Acting As-If

A lot of the work that I do is around learning to be/do in a new, different way.
Not so much “more/less of what I already do” but “different than what I already do”.

You’ve been speaking French all your life and now want to learn to speak German.
You’ve been playing tennis all your life and now want to learn to play rugby.
Intellectually logical has been your go-to relational skill and now you want to emotional rhumba.

Seems totally understandable.
For whatever reasons, you want to be/do in a different way.
Totally in line with Dojo’s main tenet, “Have the life you want to have.”

So, when you step into learning the new stuff, it’s new.
Well, duh.
I know, I know. Just hang with me a bit.

When people start into a new knowledge field, they know that they don’t know anything.
They know it’s not going to feel natural.
It’s not going to feel normal.
They are not going to know what to do.
That’s why they look outside themselves to see how to do it.

It doesn’t make any sense to look inside for your inner German-speaker, your inner rugby player, your inner emotional rhumba-er.
They don’t exist.
You do not have that specialized vocabulary nor that specialized skill set.

Makes sense, right?

Ok.

Now we’re going to put some more stuff into the mix.

Suppose that the stuff that you’re wanting to learn is not just a value-neutral “new area of knowledge”.

What happens to the internal dynamics if you are wanting to learn something that you have some “baggage” around?

What happens to the internal dynamics if you are wanting to learn something that you have been taught that is “bad”, “dangerous”, “going to get you into trouble” or “going to bring up not-so-nice memories”?

For example,

As a small child, I was taught that having or expressing or dancing with anything other than the most shallow of emotions was a very bad thing. I spent most of my young adulthood being either very unemotional or being unhinged emotionally, usually while altered, in one form or another.

When I got more into middle adulthood, I decided that I wanted a more full-spectrum relational experience. I decided that I wanted to become more fluent with human emotions, not only in terms of knowing what was happening with me emotionally, but how to be in relationship with others with emotions being part of the relational mix.

Understandable, eh?

Thought, “How hard can this be? I just have to be more aware of what emotions are coming up and weave them into the conversation. Sure, it might be uncomfortable but how hard can it be?”

Yeah, right.

Guess what happens if I put myself into a situation where any of the non-shallow emotions might come up?

My coping skills, believing that my childhood bad stuff might happen, blank me?
“Hey, Kraye. This attractive woman has just indicated that she finds you interesting and wants to know what you’re doing here. This would be a perfect place to work in something emotional.”
“Uh, yeah.”
“What’s the emotion?”
“There ain’t any emotions present, sir.” (yeah, it’s kinda a fucked up internal dialogue)
“An attractive woman is finding your interesting and wanting to engage in conversation and there are no emotions? Not even one?”
“Nothing, sir.”
“Well, look harder!”
“Looking harder at nothing is still going to result in nothing, sir.”
“ARRRRGGGGHHHHHHHH!!!!!”

My point is that if you are trying to gain vocabulary and skill sets that are in areas that your BOS believes to be dangerous, based on your history, chances are that you are going to be met with all kinds of blocks to keep you the fuck out of, what your BOS considers to be minefields.

The most common variety are:
Ain’t nothing happening, all is blank.
I don’t know what to do therefore I can do nothing.
Distractions.
Deflections.

I was lucky in that, in my exasperation, I went to (after many, many times of standing there like a non-emotional idiot), “Well, what kind of emotions would any normal, red-blooded hetero guy feel? Fake it until something actually happens.”

Acting as-if broke the headlock of blankness that the BOS had on me.

The only problem was that in breaking that headlock, or heartlock, what then came into my awareness were emotions and emotional meaning-making that seemed awfully young. Very embarrassing to have, “Shucks. I really like you” accompanied by the desire to look at the ground and draw arcs with the toe of my shoe, while blushing like a mad dog, coming up.

And it makes sense. I put that stuff away when I was a young’un. 

Still had to learn about what it was to be an adult with emotions and how to do emotional dances as an adult.

If you have never tried to appreciate the nuances of wine, of course you are not going to be able to do it the first time. You don’t even know what you’re looking for. You have to be willing to have an empty cup. You have to be willing to learn. You have to be willing to get it wrong.

If you are trying to explore a part of the human experience that you were taught to put away a long time ago, you are not going to know how to do it.

It is not going to feel natural.

The vocabulary is not going to spring into your consciousness fully-formed.

The skill sets are not going to magical appear, fully formed and operational.

It’s really, really, really going to help is you act “as-if”.

I will act as if I have emotions.
I will act as if I am vulnerable.
I will act as if I can act angry.
I will act as if I find men sexually attractive.
I will act as if I find women sexually attractive.
I will act as if I can be a bunny.
I will act as if I can be a bull.
I will act as if I want something from that person.
I will act as if my actions impact others.
Etc.

If I could demand anything of those who wanted to do more than dip their toes into Dojo, I would demand three things:
1. Do one year of volunteer hospice work.
2. Do one year of volunteer hospital work with children.
3. Do two years of method acting classes.

The first two are to create all manner of cracks in your primal character.
The third is to make it easier to act as-if.