I always make this terrible mistake of smiling when I am in group therapy and acting like I'm fine. For me, the now familiar setting of a Zoom meeting, filled with faces like postage stamps, puts me into that mindset that says, “Smile, be professional, and wear something nice.”
In professional settings, I am at least consistent with the first two.
When I am playing another one of these games, let’s call it ‘Hollywood Squares, Therapy Edition,’ I often say, “Listen, please, you have to trust me. I can be really awful.”
Awful can present itself a lot of ways for a borderline, but I like to think that one of the most common (and most annoying) manifestations is in THE LOOK.
What is THE LOOK? You might be thinking of the looks you got from Grandma when you started pecking at Thanksgiving dinner before the blessing. That is a kind of a look, and not a pleasant one at all. But that look is practically a twinkle of glowing admiration compared to the look that settles in when the anger of a borderline reaches critical mass.
And when it does that, THE LOOK, which I will call TL from this point forward, is the last thing that spectators see before the volcano blows.
(Author’s suggestion to the reader: Open up YouTube, search for Jimmy Buffet’s “Volcano,” and play it at a moderate volume as you read the rest of this entry. Seriously, do it.)
I did not know it at the time, but the first realization I had of this skill, this superpower known as TL, was when I took my son to the dentist a couple of years ago and found myself to be less than pleased with the behavior of the doctors and staff. I won’t go into too much detail on the specifics of the visit, as I only mean to say that it brought TL out of me, and ferociously so. At one point I remember the dentists looking at me in terror. Though I had zero intentions of making my grievances physical, the fear in their eyes gave me pause. As far as I knew, all I did was stand up and vocally demand that my child get the treatment he needs. On the other side of the room, they saw TL, hot and boiling, ready to send them straight to the burn unit. They were afraid, and the look on my face had much to do with it.
I often describe bouts of borderline rage as like trying to catch a train that is speeding away from you. It is going away at a brisk pace, so you think you might be able to catch it. You quickly run a few steps, but the last train car pulls away from you. The faster you run to try and grab on, the more momentum the car builds.
TL is what happens the second a borderline loses the train car and realizes that the car is, in fact lost. I like to think of it as a look that is so angry that it literally attempts to bend reality to the whims of the individual.
And in many ways, this is what borderline personality disorder really is: another way in which a human being might trade reality for maladaptive behaviors. So much of my anger, if not the whole of my anger, is rooted in some warped sense that the universe ought to apologize to me every once in awhile. Get me angry enough, and I will demand that reality bend. When those demands are running off of pure rage, good ‘ol TL comes out to play.
Sometimes TL feels like the only authentic expression I have, but I know that’s just the madness talking. Sometimes I think that if I feel angry then I ought to aim for a perfect expression of it as well. Why put on a show that doesn’t reflect the interior? I ask, often well before my mind has started thinking sensibly again. If I am going to be angry, I might as well look angry, and if I’m going to look angry, then I might was well go for the splash play and the two point conversion.
Makes total sense, right?
I have no problem smiling at a Zoom meeting when I am not feeling terrific. I know that work is work, and that group therapy is group therapy, and that there are rules and conventions and expectations and blah blah blah. There are certain ways that I should act, and certain ways I should not. I might need annual training to fit into a fancy dinner party but I can play by the rules. Just because I am a nut does not mean that I am not functional, or that I cannot adapt from one situation to the next.
Because of all this, I understand that many web conferences are not the place for everyone to look precisely how they feel. There are conventions, and people follow them. At the same time, I can’t help thinking about how the faces that I see in virtual settings, be they at therapy or on the job, are really only a slice of what’s going on with that person. I have worked with certain individuals long enough to know what their internet face is going to look like. After almost a decade of working in a remote setting,I can say this: the expressions that you see at a meeting are limited, and so much so that the video representations can create a lopsided picture.
The point? The internet person is NOT the person. There are more things behind the postage stamps. There are expressions out there, in the faces of the people you interact with everyday, that you have never seen yet.
And in many of this cases, if not most of them, you will never see those expressions. But they are there. Everyone shows up for work, and for play, and for this and that, always with a bag of masks and awareness to where the nearest dressing room is.
I am not proud of the way that TL makes me appear to others. I have been working in therapy to express the emotions in ways that do not make my eyeballs say, “I am angry, and you are in danger.” I am trying, I am trying, I promise.
We are much more than the people that we show each other, and I think we all know this. We all have parts of our characters that are under lockdown, in a single cell, emerging only at our discretion.
As my life seems to be sounding more and more like the slogans found on coffee mugs and refrigerator magnets, I’d like to cite one that always comes to mind: Everyone is fighting a battle you know nothing about.
When you see faces on the internet, pixelated and rearranged in front of you once again, giving you the high definition illusion of one human or another, or when you see faces in person, perhaps at work or at the park or the grocery store, remember that what you see is always (and for good reason) carefully controlled. You will see little in person and less on the internet. You will see the production that you were intended to see. We curate our looks before we open for business, and we use deliberate efforts to keep the unpleasantries under a shade.
Thanks for coming to my TEDTalk. If you ever see me in person or on the internet, just know that there’s more to me and sometimes it’s not nice at all. I hope that’s ok. If you’re not nice all the time, that’s ok too.
Nobody is playing for a perfect score anymore.
Yours Mentally,
Nathan
Thank you!
*This was powerful*