What is the Rock? What does it mean to be the rock for others? What role does the feelings of the rock play in guiding me away from things like ideation? How does my rock persuade me to correct my course or avoid reaching for the door. These are a few areas I want to explore here.
The Rock is how I describe the role I often play toward others. Many would describe me as their rock and they rely on me for advice, help, and to be the voice of reason in most situations. In times of uncertainty my ability to remain calm and think through situations objectively has placed me in this position. It comes very natural to me.
The term Rock therefore also applies toward my own personal voice of reason. It is my grounding rod, my rational internal voice, it is my truth. Aside from helping me make sound decisions the Rock also acts to protect me from myself. What I mean by that is when something like ideation deepens in intensity the Rock is what pulls me back. It is my compass that keeps me from getting lost, and when I feel like giving up and stepping through the final door then the Rock is what always intervenes. More about The Door metaphor in my next post.
One observation I have about my Rock is that it often lies in wait and only gets called upon when in desperate need or when requested. My Rock is slightly passive in that it does not jump in at the first sign of trouble. I have more theories than answers to why that might be. Am I trying to learn a lesson on coping before jumping in to help myself? Maybe its my tendency to only lend assistance when asked upon or when that need becomes very evident? I know I do this when assisting others, I avoid trying to solve the problems for others too quickly so that I don’t come off overbearing. Plus nobody likes to be told what to do or how to solve every problem, so the same applies to me.
This would be all fine and good if I were talking about learning lessons or avoiding the same mistake twice. But ideation is not in that category. Ideation is a desire to quit, to give up. Ideation is an overwhelming feeling when at its worst, or questioning why I should carry on at it’s mildest end of that spectrum. At the tail end of stronger ideation the Rock is merely a safety net. That voice of reason talks me down from the ledge (not literally) or gives me all the reasons why I matter in this world. In this regard the Rock is very powerful. I have complete trust in my ability to use that reasoning to prevent anything from happening.
It would be so easy if I could call upon that voice of reason at the first sign of ideation, though I wish I could. My go to remedy in the past has often been to either ignore or stuff the ideation back inside but that is not my voice of reason or Rock at work, rather it is using denial and hiding these feelings. That takes a lot of work and in the end I feel like I’ve just stuffed junk away in a drawer rather than cleaning up some mess. The alternative isn’t much better, sitting with the ideation or the void and letting it debilitate me from being an active participant in my life.
There is a third and less used option which is probably a variation of the first (deny and hide). That is to say “Not today” and cut off the ideation. That worked last week prior to leaving on my weekend vacation but it doesn’t often work that well. Using my Rock to say Not Today doesn’t address the cause, it doesn’t attempt to listen to what the ideation might be trying to tell me, and it more often than not just places the episode on pause. Maybe it worked this past weekend because once I paused the ideation I kept myself so occupied that I didn’t allow space for it to return. But by the next week on Wednesday my ideation appeared again. I can’t tell if this is resuming from the prior pause or a new episode. Maybe trying to analyze it that way doesn’t matter.
Some of this applies in ways to the Void. However with the Void I am not relying on a safety net to fall back on or the Rock to pull me back. The similarities are in how I can deny and hide the void to remain somewhat functional. I can sometimes also use Not Today to place the void in the backseat to other priorities. In these respects maybe the Void and Ideation are not so much different occurrences, rather they are variations or different flavors of my overarching depression. Just a theory. I’m not convinced yet they are the same.