Ambition Gremlin

If you’ve been following along, you know that I’ve been playing around with Parts Theory. The idea of describing your inner world through personified archetypes in order to better manage that inner world. I didn’t used to be open to that after all my interactions with evangelical Christianity. But lately, things have changed and I see how helpful this can be if I guide it instead of someone superimposing their archetype and its totalitarian personality onto my psyche.

So I was delighted when I discovered the Big Mouth spin-off: Human Resources. The Hormone Monster, Depression Kitty, Anxiety Mosquito are back… plus, more characters to help us understand our psyches. Very well timed. I have been ready to start exploring this.

Human Resources on Netflix presents us with the following characters (or at least these are the ones I’ve seen so far on the episodes I’ve watched):

• Hormone Monster

• Anxiety Mosquito

• Depression Kitty

• Addiction Angel

• LoveBug / HateWorm

• Octupus Receptionist

• Rock Monster (Logic)

• Shame Wizard

• Need Demon

• Ambition Gremlin

Very interesting set of characters…

So I’ve been struggling lately with feeling organized in my mind in terms of feeling like a unified Self with some amount of objective distance from the chaos of the mind. I know it’s part of the process of healing from CPTSD (ADHD), religious trauma, and codependency. So Rock Monster isn’t too worried. But Anxiety Mosquito and Shame Wizard are freaking out. But I’m getting ahead of myself.

My latest all-consuming stress is how much I mentally rely on my calendar and my to-do list. Regularly, and I actually mean extremely frequently, I’m consulting my calendar and my to-do list throughout the day. Since starting Adderall, I’ve gotten a boost in terms of how capable I am of organizing and documenting my thoughts and planning for actions. However, I think that it’s gotten a little out of balance,… plus,… there’s a lot of mental (leading to actual) behaviors that are residual from a life lived not knowing Who I was and What I was. So this relationship with my to-do list and my calendar, I think, are exactly that. A trauma response. I’m going to be working with my ADHD coach on this today, but honestly, I didn’t know how I was going to approach it. My calendar and my to-do list are LITERALLY (it feels like) ME. When I start simplifying those or not being guided by them all day long, a part of me freaks out and feels like it’s going to die. I go into a very panicked state of mind and can’t think of anything to do except for to just go back to the calendar and the to-do list.

So how does the structure of Human Resources help me narrate what’s happening in me in a way that may allow me to respond differently? I was thinking about it last night and I think what’s going on is that my Ambition Gremlin has been traumatized. I have been fiercely relying on my Ambition Gremlin probably since junior year of high school to compensate for my lack of LoveBug for myself. People can get by without an Ambition Gremlin, but I don’t reckon they can fare well without a LoveBug for themselves. I understand why my Ambition Gremlin is overworked. And she has been working with Rock Monster, Shame Wizard, Depression Kitty, and Anxiety Mosquito to basically help me survive for 2 decades. Now that I am changing my values and my lifestyle, I think it’s very difficult for the Ambition Gremlin to let go and moderate their passion.

So I think my Ambition Gremlin needs a rest. Clearly, she is very capable of helping me survive and get things done. She’s done it for 2 decades (in my personal life and in my work life). However, I now recognize how sickly she is. How I am missing Love. How this isn’t sustainable with anxiety and depression egging on my ambition. So I think my Ambition Gremlin needs a rest.

So how does one rest an archetype? I dunno. I just got here. But my sense is that what has been working won’t work for this. As I look forward to the future life I’m creating with less obligations and more choice driven by organic and sincere joy, I get the sense that I will need to face this sickly ambition head on by letting her … nap. Not asking much of her. Use her when I need her, but then let her go back to sleep. Ambition Gremlin is so terrified that if she doesn’t keep up the motivation and the drive that we’ll never get anything accomplished, I will hate myself, and I’ll die with a million regrets and soul FOMO. I understand that fear. With ADHD and CPTSD, it’s very reasonable that we all came to that conclusion.

But we’re on a different path now.

So I think for the future, I’m looking at promising myself 1) not to hustle or 2) not to plan any projects that DO NOT SPARK visceral joy and love inside of my body. Moreover, I don’t think Ambition Gremlin is needed for anything I plan to do, since a lot of what I want to do is to heal my relationship with my Self with has a LOT to do with LoveBug. Ambition isn’t really needed there. Well, only insomuch as I experience the ambition of loving my Self.

So that’s the direction I’m moving in. I can tell the Gremlin is scared. Because she’s really wants to grow my coaching business, do more photography, gain more notoriety, connect with like-minded people, facilitate more conversations,… and she’s scared that if we stop outputting energy into those efforts that they will never happen and I will have wasted my time on earth, which has been a foundational fear of mine for a long time. That’s legit, Ambition Gremlin. I see you. I get it. I don’t want to die feeling that way, either. However, what’s been going on isn’t working either. We need to swing the other direction and balance this shit out.

This is still all to be processed further, but something that popped into my mind today as a cool trick to help me throttle my over-ambitious mind is to ask myself these four questions when I think of an idea, a task, or whatever, that I feel an immediate and urgent energy to address:

• Is this urgent?

• Is this important?

• Will Future Me remember this on their own?

• Has this kind of idea/task been helpful for me to have addressed/documented in the past?

One way I used this today itself was that I was meditating and I went a little long and felt the Anxiety and Shame poke Ambition with a hot poker and felt this terrifying urgency to wrap up what I’m doing and get into the office so I can start my work. This happens… A LOT. I have a lot of work trauma. But I asked myself, is it urgent that I get to work right now? Objectively? No. Is it important that I get to work right now? Objectively? No. Will Future Me remember to get to work and handle all the tasks that are waiting for me? Yes, definitely. Has rushing to work and cutting off my meditation short been helpful to me in the past? Definitely not, it’s always made me feel rushed and stressed. And that is how I allowed myself to sit here at my laptop a bit longer, writing out this post even though I’m “running late” to work.

Asking these questions helps me triage the barrage of prompts and urges I get in my mind, usually sourced from Ambition Gremlin, Anxiety Mosquito, and Shame Wizard. It’s almost a method to handle mental hoarding. I think I’m a mental hoarder. Oh, shit.