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Excerpt from Urban Primitive, by Raven Kaldera and Tannin Schwartzstein
"Meet your Monster
Making friends with one's own depths is an important thing. Everyone has monsters living inside us; it's part of being human. Some of those monsters are cruel, and some are pretty, and some are terrified and weak and sniveling. Some are versions of our frustrated inner two-year-old, who wants it all NOW; some were born from painful and traumatic experiences. Some of them are unsafe and can't be allowed to make physical decisions, and some are just mortifyingly embarrassing. We lock them in cages in our spychic basements, and ususally we pretend that they aren't there.
However, the longer they're kept in the dark and are never allowed to get their needs met, the more twisted they become, and the more they begin to plot sabotage of the rational minds above. We are confident that they are completely under control, perhaps even that they don't exist any more, and then suddenly we fall in love with someone totally inappropriate, or blow up at work, or develop ulcers or cancer, adn we can just barely hear their muffled "Ha! Gotcha!" from the basement.
After years of work with the Darkness Within and Without (and by dark we do not mean evil, just terrifying and mysterious), we've come to the conclusion that the best wy to deal with the denizens of your inner Underworld is by the following steps:
1. Accept that you have monsters, and that they will likely remain monsters, and try to scrape up some kind of affection for them. If they don't feel loved and cared about in spite of their grubbiness they get worse. Treat them with the respect due to wounded veterans suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder.
2. Show that affection by giving them little gifts. Obviously you can't give in to all their atrocious demands; you'd end up dead or in jail. But you can find small things to do that give them pleasure that don't harm others. We've found that monsters demand way too much when they think they aren't going to get anything, and when they start getting some attention they scale back their demands, (An example of this might be: If your monster is filled with rage, cast a circle in an empty backyard and smash a whole bunch of bottles. Please clean up after your monster, however.)
3. Build them a nice park to play in, inside yourself. Give them toys. Make sure there's a strong wall around the park, if need be, but make it pretty inside. Bring in friends for them to play with--perhaps other people's monsters, under carefully controlled and netogiated circumstances, And example of solo monster coddling might be putting up things your monster likes to look at on the walls, or dancing to music your monster likes. An example of mutual monster coddling might be role-playing your monsters together in an agreed-upon manner, or sharing a mutual but unusual hobby.
4. Don't try to force them to heal, or get better, or un-monster. That never works. It's the equivalent of beating an antry child to force them to be happy. Maybe they'll get better with lonts of unconditional love and attention, and myabe they won't. Either way, it's better than having them sawing holes in the floor beneath you."
Amen! says I. ^_^ Personally, I'm quite fond of my monsters. (Can't be a whole person if you're only willing to embrace half, y'know?) Naturally there are arguments (that's to be expected,) but on the whole my demons and I are a happily warped little family.
"Meet your Monster
Making friends with one's own depths is an important thing. Everyone has monsters living inside us; it's part of being human. Some of those monsters are cruel, and some are pretty, and some are terrified and weak and sniveling. Some are versions of our frustrated inner two-year-old, who wants it all NOW; some were born from painful and traumatic experiences. Some of them are unsafe and can't be allowed to make physical decisions, and some are just mortifyingly embarrassing. We lock them in cages in our spychic basements, and ususally we pretend that they aren't there.
However, the longer they're kept in the dark and are never allowed to get their needs met, the more twisted they become, and the more they begin to plot sabotage of the rational minds above. We are confident that they are completely under control, perhaps even that they don't exist any more, and then suddenly we fall in love with someone totally inappropriate, or blow up at work, or develop ulcers or cancer, adn we can just barely hear their muffled "Ha! Gotcha!" from the basement.
After years of work with the Darkness Within and Without (and by dark we do not mean evil, just terrifying and mysterious), we've come to the conclusion that the best wy to deal with the denizens of your inner Underworld is by the following steps:
1. Accept that you have monsters, and that they will likely remain monsters, and try to scrape up some kind of affection for them. If they don't feel loved and cared about in spite of their grubbiness they get worse. Treat them with the respect due to wounded veterans suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder.
2. Show that affection by giving them little gifts. Obviously you can't give in to all their atrocious demands; you'd end up dead or in jail. But you can find small things to do that give them pleasure that don't harm others. We've found that monsters demand way too much when they think they aren't going to get anything, and when they start getting some attention they scale back their demands, (An example of this might be: If your monster is filled with rage, cast a circle in an empty backyard and smash a whole bunch of bottles. Please clean up after your monster, however.)
3. Build them a nice park to play in, inside yourself. Give them toys. Make sure there's a strong wall around the park, if need be, but make it pretty inside. Bring in friends for them to play with--perhaps other people's monsters, under carefully controlled and netogiated circumstances, And example of solo monster coddling might be putting up things your monster likes to look at on the walls, or dancing to music your monster likes. An example of mutual monster coddling might be role-playing your monsters together in an agreed-upon manner, or sharing a mutual but unusual hobby.
4. Don't try to force them to heal, or get better, or un-monster. That never works. It's the equivalent of beating an antry child to force them to be happy. Maybe they'll get better with lonts of unconditional love and attention, and myabe they won't. Either way, it's better than having them sawing holes in the floor beneath you."
Amen! says I. ^_^ Personally, I'm quite fond of my monsters. (Can't be a whole person if you're only willing to embrace half, y'know?) Naturally there are arguments (that's to be expected,) but on the whole my demons and I are a happily warped little family.
