Clint & Little John

A very powerful skill I developed during treatment was the ability to parent myself when I most needed to. Most adults have difficulty connecting to their inner kid. They find it difficult to really let themselves go, to release their inhibitions, to give that kid space in their life, and to allow that kid to come out and play. That is not my challenge. I'm very connected to my inner kid. He's alive and well, shows up all over my life, and contributes a lot to my personality. 

 One of the ways I define a person who is whole is that they have a balance between the elements of themselves that are childlike and the elements of themselves that are adult. When I am at my best, when I am most fully alive, when I am living my life at maximum throttle, I achieve harmony between my inner child and my adult, my Man. When I'm in balance, both are present simultaneously; both show up powerfully; both provide valuable contributions to who I am. They compliment each other perfectly.

In my last intimate relationship, my love paid me a beautiful compliment when she told me how much of a man I was. I could also be the boy with her. What she was able to do was help bring out the best in me. She made it easy for me to be my full self, or at least the fullest self I was capable of then; that's what people who truly love us usually do. Being madly in love with the woman I wanted to share the rest of my life with, my Man knew he had to show up, and he wanted to show up. I wanted to be there for her. I wanted to be there for myself. And, she brought out my kid as well. I was incredibly silly and playful and childlike with her too. Again, I brought a fuller self. I know I did the same for her. I brought out her Goddess and her little girl. That was part of the magic between us.

Notice I didn't say "Flawless Self". I was far from perfect. I fucked up plenty. But I was more balanced. More whole. More fully Me. The Kid and the Man both showed up, simultaneously, powerfully. And the Man could usually parent that kid, if need be, when I was with her. It's when I wasn't with her, when I was alone and left to my own devices, that I got myself into trouble being unbalanced. At that period of my life, when I wasn't with her, my kid ran the show far too often.

My Man didn't know a lot about parenting my inner kid when that kid was suffering. Whenever this kid was in a lot of pain, I was in a lot of pain. I had trouble separating myself from the kid when the kid was in real agony. That's when My Man would often disappear. In treatment, I learned, literally, to bring my Man, my adult self, into the conversation and talk to this inner child when my inner child acted up, when he was in pain, when he was afraid, when he didn't want to do something he needed to. My parents, god bless them, weren't very good at that, so I had no role model on how to parent myself when things got really difficult or really painful. I had to create that parent from scratch, with the help of a very skilled therapist. 

The crazy thing was, when I dug deep, my Man knew exactly how to talk to this kid. I knew what to say and how to say it. Because I knew this kid so well, loved him so much, and knew he needed my Man. And because the Man in me was there and well developed (my ex-love saw that, everyone in treatment saw that, and so have lots of other people in my life). My man could show up for other people, especially when they were in pain and needed a strong, loving presence. It was myself I had trouble showing up for. I needed lots of help accessing that Man at some of the times when I needed him most. Like when my kid was suffering. Like when my kid was trying to run the show. And like when I was depressed.

One of the biggest "Aha!" Moments whilst in treatment (one of biggest "Aha!" Moments of my life, actually) was the realization that the constant negative self talk within my own head wasn't my adult talking. It was my kid. For all these years, when I would hear that voice, I had assumed it was my present self. It isn't. I started telling myself I was no good pretty young. I've often said I'm a much happier adult than I ever was as a kid. That kid was afraid, lonely, didn't like himself, felt unloved, unworthy, and unacceptable. That voice stayed with me. That voice was always in my head; sometimes just as background noise, like a tape loop you can't turn off, even when I felt good and things were going well. And sometimes, that voice was as loud as fuck, all I could hear, and drowned everything else out. When I learned that that was my kid, I found a way to talk to that voice, to that kid, as a Man. As a parent. The more I did it, the better I got at it. It's another practice I will continue for the rest of my life. 

I got an assignment to write a letter to my inner child. I called this child "Little John". A perk of changing your name when you get older is that, when you talk to your inner child, you can refer to him as your former name. It actually helped me separate the kid from the adult in me, which, could be challenging when both share such a strong presence within me. I wrote this letter to "Little John" as Clint; as his parent; as the Man I am today. 

When I got the assignment, I let the idea percolate and marinate inside me for a few days before actually writing it. WhenI did sit down to do it, it was like magic. The words pored out of me. It felt as though I was a channel. It took me under two hours to write, and it was over eight long legal pages long. And once I started writing, I didn't stop until I was done. No editing. No rewording. I did it long hand because I had forsaken all electronics during treatment. 

Writing that letter was truly transformative. When I read it to my group, the experience was profound. My therapist called it "A Masterpiece".

I'll be sharing direct excerpts from that letter in upcoming posts. 

©2017 Clint Piatelli, MuscleHeart LLC, and Red F Publishing. All Rights Reserved. 

Body Addiction (part 1)

Over-Identification with anything in our life, be it our job, our looks, our mind, our status, our.........pick your poison.....is a prescription for suffering. For years, I over-identified with my body and my looks as a big source of my self-esteem, my masculinity, my confidence, and my MoJo. I was aware I was doing it, but I couldn't stop. It was, in every sense of the word, an addiction.

Hanging my hat on how I looked grew from being a fat kid, being teased for it, and having to buy special pants ("Huskies", a great marketing name for kids with expanding waistlines). At an early age, I developed a poor body image. I wasn't a fat kid for very long, between about the ages of eight and twelve. Unfortunately, those are probably the absolute worst years to pack on pounds, for a number of reasons. 

First of all, it's around then that the opposite sex stops becoming the enemy. Actually, I developed crushes on girls from as early as I can remember. I had the hots for my second grade teacher, Ms. Lindsey, Big Time. One of my babysitters, when I was about seven or eight, had the pleasure of having her long ponytail stroked by me whenever she would let me. She even let me tie her up in her bikini on the beach, and I wouldn't let her go until she promised my twin brother and I ice cream (I was a naughty, kinky outlaw from jump street).

Biologically, it's also at around that age that we gain more access to our pre-frontal cortex (the "upstairs brain") which is the part of the brain that does the thinking, is logical, and sees the world more for how it is. Although we have more access to it, the pre-frontal cortex is still very immature, and it starts making connections between itself and the lymbic system (the "downstairs brain", or the emotional center) that are't real. Like "I'm fat, it doesn't feel good, I must be defective". These neural pathways are very strong, and it takes a lot of work redirecting them when we get older. But if you put the time and effort in, it gets done. Meditation, Somatic Experiencing, EMDR, and a host of other techniques are making it possible to get to the root of the trauma and create new neural pathways; to basically re-wire our brain.

The bad timing double whammy regarding biological brain developmental and the shifting sands of social engagement meant that for me to get fat at that age had the potential to cause the most damage to my fragile ten year old ego. And it did. The scars of being a fat kid have stayed with me all through adulthood.

There are gifts in that wound, however. It motivated me to change my body once I learned how. It gave me the discipline and the motivation to work hard and persistently to get and stay in great shape; to have a physique that looks better than most men half my age. I doubt this would be the case if it wasn't for the pain I felt being a fat kid and never wanting to feel that pain again.

When I entered into treatment, I didn't look very good. I was thin, twenty pounds lighter than where I looked and felt best. I looked drawn, having lost a lot of muscle and too much weight in my face. For a man who could be guilty of hanging his hat on how he looked to define his sense of self, my coatrack had completely disappeared. I wasn't fat, but I certainly didn't like how I looked.

This was a blessing. No, I didn't like how I looked. I saw that fact in the mirror every morning. But I was so ready for something new; I knew that way of over-defining myself just did not work anymore. Before I even entered treatment, something in me knew I could not keep doing it that way. Something in me knew that I was slowly killing myself, and this fixation, this addiction, to how I looked had something to do with that.

The universe had severely limited my options. I couldn't go to my body or my looks to bolster my self esteem. I couldn't use substances to run away from the pain. I couldn't turn to an intimate relationship to get a sense that I'm indeed worthy of love. All I had was relatively emaciated me. 

But, as I soon found out, that was more than enough.

Join me for part two.

©2107 Clint Piatelli, MuscleHeart LLC, and Red F Publishing. All rights reserved.

Gone In Sixty Seconds

       There’s this fear I have. It’s one of those ridiculously unreal fears, the kind that are completely irrational; like the adult equivalent of the Boogie Man. Unlike, say a fear of flying, where the possibility of death may be very remote but statistically possible, my phobia is not based on anything except some deep seeded dysfunctional neural programming.
       I work hard at keeping myself fit. Lots of sacrifice and discipline involved. Hours of exercise. Constant vigilance regarding diet and nutrition. In other words, it doesn’t happen overnight. Yet my fear is that, if I miss just a few days, or if I’m not constantly on top of it, one morning, I am going to wake up, and, literally, it’s all gonna be gone. Overnight, my body will have morphed into something soft and unhealthy and unrecognizable.
       Now, I’m aware of the reality that, if I had an accident, in one moment, my body could be permanently transformed. I’m not talking about that kind of fear. I’m not talking about the fear of having something instantaneous and horrific happen to me so that I would be mutilated or paralyzed. I’m talking about the kind of completely impossible notion that I’m going to have a lapse of proper eating or of working out, and, all of sudden, I’m going to look like Fred Flintstone because of it.
       My rational brain knows this is not remotely possible. But this fear does not reside in my rational brain. It resides in that part of me that has been traumatized and not completely let go of the trauma. We all have areas in ourselves like that. Some of us, more so than others, and more intensely. But we’ve all got that shit floating around within.
       Because I’ve gone inside and gotten to know myself better, even the parts that are sort of fucked up, less than stellar, flawed, and completely insane, I know what this particular fear says about me, and I know where it comes from. I know that this kind of fear points to something bigger and deeper. They always do. That’s the nature of really bizarre fears like this. They’re signposts to parts of ourselves that are still holding onto trauma and pain and constantly reliving it. It’s where these certain parts of ourselves hang out. The question becomes how often do we hang out there with them. And what do we do about that when we do, because spending too much time there can really interfere with our lives.
       This particular fear of mine has to do with a kind of emotional volatility that I grew up with, and with abandonment; shit that I experienced as a kid, in enough doses and/or with enough intensity, that they left marks. They left scars. As I’ve said, we all have scars. Both inside and out. But do I let my scars define me? If, for example, I had a big scar on my body, would I let it define my physical appearance? Would I experience myself as a scar with a body around it, or would I experience myself as a body with a scar on it?
       It’s the same thing with internal scars. There are times when I over-identify with those scars. When I do, I’m coming from fear. I’m coming from inadequacy. I’m coming from pain. From a place where I’m not operating on all cylinders. How quickly do I catch myself when I’m there, and how do I get out of it? Sometimes I’m very good at that. Sometimes I'm not.
       Support networks are very important. If we have people in our lives who know these dark places in us, we can look to them to help dig us out of those trenches. One of the worst aspects of being in a place like that is the loneliness and isolation we feel. We feel like, not only are we the only fucked up person on the planet, but that we are the most fucked up person on the planet. At least that’s where I go when it’s really bad. And let me tell you, it's a shitty place to be.
       But I have people in my life I can turn to when I’m there. But I don’t always do that. I don’t always reach out. Sometimes I keep it all inside, mind fuck it to death, and make it worse. Why the fuck would I do something like that? Part of it is shame. I’ve attached a lot of shame to feeling like that, so the last thing I want to do is cop to it, even to somebody I love, somebody who I know isn’t going to judge me. I have to be on top of that. Keeping all that shit inside is an old habit, and a bad one.
       Writing about it, and posting it for anybody on the planet to see, really helps me though. It doesn’t feel so bad, or so heavy, when I share it. Posting is one way I share. Talking to people close to me is another way. I encourage you to find your ways. There’s a saying that goes “Your mind can be like a bad neighborhood. Don’t go there alone.”.
       Right On.


©2015 Clint Piatelli, MuscleHeart LLC, and Red F Publishing. All rights reserved. 

Desert Magic

       From watching too many Clint Eastwood westerns on television throughout my formative years, I romanticized the desert. The mythical magic of The Mojave was real to me, even though I had never stepped foot there. I could feel it. Even through a TV screen.
       When I’m experiencing any form of art or entertainment, be it a book, a movie, a piece of music, or a painting, I have the ability to completely immerse myself within it. Some call it “getting lost”. I call it “becoming part of”. What I actually lose touch with is all other external reality. Whatever else is happening around me suddenly feels almost extemporaneous. My whole world becomes that song, or that movie, or that whatever.
       It’s an outgrowth of constant fantasizing as a kid: my coping mechanism of choice when things got too uncomfortable, or too heavy, or too fuckin‘ traumatic for me. Which was, apparently, fairly often. My creativity and imagination developed a Warp Drive, and I used it. I was able to instantly leave wherever I was and go someplace else. And if there was already a place to go, like a song or a television show, well sometimes that became my destination. At that point, I wasn’t in my body anymore; I was in the car with Fred Flintstone.
       In 2003, driving from Los Angeles to Phoenix, I had an opportunity to see Joshua Tree National Park, which is in The Mojave Desert. The night sky in the Mojave, far from the light pollution of populated areas, is pitch black and spectacularly full of stars. Being an astronomy fiend, I just had to do some star gazing in that environment. And catching the sunrise at Keyes View, also in Joshua Tree, was on my bucket list.
       I wanted to spend the night in the park, in the desert, under a blanket of thousands of stars. Not in a motel room. The problem was, it was November, and the desert can get bloody cold at night that time of year. According to park services, the lows that night were expected to dip into the high thirties. I had no tent, no sleeping bag, no blankets, no pillows. I didn’t even have a jacket. But I did have a car. And some clothes. That would have to do.
       So I threw on as many layers as I had with me, spent as much time as I could outside looking at the stars, and then found a place to park. Putting the driver’s seat all the way back, I did my best to fall asleep. Throughout the night, I would wake up every half hour or so, because I was freezing, start the car, crank the heat, and bring the temperature up enough so I could fall back asleep. This went on all night, until about two hours before sunrise, when I made my way to Keyes View. I was the only one there. That’s where this picture was taken.
       It was worth it. Like I said. Desert Magic.


©2013 Clint Piatelli, MuscleHeart, and Red F Publishing. All rights reserved.

As A Girl

       At dinner the other night, there was a family of four at the table next to me. An adorable little Asian girl was completely absorbed in her coloring book, barely paying attention to her parents as they asked her what she wanted for dinner. She answered them without even looking up.
       Something about that scene struck me. The parents weren’t freaking out that their daughter wasn’t giving them her undivided attention. They seemed to get that she was involved in something very important to her at the moment, and the decision about what to eat could be handled without fanfare. There was an ease and a calm between all of them, and a respect for where the little girl was at. Everybody, it appeared, was, at the moment, getting just what they needed.
       That touched me. And it sparked some sort of internal astral projection of all the women I’ve been intimate with that didn’t get what they needed growing up, and how that showed up in our relationship. In a flash, all I could see were the faces of some of the women I’ve loved. Women who, when I looked into their eyes, I could see and feel the little scars of pain and longing and sadness that were left over from childhood.
       We all carry those scars. Some of us are just better at hiding them. And some of us are better at seeing them, no matter how hard people try to hide them.
       Then I had this fantasy; that I could go back in time, to when these women I loved were little girls. And, as an adult, I would just shower them with love, and attention, and joy, and support, and mirror for them whatever they needed. I would be the adult who didn’t leave any scars.
       As adults, we have the opportunity to heal these scars through our intimate relationships. That healing takes a certain commitment, a certain attitude, an openness, and a certain enlightenment protocol that’s somewhat outside the norm of, say, traditional love relationships. It takes a desire to explore and dig and grow and do things a little different.
       I can’t go back in time. But I can be a better man today. In doing that, I heal myself. And I serve in the healing of the woman I love.
    

I wish I knew you
When you were just a little girl
Before I knew you as the woman
Who’s toes I would curl

If I knew you then
I would give to you all you didn’t get
From the adults in your life
All those needs that did not get met

Loving you now
I saw inside
I looked
I found
I loved
What you could not hide


©2013 Clint Piatelli, MuscleHeart, and Red F Publishing. All rights reserved.