SUPER(WO)MAN SYNDROME
One of my favourite ways of escaping my reality and result is constantly fantasising about being a superhero in spaces where I may have messed up, where the ending was less than tidy or had me at the bottom of the dynamic. I always imagine that there would be a rare situation where I would be the ONLY ONE to solve the problem thus redeeming my image and redefining the perception they have of me. This fantasy works for 5 minutes unless I put it on a loop and stretch it to other situations.
HERE’S WHY THAT IS POTENTIALLY DANGEROUS
- It keeps me looking back: all the “what ifs”, “maybes”, “who knows” etc has me stuck in one moment in time while the object of my fantasy is moving forward.
- It makes me an absent participant in my life: There are real time problems that require my attention, real time emotional puzzles I need to work on, real time goals I should be setting, but because I keep looking to a time that doesn’t exist, I am not giving myself room to solve them.
- It keeps me from making room for something new: my fantasies are so grounded in the past, I haven’t yet discovered who I have evolved into, as a result of the learnings from my mistakes. What new me has emerged? How do I cater to her? What questions is she bringing up, whose answers I need to find? All of these are magical discoveries I am keeping from myself because my time is still set to yesterday.
The real superhero act is me acknowledging that this pain I’m trying to escape are spaces telling me that they need my attention, that they need me to tend to them. They are potential areas of growth. I need to sit with them, pull out their questions, salve them and give them healing until they don’t hurt so much.
