PANDEMONIUM OF PARTS

In referring to a pandemic,

“It shows a mirror to ourselves, it doesn’t show just the dark side of humanity, it also shows the heroic side”,

Frank Snowdown, professor emeritus of the history of medicine at Yale (in his interview with Isaac Chotiner, who writes for the New Yorker

When we hold up a mirror to our respective societies in terms of how we are relating to what is going on around us globally what do we see? We see some people hoarding and selling supplies at inflated prices. Some people are defying the rules, not practising physical distancing, and prank coughing on strangers in the supermarket. We see some people joining in song off their balconies. We see other people acting tirelessly, altruistically and sometimes thanklessly. Within each of these people, though, there exists multiplicity.

Sometimes we refer to ourselves as if we are a unified whole, (e.g., “I feel sad”) when, in fact, we have a multitude of parts and shifting states of feeling and being. I am not talking about the 16 personalities of Sybil. It just means that people are complex. Bewilderingly, we can have parts that feel different things about one situation. For example, a part might feel happy at your wedding; however, another part might feel bereft about an important person who was not alive to bear witness to this occasion. Even more complicated, a part of you could feel deeply positive about getting married but another part might grieve your freedom.

This multiplicity feels near in experience to most of us. It normalizes why we can feel so polarized about a pandemic; e.g., parts of me (my introvert parts) feel a sense of relief about being able to work from home during the quarantine, but other parts judge these parts for taking even small comforts in a situation that is so grim. This idea about parts is neither new, nor mine. A number of psychologists and psychoanalysts have theorized about humans having multiplicity (e.g., Richard Schwartz, David Wallin, Philip Bromberg, Irvin Yalom). This idea is also common in the literature world.

“Very well then I contradict myself, I am large, I contain multitudes.”

Walt Whitman

When we look in our respective individual mirrors during this time in history, our reflections might feel more fractured. This period of time is universally challenging. It likely brings out our best and worst. Speaking personally (as that’s the only place to speak with confidence) parts of me feel more generous towards humanity. I have an urge to connect with new people and people from the past. Parts of me feel mobilized to put words to experience and find meaning. These parts are in service and protection of other parts that feel fear and despair. These energized parts lead me to take a chance and create a blog – something my Luddite introvert parts would be loathe to do generally. There are shaming parts that find this doing this icky, exhibitionistic and indulgent.

I have an angry scared part which felt a desire to scream at a runner who was wheezing at me in close proximity. There is a part that now sees strangers as a threat. There is an irritable part that has reared its head, sometimes wanting to stir up conflict with those around me, perhaps to distract from more existential concerns. There is an obsessive part which is desperate to find ways to keep moving, which has a reluctance to sit with the moment and the feelings these moments bring. A sister to this obsessive part wants to control the chaos, control my partner, control my environment to keep the feelings of helplessness at bay.

I am also trying to harness a superordinate place within me that holds compassion. I know that she is in there somewhere, but the others are making a lot of noise. When we can access compassion, we can better handle the dancing parts within ourselves and tango between our parts and others’. When we can find some compassion, we can see that we are all messy and trying to do the best we can to manage all the nuance and complexity within ourselves, between each other, and within the world.