Narrative Responsibility

The Female Body As Object

CW: language, eating disorders, body dysmorphia, and unwanted sexual attention. Western culture has a terrible history of treating the female body as an object that exists for the pleasure - or displeasure - of everyone except the girl or woman who inhabits it. Her body is a safe place for her to inhabit only so far as it earns her safety and approval from the people and society around her. So splitting her sense of self off from her body makes sense. Her body becomes an object to her, too, and not one she is incentivized to treat as inherently worthwhile or precious. 

Subjugating the Body

We do not exist as islands unto ourselves. We are plugged into cultural systems of belief and behavior, and those systems deeply impact our relationship to ourselves and what we internalize as normal or ideal. Moreover, those systems are often inherited from times that have little or no relevance to our modern perspective, yet the echoes of their beliefs linger in our institutions and language. This episode explores the link between the time that built our modern institutions and how we relate to our bodies in the present time.

Movement, Not Exercise

Geting more movement getting more into your body is often pushed as a panacea to many health and mental health issues. But exercising in a way that makes your body uncomfortable or even distressed has the opposite effect from what is intended, and drives you further OUT of your body and out of alignment with your inner truth. Luckily, you can change your underlying philosophy around movement and activity to get a better result - at least in terms of integration between your two selves!

Your Discomfort Zone

Ever heard the phrase "get out of your comfort zone" and just felt something in you just tense up with rejection at the thought of doing even more than you already are? Maybe your discomfort zone isn't about doing more, but rather about doing less. Let's examine what conditions inside the environment of your own body that you've normalized, and see if they are, in fact, optimal conditions for growth. 

Our Two Selves

If we're gonna talk about letting go of copes, we gotta talk about why we were doing them in the first place. Which means looking at the schism between our "self that acts" - our conscious, egoic self - and our "self that is," the gentle body self that has to come along for the ride with whatever our action-self chooses. The body: your original ride or die. Who knew?

Sober Curious

When was the last time you critically examined your relationship with alcohol - or any other substance - and considered sobriety? Pull up a chair for storytime as I walk you through my journey of being sober-curious for most of the past two years. I share what I've observed in myself and American culture, what I've learned helps to reinforce the decision to abstain, and what I've decided about alcohol's place in my toolbox of coping mechanisms. 

Breaking the Habit of Comfort Eating

Part two on the topic of comfort eating, or emotional eating. This is the section with practical action steps for using the coping mechanism of comfort eating in a way that serves you better, finding other tools that you can use instead, and some of the specific dynamics you can watch for in your own body if you're still not convinced comfort eating is a problem. 

On Comfort Eating

Comfort eating - or emotional eating - is a means of soothing ourselves in times of distress. But it can quickly turn into a habit, or even an addiction, that wreaks havoc on our physical health long-term. How does it get started? Why does it persist? And, really, what IS so bad about it? This is part one of a two-episode arc on this issue!

Talent Vs. Skill

My most controversial opinion: talent does not actually exist. What we call "talent" is higher than expected skill development at a task or higher than average capacity for an underlying cognitive function. This is a distinction worth making when our cultural narratives of talent as innate and fixed can inspire or deter someone from pursuing a goal.

No Experience Is Ever Wasted

Every experience that we have can be judged as good/bad, worthy/unworthy of the coin of time we spent on it...or it can be viewed more neutrally, simply as a resource. A resource for what? Skill-building, discernment, wisdom, character.... We can even think in terms of our RPG character levels, and consider what experience points we might be able to gain from something we lived through. Let's talk about what we can do with what the DM of our life - whether our past self or the universe - gives us to work with!