Epic Fail
Firefighter and exile discuss an unfortunate recurrence of the dreaded fruit festival
Exile and Firefighter face up to the fruit festival
Glass caterpillar (exile): Well, Sharky, Dr. Hua got us.
Sharky (firefighter): Darn it all. Pure and total failure. Epic, extreme, FAIL.
Glass caterpillar (GC): Well, I love you Sharky. I’m sorry Dr. Hua didn’t understand us.
Sharky (firefighter): It’s nice to be loved even when you fail, that’s for sure. I’m FACE PALMING myself. I TOLD him I CAN’T EAT JUST ONE “SERVING” of watermelon. I told him this. I keep telling him this. In fact, I said: “Telling me to eat watermelon is like telling an alcoholic to drink.” He laughed. Which I understand — he’s a very upbeat, positive human. But he does NOT understand our problem.
GC: Oh my. What big round belly we have now. How much watermelon did we eat?
Sharky: I will not tell a lie. Approximately 4.5 pounds of pre-cut organic watermelon.
Glass caterpillar (exile): It’s a fact. Because the little plastic containers have the weights on them.
Luckily no managers are criticizing anyone
Sharky (firefighter): One good thing about us, is we don’t get any manager criticism if we fall into a watermelon eating festival like we just did. I mean, listen to the total absence of criticism coming from them! Crickets.
Glass caterpillar (exile): In a way, it’s spooky.
Sharky (firefighter): What do you mean? (laughing)
Glass caterpillar (exile): We’re left to our own devices! Green’s not going to cajole, criticize or mess with us. We gotta figure this out ourselves, Sharky.
Exile and firefighter start getting motivated to understand what happened
Sharky (firefighter): Hmmmm. What can we do?
Glass caterpillar (exile): We did so well last week. Why did we fail this week, but not last week?
Sharky (firefighter): Oh god, now comes the ugh. I kinda don’t want to know.
Glass caterpillar (GC): We can do it, Sharky!
Sharky: Last week, he said I should eat watermelon, because in Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) it’s THE THING for our constitutional problems. But I KNOW I can’t eat watermelon because I’m a sugar addict, and there’s NO WAY I can EITHER BUY or EAT only “one” serving of watermelon. Once the floodgates open, goodbye sanity! Goodbye, balance! Out comes the kraken! Addiction is hard, let’s go to the mall!
GC: Ha, Sharky. I’m sorry about our addiction problems.
Sharky: You and me both. Can’t I get a break? We were doing so well. It just needs to be ILLEGAL for us to step foot in a grocery store. We can’t be trusted. Thank god for Instacart. Pro tip for sugar addicts: never step foot in a grocery store again, buy everything on Instacart. That’s what we usually do and it works wonders. All the money we spend on deliveries we save on watermelon festivals.
GC: Seriously, Sharky, if we just made it a rule we’re not allowed to go to the grocery store, I think we could avoid this in the future a lot better.
Sharky: I’m not joking around here! You think I like having 4.5 lbs of watermelon in my estomache, as you say?
GC: It’s not the most comfortable. Got a slight sugar buzz going too.
Sharky: Jesus Christ. HOW DID THIS HAPPEN!!!
GC: That’s what we’re trying to find out!! We can do it, Sharky.
Sharky: You do it. I’ll go shopping.
Firefighter frustration with endless addictive behavior
GC: Ha ha. Sharky, help me out here. Seriously. Let’s get to the bottom of this with our nice, friendly IFS curiosity.
Sharky: I have nice, friendly furiosity about Dr. Hua leading me into temptation. That guy!! God damn it! He just does NOT understand. I have an impairment of judgement, or regulation, or executive functioning, I’m damaged. How fun is it to be damaged! Not fun, dude!
GC (exile): I’m really sorry, Sharky.
Sharky: Do you think, seriously, that I enjoyed being a cookie monster, or a cupcake scarfer, or a binge-eater, or any of the crap I had to perpetrate AGAINST OURSELVES in the past? No I did not like it. I can PRETEND I like it, and be a jackass firefighter and be all diffident and “I’m good, it’s fun, Waaaah!” but underneath, I am a sensitive soul. I am sensitive person! I hate being stereotyped as a jackass firefighter, and I hate BEING a jackass firefighter, and I feel like I was recruited by the dark forces to an atavistic behavior that I WANT TO LEAVE BEHIND. I do not WANT to eat 4.5 lbs of watermelon at a time. I do not WANT to be unable to stop putting fruit into my body past a reasonable quantity. But I can’t stop. So, suck this! I fucking hate it! I’m pretty pissed, I’m not delighted. I want answers, and I want solutions, and I WILL work on this with you, fuck it all GC. Let’s do this!
GC: Let’s do this!
Firefighter frustration engenders motivation to understand what happened
Sharky: Well, when our digestion is terrible we start to get worried. We were worried today, whereas last week it wasn’t as terrible. It’s probably only terrible because of all the stress of the betrayal we’ve been dealing with. Last week the stress hadn’t been going on for so long.
GC: Yeah, so our digestion being bad made us want to listen to Dr. Hua and do what he told us, even though we KNOW we can’t eat watermelon.
Sharky: It’s like we got knocked out of our sumo wrestling ring of our own knowing. ‘A’ says you gotta squat down like a big, huge sumo wrestler into your own knowing and just stay in the ring. We got knocked out of the ring.
GC: Yeah, we fell out of the ring into a pit of watermelon and had to eat our way back to the ring!
Sharky: There was some fugue state, some dissociation, that came over us at Dr. Hua’s— where we couldn’t hold onto our knowing, and we dissociated—
Two deeper firefighters pop in to help explain what happened
Rhino (firefighter, second-in-command firefighter beneath Sharky): That would be me.
Koala (another firefighter): Oh me too!
Sharky (firefighter): Say what?!
Koala (firefighter): We did it!
Sharky (firefighter): You, and Rhino, you just…dissociated right there at Dr. Hua’s?
Rhino (firefighter): Yeah, we did.
Sharky (firefighter): Why?
Rhino (firefighter): Stress! Today was too much for us man. Today was like, way too much.
Sharky (firefighter): Okay well peace out, this is above my pay grade, talk to A.
Self-energy talks to the watermelon-eating firefighter, Koala
A (Self-energy): Hey Rhino. Hey Koala. I hear today was really stressful.
Koala (firefighter): This shit is fucked up. I’m losing my hats.
A (Self-energy): What’s going on?
Koala (firefighter): So, you know with that betrayal that happened, and how the glass caterpillar (exile) was all, “Either choose that other person or choose me, I can’t sleep, I can’t take this anymore, set a boundary with that person, have a confrontation, blah blah blah,” so then you did and you actually SET THE BOUNDARY and spoke FOR the glass caterpillar’s needs and chose the glass caterpillar over the other person?
A: Mmm hmmm.
Koala: Well, then, I had to eat 4.5 lbs of watermelon in response. You don’t get to do something THAT empowered without a firefighter backlash.
A: Oh, I’d love to hear more.
Koala: Well, if we set that kind of boundary as a kid, right now, we would not be eating watermelon, WE’D BE DEAD.
A: True. We would NEVER have set a boundary like that when we were kids. That was NOT an option.
The IFS question: “How old do you think I am?”
Koala: So, how old do I think we are right this second?
A: I don’t know, how old do you think we are right this second?
Koala: A solid six, mo!
A: What’s that like?
Koala: Fucked up, dog! I know we’re not six, but I FEEL LIKE we’re six. And when we were six, if we set the boundary we set today, DEAD. Can’t have NO BOUNDARIES when we’re six. NONE. ZERO. No boundaries!! No human dignity. No respect. So standing up for our boundaries, our needs, our dignity…it’s hugely threatening to our nervous system, and I’m a firefighter, in a way, you could say I’m your nervous system personified. And I just flipped my lid when you set the boundary! I was freaking out all day after you sent the I-statement, boundary-setting text. I had a NERVOUS BREAKDOWN down here!!
Regret we missed the signs of firefighter distress and failed to check in with firefighters in therapy
A: Geez, Koala, I’m so sorry it was so hard for you. I wish I’d been more aware of that. This really sucks because we had therapy today—I wish you could have been in therapy and gotten some support.
Koala: ME FUCKING TOO!!!! What the hell went wrong here?!!
A: That’s what we’re trying to get to the bottom of.
Koala: Damn, what a good idea it would have been for me to go to therapy today. That would have been epic. That would have been the smartest thing since sliced bread. Oooohhh, now today makes so much more sense. We were very, very jittery all day. Very anxious. And when we couldn’t log in to Substack on our other computer to do some editing, we flipped out. We’re usually NOT that on edge. So our edgy behaviour, anxiety, and jitteriness were all signs that something was wrong, but we didn’t read our own signs / behavior correctly. The upset was under the radar of our awareness. We literally didn’t connect it to the boundary-setting text we wrote. And because the glass caterpillar was the one who insisted on the text, on you speaking FOR their needs to set a boundary and end the relationship due to the betrayal, we focused on the glass caterpillar in therapy but failed to check and see if other parts needed help. And damn, other parts did indeed need help ‘cuz look what happened…we failed to check in on firefighters, so firefighters checked in to the Whole Foods produce section and ate their issues!!
A: That’s what happened.
Deeper firefighters’ frustration with lack of contact with Self-energy
Rhino (firefighter): We need help. Both of us are really behind the curve on the IFS work train.
A (Self-energy): I feel you Rhino.
Rhino (firefighter): I mean, I feel like an idiot, because, couldn’t I have just said, “Oh, hey, A, I need help?” I mean, is that not possible? Why couldn’t I do what the glass caterpillar did? Why can’t I ‘use my words’ to get help, instead of using my kraken to devour 4.5 lbs of watermelon? Eating an entire watermelon patch won’t resolve my problems. Talking to you will. I need to give up the old ways and come on board to the IFS way. Use my mouth to talk, not eat!! I can not resolve my issues with eating! But the habit is so strong, it’s astonishing.
A (Self-energy): It’s a strong habit.
Rhino (firefighter): God we (firefighters) suck!! But, whatever, the first step in overcoming being an ass is to be able to see that you suck and not collapse. I just had to eat to numb the pain of my childhood and that was adaptive when I was six, in fact, it saved my sanity and my life when I was six. Not six now though.
Deeper firefighters, Koala and Rhino, decide to discuss things themselves
Koala (firefighter): Let’s you and me talk about this.
Rhino (firefighter): Can we? It’s hard to keep two parts of the same type differentiated in the mind.
Koala (firefighter): Don’t be an ass. We can do it.
Rhino (firefighter): Okay, stoner!
Koala (firefighter): That’s more like it. Although I’m only a stoner-wanna-be.
Rhino: True. How can we work through this though?
Koala: Well, for one thing, we both have this issue of feeling we’re six. We’re anxious we set a boundary today. We are NOT six, however, and we need to move the needle on reality here. Six and fifty-two are fuck all apart in time.
Rhino: Amen they are. I feel…not so much that we’re six. I feel, just, anxious.
Koala: Why?
Rhino: Just, the whole entire nervous system actually standing up for itself, that was a really big watershed experience for me, personally, today.
Koala: In what way, dude?
Firefighter (Rhino) concerned about losing their identity / job
Rhino: I guess, in part, what will happen to me as a firefighter, since I’m a jackass and all I know how to do is eat watermelon or eat to distract or eat to react to distress or binge watch TV or do stupid things to numb out? I ain’t got skills man! So if I suck, and we stop needing my suck ass behavior, then what happens to me? I’m fearing for my job here, I’m fearing for my identity state. Do I just go “poof!” and disappear? That’s death man, I’m not down for that. I don’t want to die. I don’t want ego death. This shit got deep fast!
Koala: Amen it did. But now we’re on to something.
Rhino: Yeah, we’re afraid for our lives here! We got ego death fears. We gotta evolve or die, in this inner system!
Koala: Preach!
Rhino: Well, I wanna evolve.
Koala: I’m with you. I made the decision to join ‘the Force,’ the IFS alliance, whatever you want to call it. I’m down for this shit. How do we do this?
Rhino: Unburden I guess. And learn how to ego die. Gotta put ‘ego’ in there or green will come and annoy you.
Koala: Whatever, let’s unburden and get some new jobs and die a little!
Rhino: Let’s do this!
to be continued…