Insanely Gifted. Jamie Catto
and assist or inspire in their creativity. Your daemon was your friend, a sort of semi-magical being who lived half in this world and half in the spirit world, unbound by the same earthy laws as you and I. It could run ahead down the path and warn us of approaching hazards. They were there to show us stuff. In fact, as my pal and anarchic workshop creator Dave Rock told me recently, the word ‘monster’ comes from the French word ‘montrer’ meaning to show. Hence our word for ‘demonstrate’. Long ago, if you committed a crime or indecency in France you would be dressed up as the exaggerated version of your crime and paraded around the village as a cautionary tale to others.
The early Christians were frightened of the perceived power of these daemons and so the idea spread that they were evil, looking to control human beings rather than help them. Now we’ve become so used to resisting the unexpected and uncomfortable things which arise that we ‘demonise’ them and push them away. How would it be if we harvested their jewels instead? Yes, they do leap out at often inconvenient moments, and yes, they can seem upon first inspection to be potentially destructive or chaotic, but when framed differently they can contain potent wake-up calls.
Have you seen the Pink Panther movies with Peter Sellers playing Inspector Clouseau? He is a bumbling French police detective who has an Asian manservant called Cato (not Catto), an expert in martial arts whose job is to attack Clouseau unexpectedly, leaping out from hiding places, to keep Clouseau’s combat skills sharp. Of course he always attacks at the ‘wrong moment’ and Clouseau shouts, ‘Not now, Cato!’ as they fight and pretty much always totally trash whatever environment they’re in.
Our demons are Cato. On some level we hired them to show us, not always comfortably, things we need to be aware of or be reminded of, especially our disowned self. And of course, in the surprise of their sudden appearances, leaping out of the closets of our lives, we nearly always scream, ‘Not now, Cato!’ – but there’s an invitation to reframe and re-evaluate our demons and even transform them into illuminating allies. When we treat them as friends keeping us on our toes, not enemies hindering us, a whole new menu of opportunity is on offer.
In making a list of the characters who live in my head, the first eight or so seem pretty universal. I’m not sure I’ll ever get to the end of the list, but here are some of the main players. I wonder if you have them, too.
1)The Pessimistic Worrier
Whatever’s about to happen, especially something which is not in my control, there’s a character who lives in my head who will imagine and play out the worst possible way it could go, the most negative scenarios that the Worrier thinks I need to prepare myself for. This even includes running imagined versions of potentially difficult conversations I need to have and inventing the most infuriating and triggery dialogue. Have you ever found yourself driving home and running one of these imagined exchanges in your mind? Have you ever found yourself getting angrier and angrier at the person you’re having the imaginary argument with, all because of the script you gave them? I can sometimes drive for half an hour and arrive home with no memory of the route I took, I was so immersed in my negative imagination. Painting the future as black as it can be, is this some kind of insurance? Control? Does this character live in your head?
2)The To-Do-List Addict
No matter how many times I run through the list of all the things I have got to do, this character never rests. ‘Let’s just run that through one more time. First I’ll do this, then I’ve got to do that . . . oh, and then . . .’ The anxiety that not everything might get done or that I might miss something or forget something, the overwhelmingness and pressure of everything I’ve got to do, and all the diverse and vital tasks I have to remember to tick off the endless list, can send my mind into an involuntary loop. This is also the character who starts trawling for trouble when nothing is wrong. I’ll sit back, relax, and then I’ll start running through the checklist of my life, relationship, money and health, looking for problems, things to solve. Invariably I’ll find something that isn’t OK, that needs sorting out. It is like a perpetual sense of having gone out and left the gas on. Something must be wrong somewhere and I mean to find it, worry about it, and fixate on it instead of allowing myself to simply relax in the space where I am.
3)The Innocent Victim
Oh, the injustice! My inner innocent victim is always upset by others’ lack of empathy and fairness. ‘There I was, only trying to help . . .’ Other people’s unfair behaviour is both painful and deliciously addictive in a way, because it is so hard to let go of a situation where we are definitely in the right. In fact, this character has its own cast of thousands living in my head because my innocent victim has to present unarguable evidence of his rightness and suffering of injustice, and that often plays out as a kind of courtroom scene in my mind where I list point by point items which prove my rightness and their clear wrongness, and everyone in the jury or in the gallery nods in agreement, equally outraged and sympathetic, understanding perfectly how utterly unfair this episode has been for me. How do they all fit up there in my head?
4)The Strategising Control Freak
It seems so important for everything to stay in control, to go the way I want it to. This character is very focused, and often anxious, running all kinds of control trips and strategies, weighing the odds, comparing probabilities, and devising plans and possibilities for me to have my own way. This character has a one-track mind and is fixated on only one outcome. He has no trust that unexpected situations might work out well for me. He sees through a tiny keyhole and yet acts as if he has all the information and knows his way is the best way, and when it looks like life has other plans he will attempt to take over and strong-arm everything back into his vision of rightness. This can often include manipulation – ‘If I do this, then she’ll do that . . . if I put it like this then they’ll think . . .’ – working out ways to say things to get the desired outcome, to control people without them ever feeling controlled. Mock innocence. The greatest opportunities often come cloaked in disaster and if we are patient, things can unfold much better than the original plan we had. This character has zero trust in that, can’t wait and can’t sit in the uncertainty.
5)The Vengeful Murderer
We each have our own personal cocktail of things which drive us so crazy that we almost want to kill whoever presses that button in us. For me, you only need to be driving too slowly in front of me when I’m in a hurry and I want to kill you, maybe have some huge crane appear and lift your car vertically off the road and throw it over a bridge with you inside, and for you to know it was karma exacted on you for your appalling, selfish driving. And in that rage surge I am so sure I am just and right. We have become so reactive and fragile. Most of us are lucky enough not (at this moment) to be living in a time where bombs are dropping all around us. Most of us do not (currently) need to walk eight hours to get clean water, yet we will ruin a whole day, or even a whole relationship, over the tone of voice you just spoke to me in. My injustice meter is so super-sensitive, and the surge of pain and injustice that can explode in me so overwhelming, that suddenly, in disbelief at the other person’s outrageous wrongness, I want to kill that person, or at least make them suffer, and feel completely justified. The vengeful murderer can go from zero to one hundred per cent in a moment.
6)The Slave-Driver/Inner Critic
I’m not sure whether this is one character or two similar ones working in tandem, but I have never met anyone who is totally free of this undermining voice. When we were growing up, usually the way our parents and teachers delivered advice on how to succeed and get it right was with very critical and judgemental language. It became so important for us to achieve what was expected of us that we internalised the same voices to keep us on track and free from failure. Approval and success are so important to us that we feel justified in slave-driving ourselves along, and often our compassion for our fallibility is sacrificed along the way. It is only very recently that children are being taught that encouragement is even an option unless one is already succeeding.
7)The Naive Child
‘This time it is going to be different!’ Aw, bless this little boy who lives in me. I remember how neat my handwriting was on the first page of every new exercise book at school. I had such positive intentions that this time I was going to absorb