Reach out and love

Content note: depression

A two-panel cartoon. The top panel features a porcupine curled up into a spiky ball on the left, and a concerned-looking white bunny rabbit on the right. The bottom panel shows that the rabbit has dug a tunnel underground and is meeting the porcupine nose-to-nose, from underground, because the porcupine is still in a ball with its face pointing down. The black san-serif text says "There is always a way..." at the top and "...to reach out and love..." on the bottom." The original creation source was not included in the screenshot.
ID: A two-panel cartoon. The top panel features a porcupine curled up into a spiky ball on the left, and a concerned-looking white bunny rabbit on the right. The bottom panel shows that the rabbit has dug a tunnel underground and is meeting the porcupine nose-to-nose, from underground, because the porcupine is still in a ball with its face pointing down. The black san-serif text says “There is always a way…” at the top and “…to reach out and love…” on the bottom.” The original creation source was not included in the screenshot.

That stupid porcupine clearly doesn’t have any idea what it’s doing, so if it’s going to get its shit together, it clearly needs to be saved from itself by a concerned, selfless, innocent, absolutely informed, and incidentally adorable bystander.

We don’t need to see the comic where the bunny cries at the still-depressed porcupine for not appreciating all the hard work it took for the bunny to dig that intimate face hole, because that would just not be realistic.

So, that was my off-the-cuff “Hi, I’m a porcupine” response.

But seriously.

How the fuck is this comic supposed to be about a heroic bunny instead of a sad porcupine?

Why is it hard to imagine that the bunny could show love by recognizing and respecting the porcupine’s fairly unambiguously unavailable body language?

The message here is 100% about making the bunny feel better about believing that it’s helped the porcupine, regardless of the actual impact of its well-meaning actions or whether the porcupine really appreciated them.

Superficial armchair analysis of attachment styles is all the rage these days among self-help and pop-psych types (oh hai), but I’ll begrudgingly admit that it’s popular for a reason.

The utility of the Attachment Theory framework renders it susceptible to the reductive chicanery of confident Insta-experts who’ve probably only read the cliffs notes of the blurb of a review of any source material about Attachment Theory.

But then again, you’ll have that with all kinds of worthwhile concepts, like “practicing gratitude,” “setting boundaries,” and “self care.”

And, for as snooty as I sound in those preceding paragraphs, it’s not like I have the professional chops or an appropriately exhaustive literature review in my back pocket to Prove My Own Superiority.

I’m just an angry ex-academic who likes to poke holes in things.

At any rate, for readers who aren’t familiar with popular Attachment discourses, here’s a reductive informal introduction that will allow you to read this blog post without any additional research but is absolutely insufficient for anything else, so please don’t quote me to your therapist as though I’m an authoritative resource:

A fundamental idea behind attachment theory is that our early interactions with caretakers provide the basis for and inform the development of our relational patterns as we grow into independent humans.

Although there is some variation in the specific labels that are used, how they’re defined, and how to apply the concepts, Attachment Styles are commonly divided into four categories: Secure, Anxious, Avoidant, and Disorganized. (Not my preferred framing, but again, my goal is just to give a brief overview that will help contextualize my argument about this comic rather than to offer a comprehensive review of the entire history of the theory.)

A significant limitation to this simplified, popular framing is that a lot of advice basically boils down to, “There are three really bad attachment styles, and one good one that we should all aspire to achieve. Also, among those three bad ones, there’s one that’s extra super bad.” (Oh hai.)

A nuanced understanding of the theoretical framework demonstrates that these categories are not discrete, fixed, absolute, or mutually exclusive.

But if you Google the topic, you’ll come across all kinds of grids and checklists that frame them as though they are.

Unsurprisingly, I don’t find that helpful.

The idea that there are permanently, fundamentally “securely attached” people is just as problematic as the idea that there are “healthy” people who are fundamentally better at existing in human bodies than “unhealthy” people.

Even the Healthiest person will get sick or injured or experience the natural wear-and-tear of aging. They’ll be affected by their environment, and they’ll sometimes make choices that aren’t perfectly Healthy, after all.

(Then again, I also tend to lean into the reasoning that “we’re all going to die some time” when judgements of other people’s Unhealthy Choices arise, so, grain of salt if you want to think you’ll be able to out-health my conclusions.)

By the same token, a securely attached person doesn’t not experience anxiety – they just navigate it differently, in a way that doesn’t always overtly read as anxious.

(Then again, I tend to lean into the reasoning that “we’re all bound fuck up at some point” in discussions of Ideal Personal Development and Relational Success, so, grain of salt if you want to think you’ve already Done All the Work and Done It Right.)

No one person is absolutely only one way all the time, with all people and across all circumstances (and the existence of hypothetical exceptions here does not negate the generalizability of this statement).

And really, all three of the insecure categories are defined by varying degrees of and responses to anxiety.

Overtly Anxious-leaning types will broadly tend to cling to or seek connection when they sense a relational threat. Avoidant-leaning types will broadly tend to push back or seek isolation when they sense a relational threat. Disorganized types will fluctuate between these types of responses with more frequency and possibly more intensity than will their more predominantly Anxious or Avoidant counterparts.

I’ll be the first to admit that this cursory introduction is lacking, so please go and do your own research if you’re interested in learning more (with healthy skepticism toward anything that makes it seem easy), and if you do already have a lot of knowledge on the subject and think that you could do a better job than me, please go ahead and do so in a space that works for you, and also please don’t share it with me.

An “Anxious/Avoidant” dynamic is fairly common in human relationships, romantic and otherwise.

I’ll continue leaning into this contrastive binary for most of my examples, with the consistent reminder that things are rarely so simple in real life.

This dynamic is at the heart of a lot of buddy comedies, where one party is emotional and messy in order to serve as a foil for another party who is reserved, tidy, and standoffish.

The Stick-in-the-Mud learns to let go and loosen up a little, but The Hot Mess doesn’t necessarily have to learn to calm their tits or get their shit together.

It’s more often the case that the stand-offish half of the duo is both more unsympathetic and more dynamic. They need to grow and learn to accept their chaotic friend/love interest, but the chaotic friend/love interest already intrinsically understands how to be emotionally open, so what other lesson could they possibly have to learn? It’s not like we should expect them to start self-soothing or respecting people’s boundaries or anything.

It makes sense that Anxious-leaning folks are more likely to make a sympathetic appeal on their own behalf, by revealing and even potentially emphasizing their relative defenselessness in a given situation.

Whereas Avoidant-leaning folks are far more likely to (wait for it) avoid exposing their weak spots and anxieties.

In reality, of course, just as not everyone who has overtly Avoidant tendencies is a heartless asshole, not everyone who has overtly Anxious tendencies is an emotional parasite.

The important thing to remember here is that we’re all capable of being parasites, and we’re all capable of being assholes!

(See if you reflexively responded either “Not me!” or “Oh god I’m both and that’s terrible!” and then have fun unpacking that. You’re welcome.)

On account of what a strongly negative reaction I had to this cute little comic, let’s examine what that extremely Anxious “emotional parasite” pattern can look like.

There’s a subcategory of folks with Anxious relational patterns who really seem (to cantankerous ol’ me) to come alive at the prospect of others’ misfortune, like “Here’s my time to shine!”

And, here let’s pause to take another moment to recognize that I am a miserable asshole with a transparent bias against an All-Anxious-All-the-Time modality (in terms of relational attachment, because I actually experience a lot of anxiety a lot of the time – I just index it and respond to it in less overtly Anxious ways in terms of a lot of interpersonal behavior.)

Here, I’m describing a specific subcategory of a relational style that is especially perplexing for Avoidant-leaning Me to engage with, not making one negative generalization that’s meant to characterize anyone who is on the more Anxious-leaning part of the attachment spectrum.

I’ll label this subcategory “Grief-Seeking Missiles.”

(Other labels I considered include “Emotional Vampires,” “Emotional Vultures,” and although “Ambulance Chasers” is a label with more overtly financial and legal implications, I’d contend that it still fits the general pattern of crisis-driven opportunism.)

I was never a fan, but I grew especially wary of GSM types while I was grieving the loss of my father.

At times when I actually would have liked to let go and be at least a little bit emotional, I felt compelled to appear more stoic because I could practically physically feel it when I was approached with this apparently eager anticipation for the satisfaction of my tears.

One simple and not-uncharitable explanation for the GSM relational pattern is that these folks treat others the way they want to be treated, and they are in serious need of being offered a little basic empathy. They want someone to be willing to encourage them to cry.

They want people to be focused on them and tend to their needs and check on them frequently and buy them flowers and remind them how much they’re loved.

And is that really so terrible?

Of course not.

It’s okay, and it can even be healthy, to want these things.

I’ve framed it in a way that could read as “selfish” above, but of course it’s really not the worst thing for a person to want recognition, validation, and even celebration. (And if your response to that is something like “Actually, yes it is!” you’re welcome, again – there’s another shiny new nugget to share with your therapist.)

The disconnect occurs because they can’t admit that they want these things, because at some level they think that it would make them greedy and bad people.

So this GSM subcategory of Anxious-leaning Attachment can manifest as a combination of jealousy and projection. They want the kind of attention they’re pouring out onto others (who haven’t necessarily sought it), while hoping for others to automatically reciprocate while also at some level resenting that “at least the porcupine has someone looking out for it.”

That kind of resentment would likely come across as petty if they said it out loud, so it’s reframed by the GSM as a combination of self-aggrandizement and patronizing pity.

“The poor thing just isn’t taking care of themself! Thank goodness I have such an enormous capacity for love and care, or they’d just keep suffering endlessly in silence with no one to offer them the support they so clearly need!”

If this description hits a nerve and you find yourself feeling defensive, I’d like to invite you to sit with that feeling and maybe even interrogate it a little, if you have the capacity.

(And, to be clear, saying “if you have the capacity” really isn’t meant as shade or as a challenge, although it could be used in those ways. I just don’t know where your emotional reserves are at today, friend. I don’t know how much energy you have to allocate to self-reflection. This is knowledge that only you have, and I’m not demanding that you push yourself in your own mind to prove your worth to an internet stranger who will never perceive, or care to try to perceive, the full scope of your depth and complexity.)

The GSM sub-category seems to be manifest in folks who, themselves, have significant emotional needs that are not being met. This merits empathy, but not necessarily attention, depending on the circumstance.

To be clear, I don’t disagree with the basic message of the words in this comic.

Having someone reach out can be vitally important for someone who is struggling to ask for help.

And there are always ways to show love to those who aren’t actively requesting it.

It’s just that digging yourself into a hole to demonstrate the strength of your desire to be the one who’s reached out before confirming that the hole is actually helpful is more likely to overstep than it is to Save the Emotional Day.

Also to be clear, it’s understandable that the bunny feels anxious about the fact that the porcupine (presumably a friend) doesn’t appear to be doing well.

It’s extremely reasonable to feel worried about people who are having a hard time, and even more especially worried about people you love who are having a hard time.

It’s just that managing your own anxiety about someone else’s discomfort by striving to deliver it straight into the face of an individual who was otherwise just existing adjacent to your anxiety isn’t necessarily going to help you manage your own anxious feelings any better the next time someone else is struggling, and meanwhile, there’s a good chance that the first person is still uncomfortable (and possibly now also annoyed).

I won’t pretend to have The One Advice to Rule Them All, but I would like to contribute a sincere suggestion that I, at least, have found helpful:

When you’re trying to decide what kind of outreach seems appropriate in a given situation with a particular person, run a quick self-scan to see if you’re actually addressing a concern of yours or theirs.

It can be hard to do this if you’re accustomed to perceiving yourself as a helper who never thinks of themselves, but like most things, it gets easier with practice.

And some people are likely to want exactly the same things that you do! In those cases, you will have great instincts to follow.

I cannot speak for all Avoidant-leaning folks, but for me, being asked about my preferences (whether by text, email, phone call, physical letter, or whatever) is just as good as (and usually actively better than) having to navigate the imposition of an inconvenient performative gesture that is clearly more about whoever is making that gesture than it is about me and my actual needs.

So if you’re not confident in your judgment, it’s truly okay to ask.

Brené Brown’s public-facing work has brought “vulnerability” to the forefront of popular discourse about relationships, and as with Attachment Theory jargon, it’s been a mixed blessing for folks with an interest in applied psychology.

I’ve both appreciated and struggled with her work.

This cartoon is a helpful demonstration of one of my stickier concerns.

Really, no one in this image has opted to be vulnerable.

And as I do value the importance of vulnerability in creating honest, intimate relationships, I am frustrated by simplistic advice like this that actually discourages its practice.

We’ll start with the porcupine, who is clearly demonstrating more defensive posturing.

I don’t think it’s fair to read the porcupine’s position as actively shameful or weak. All we can really tell from the image is that porcupine appears to be sad, and that it’s chosen to be alone. It’s protecting that choice with its natural spikes and with its body language.

But that bunny isn’t actually being vulnerable, either.

It’s avoiding the known threat of prickliness by relying on its own strength as a digger.

That is, it’s protecting itself by approaching the porcupine from a position of relative personal safety.

And to be clear, I don’t think that it’s fair to suggest that there is any shame in the bunny’s choice to not thoughtlessly embrace a face-full of quills.

Frankly, I don’t perceive any shame or weakness in either characters’ choice to protect themselves.

However, if the first image – that of the Avoidant porcupine and the Anxious bunny – were to be followed up by next steps that actually illustrate vulnerability, then it seems like the porcupine would have to uncurl on its own, and then seek out the bunny.

And the bunny would just have to be fucking patient and stay available, even if the porcupine’s outreach might happen at a time when the bunny didn’t feel all the way up for performing its dramatic outreach thing.

Realistically, of course, most of the work we do in life happens between these extremes.

It makes sense for the porcupine to sometimes meet the bunny halfway by offering some limited availability.

It makes sense for the bunny to follow up with the porcupine even after seeing that it initially appears to be closed off, with the recognition that it might not actually succeed at getting in when it wants to.

Relationships constantly call for active negotiation and situational adaptation.

If the basis for the relationship is pretty much always one party pulling away with the other party pretty much always reaching out, that’s more likely to generate fragile tension than comfortable balance.

And then again, there’s value in accepting our partners (romantic, friendly, professional, and otherwise) just the way that they are.

As an Avoidant-leaning person, I can confirm that there is a lot more “accept and respect Anxious people’s anxiety” propaganda out there than there is “accept and respect Avoidant people’s distance” propaganda.

(This is at least in part because more overtly Anxious types are often more open to requesting and even potentially demanding acceptance, while more overtly Avoidant types are often more likely to just shut down the possibility that they should have to ask for acceptance in the first place.)

Story time!

I have adopted a number of pet rats over the course of my adult life.

Recently, my partner had a couple from our current brood perching on his shoulders, and I was talking to him with several feet of space between us.

I noticed one of the girls kind of wiggling her butt, not unlike a cat about to pounce on prey. In fact, rats also do this when they are preparing to leap forward. I noted the movement, but my brain just said, “There’s no way she can jump as far as my shoulder. She’ll give up when she realizes that,” and I dismissed the thought.

I started to turn to walk away at just about the same time that she chose to go for it, and tried to jump from his shoulder to mine.

Naturally, I was startled by the sudden movement, and turned my body towards my partner and this unexpected furry projectile. It was a pretty long distance for her to make anyway, but had I not moved, she probably would have succeeded.

As it was, my face ended up in the position my shoulder had occupied a moment before, and all four of her sharp little feet landed between my upper lip and my chin.

Needless to say, this was not the solid landing she’d been aiming for, and she sort of rebounded off of my chin and I was able to catch her before she fell all the way to the floor.

After the initial shock wore off, we started laughing, but then my partner was like, “Oh god, you should go take care of your face.”

It looked a lot worse than it really was. The scratches were shallow, and they fully healed within a few days. But in the immediate aftermath, when I had four bloody lines dominating the lower half of my face, it looked pretty intense (and honestly, also pretty bad-ass).

There are ways that this little incident doesn’t quite work within a vulnerability framework, because it was just surprising bad timing. It’s not like I chose to bravely offer up my face as an alternative to a more dangerous landing site or something.

Everyone involved was just startled and awkward.

But isn’t that more representative of how a lot of real-life vulnerability unfolds, rather than through dramatic moments and heroic, self-sacrificing gestures?

I wasn’t prepared to protect myself because I didn’t expect to be hurt, and she wasn’t prepared to be aware of my boundaries because she didn’t expect me to be vulnerable in the first place. She wanted a familiar landing place, and I just expected to not have a rat on my shoulder.

I’ve accepted that I have pets (as do many pet owners) who are capable of scratching my face, biting my fingers, and generally causing me a reasonable amount of inconvenience and physical pain.

The fact is that I didn’t really mind what happened to my face, and frankly, I’m glad that she landed on me instead of the floor. Rats are quite resilient, and she probably would have been fine, but it still would have been a long, hard fall.

I’m a really jumpy person, though. I could have just as easily reflexively knocked her out of the air.

Again, I’m not trying to take a ton of credit for making a conscious choice not to hit her out of shock, but then again, I know that I have also tensed up and (mildly) lashed out at plenty of people for doing far less physically threatening things around me.

So what about these situations where we have every reason to expect to be safe, and we get hurt anyway, and we don’t use that as an excuse to armor up the next time we find ourselves back in a similar environment?

So I guess the moral of this story is that it seems like the push and pull of distance and pursuit isn’t a great place to look for practical examples of genuinely vulnerable practices.

Understanding that different kinds of behaviors are apt to feel vulnerable to different people is an important part of interpreting the significance of someone else’s actions.

Bunnies certainly aren’t all bad, but neither are they all great.

And porcupines aren’t necessarily awesome, but they’re also not necessarily terrible.

Context matters.

There really are always ways to reach out and to love folks, but it doesn’t always look particularly cute at a glance, and that’s more than okay.

And leaving your prickly porcupine friends the fuck alone when they choose to show you their prickles might just be the most loving thing you can do for them.

But you could really just ask them what they prefer.

Happiness is an Inside Job

Content note: ableism, transphobia, racism

A light pink rectangle with a blue and teal decorative floral pattern at the top. The black sanserif text says, 'Happiness is an inside job. Don't assign anyone else that much power over your life. -Mandy Hale' This actual quote is attributed to Mandy Hale. At the bottom of the rectangle, there is a blue-gray bar with a white image and white text. The image is on the left side, and is a logo that appears to be an abstract rendering of leaves with a circle around them, with possibly a sun or moon - a smaller circle floating above the leaves. The text says "Barbara Vercruysse" in a script font, and then "Start the Life of Your Dreams" in a sanserif font beneath.
[A light pink rectangle with a blue and teal decorative floral pattern at the top. The black sanserif text says, ‘Happiness is an inside job. Don’t assign anyone else that much power over your life. -Mandy Hale’ This actual quote is attributed to Mandy Hale. At the bottom of the rectangle, there is a blue-gray bar with a white image and white text. The image is on the left side, and is a logo that appears to be an abstract rendering of leaves with a circle around them, with possibly a sun or moon – a smaller circle floating above the leaves. The text says “Barbara Vercruysse” in a script font, and then “Start the Life of Your Dreams” in a sanserif font beneath.]

I Googled Barbara so you don’t have to.

On one hand, this woman is just doing her thing and living her life. In this economy, we all gotta get paid.

On the other hand, she’s a rich white lady who pays her bills by reassuring other rich white people that everyone is personally, individually responsible for their own ability to thrive.

I kind of wanted to see how much she charges for her services so I clicked on “shop,” thinking that it would include information about how to book a session or begin a wellness journey.

It’s an actual shop with products, though.

Her shop is called “Barbara’s Empire of Love.”

Among other things, you can purchase inspiration cards, a daily success journal, and a gratitude journal.

They’re branded with pink flowers – cherry blossoms, I think.

I eventually did find information about courses you can enroll in, and unsurprisingly, they aren’t cheap.

There’s a baseline assumption on her site that it’s not going to put you out significantly to spend $50 (which was approximately the conversion rate from British pounds to US dollars at the time of my Googling) on a spiral-bound planner.

I think she means well enough, in her Barbara way.

But as a generally well-meaning white cis woman myself, I recognize that “meaning well” doesn’t cut the mustard when it comes to actions that inflict real harm.

And I contend that there is real harm in profiting off of the message that one can choose to not be affected by adverse social conditions.

As is always the case here at Pith Rant, there are more generous interpretations available for the messages I feature.

I also recognize that the actual quote is attributed to Mandy Hale, and was only shared by Barbara Vercruyess, but Babs or a fan of Babs decided to add her stamp of approval to that message and promote it via social media, so we’ll leave Mandy alone for now.

I acknowledge that many viewers of this message and my response may think, “But I think it just means…” or “What about…”

And I have heard those concerns.

And I’m sticking to my angry metaphorical guns.

To wit:

By acknowledging that systemic racism is a thing, one isn’t “assigning power” to racists.

By recognizing the existence of heteronormativity, one isn’t “assigning power” to the straights, and observing that pervasive transphobia permits medical malpractice to flourish is not the same as “assigning power” to transphobic doctors.

It sucks, but these people already have power.

Racists who write laws that get passed are exerting the power they have to propagate white supremacist beliefs.

Homophobes who refuse to issue marriage licenses to same sex couples are reaching for any power they can grasp to prevent Big Gay Weddings.

Doctors who ignore their patients’ pronouns are reminding their trans or nonbinary patients that powerful institutions can choose to deny them security, protection, and/or comfort.

Messages like the one on display here absolutely prop up logic like:

“It’s their own fault if they let people treat them that way; I sure wouldn’t let someone control my life like that.”

The thing is:

Assholes.

Have.

Power.

Assholes tend to seek power.

They treat people shittily, and it has shitty consequences.

This does not mean that it’s therefore fine for directly affected folks (and also less directly affected folks – hi there, you’re not exempt!) to give up and acquiesce to injustice simply because hierarchical power structures create exploitable situations.

It means that it’s ridiculous to suggest that an individual can simply think and feel their way beyond a deeply entrenched social pattern that informs the actions of people who are, in fact, relatively powerful.

I do not mean that it is impossible for marginalized folx to be happy or successful as long as powerful assholes exist.

I mean that it’s okay to recognize that broad institutional support and the absence of naked aggression makes happiness easier and more sustainable.

So, yes.

Happiness is an inside job.

Because people who have power and influence over important structures that shape your life don’t necessarily care about your happiness.

They will not seek it for you. They will not lift a finger on behalf of your actual happiness. So in that sense, it is indeed up to you to find and protect your own happiness.

The part of the quote that I am fighting against is the idea that you’ve let someone take advantage of your circumstances in order to disenfranchise you.

If you’re rich enough to be preoccupied by the perfection of your own pursuit of happiness, you probably are exerting power over someone else’s life in a way that limits their access to the kind of stability that enables happiness.

I had a separate post going for this second macro, but it’s helpful to see them together:

A vertical rectangle with a solid green background on the top half and a solid purple background on the bottom half. The top half, with the green background, has an oval shape that appears to have abstract green, purple, and yellow are in it. The serif text changes color - the first two words are magenta, and appear on the green half, and the rest of the words are white and appear over the purple background. The message says, "My happy thoughts help create my healthy body." I apparently didn't save any information about the creator or sharer of this one, but as you'll see in the blog post below, there are many instantiations available.
[A vertical rectangle with a solid green background on the top half and a solid purple background on the bottom half. The top half, with the green background, has an oval shape that appears to have abstract green, purple, and yellow are in it. The serif text changes color – the first two words are magenta, and appear on the green half, and the rest of the words are white and appear over the purple background. The message says, “My happy thoughts help create my healthy body.” I apparently didn’t save any information about the creator or sharer of this one, but as you’ll see in the blog post below, there are many instantiations available.]

As though people with “unhealthy” bodies just didn’t remember to think the right way about their genetic and physiological makeup.

As though people with “unhealthy” bodies have allowed someone else to exert sufficient control over their minds that they are not able to make appropriately “healthy” thought choices of their own.

As though the existence of people who have, in fact, elected to put their own health and well-being on the back burner in order to pay bills for their families or prioritize the needs of others – thereby “choosing” an “unhealthy” body – somehow cancels out the existence or the rights of people who tried to take good care of their bodies but “failed.”

As though people can’t experience depression and mental illness at the same time as physical health.

I recognize that I’m using lots of black-and-white, either/or scenarios, but that’s really what this breed of macro encourages.

This second macro tries to soften its message with the word “help,” but I guarantee the other version exists (“My happy thoughts create my healthy body”).

(I actually Googled the sentence without the word “help,” but it still turned up variations of this exact same quote with different backgrounds. Elsewhere, the actual quote is attributed to one Louise Hay.)

To conclude:

Happiness is sure nice, and it’s good to feel happy sometimes.

There are lots of other feelings to experience, though. Sometimes happiness isn’t as valuable as discomfort, even if nice white ladies want you to embrace your personal happiness as an ultimate and all-consuming goal.

People who seek power over your life often suck (including those who want the power to remind you how happy you should be all the time), so it’s up to you to remember to connect with your own happiness.

No one has the right to take your happiness away from you, but shitty people are going to keep trying, regardless of whether or not you’ve given permission. That is, you are not “giving” or “assigning” anyone power by acknowledging that your needs are at odds with their wants.

Sometimes it’s best to ignore these people, but sometimes you can’t ignore the consequences of their behaviors (I write from America in the year 2022 where the right to abortion is no longer protected by the constitution).

Your mental and physical health can absolutely inform and interact with one another in a range of fascinating ways, but thoughts aren’t magic.

Health (in whatever way it manifests according to a vast array of different bodies and circumstances) promotes the ability to have and maintain happy thoughts.

That is, we will do better to increase “happiness” in the world by providing more and better health care for all people in all circumstances than we will by telling people that they are obligated to be happy in order to properly preserve their health.

Your own personal happiness may be an inside job, but don’t let smug assholes convince you that what’s on the outside doesn’t count.

Special Bonus Rant: How Are You Complicit? (Academic Edition)

Trigger Warning: reference to sexual assault

This isn’t the blog post where I’ll unpack issues with social media and blurry boundaries between personal and professional self-presentation, but I will lead with an acknowledgement that this type of blurry boundary is a complicated thing.

(Says the relatively anonymous blogger.)

I debated about whether to link to the original article here, and I’ve decided to go ahead. It’s not like the source text is too inappropriate to share, and it’s also not like this humdrum little blog is going to generate a lot of foot traffic for the original author one way or the other. 

So, here is the link to the article, titled “How Are You Complicit?”

I am avoiding naming the author directly in my post, which I think should prevent this blog from turning up in searches for his name, as I’m not interested in having any impact on this stranger’s actual career (as though I even could if I wanted to, but weird things happen on the internet) or frankly bothering him at all.

He’s just a guy promoting his own dude thoughts in the interest of his public and professional image, which is a pretty reasonable thing for an aspiring academic to do.

I’m clarifying all this because I haven’t read this person’s actual academic scholarship, and I don’t know them personally, so my response here is purely based on this one article they wrote that I happened to encounter one day when I was already feeling cross, and little bit of casual poking around on their website after I started writing out an impromptu rant that turned into this blog post. They’re not, like, my nemesis or something.

Although I do not imagine that the article’s author would enjoy this post if they came across it, they’re still not my real target. My issue is with larger patterns and beliefs that happen to show up particularly clearly in this one little post of theirs.

So, just a reminder that everything on this blog should be taken with a grain of salt, and that the lives people live independently of my opinion have value and worth that my crabbiness cannot and should not be presumed to diminish.

The author interrogates the question “How are you complicit in creating the conditions in your lives that you say you don’t want?”

It’s a short article, but it does reference one outside source (i.e., the author of a book), in the context of a second source (i.e., said book author was interviewed for a podcast). 

Both that author and that interviewer appear to be square-jawed white men with lots of money. 

Incidentally, the author of the source article, the one who references only rich white men in developing his argument about how we are complicit in our own oppression, is an apparently white man who is an assistant professor. 

Assistant professors can hardly be presumed to be wealthy people (though exceptions exist), especially in the humanities and social sciences, but it remains an extremely privileged (even when tenuous) position in the buyer’s market of academia. 

This fellow talks a lot about leadership. He studies the learning practices of individuals in online and hybrid spaces. 

Just, you know, all the individuals.

Who would benefit from the perspective of rich white cis male CEOs.

Anyway, I’m particularly interested in the framing of the last clause of the question: “that you say you don’t want.”

I’m curious as to how this framing might differ from the standard fallacies of victim blaming:

“You say you didn’t want to have sex that night, but why did you wear sexy clothes and then keep talking to that guy who wouldn’t leave you alone?”

“You say you don’t think workers should be exploited, but why do you still work at a job where you yourself are exploited?”

Ah, the convenient threat of hypocrisy. 

To be clear, I’m not really so obtuse that I don’t understand how individuals can perpetuate patterns that keep them stuck in unfortunate situations.

Of course self-sabotage is a thing. 

Of course unhealthy and unproductive patterns can create frustrating personal ruts. 

But this is hardly an either/or situation, and the context of academia is a particularly inappropriate setting in which to imply that it might be. 

How hard is to begin from the premise that while most people can, indeed, take steps to do better (whatever that looks like relative to their own situations), it’s also true that their ability to successfully and consistently do better may still be hindered by social and logistical factors outside their control? 

Is that too much to ask?

The author continues:

“…we are taking part in the things that make us mad, sad, or unhappy.” 

Buddy, that’s just called living. 

(Italics for emphasis! Like a confident leader would do!)

Now, I recognize that this article is vague because it’s meant to be a quick little think piece, and not like a well-researched manifesto. The author is personally keeping up with the creation of daily content, so of course each individual post isn’t going to be exhaustively reviewed and revised and polished.

Still, if I were to be asked for feedback on that article as a draft, I’d ask for some specific examples to support at least a few of the sweeping generalizations.

Specific examples like

“What are some problems you’ve invited into your life?”

“Under what circumstances have you been unwilling or unable to make a personal change?”

“What are some times when you accepted responsibility for your actions and for your circumstances?”

“What are some examples of times you placed responsibility on others?”

“What kinds of responsibilities belong to individuals?”

“Who dreads and fears doing what kinds of self-work?”

“What critical framework shapes the critical lens you recommend being applied to everyone’s lives and belief systems?”

“What are some examples of times you’ve been wrong or silly or stupid?”

“How are you defining both ‘responsibility’ and ‘complicity’?”

“What are some examples of burdens that have been passed on to you by others’ fear of failure?”

Just a few, off the top of my head. 

Then again, maybe me asking all these pointed questions just stems from my unwillingness to accept my own complicity in letting confident assholes make the kinds of important decisions that they’ve positioned themselves to make within a system that elevates that particular brand of uncritical confidence. 

“Doing self-work is often dreaded and feared,” the author opines.  

Look, I don’t have access to stats on this, so anecdotal evidence is the best I can do on the short notice I’m giving myself for this post. 

But anecdotally, I’d say that the vast majority of folx who have committed to doing the dreaded self-work of shouldering the responsibilities borne of unfavorable conditions are not the same folx who are writing books, intended to coach future business executives, with subtitles like Leadership and the Art of Growing Up.

I’m aware that it may seem redundant to complain about such a personal take on “self work.” How else can you work on your own self unless it’s personally? 

But “we don’t want to put a critical lens to our lives and belief systems,” he says dismissively about all humans. 

As though you – uniquely, individually, personally, solely you – are responsible for those belief systems that it may be time for you to challenge. 

And as though your conclusions about how you’ve chosen to bear the burden of your own responsibilities will be fundamentally better than how you were before you did that self-work, all because you knew from your own knowledge and feelings (but mostly knowledge, because feelings are just excuses for weakness) what substantive improvement would entail. 

As though the critical lens of your own opinion is sufficiently and appropriately tuned to meet or even exceed its own limitations. 

This author seems like someone who should know the difference between “criticism” as “the expression of disapproval of someone or something based on perceived faults or mistakes” and “Criticism” as “the analysis and judgement of the merits and faults of the object of study.” 

This post really seems to be leaning into the former definition. 

Which is really a less useful tool than the latter. 

And yet that former form of criticism is likely to be a familiar tool for people who’ve had inferiority imposed on them by external forces for their entire lives: they talk the wrong way. They look the wrong way. They feel feelings the wrong way. They get horny the wrong way. They handle money the wrong way. They manage their time the wrong way.

The kind of wealthy faux-Buddhist advice being peddled as wisdom here seems so fucking novel to white dudes who have never believed that something fundamental about their way of existing in the world is a problem to be fixed.

(Do I have to do the #notallwhitedudes business? If you’re a white dude reading this and you know you’re doing real work to resist patriarchy, you probably don’t need that reassurance in order to understand my point, eh?)

It can be true that there are some practical nuggets of actual wisdom hiding among the gross oversimplifications in an article like this one

AND

it can be true that this article is an uncritically selfish framing of what self-work means and why it matters. 

The weight-lifting analogy at the end reveals something the author probably didn’t intend.

It’s like doing self-work is about getting ideologically swole. Like the point of self-work is self-gain (and kind of getting off on the pain of getting there). Not “pass[ing] the burden on to others” is about your ability to shoulder that burden yourself, rather than about sparing others from the burden of your own irresponsibility. 

Then again, I suppose I could just be defensive that my own blog represents my complicity in sustaining toxic positivity, since I say I don’t like it but then I keep collecting tokens and taking the time to rage write about them. 

But honestly? In the end, I still choose to blame Jerry Colonna, author of Leadership and the Art of Growing Up, for every single one of my personal problems.

Walk Yourself Out of Your Bad Mood

Content note: reference to depression and suicide

 The background image is a muted-filtered dark photo of a winding asphalt walking path through a foggy wooded area. The white serif font reads, "WALK yourself out of your bad mood. Studies show that even a 10-minute walk immediately BOOSTS brain chemistry to increase happiness." -Karen Salmansohn." The macro itself is attributed to "Inspiring Quotes."
 The background image is a muted-filtered dark photo of a winding asphalt walking path through a foggy wooded area. The white serif font reads, “WALK yourself out of your bad mood. Studies show that even a 10-minute walk immediately BOOSTS brain chemistry to increase happiness.” -Karen Salmansohn.” The macro itself is attributed to “Inspiring Quotes.”

Fuck therapy, sad sacks.

Y’all obviously aren’t walking enough.

Who needs drugs to manage their mental illnesses when plain old movin’ your body parts will do the trick?

And just to preemptively address the anger I’ve created in the pro-walking community I’m imagining in my mind: please recognize your big feelings and take a few moments to sit with them. (That’s the kind of advice I’ve always resented, because it actually is pretty helpful.)

I’m not writing this up because I don’t think walks can ever be good for anyone’s mental state.

I advocate for movement when feeling funky, in all senses of the word.

And it’s true that the reasons walking can help boost your mood actually do boil down to “brain chemistry,” since chemical reactions in your brain literally inform your experience of every single thing.

But people don’t die by suicide because they’re a little grumpy about missing their evening constitutional.

Consider the possibility, if you have not experienced depression (or if you have experienced it in the past but feel better now) and you agree with the sentiments expressed in this macro, that you might be projecting your own experience onto people who are dealing with something very different from your own experience.

It may not have been the intent of the original author to go into full medication-shaming mode, but those sentiments are rampant in Positive Thinking Land.

I Googled the person that the quote is attributed to, and I had to go take a 10-minute walk to be able to review her site more charitably.

I will just say this: I came across another pithy quote macro on her site in which she introduces her proposal for coining the new word “blesson.”

This is indeed an unfortunate blending of “blessing” and “lesson,” which she defines as “what happens when you see the blessing in the lesson that your challenge taught you.”

I’m clearly not her target demographic. It looks like she probably offers some decent resources that aren’t entirely shame-based or victim-blamey, but her whole ethos is buried under so much toxic positivity that I can’t take the good parts seriously.

To each their own. If she has helped you in the past or seems helpful now, I do genuinely want for you to be helped. Please try to hold onto at least a kernel of the healthy skepticism I advocate for, but do what you need to do for you.

Onward.

We all know that Big Pharma sucks, right?

A lot of kinds of research-based evidence for medicating all kinds of mental health diagnoses are actually sketchy as hell.

And at the same time, casting aspersions on the people who have chosen to rely on available medication to make their lives feel more manageable is not going to cause the collapse of the legal drug industry any time soon.

I get the impression that arguments like this one – the old “have you tried NATURE?” schtick – are not about resistance to capitalist neoliberal oligarchy etc. as much as they are about preserving the moral high ground that appears to exist within the WellnessTM branch of that same oligarchy.

Psychiatry’s public-facing emphasis on brain chemistry is to some degree an effort to legitimize the medical reality of potentially life-threatening diagnoses like depression.

I mean, there’s also dirty money and institutional pressure to pathologize humans’ normal reactions to abnormally difficult situations.

You win some, you lose some.

Even if that emphasis on brain chemistry began as a tool of the pharmaceutical industry, it’s still true that the concept has helped muster more widespread support for letting people seek help for their problems.

Concepts like “brain chemistry” have also become part of public discourse because there are a lot of non-depressed people who prefer to assume that depressed people are just bad at existing.

It’s still important to legitimize the fact that depressed people need support, even if drug companies will inevitably exploit that information .

The point here is that there are lots of internet folx (who, it turns out, also exist in the non-internet world) who don’t believe in using medication to balance out “brain chemicals” because they are super sure that there are better ways to get un-depressed than “professional medical treatment.” 

I mean, sure.

Sweeping structural and systemic change that prioritizes individual security, access to health care, and an overall sense of purpose are really nice ways to combat depression.

Exercise, vegetables, water, and sleep are also pretty good.

It just also happens that the same WellnessTM Industry that promotes disproportionate numbers of images of fit, serene women doing yoga and drinking from recycled glass bottles is simultaneously invested in keeping the public focus off of neurotransmitters and back on “lifestyle choices.”

The connection between those narratives is very clearly highlighted in this macro.

Neither the Big Pharma or WellnessTM frameworks truly offers some kind of objectively moral high ground to shame other people for struggling to cope with this nonsense world. We’re all competing with way too many systems that are rigged against us to be able to push back against all of them and fully thrive in equal measure (as tempting as that sounds).

Anyway, in a conclusion that’s allowed me to bury the lede, let it not remain un-noted that neither a bad mood nor severe depression are just about “not enough happiness.”

More Than They Need to Know

An edited image of a person's silhouette in profile. They have long hair, and are facing towards the right half of the photo. In the background, a distant horizon line is visible. The entire image is grayscale, although with a bluish tinge to the gray. It's difficult for me to determine if the horizon line has low mountains or plateaus. Most of the background (behind the silhouette) is an overcast sky. The silhouette has had an image of puffy clouds and a crescent moon superimposed over / inside of the head, creating a surreal effect. The white sanserif font reads, "Stop telling people more than they need to know." It says "unknown" after the quote, and the whole image has been marked with the "Power of Positivity" logo at the bottom.
An edited image of a person’s silhouette in profile. They have long hair, and are facing towards the right half of the photo. In the background, a distant horizon line is visible. The entire image is grayscale, although with a bluish tinge to the gray. It’s difficult for me to determine if the horizon line has low mountains or plateaus. Most of the background (behind the silhouette) is an overcast sky. The silhouette has had an image of puffy clouds and a crescent moon superimposed over / inside of the head, creating a surreal effect. The white sanserif font reads, “Stop telling people more than they need to know.” It says “unknown” after the quote, and the whole image has been marked with the “Power of Positivity” logo at the bottom.

The relatively interesting image here (compared to, like, a generic sunset) makes the relationship between that image and the quote feel ambiguous.

It is good that their head is full of puffy clouds and moonbeams, or is it a cause for concern?

Is the silhouetted head giving the advice to other people? 

Like, is their head full of all kinds of beautiful things already, and they’re just like, “Please stop talking to me”?

Or is the silhouette the one to whom the advice is being given?

Like maybe they are under the impression that all the stuff they have in mind is super important, but they are actually just an insecure over-sharer? 

Variants of this piece of advice are pretty common, so I understand why the quote is simply credited as “Unknown.”

And Power of Positivity as an organization doesn’t seem too bothered about copyright or intellectual property, in general. 

When it comes to images, it seems like the basic attribution policy is to assume that the creator is “unknown.” 

Probably it’s because most of the photography is already in the public domain, but there are still usually other design choices being made. 

This image here, for instance, required at least two photos, and someone to put them together. 

At that point, why make the effort to specifically establish that the words originated from an unknown sources?

Your heart’s in the right place, anonymous macro creator, if a bit misguided. 

I get that you want to make it clear that you are not the brilliant philosopher-poet behind these words of pithy wisdom. 

You just felt compelled to design a space for those words to exist in a social media-friendly medium. 

But where do your design choices begin and end, my friend? 

Did you Photoshop the moon onto this person’s silhouette? 

Is it your own silhouette, or an image of a stranger from Shutterstock? 

Do you truly know, person who humbly acknowledged distance from the creation of these words, the face of the human whose profile graces your macro?

I have the sense that when the author of a quote is left unspecified in a context like this, it’s kind of implied that they’re either unknowable or so well-known that it there words can be expected to be common knowledge. (Including those situations where a quote is commonly but erroneously attributed to a very famous person.)

The advice in these anonymous words is actually potentially useful, but ironically it lacks sufficient context to account for how and why it’s useful.

A reductive but useful example of finding The Right Amount of Information is the IT classic: “Have you tried turning it off and back on again?”

Opening your conversation with tech support with a play-by-play of everything you’ve tried already, just to prove to them (but actually to yourself) that you’re not totally incompetent, is an example of “telling people more than they need to know.”

I imagine that most of us have put our foot in our mouths at some point, insisting something like “Of course it’s plugged in!” only to have to later sheepishly admit that it wasn’t.

But the person whose job it is to troubleshoot whatever is preventing you from getting your work done has no obligation to care about your pride or sense of self-worth. (Not that IT folx are uncaring, of course. Just that it would be unreasonable for them to invest that much emotional energy into each case.)

Then again, you often have to be able to explain your problem before they can begin to help you fix it.

My own anxiety often compels me to explain exactly how I arrived at any given decision to anyone I’m communicating with, so “telling people more than they need to know” is kind of my default. 

I’m aware that my process is not always efficient.

It’s been suggested by very patient and wise people at various points in my life that it’s okay if I provide just a little information to get started, and remember that whoever I’m talking to has the freedom to decide whether they have any follow-up questions about what they need or want to know. 

Apparently, it’s not a failure on my part for not having already predicted and preventatively addressed every conceivable reaction to my very normal bids for reasonable responses.  

Weird. 

I’m still getting used to it.

On the other hand, one of the reasons I developed a tendency to overcompensate with Too Much Information was how often people bring up things that I’ve already considered, dismissed, and/or attempted.

I know I’m always on about this whole “context matters” business, but…

stop framing situationally-specific advice as generalizable imperatives that are more likely to reinforce shame and silence among mentally ill and/or traumatized and/or marginalized folx who’ve developed those targeted behaviors as coping mechanisms than they are to promote understanding, mindfulness, or useful self-reflection.

Successful Outcome

Content note: animated gifs

A square with an orange filter over a photograph of college students rappelling on a climbing wall. In the upper right hand corner are the hashtags #momentummonday and #uwec, the educational institution that shared the post. In white sanserif letters, it says, "It is our attitude at the beginning of a difficult task which, more than anything else, will affect its successful outcome." -William James
A square with an orange filter over a photograph of college students rappelling on a climbing wall. In the upper right hand corner are the hashtags #momentummonday and #uwec, the educational institution that shared the post. In white sanserif letters, it says, “It is our attitude at the beginning of a difficult task which, more than anything else, will affect its successful outcome.” -William James

I originally wrote this post in early 2020.

At that point, I had heard of coronavirus, but people were dismissing whispers about lockdowns.

More recently, here in mid-2022, I was reading the book Burnout: The Secret to Unlocking the Stress Cycle by Amelia and Emily Nagoski, and I was struck by their chapter on “persistence.”

The perspective they present there is much more nuanced and thoroughly researched than my blog post here (which makes sense, because they wrote a whole book), but I’ll go ahead and admit that I was chuffed to see a well-rounded argument by people I respect with some thematic parallels to my burned-out thoughts from two years ago.

Back in the before-times, I was feeling especially salty about this featured quote because I had just received a long-overdue confirmation of rejection for a job that I was extraordinarily confident about my ability to perform, that I was ridiculously prepared for, that I was eminently qualified for, and for which I made an exceptionally strong argument for myself for in both preliminary and final interview stages.

I also received my poorly-handled rejection notification the day after Elizabeth Warren dropped out of the 2020 presidential race.

It wasn’t a great day to see an inspirational quote about attitude.

My attitude had varied over the months of the academic job application and interview process, but overall, I remained uncharacteristically positive.

I mean, I was still fundamentally me.

Of course I experienced bouts of doubt and anxiety.

But for once, my professional self-doubt felt like a lie that could be countered with evidence.

When I saw the original advertisement for the position, I thought, “Well, that’s me. I can do all of that, and I can do it well.”

(It was far more common for me to read the bulleted Preferred Qualifications list and feel great about three of them, okay about four or five, ambivalent about a couple, and terrified by at least one.)

When I started pulling my materials together, I told myself, “I will turn in an application that they can’t ignore. They may not actually contact me for an interview, because that’s out of my hands, but by god, they’ll have to work hard to justify keeping me out of the running if that’s the case.”

And they contacted me pretty promptly to schedule an interview.

And when I prepared for the interview, I told myself, “I will not give them any reason to second-guess choosing my application, and by god, they’ll have to sweat if they don’t put me through to the next round.”

And I made it to the next round.

Every other time I had a campus visit, I’d leaned into a “fake it ’til you make it” approach to get me through, but this time, I just felt a qualified colleague.

It would be unfair for me to resent the fact that another person existed with pertinent qualifications, which they proceeded to show off to good advantage in their own interview. The person who got the job was presumably confident, prepared, and qualified, and capable of making a strong argument on their own behalf.

Awareness of this fact didn’t do much to alleviate the sting.

So, back to William James (and those who like to quote him out of context):

How does “attitude at the beginning” really come into play when we arrive at an unsuccessful outcome?

I admit that I threw myself a big old pity party when I got the rejection, and I stand by that. Pretending not to be bitter will only exacerbate bitterness.

I also admit that my above question originally arose from a place of resentment and frustration.

But once the emotional lava has hardened, the issue still stands: what’s the connection between attitude and success?

The quote in this macro is being used in service of this broader Power of Positivity enterprise that blames individuals’ thought patterns for individual failures (or successes), rather than engaging more meaningfully with the social infrastructures that reinforce patterns of success (or failure).

If we’re looking to define an attitude that helps to determine success, it seems like confidence, persistence, and resilience are good personal qualities to have, eh?

I don’t know Elizabeth Warren personally, and I’m in no position to ever speak meaningfully about her mental or emotional state.

But at least in terms of her public image, she remained engaged, forward-thinking, and determined. She shows it when she’s angry, but she remains broadly “positive,” and does not appear unconfident or underprepared.

Elizabeth Warren’s own attitude wasn’t the problem with her campaign. Her attitude was demonstrably on point.

Of course she’ll persist. Of course she’ll be resilient. Of course she isn’t going to stop working altogether. She knows the drill. She’ll stay on her feet.

But still.

Fucking hell.

I’ve focused a lot on that word “attitude” in the original macro, but here I’ll start folding in that idea of “successful outcome.”

A “successful outcome” for a job interview – both at the local and national level – is a job offer.

That’s what it looks like your own attitude is mirrored by that of a larger system (which may or may not be rigged in your favor). 

Now, I promise that I know that “not achieving a desired outcome” is not the same thing as either “failure” or “total lack of institutional support.”

When multiple people are competing for only one position, it’s obviously not possible for everyone to “succeed” in the sense outlined above, and so of course there’s going to be disappointment somewhere.

Toxic Positivity encourages us to elevate the lesson at the expense of acknowledging the disappointment, though. 

Sure, I get to practice resilience this way, and I can identify opportunities for growth, but “someone else got the job” still wasn’t a “successful outcome” for me. (Or Elizabeth Warren.)

It’s a reasonable outcome.

It’s a manageable outcome.

It’s not a total failure, and it’s not the end of the world.

I’ll persist. I’ll be resilient. I won’t stop altogether. I know the drill. I’ll stay on my feet.

We can’t all have successful outcomes all the time, and that’s normal.

Now, I think that’s a reasonable attitude to have at the disappointing conclusion of a difficult task.

Cognitively, I know that this is my baseline “actual” attitude, even though I may struggle to stick with it as circumstance and emotions fluctuate.

This “attitude determines outcome” framing doesn’t seem to encourage a healthy, balanced response to unsuccessful outcomes, but then again, what do I know from healthy?

There are a couple of ways to justify this relationship between “attitude determines outcome” and what “a successful outcome” actually looks like compared to an “unsuccessful” one.

1) Play with the definition of “attitude.” If you have an unsuccessful outcome (e.g., not getting the job, not winning the race, not nailing the performance, etc.), it must be because your initial attitude wasn’t truly what was needed for that particular kind of success in that particular situation. Your attitude was always the problem, rather than anything circumstantial, and you need to try harder to have a more situationally-appropriate attitude if you want to achieve your goals. (Okay, I’ve been a bit flippant there, but then again I never promised not to be.)

2) Play with the definition of “success.” If you don’t achieve your desired outcome (the job, the medal, the gig, etc.), it’s okay to retrofit your idea of success to accommodate whatever actually happened. That sounds a lot like the ol’ “Everyone’s a winner” schtick that never made anyone feel any better in elementary school.

“You succeeded because you tried.”

(Don’t tell Yoda.)

Animated gif of the shriveled green character Yoda from Star Wars (specifically The Empire Strikes Back, for the nerds) saying his iconic line, "Do or do no. There is no try."
Animated gif of the shriveled green character Yoda from Star Wars (specifically The Empire Strikes Back, for the nerds) saying his iconic line, “Do or do no. There is no try.”

Now, I’ve offered several either/ors here, and you know how I feel about binaries.

Of course success is not an absolute binary, and it’s reductive to treat most outcomes as “SUCCESS” vs. “FAILURE” with nothing in between.

At the same time, of course it’s disingenuous to act like “NOT SUCCESS” has so much overlap with “SUCCESS” that the difference is functionally negligible.

I have a background in social science research, but I’ve really only dabbled in psychology. I’ve spent more time engaging with popular psychology resources than digging into the academic theory and history of the discipline.

So I’ll admit that I wasn’t sure who William James was when I initially snagged this screenshot.

In fact, when I started writing, I was thinking of Henry James, and I was all ready to lay into him.

Wrong James, though. 

It turns out that William James is often referred to as “the father of American psychology.”

The history of the philosophical tradition of Pragmatism, as James defined it and as it has since evolved, wasn’t exactly light reading, and I’ll be upfront about the fact that I just don’t feel like summarizing it here.

And at any rate, this blog isn’t a great space to develop a lengthy and well-researched essay on the history of ideological debates that have influenced contemporary psychological practice. I’m just here to pick apart their outcomes.

I liked the sound of “pragmatism,” though, so I considered the possibility that his quotable quote was pulled from a context that could offer some illumination.

I briefly searched for that original context.

Early efforts to identify the source beyond the author’s name were fruitless. This sentence has been macroed a LOT:

Screenshot of the many results of a Google image search for the William James quote "It is our attitude at the beginning of a difficult task which, more than anything else, will affect its successful outcome." There are many different treatments in terms of font, color scheme, and imagery. 14 are represented here, but that's just what fit in the screenshot.
Screenshot of the many results of a Google image search for the William James quote “It is our attitude at the beginning of a difficult task which, more than anything else, will affect its successful outcome.” There are many different treatments in terms of font, color scheme, and imagery. 14 are represented here, but that’s just what fit in the screenshot.

I have just a couple highlights to bring in from my very brief historical review.

“Pragmatism” as a movement has been paraphrased as “a return to common sense.”

Well, that sounds less promising. Naturally, I wondered whose senses were considered to be most common, and naturally, I have some hunches, William James, but we’ll table that for now.

(*cough* abled-ish financially secure cis het white dudes who were likely to have been raised with broadly Christian values if not beliefs *cough*)

I didn’t find the original context, but I came across another James quote that seems like a helpful expansion: “a belief can be made true by the fact that holding it contributes to our happiness and fulfillment.”

I.e., “fake it ’til you make it.”

It seems a little on the nose to me that the “father of American psychology” advocated for magical thinking that he preferred to rebrand as “pragmatism.”

Admittedly, I’ve presented a judgement about an influential figure and the significance of his entire career based on just a couple of Google searches and the brief perusal of a few articles. I stand 100% ready to be educated by the perspectives of those more familiar with his work (as I pretend that multiple people with relevant and informed opinions are reading this blog).

Shortly after writing an early draft of this post, I read a chapter from Barbara Ehrenreich’s Bright-Sided: How Positive Thinking is Undermining America that expanded more on the historical context that led to the emergence of William James’ psychological philosophy. In short:

it seems like James approached the then-emerging pseudoscientific fad known as “new thinking” (the idea that people could manifest things simply by thinking about them) with a reasonable degree of skepticism.

His original motivation seems to have been practical enough. I respect anyone who is driven by a desire to disprove popular bullshit; yet the outcome has led to terribly impractical results (i.e., more people in contemporary society who lump his eventual admission that “thinking positive thoughts can in some cases seem to correlate with positive outcomes” into the same kind of magical thinking he was contesting in the first place).

So in that sense, his optimistic attitude at the outset does not seem to have resulted in a particularly successful outcome for his theories.

Just sayin’.

I write a lot here about what I don’t believe and not as much about what I do believe.

I want to stress that I believe deeply in the value of acceptance.

I can and always will learn from disappointment.

I know my Bob Ross, y’all. 

Animated gif of painter Bob Ross from his '90s TV show "The Joy of Painting," standing in front of a nature-scape with his palette in hand, saying, "We don't make mistakes - we just have happy accidents."
Animated gif of painter Bob Ross from his ’90s TV show “The Joy of Painting,” standing in front of a nature-scape with his palette in hand, saying, “We don’t make mistakes – we just have happy accidents.”

 I absolutely appreciate the value of being able to identify positive potential after a negative situation has unfolded.

I comprehend and respect the idea that the anticipation of success can have benefits that the anticipation of failure may not.

I recognize the ways in which negative thinking can perpetuate cycles of self-sabotage.

But.

Attitudes don’t exist in vacuums.

Having a good attitude IN A SYSTEM THAT PRIVILEGES AND PRIORITIZES YOUR ABILITY TO MAINTAIN THE IDEA THAT YOUR OWN ATTITUDE IS THE BEST ONE will, indeed, probably encourage successful outcomes.

You can have the best damn attitude in the world, but that’s not the primary thing determining your success. It just helps.

Know your strengths, know your limits, and know your value. That’s in your control.

But also know that there are plenty of folks out there who want you to be fully responsible for the “failures” that you encounter, just so that they can justify their own relative comfort and “success.”

I feel like this post turned out more ranty than usual. That’s not what I planned for when I started, but that’s where it ended up.

Unintended and unexpected outcomes are normal and fine.

It is possible to turn your mistakes into birds.

But that doesn’t have to mean that your attitude was always going to lay eggs in the first place.

The Stuff That Weighs You Down

A photoshopped or filtered photo with a heavily saturated warm pastel color palette, featuring little spindly pink flowers, an orange butterfly on the left of the image, and some kind of light-colored circles that may be out-of-focus dandelion fluff or dust or sunlight reflections. The gray serif font in the middle reads, "If you wanna fly, you gotta give up the stuff that weighs you down." It also attributes the work to a photograph, saying "Photo by Joel Olives" in a new, darker gray sanserif font at the bottom, and lists what is presumably the name of a site or company, "Butterflies and Pebbles," in a third sanserif font across the bottom of the entire image.
A photoshopped or filtered photo with a heavily saturated warm pastel color palette, featuring little spindly pink flowers, an orange butterfly on the left of the image, and some kind of light-colored circles that may be out-of-focus dandelion fluff or dust or sunlight reflections. The gray serif font in the middle reads, “If you wanna fly, you gotta give up the stuff that weighs you down.” It also attributes the work to a photograph, saying “Photo by Joel Olives” in a new, darker gray sanserif font at the bottom, and lists what is presumably the name of a site or company, “Butterflies and Pebbles,” in a third sanserif font across the bottom of the entire image.

I love how this image feels positively weightless!

It’s like how the world would look if gravity wasn’t even a thing!

But I mean, still more fun than outer space. There’s oxygen here.

Does it really matter whether this gentle universal message is being shared by a physically healthy and mentally/emotionally supported person with a solid 401K and too many possessions, or if it’s being shared by a physically disabled and mentally ill person who is not entirely confident from month to month that they will be able to pay for all the things that they rely on for survival?

I mean, they both still have baggage to unload.

But poor people just also have extra baggage to unload before they can responsibly think about something like flight, amirite?

Okay, I have to push “pause” on the sarcasm button because I’m less comfortable leaving this open to minor misinterpretation than usual.

The point of invoking disability and poverty in this example is NOT to suggest that you, dear reader of any ability or financial status, are expected to feel sorry for “those people” on account of how their existence is.

Nor is the point of invoking disability and poverty to imply that you ought to be more grateful for all that you have, because “it could all be taken away in an instant.”

I’m not invoking disability and poverty as an appeal to pathos, or as a very special lesson, or as a cautionary tale.

I am using these relevant examples because CONTEXT MATTERS.

Allow me to offer a brief, honest anecdote in the interest of developing a thematically appropriate metaphorical framework.

One fine spring morning, not so very many years ago, I paused as I was about to open the latch of my back door and step outside.

There was a sparrow on the top step. I held my breath and hoped I wouldn’t scare it away.

It was just a magical little moment.

I marveled at the confluence of circumstances that had brought me and this little bird together for such a brief time.

Then the sparrow pooped on my stoop and flew away.

Of course, in order to take flight, birds freely and routinely give up the stuff that’s weighing them down without any regard for the mess it leaves behind.

Just look at how fluffy this picture is.

It’s like all you’ll ever have to throw away is cotton balls and glitter.

I get that the macro is not meant to be taken entirely literally, and that it’s referring to, like, emotional weight and not necessarily physical things.

Trust me, I read that message loud and clear.

But this macro wants you to perceive the relationship between you and your troubles to be like the relationship between a cute little sparrow bird and the way in which it’s perfectly poised to evacuate meaningless excess because physics (e.g., gravity) and biology (e.g., evolution) have been collaborating for millennia to bolster its precious body.

In life, one charming li’l stoop sparrow poops and takes flight and goes home to its cozy bird house and 2.5 chicks, and another adorable li’l flutter bucket gets snagged by a hawk and its untended eggs get eaten by a weasel.

That’s nature for ya.

But that doesn’t leave room for all the other factors that need to be accounted for in this metaphor, tho. Like society.

 animated gif from the ’90s movie “Billy Madison” (which is definitely a terrible movie but it burned so many quotes int0 my brain) of actor Adam Sandler saying “society” while doing air quotes with his fingers to explain a heavy-handed metaphor

Here’s where I’ll depart from any lingering evolutionary parallels, because social Darwinism is just racism, and we’re coming back around to the land of choices, folx. 

You’ve got to be able to choose to let go of the things that are weighing you down in order for this macro to work.

If you can’t choose to let go of something that\’s holding you back, you don’t get to fly.

For many folx who have access to appropriate treatment for any conditions that they are managing, though, it isn’t those disabilities or illnesses that are weighing them down. The heaviest barrier is the people around them who don’t understand that they won’t “get better” or “try harder” than they already are.

For folx who live with the most unpleasant realities of poverty on the daily, it’s not an option to just “give up” being poor. I’m pretty sure that the majority of people living beneath whatever the poverty line is defined as in their own neck of the woods would like to give up on debt and exhaustion in exchange for a nice long flight (or metaphorical flight of their preference).

It’s the people clinging to a dysfunctional system because it’s not terrible for them that prevent the system from letting go of what’s weighing it down.

Sometimes the stuff that’s weighing you down the most is not, in fact, coming from inside the house.

I mean, still check in on what’s coming from inside the house.

Poop away, my little birdies.

You may need to learn to poop more freely and efficiently, like that unencumbered and dropping-optimized stoop sparrow, and of course it’s okay if you need to practice that kind of jettisoning.

I firmly believe that we all have metaphorical emotional pooping to do, and that there is no shame in admitting this.

Just be careful about letting go of so much of what you’re carrying inside that you forget who fed it to you in the first place.

It’s not necessarily your little birdie poops that are contaminating rivers and polluting the groundwater, eh?

That metaphor got grosser than I originally anticipated.

Sorry-not-sorry.

Animated gif of actor Lucille Ball, in character as “Lucy,” shrugging broadly and and squinching her face in a “Whaddaya do?” kind of expression

Like a Flat Tire

The top two thirds of the photo is just clear blue sky, with white sans serif letters over it that read, "A bad attitude is like a flat tire. You can\'t go anywhere until you change it." The bottom third of the photo is a navy blue muscle car (sorry, I can't tell the make or model, I don't know kinds of cars) with its hood popped open, with digital smoke coming from the engine. The car is pulled over to the side of a road in a flat landscape. A tan, thin, blonde person in a white tank top and jean shorts leans against the passenger side of the car (yes, sitting on the actual road, which seems inadvisable), looking dejected and frustrated. The source is Power of Positivity.
The top two thirds of the photo is just clear blue sky, with white sans serif letters over it that read, “A bad attitude is like a flat tire. You can’t go anywhere until you change it.” The bottom third of the photo is a navy blue muscle car (sorry, I can’t tell the make or model, I don’t know kinds of cars) with its hood popped open, with digital smoke coming from the engine. The car is pulled over to the side of a road in a flat landscape. A tan, thin, blonde person in a white tank top and jean shorts leans against the passenger side of the car (yes, sitting on the actual road, which seems inadvisable), looking dejected and frustrated. The source is Power of Positivity.

I don’t have a clear visual of both tires on the driver’s side, but this vehicle doesn’t appear to particularly lopsided.

And even if they were both as flat as pancakes, the state of those tires is functionally irrelevant in terms of forward momentum, because the engine is smoking.

It’s not the most convincing Photoshop on the smoke, but then again it’s actually comforting to know that it was added in post, in case this person was asked to pose in shorts on hot asphalt, leaning against a dark car in full sun. (It seems likely that they were also shot separately, but I am not an expert digital manipulation sleuth.)

The point is that all four tires could get changed as fuck, and this automobile would not be going anywhere.

I don’t think I could create a better representation of the characteristic gaslighting of Toxic Positivity if I tried.

See, this message insists that a specific thing has to be done, and done by the metaphorically stranded motorist that is you, at the expense of engaging with the more salient situational factor that you’ve clearly accepted is beyond your control.

(This is based on my interpretation of the driver’s look of defeated exhaustion as an acknowledgement that they aren’t in a position to fix the engine, rather than an indication of a bad attitude towards an unambiguously unfortunate circumstance.)

It may be that the creators of the macro, who probably just added text to an existing stock image, intended the driver to be an embodiment of a bad attitude. I don’t know.

But still, in that case, what the actual fuck does a different attitude accomplish in this situation?

Putting on a smile while you wait for AAA does just as much good as a changing a tire on a car that won’t start. Sure, it might feel better to do, and that’s enough reason to do it! But don’t pretend it’s going to solve the bigger problem.

I’ve been consciously avoiding gendered pronouns in my descriptions, which I generally try to do unless gender is central to my commentary, but that’s really the second elephant in the awkward room created by this macro, isn’t it?

(The first elephant, if you’re keeping track of elephants, is the fact that the folx who made this beauty couldn’t be bothered to find an actual image of a car with a flat tire, but also don’t think that this discrepancy should prevent you from accepting their feel-good life advice.)

Power of Positivity tends to paint with pretty broad strokes, and their consistent framing of whiteness and heterosexuality as default states of being is just the very tip of their victim-blaming iceberg.

So what the heck. Let’s make some irresponsible assumptions about gender, for old times’ sake.

Let’s suggest that we’re dealing with a conventionally attractive young white lady whose fancy hot rod broke down.

The image is basically a boring cis het dude’s wet dream.

Viewed through the lens of the straight male gaze, a lens I grew up believing was both normal and fine, I get the sense that this woman is meant to be seen as

a) helpless and

b) eager to smile when a thoughtful, helpful, handy man who just happened to be driving by informs her that she ought to change her attitude, and maybe also that she’d be much prettier if she just smiled.

Like, maybe she’ll be a little feisty at first, and maybe she’ll briefly show up Mr. Gosh-Are-You-Okay-Miss by having some advanced technical knowledge about what’s under the hood of this machine that dudes are always trying to explain to her, but you just know she’ll ultimately benefit from this totally-innocent-and-non-predatory-hashtag-not-all-men interaction.

Et voilà, I’ve just written Flat Tire, a new romantic comedy to be directed by Judd Apatow.

I assume you can figure out the other, wetter dream on your own.

At any rate, just a reminder that while it’s a good idea to be aware of what your own attitude is doing, the advice to focus on that exclusively is often a diversion from what’s causing your attitude to be “bad.”

And a reminder that context matters.

The place that’s pushing for you to buy tires probably doesn’t give a shit about your engine.

What You Feed Your Mind

[A cartoon image of two pink cartoon brains with faces and floating hands. There is a black line between the two brains to separate them. The brain on the left is grotesque and scary, with angry eyes and a frowning, open mouth that reveals pointed teeth and a long pointy tongue. The brain and its floating hands are covered with either spots of dirt or bruises. The floating hands are clutching a knife and a fork, and the brain itself is hovering over a plate of what appears to be a pile of excrement (although the illustrator held off of making it too visually unpleasant so that the pile is more like the poop emoji or a swirl of chocolate soft serve ice cream). The poo has the words "Drama, Bad News, Negativity" written on it. The brain on the right is clean and happy, with a big smile on its face and excitement lines coming out of its head. The position is the same - clutching the eating utensils and hovering over a plate - but the plate is full of fresh produce: apples, broccoli, and lettuce, as well as a banana that says "Positivity," a carrot that says "Discipline," and an avocado that says "Dreams." The slogan, in black impact font at the top, reads, "You become what you feed your mind." It has the letters "opw" at the bottom, presumably for an organization but I can't determine what organization it is, and the bad brain's knife has a copyright for "successpictures" running down the blade.
[A cartoon image of two pink cartoon brains with faces and floating hands. There is a black line between the two brains to separate them. The brain on the left is grotesque and scary, with angry eyes and a frowning, open mouth that reveals pointed teeth and a long pointy tongue. The brain and its floating hands are covered with either spots of dirt or bruises. The floating hands are clutching a knife and a fork, and the brain itself is hovering over a plate of what appears to be a pile of excrement (although the illustrator held off of making it too visually unpleasant so that the pile is more like the poop emoji or a swirl of chocolate soft serve ice cream). The poo has the words “Drama, Bad News, Negativity” written on it. The brain on the right is clean and happy, with a big smile on its face and excitement lines coming out of its head. The position is the same – clutching the eating utensils and hovering over a plate – but the plate is full of fresh produce: apples, broccoli, and lettuce, as well as a banana that says “Positivity,” a carrot that says “Discipline,” and an avocado that says “Dreams.” The slogan, in black impact font at the top, reads, “You become what you feed your mind.” It has the letters “opw” at the bottom, presumably for an organization but I can’t determine what organization it is, and the bad brain’s knife has a copyright for “successpictures” running down the blade.

Ah, yes, the two food groups: steaming shit and fresh produce.

Why feast on the disappointing Poop of Negativity when the Avocado of Dreams is within reach of the fork you’re using to eat the deconstructed mishmash of the salad that is life?

A powerful reminder, to be sure.

I might be overthinking this*, but fruit turns into poop, right?

I promise I understand that the image is meant to emphasize the contrast between the brains and their diets rather than depicting any direct correlation between them, which is why we go from poop to fruit.

But still…

I’m just saying that the contents of that shit pile used to be something else.

It’s the circle of life.

I feel like the Angry Krang recognizes that its dreams and positivity have served their purpose, and it’s only left with bitter, smelly remnants to work with, but is still committing to feeding itself with whatever’s on hand, so, honestly, that looks a little more like the face of resilience to me.

Sub-question: are the pointy fangs and lizard tongue practical evolutionary adaptations for a coprophage?

Like I don’t know much about what kind of ecosystems are happening in Dimension X.

Maybe Angry Krang is a predator who is also willing to scavenge?

I’m very interested in the morphology of Happy Krang, because if it’s got the same tooth and tongue situation, I just don’t think that fruit and veg plate is going to be a walk in the park.

I like to think that this is literally explaining that some brains are herbivores and others are predators, and showing how they developed appropriate adaptations over time.

I suspect that this may be a case of divergent evolution, and that this image has actually been shared as a picture on the page “Science Diagrams That Look Like Shitposts” in an alternate universe.

*I am overthinking this

The Generation That Respected Our Parents

Content warning: reference to child abuse; guns; death

An image of a brick wall, with white text, mostly in a bulleted list, that reads, “I’m part of the generation that: Respected Our Parents Drank From a Garden Hose  Stood for the Flag  Played Outside  Had Toy Guns  Got Spanked  And I SURVIVED SHARE IF YOU DID TOO!” There is also a smiling Minion wearing goggles, from the “Despicable Me” franchise. The credits in the lower right-hand corner say “Minions - for the Old Folks.” Really.
An image of a brick wall, with white text, mostly in a bulleted list, that reads, “I’m part of the generation that:
Respected Our Parents
Drank From a Garden Hose 
Stood for the Flag 
Played Outside 
Had Toy Guns 
Got Spanked 
And I SURVIVED
SHARE IF YOU DID TOO!” There is also a smiling Minion wearing goggles, from the “Despicable Me” franchise. The credits in the lower right-hand corner say “Minions – for the Old Folks.” Really.

As an elder Millennial, I admit that the rhetoric of the whole Millennials (et al.) vs. Boomers (et al.) feud can feel irrelevant and reductive at times.

As much as I love the utility of an all-encompassing catchphrase, and respect parody in the service of iconoclastic comedy, “Okay, Boomer” is sometimes used in ways that force much more complicated issues into the framework of a simple generation gap.

So, I acknowledge that simple inter-generational snark has its limits.

Still, I’m going to paint with broad strokes today, because this macro has handed me an enticingly broad brush.

I’d almost like to believe that this was created by a 30-something with more qualifications and fewer prospects than most financially-secure 65+-year olds ever had to face, but ultimately I think it reads like a genuine artifact by and for “the Old Folks.”

Most of the bulleted items are clearly dog whistles, but I’m really hung up the “garden hose” one.

“Respect for parents” covers all manner of “kids these days” sins: majoring in English, not having kids when it sure seems to be the right time, enforcing healthy boundaries, being gay… the list goes on.

No respect.

In “stood for the flag,” we have a defense of all kinds of thoughtless patriotism, including implicit support for police brutality and the willingness (some might say obligation) to attempt to conceal the hardwood foundations of American racism beneath the questionable beige carpeting of respectability politics.

“Played outside” feels like general pearl-clutching about the Video Games, the Computers, and/or All Those Electronic Devices turning everyone into screen-obsessed couch potatoes (who also know how to set up All Your Electronic Devices).

“Had toy guns” could be an enormous and depressing post of its own, but we’ll just settle here for a general preference to minimize the scope and sociopolitical clout of the NRA.

That spanking bullet is good old Normalization of Child Abuse*.

And then what’s left is… non-traditional drinking apparatus.

Am I missing the dog whistle?

My best guess is that it’s somehow meant to be sissy (read: feminine-adjacent; read: weak; read: inferior) to NOT be willing to drink out of the garden hose, but I also have to admit that still feels like a stretch.

Just, has drinking out of a hose vs. a faucet really ever been a point of contention? It’s so oddly specific.

BOOMER: You look like someone who used a KITCHEN tap your whole life! Go ahead. Drink from this sun-hot rubber hose.

MILLENNIAL: I mean, I CAN, I’m not technically opposed to it, I just don’t see why…

B: DRINK IT!

M: …if I do, will you stop telling me to hit my kids?…

B: *shakes head slowly*

*maintains eye contact*

*proffers hose*

Also, the whole “Share if you survived!” thing feels unnecessarily cruel (but then again, I’m one of those Easily Offended Millennials, so what do I know?).

I think the intended meaning of “I survived” is just an effort to minimize the validity of all of these other debates.

Like, “Geez, no one DIED.”

Except… some people did.

Because of institutionalized racism.

Because of child abuse.

Because of both real and toy guns.

The dead ones just aren’t out there posting Minion memes.

Animated gif of Ted Danson on the show “The Good Place,” holding up a plush Minion doll in amazement

*This is actually old but it is not actually good