to see how often I tried to be pleasing, even in potentially confrontational or purely task-oriented situations. Instead of stating directly what I believed should be done, I played nice. Playing nice was of course intended to assuage my fear that I would be rejected. But my niceness was often judged as phony, and I would then feel the vulnerability of being rejected, which was the very feeling I had been trying to avoid.

If I told you how long it took me to come to grips with the existence of my shadowed traits, and the unacknowledged fears of vulnerability that were supporting those disowned dark sides, you might give up on me altogether. But as I said previously, nothing is harder for someone to see than what their ego-mind doesn’t want them to see. I wanted so to see myself as my story wanted me to be seen, but I knew in my heart that it wasn’t the whole story.

In this Dark Side busic, the singers proudly own their own dark sides and vulnerabilities. The songs clearly combat our culture’s mottos of “No pain, no gain” and “Big boys don’t cry.” The lyrics assert that recognition of these darker attributes is not only necessary but a beautiful part of being human. 

However, I have to confess that there’s something wrong both with the songs and with my comments above. Neither the songs nor my comments express the deep level of emotion that needs to be felt in order to really let go of old fears of vulnerability and old patterns of behavior. As Melody Beattie said, fear “needs to be faced, felt, acknowledged, and released – it needs to be healed – or else it may control our lives.” So let me conclude with a personal example.

I was waiting to go in to see a new prosthetist, the person who would make adjustments to my artificial leg. My previous prosthetist, a female whom I had grown to trust, had been laid off. So I was now completely reliant on a total stranger…. I sat in the car unable to get out. My past fears, which had been established over many years of working with an insensitive male prosthetist, came rushing back. But instead of stuffing my fear down, I walked in and verbalized my fears from the past to the man sitting across from me. He replied simply, “Isn’t it funny how those old memories stick?”  

What I discovered was this. Fear of my vulnerability had been in the driver’s seat all along. It was way past time to let go of choices based on that fear for a very simple reason: Fear creates a desire to control (whether outcomes or approval). Such control is illusionary and necessarily results in an inability to live in the present moment. As my fortune cookie stated, “Fear is interest on a debt you may no longer owe.”