MY 10 COMMANDMENTS - PART ONE (Patreon)

Hello $5 and above Patrons! From here on you’re going to be getting blog posts that are a bit more personal than I’d ever put on Digitiser, and which don’t necessarily fit with the whimsical tone of what I do elsewhere.

I was doing that already on here of course, but I always worried that there might be those who just pay 70p a month who were only there to gawp, and it risked them sharing what I’d shared. I’m hoping that by keep these posts to higher patron tiers it’ll keep them between friends. Though of course, by all means tell everyone how much you enjoy them!

I’ve been through plenty of ups-and-downs in my life, and come out the other side, and  I’ve trained to be a person-centred therapist, so I feel I’ve got things I can offer that might make life a little better. In fact, that’s kind of what I’m planning to focus on as and when Sanja and I ever get around to doing a podcast. I want to share what I’ve learned.

So with this in mind… there’s a regular feature in Q Magazine called 10 Commandments, in which every month a pop star will give 10 pieces of wisdom. It’s a blatant steal of something very similar that they used to have in the much-lamented Word magazine, and pretty much the only reason I buy the magazine. Which is telling, given it generally has nothing to do with music. Whenever I read it I wonder what my 10 would be. 

So, to heck with it… I’m going to give you mine. Warning: there might be a few controversial home truths in here… Trust me; I struggled with them too at first. 

Don’t worry. It might not always be this heavy!

10. NOBODY IS GOOD OR BAD

Morality just an idea. That’s a really hard thing to come to terms with initially – the notion that morality isn’t something that exists in the natural world, but something humans just made up. 

There’s no right and wrong, because all morality is subjective – even at the level of lawmaking, every country has its own definition of what good and bad is. There’s no consensus, because it’s something humans just make up. Our own moral code is one that has been drilled into us from birth – a mixture of influences and experiences with family, friends, the world at large... Without all that influence, without being told about good and bad, right and wrong, and internalising it, it wouldn’t exist.

The knowledge of that obviously doesn’t give you carte blanche to behave however you like – I mean, there’d be consequences for one thing (if you try to covet MY ox I’m going to call the police or throw a brick at you), plus my personal sense of morality is something I value highly, and goes to make me who I am.

Yet it’s always worth staying aware that morality is subjective and personal. It’s the old quote about seeing things not as they are, but as WE are. We all see the world differently. Never assume people see it the way you do, because they don’t. Not completely.  

So does that mean, say, Hitler wasn’t evil? Unfortunately so, because if you really boil it down, there’s no such thing, and Hitler probably didn’t see himself as evil any more than Noel Edmonds does. 

“Evil” – like good and bad - is just a label, a form of shorthand. So, just because I might call Hitler evil… that doesn’t make him evil. If that makes sense.

That’s an extreme example, but it’s worth keeping in mind when we call someone a “bad person”. Or even a “good person”. I try – but don’t always succeed – to judge a person’s behaviour, not the person. 

9. YOU ARE NOT YOUR PAIN.

I worry that too often these days many people internalise their emotional damage until they adopt it as their identity. Doing that risks it becoming too comfortable, and losing sight of a time when it wasn’t who we are. Having your identity threatened is something we’ll resist with every fibre of our being, so when that identity is “I am a depressed person”, that’s a problem, and you’re more than likely going to stay like that. 

Don’t get me wrong; I’m not saying this is the case for everyone who says they’re depressed. Often it’s just bad wiring or chemicals, historical damage, or being knocked off course by life.

But at the same time, I’m really concerned that social media has kind of made depression – dare I say it? - trendy, and I see a lot of people saying that discussing depression and the like normalises it, as if that’s a good thing – and makes it something you shouldn’t be ashamed of.

Which is right of course; we shouldn’t be ashamed of being depressed. But normalising it?!? That scares the hell out of me, because I know of kids, and some adults, who are emulating their social media idols by saying they’re depressed, and then their friends are emulating them, and back and forth – and it’s really troubling to me.

Not only that, but it cheapens and trivialises depression for those who really, truly, suffer – which is a very real and terrible condition, which some of us just have to learn to find a way to cope with. Normalising treatment for depression, normalising strategies for coping, is what we should be doing; not the depression itself.

Making it too normal also risks making it the default. It doesn’t encourage people to get better, just enables them to stay trapped in that painful place, because that’s “normal”. If you can’t see any sunshine, because all that’s around you are dark clouds, how do you even know that the sun exists?

Depression is not normal; it means something isn’t working inside you. And we don’t all have it. Feeling low for a few days, or a week, isn’t depression. Life being hard isn’t depression. Grief isn’t depression. Depression is huge and long-term, and can feel impossible and insurmountable, and can happen for no apparent reason.

Believe me, I have been depressed at times in my life, and there have been times I’ve been feeling miserable, and I’ve been tempted to tweet about it, or vent publicly, but given I’ve got 10,000 followers on Twitter… would it actually help anybody? I read a great tip once that gripping a pencil between your teeth uses the same muscles as smiling, and when you smile it releases endorphins. On bad days I’d still rather try doing that - in a metaphorical sense - than putting it out there in public.

Also, it’s worth noting, hard as it may be to hear, that being depressed – or at least saying you’re depressed – can also bring with it certain benefits. You don’t have to take responsibility for things; just blame it on the depression. Because people struggle to see others in pain, because we all have an inherent rescuing tendency, you get plenty of sympathy and attention, which feels nice. 

But…. it’s just more incentive to stay there and not try to get better or improve your life. You’re stronger than you know, but some people – I’m sorry to say – do enjoy this cycle on some level, even if they’re not aware that they do. 

See below for more on this, but ultimately, even if you have depression, you are not “a depressed person; you are “a person with depression”.

8. CHARITY AND KINDNESS ARE SELFISH ACTS

This sounds harsh, but it’s true; it feels good to help somebody else. It makes us feel we’re a “good” person, giving us a quick dopamine hit, it makes other people see us as “good” and “selfless” when in fact it’s a completely selfish thing to do.

It’s great that it happens, because it makes the world a nicer place to live in, generally, but equally… helping someone too much takes away their power to help themselves. 

It teaches them to rely on others, and that weakens a person and stops them growing. By all means support people who need it, but don’t be tempted into the quick fix; people can get trapped in a cycle of being a victim, and  when people come to their rescue, both rescuer and rescued getting a dopamine hit… and then they need more and more. It’s not healthy for anyone.

Tough love is something that gets a bad rap nowadays – understandably, because you risk coming across as cruel and heartless, as I undoubtedly am right now! - but there’s a lot of wisdom in it. Sometimes the biggest act of selflessness you can do for someone is to ignore your own discomfort and urge to help. You don't need to solve every problem.

You can still be a good friend, still have empathy and compassion, and offer support, for a person without doing the hard work for them. And believe me, I know it’s hard and uncomfortable to watch suffering, but sometimes you have to let a person fall further and hit rock bottom, and learn to not depend on others, before they’re able to get better. 

You sometimes need to let people reach a place where they can no longer stand the pain, and will become determined to do anything to escape. 

7. WE ALL JUDGE BOOKS BY THEIR COVER… AND SOMETIMES IT REVEALS THE TRUTH

I remember an English lesson at school where my teacher asked if we should judge people by how they look. I said no, but argued that we all do it, and she took real offence to it. It’s true though; we all go on first impressions, but those first impressions will vary from one person to another.

Until I did my counselling training I had a pretty inaccurate sense of how people saw me. I had to come to terms with a lot of things about my physical appearance – chiefly that I’m a big guy, and that for whatever reason, probably because I stand out, people feel they can comment on my physical appearance (both good and bad). For a long time I wondered if I was imagining it, but my wife has also seen it in action. 

Literal broad shoulders on the outside meant, I think, that people felt I could take any criticism, that I was strong (though certainly at the start of my training I was anything but). Ironically, because I'd get a lot of comments, continually, I grew up feeling quite self-conscious about my physical appearance. I thought I must look weird, or wrong, or awful. Though I've mostly come to terms with it, that hasn't entirely gone away.

Then we had one other bloke in our group who was hugely threatened by my size. He felt he had to protect the women in the class from me, which sounds absurd… but he had a complicated background, and wanted to be the group "alpha". His first lesson he literally paced around the circle we'd sit in, like he was a gorilla establishing his territory.

My wife, when she first met me, thought I was probably a rugby player, who drank white wine, and was very grown-up and together. She knows better now! 

We all judge people by how they look, and whether we like it or not people are going to assume things about us. Yet how often have you met somebody who turned out to be completely different to your first impressions?

At the same time, our outward appearance is often a reflection of what’s going on inside us. My tutors once told me a story of somebody who was enormously overweight, and didn’t wash, and that’s because she had suffered sexual abuse and didn’t want anybody getting close to her. Using myself as an example, I know I have a tendency to hunch, or stoop, and that’s because my height growing up – so I thought - kind of made me a target of bullies. I tried to make myself appear smaller, and less noticeable. 

I mean, it clearly didn’t work...! Now at least I'm aware of it, and do my best to work with it. 

TO BE CONTINUED...