I Am the Boiled Frog

 

Hello, Invisible Audience.

 

I have some good news! I’m feeling better!

 

This is a BIG deal…not just because I feel better, but because feeling better has made realize just how absolutely shitty I felt before, and how low my quality of life had dropped.

 

Do you know about boiling a frog, Invisible Audience? They say you can put a frog in a pot of cold water and turn the heat on and it won’t jump out. By the time it notices the water is getting hot, it’s too late.

 

I’m the frog, Invisible Audience.

 

Yes, I knew I didn’t feel well. But I wasn’t totally aware of the extent of it. Instead, I internalized all my symptoms into ways that I was just a shitty, lazy human being. I convinced myself that I couldn’t concentrate because I hadn’t found the right life hack yet to convince me to sit down and work instead of being unable to concentrate after 20 minutes. I blamed my diet when the truth is I have a better one than most people I know; over the last 10 years, I’ve been on more detox diets and cut out more foods than is reasonable. I kept telling myself that if I could just figure out how to stop self-sabotaging, I’d be able to get more done.

 

ALL OF THAT WAS BULLSHIT, INVISIBLE AUDIENCE. I WAS JUST FUCKING SICK. END OF STORY.

 

Before I could get to the point where I started looking outside myself for an answer, I had to get angry with the various cultural narratives that I’ve ingested over the years. I had to start listening to myself even more than I had, and to stop filtering the results through a gauze of “it’s all your fault.”

 

I imagine that I hear you whispering to yourself, Invisible Audience. Of course, you’re saying in my head. Of course it wasn’t you, you poor thing. How could you think it was?

 

Have we talked about attachment theory? I can’t remember. Well anyway, I just started reading a book about attachment theory, although I was already very familiar with the theory itself. Basically, the theory is that whether or not any of us were able to emotionally attach to a nurturing figure in childhood makes a huge difference in how well we function as adults. Although the book I’m reading talks about attachment theory as it pertains to healthy relationships, there was a line that made a huge impact on me when I read it. I don’t have it in front of me, so I’m going to have to paraphrase it here: if a parental figure is not emotionally available, makes you feel secure, and validates your feelings, emotions and perceptions, you end up questioning your experiences and have little confidence in what you perceive as an adult.

 

There it is, Invisible Audience. That’s why I am a boiled frog.

 

It explains why I find it so hard to believe myself, in things as small as whether I think my room is too warm to big things like saying no to people who treat me badly. It explains why I find it hard to let go of unhealthy relationships and why I will wait until I’m falling over from exhaustion before I will finally let go of whatever it was I was trying to do—whatever it was that felt absolutely essential to get done, because someone else thought I should do it.

 

Attachment theory is mostly about forming relationships, and explains a lot about why it’s harder for some people than others. In this specific book, it has cast light on my tendencies to be very content to be on my own, and also why I turn into a needy, sniveling wreck in a relationship. It explains why I find it so hard to trust myself, and why the first place I go is to, “Gee, I must have done something wrong here.”

 

There’s this book series I’m reading for the second time—it’s also a TV series on Amazon Prime called The Expanse. In it, there’s a man (Amos) who had a beyond shitty childhood and who is basically a psychopath with very little idea of how to function correctly in the world because of the way he had to survive as a child. To rectify this, he attaches himself to people who are moral and have integrity. When he’s in situations where he’d resort to violence, he thinks about what these people would do and how they would react. Basically, he’s outsourced his moral compass because he doesn’t have one.

 

I’ve waited too long to do this for myself, Invisible Audience. In my case, it’s not about not having a moral compass, or about asking someone else to reflect back to me when it looks like the water around me is starting to boil. Because I’m so in tune with others, it’s about treating myself as a separate person and looking at my life with more objectivity. If someone else told me they could only concentrate for 20 minutes at a time, couldn’t sleep, and was constantly exhausted, would I tell them that maybe they should do more yoga? No I would not. If they asked, I would tell them that it sounded like something bigger was going on. I would tell them that what they described was not normal. I would offer to do anything I could to help them, and that wouldn’t include reading life hacking books on how to be more productive. It would probably include making them a meal and offering to go grocery shopping for them.

 

So here I am, the boiled frog trying to remind myself that there’s a different way to do this; that I can trust what I’m seeing. That it’s ok to not be ok, and it’s ok to check in with myself and what I feel up for before saying yes to anyone else.

 

Love and frog leg kisses,

Morgan  

 

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