Both Warmth and Wildness are Important for Self-Care
Trying to make room for the vibrant self in a busy, goal-oriented life
I called my friend today and announced, "I think I have a psychological problem. I think I've developed admin-phobia!"
The reason I thought this was because I had a bit of unexpected admin this morning for which I felt a completely unreasonable amount of dread. The admin task would only take a few minutes. There was no immediate deadline. Yet the intensity of the sinking unbearableness I felt at the thought of addressing this trivial piece of admin was ludicrously out of proportion to how small the task was.
I'm not particularly claustrophobic, but I think the way I can feel about admin might be what claustrophobics might feel. In the grips of admin-phobia, the thought of doing even very trivial admin tasks can bring on a minor panic of intolerable constriction and suffocation. My mind is sent into a negative spiral of fear that life is an endless miserable slog. My reaction to admin at various times in my life can be so completely out of proportion to the reality at hand that it does seem like a phobia. The same way I have screamed in terror upon seeing a mouse or spider. However, unlike arachnophobia, admin-phobia is a serious life-impeding issue. As much as I’ve minimized admin to the bare minimum, there’s no getting around admin in modern life. The often-quoted phrase about death and taxes should be updated to, “Nothing certain in life but death, taxes, and admin.” Left untreated admin-phobia can be a serious problem.
I don’t always have admin-phobia. I have other states of mind and many periods of my life where I can get on with routine admin tasks like a normal adult person. I had a hypothesis for the root of my intense reaction to admin, which I flushed out further in my conversation with my friend. The diagnosis: My admin-phobia was actually a fear towards a part of myself.
There's a part of me that is extremely goal-oriented and obsessed with getting things done and off my plate. Any time for non-goal-oriented pleasure and play can easily be crushed by the progress-obsessed military sergeant inside me that can take over my psyche. This is a problem because when I haven't given myself enough time for open-ended creative exploration, I start feeling quite brittle inside. Life starts feeling like a meaningless march through linear tasks that deplete my will to live. And yes I can cite the influences of immigrant parents who are obsessed with safety and security as well as living in a goal and achievement-oriented society. But I'm an adult, living with perhaps as much freedom and privilege as there ever has been available to an individual in the history of humankind. There is absolutely no reason why I can't find more balance within myself. The fact that I have a military part that takes over my inner world is something I take full responsibility for.
One of my favourite psychological frameworks for finding inner balance and harmony is Internal Family Systems Therapy (IFS), which is also used for coaching. IFS is a variant in a long line of psychotherapeutic methods known as "parts work", which recognizes that each person has multiple internal parts that specialize in particular areas of concern. These parts can have conflicting needs, desires, and emotions. Sometimes parts of ourselves can adopt a "neurotic" attitude, often due to fears, voices from past authority figures, and less-than-ideal coping mechanisms that we learned when we were younger and didn't have the full psychological resourcefulness of our adult selves.
These “parts work” based psychological frameworks help us gain greater self-awareness and develop more effective strategies for managing the emotions and behaviors that arise from these different parts of ourselves. IFS adopts a particularly compassionate approach to parts work and encourages us to thank these parts of ourselves for trying to look out for us. In IFS, these neurotic parts of ourselves have good intentions, even when they are using unhelpful, outdated strategies to address their areas of concern. The IFS approach to self-talk is grounded in the practice of self-compassion. Thanks to the seminal work of Dr. Kristen Neff, there are now hundreds of research publications showing the importance and effectiveness of self-compassion for supporting resilience and wellbeing.
(As an interesting side note, I learned on this episode of Peter Attia’s podcast with Dr. Neff that her research partly was inspired by the IFS therapy she was having at the time.)
IFS encourages compassionate self-talk by having us access the voice and perspectives of our "wise self", which can listen with care and wisdom to the concerns of the more neurotic parts of ourselves. Under the IFS approach, the neurotic parts of ourselves mean well. They are looking out for us, but using outdated tactics that we may have learned when we were young and more helpless. The idea is that the "wise self" that we all have within ourselves has the capacity to re-parent the other younger and more neurotic parts of ourselves with a reassuring wise voice. Our wise self can engage in compassionate self-talk with our neurotic parts by saying things such as, "I hear that you are worried about X. Thank you for wanting to help me. You come from a beautiful place. I promise you I'll look out for us."
When our neurotic parts feel heard and reassured that their concerns will be taken care of by our wise adult selves, they feel safe. The neurotic parts can then relax their over-zealous neurotic responses. Of course, there is no magic pill for psychological work. It will always take effort and time, especially for more deeply entrenched issues. However, I have found for me and others that I know, IFS is a particularly effective way to move through unhelpful psychological responses we may have. For anyone who would like to learn more about IFS, an explanation I particularly like is by Dr. Tori Olds on Youtube.
When I first learned about IFS I was greatly inspired by the creative potential it had. I loved the idea of illustrating the imaginary characters in my head. This is the image I had made of my Military Part. (No I did not use AI)
The skin for my military part is a map and the eyes are compasses to represent her obsession with getting somewhere. Embedded in the patterns on her clothes and cap are self-care figures to represent that the Military Part is trying to take care of me, even if it can be excessive and block out my need for pleasure and play. This is the poem I wrote to accompany it:
Military Part Poem I just need to know I have a path to go That has a guarantee Of security The points I need to gain To keep me safe from pain The need to stay alive Requires me to strive Even in times of rest Unease is in my chest More stuff to be done Battles to be won Life is just this tough I'll never have enough To let myself be free Of necessity Of always being led By trying to get ahead
I realized that my extreme reaction to admin really was an indicator of my fear of my Military Part taking over. What also came out in the conversation is that there were two of my needs that overactivity of my Military Part can cause me to neglect. First is my need for warmth and rest, and the second is my need for exploration and adventure. It is actually the second of these needs that I am not as good at ensuring that I meet for myself.
I'm aware of my need for warmth, emotional support, and compassionate self-talk. However, I'm less familiar with my needs for novelty, exploration and adventure. This is because, for me, I don't necessarily enjoy activities more commonly associated with the words "exploration" and "adventure". I don't really want to climb mountains, go river rafting, and don't even much enjoy travelling. It's only recently that I learned that for me, exploration and adventure are more about exploring art, aesthetics, and new ideas about psychology, rather than external places and activities. Because my preferred ways of adventuring do not appear adventurous from the outside, it is only recently that I became aware of my version of the need for “adventure”, i.e., exploration and novelty. My relationship with the "wild, adventure-seeking" part of myself is quite nascent, and easily extinguished by concerns of practicality and getting things done. There are many words people use for this side of themselves. Sometimes we hear it called the “explorer”, the “free spirit”, the “creative self”. But essentially it’s being connected to our sense of aliveness, being in tune with what brings out our vitality and what allows us to feel awake to possibilities.
A fantastic book on this topic is The Lion Tracker's Guide to Life written by Boyd Varty, who calls this the “wild self”. Here is a wonderful quote about the "wild self" from the book:
"The wild self, the part that is in touch with instinct and needs and purpose, the part that can feel shades of emotion and is natural, is like that. It must be awakened, followed, listened for—tracked. --Boyd Varty
Re-reading favorite quotes from this book helped me understand why my admin-phobia developed. Admin is the utter antithesis of wildness. My admin-phobia is a symptom that I don't have enough trust in my ability to connect to what helped me feel alive, awake, and inspired, my inner wildness. As per the framework of IFS and the idea of having different parts of self with conflicting aims, I realize I have another part of myself that is playing a role in my admin-phobia drama: my Wild Part. My Wild Part wants to be awake, to feel the joy of unknown adventure, and have the moments of creative exploration that make life worth living. (I haven’t illustrated her yet but writing this makes me think that I should). When my Military Part takes over too much of me, my Wild Part starts having a panic that she will be extinguished entirely, thus creating the experience of admin-phobia.
In-line with self-compassion and IFS practice, I addressed the underlying cause of my admin-phobia with the following self-compassionate conversations with my Military and Wild Parts.
What I said to my Military Part and Wild Part this morning:
Dear Military Part,
Thank you for looking out for my needs of security and sense of progress. I know you want the best for me. I promise I’m very responsible and will make sure I can handle the practicalities of life.
Dear Wild Part,
I promise I'll value you. I will reassure the Military Part so she doesn't get anxious and take over. I promise I'll prioritize making room for us to find the frame of mind where we feel free and where life feels open, expansive, and beautiful.
This has helped me feel much better! Are you needing more warmth, or more wildness, or both?