It takes the form of an interview between the part of me who created it – Fox – and another part – James. If you haven’t read one of my plural blog-posts before and aren’t sure who these people are, feel free to check out our Plural Selves zine, and our free book about Plurality. But hopefully you don’t need to get that part in order to find the content here interesting.

Location: Fox’s favourite cafe.
Food: Halloumi tomato pesto sandwich, OJ.

James: It’s my great pleasure, today, to be conducting an interview with the artist behind the new zine Welcome Monster Feelings. Thankyou for taking the time to speak with me today Fox.

Fox: You’re welcome.

James: Would you like to begin by telling the readers a little bit about who you are?

Fox: Nope.

James: Well this is getting off to a great start.

Fox: I think it’d be more fun if you say who I am and I’ll say who you are.

James: Oh go on then. How best to describe you?

Fox: It better be good.

James: No pressure then.

Fox: *giggle*

James: I would say that you’re the youngest child part of our plural system. Or rather we tend to think of you as who we might have been without all the rules we learnt about who it was okay and not okay to be in the world – without our developmental trauma. You are the most able of all of us to just be in the moment, to find delight and wonder in things, to move through the feelings you have rather than getting stuck in them. How am I doing?

Fox: Why do we call me Fox?

James: Because you often feel more like a creature than a human: a wild little thing.

Fox: Heh I like that. Okay I’ll do you.

James: I’m not sure it’s regular to introduce the interviewer.

Fox: I’m gonna anyway. You’re our James. We call you lots of other names like Old Man and Saint James and Captain Admin and ruder ones.

James: Captain Admin is pretty rude. I don’t just do admin.

Fox: That’s why it’s funny. You are the one of us who does most of the everyday life stuff, particular the bits that the rest of us find boring or scary like emails *shudder* But you’re also the main one who looks after the child parts of us: me, Morgan (aka Beastie), and Robin (aka Tony). You’re really good at that.

James: I’m not sure how Morgan would feel about being called a child part.

Fox: She’s not here!

James: I mean technically, given that we share a body…

Fox: If she was properly here we wouldn’t be doing this interview coz it’s not easy for her to do this kind of thing. But we’ll get to that.

James: Is that enough introductions then? Am I allowed to start the interview proper?

Fox: It’s about time!

The aims of the zine

James: *shakes head* Okay then. First question. What were you hoping to achieve with this work Welcome Monster Feelings?

Fox: Two things I think. The main one was I wanted to help the other members of our system – particularly Robin and Morgan who carry most of our trauma – to find a way to be with their most painful feelings. We’ve been in this big trauma period for the last few years, so our feelings can be very overwhelming at times, especially for those two. 

The other thing I wanted to do was to find a way back to drawing. We made quite a few zines and comics a few years back, but it was something we found much harder to do during the trauma time.

James: Why d’you think that is?

Fox: Well Morgan’s trauma often comes out as being an inner critic – so it’s very hard for her to let us draw without feeling it’s not good enough, or comparing it to what other people do, even though she also really wants us to be creative. Robin’s trauma comes out as fear and shame so it’s scary for him to put stuff out there in the world, in case people are mean about it. Also it’s just generally pretty hard to sit down and draw – or do anything much – when you’re feeling that bad. 

James: I think it was a genius move to find a project that we could do even when we felt rotten, in fact tough feelings were kind of a bonus.

Fox: I know right? And – as we say in the companion zine Welcoming Your Monster Feelings – the practice of making the monsters often helps overwhelming feelings to calm down a bit. So you gradually get this knowing in your body that making a monster will make you feel better, which makes it easier to do it the next time you feel rough.

James: Positive reinforcement.

Fox: Right, and I love that it showed Robin and Morgan that they were vital – to the project and to us. They can both so easily feel that they are ‘bad parts’, or ruin things for the rest of us, and that they should be cast out again – as they both were for so much of our lives. But I couldn’t have done this project without them. It was their feelings I was drawing most of the time. 

Also when we showed our friends, and they found it helpful and said they felt similar things, that helped Robin and Morgan to feel seen, and less alone, and like they were being helpful to others.

A plural project

James: Just brilliant! So it sounds like you see this as a plural collaboration, even though you were definitely the one leading on it.

Fox: Absolutely. Robin and Morgan mostly had the feelings, and told me about them, and then I found the way to draw them that felt most right. But we also got everyone else’s feelings in there somewhere.

James: I particularly like the holding and hearing monster towards the end…

Fox: That’s you! And he looks a bit like Sully from Monsters Inc because that character reminds us of you, and his full name is James P. Sullivan.

James: I also helped as Captain Admin right?

Fox: Yes! You did all the scanning and the making it a pdf, and learning how to make a pdf small so people can download it, and putting it on our website, and all kinds of things that I find an-noy-ing!

James: And conducting this interview of course.

Fox: Of course. Next question.

Feelings, art and monsters

James: Well I was interested in exploring with you the links in our life between feelings, art, and monsters. I know you’ve been reflecting on that.

Fox: I have. It feels like we’ve been trying to do this project our whole life, and it involves going back towards these three things that were all kind of crushed in us.

James: Do go on.

Fox: Well we’ve written before about how we weren’t allowed ‘difficult’ feelings as a kid. People at home and school tried to train us out of them with punishments for unacceptable emotions, and rewards when we made it through the day or week without crying. That’s part of the reason that Robin and Morgan got disowned. They held all the least acceptable feelings: fear and anger, but also loneliness, sadness, jealousy, pride. All sorts.

James: Right. Our feelings get so unbearable during the years in our life when PTSD hits because we’re feeling all the things that were locked inside Robin and Morgan.

Fox: Feeling the feelings they held for us our whole life. That’s it. 

Another thing that got pushed out of us in a similar way when we were small was art. We LOVED drawing. We drew all of the time. Our bedroom wall was full of our pictures.  But gradually people around us tried to make us draw the kinds of things they wanted, and to draw in the ways they wanted us to.

James: For example?

Fox: Like being asked to draw pictures as a present for people’s birthdays. And they generally wanted things like landscapes or still lifes or whatever, which isn’t what we enjoyed drawing. Also when we did art at high school we were shocked because we had to draw things from real life rather than out of our imagination – as we’d always done before.

James: What did we enjoy drawing?

Fox: Mostly people and imaginary creatures. And we drew to tell stories from our fantasy life, or to get down feelings that we couldn’t talk about or express in other ways. But eventually we learnt that wasn’t how you were meant to do art.

James: So, not only were both feelings and artistic pursuits suppressed, but those two suppressions were also related. Losing the ability to draw from our imagination and feelings denied us an important outlet for emotions we weren’t supposed to have. How do monsters fit in?

Fox: Monsters feel like the third leg of the stool somehow. 

We were always fascinated by monsters. Our favourite TV shows as a kid were Rentaghost and Dramarama. Our favourite books were pop up ghost books. Later we read true haunting books over and over and over. We were addicted to Ghostbusters – one of the first movies we saw at the cinema. When we got to choose our own topic to do a project on at school we did dinosaurs every time.

James: We had a huge collection of plastic dinos too didn’t we?

Fox: Yes! Dimetrodon was my favourite dinosaur, but they don’t think Dimetrodon was a dinosaur any more!

James: This may be a tangent.

Fox: Heh. 

James: How did monsters relate to art and to feelings?

Fox: Well they relate to art because a lot of what we wanted to draw was mythical creatures like dragons. 

They relate to feelings because, when we reached double figures and things got really bad, we started reading authors like Stephen King, Dean Koontz and James Herbert. We thought that reading horror books would help us to be less scared in our real life – like maybe we could get used to facing frightening things by reading those books, and become braver.

James: And did our monster love get suppressed too?

Fox: I think so. We once tried to do a book review of a horror book in school and they didn’t like that. It wasn’t a proper book like the ones you were meant to read. When we studied psychology at university – and afterwards – we were always drawn to monster-y topics, like the paranormal, and why people do evil things, and the meaning of fairy tales. But those things were always looked down on as not proper, so we wound up doing our projects on other stuff – somehow making it acceptable.

James: And yet our PhD was on loneliness, our first paper was about goths and Pagans, and the first conference we organised was about vampires. We kept finding our way back to feelings and monsters didn’t we?

Fox: All the way through. Like we did the A levels that people said we should do, instead of the ones we really wanted to do (drawing and stories!) But we spent the whole summer after we finished those exams painting our room with a giant dragon, even though we were just about to move out of there. Then after our PhD we started writing fiction. We were going to do a whole collection of alternative fairy tales and take a creative writing course, but we didn’t get accepted. For a long time we’ve had an idea for a book called Everyday Horrors: a mash up of horror fic and self-help.

James: It seems like we’ve been trying to make Welcome Monster Feelings our whole life, and finally, we’re making it, now that we’re nearly fifty.

Fox: Speak for yourself old man!

James: *Grin* 

Reclaiming lost things

Fox: It’s like reclaiming isn’t it? By reclaiming art, and reclaiming monsters, we’re also reclaiming those feelings and the parts who hold them. No part gets left behind.

James: Absolutely. I couldn’t agree more. And I suspect that many people have a similar history – at least with feelings and with art. The world, and the people around them, tell them that they mustn’t show their feelings, and that they ‘can’t draw’.

Fox: That’s why we love Lynda Barry, who we mention in the zines. She says that most kids just naturally tell stories with pictures, but then they get taught proper writing and proper drawing, and they lose all that. Her books and resources are all about getting it back, by playing with it, using wax crayons, drawing quickly, colouring in, that kind of thing. And lots of drawing from the imagination!

James: I notice that when we can allow you – Fox – to just draw from the feeling (with the odd bit of help from Google images to see what certain things look like) it just comes out looking right.

Fox: It’s amazing. Morgan is often sure there’s no way it’ll come out looking like we feel it, but it really does. It’s all about keeping it simple, not trying too hard, just getting the feeling down.

James: I think Lynda Barry is helping people get back to the child part of themselves who can draw that way, and tell stories too. The part like you that perhaps everyone has somewhere inside.

An early attempt to welcome monster feelings?

Fox: More questions please!

Inspirations

James: Well you’ve mentioned Lynda Barry. Can you say something about your other inspirations for this project?

Fox: I guess there are two kinds of inspirations: other people who’ve used monsters as a way of exploring feelings, and other people who have come up with practices for welcoming feelings. 

For the first one we’re super inspired by Pixar movies. They are something we watch a lot of because they are so gentle, and we generally need that in the evenings. Inside Out and Monsters Inc are the obvious ones, but lots of the Pixar shorts explore trauma and plurality too. Far From the Tree and Twenty Something are great examples.

We also recently watched the movie A Monster Calls, which is all about monsters and fairy tales as ways of dealing with huge tough feelings. Hannah Eaton’s graphic novel, Naming Monsters, is about that too.

We really love this Zen Pencils comic version of Rumi’s poem, The Guest House, by Gavin Aung Than. That poem captures the whole idea of welcoming feelings better than anything else, which is why we included it at the start of the zine.

James: What about the practices for welcoming feelings?

Fox: We wrote about focusing and Pema’s F.E.A.R. practices in our Staying With Feelings zine. Those are about feeling feelings in the body. Our therapist helped us towards the idea of visualising feelings. She suggested imagining the feeling you’re having as just one cell of the body, and picturing it outside of yourself, describing what it looks like: its colour, texture, that kind of thing. That helps it be more manageable – it’s not all of you, just one cell, and it’s outside of you so you can approach it curiously.

James: Externalising the feeling, so it doesn’t feel like all that you are and all that you’ll ever be, as traumatic feelings often feel.

Fox: Right. But cells aren’t much fun. I think that imagining feelings as monsters makes it more playful. And you can do with a bit of lightness and humour when you’re dealing with something that hard.

James: Agreed. And that makes it a bit more like the Tibetan demon feeding practice that we’ve written about before.

Fox: Except in that practice you don’t tend to draw the feelings. Lynda Barry adapts a Zen practice where you draw your demons in her comic One! Hundred! Demons!

James: It’s so cool that you’re now part of this group of comic and animation creators who’ve explored monsters in this kind of way.

Fox: I know, I love that. It’s what I’ve always wanted.

James: We found our long, slow way towards art, monsters, and feelings, didn’t we?

Fox: We sure did!

Monster feeling practice

James: I know that you’ve also made a companion zine called Welcoming Your Monster Feelings. Do you want to say something about that?

Fox: Yes. We wanted to find a way to share our practice with people, in case they might find making monsters about their feelings helpful too. We were going to finish the Welcome Monster Feelings zine with a few pages about how to do it. But our friend H said they thought we shouldn’t do that, because it should stand on its own as art!

James: What did you think about that?

Fox: I think they were right. Because we still struggle to see ourselves as someone who can legitimately draw pictures or tell stories, we often want to wrap those things up in a kind of self-help project, like we used to do with academic projects. Publishing Welcome Monster Feelings as a standalone book of our art felt really important. But we did still want to share the practice, so I made an extra little zine about that.

James: And do you describe your process in that zine?

Fox: Not exactly, because I know that not everybody will work the way that we do. The zine explores all kinds of different ways people might access their feelings and turn them into monsters, and the different reasons they might find that helpful.

James: Can you share a bit more about your process here then. That’s something people often want to know about artists.

Fox: Heh that still sounds funny – artist. What I do is I sit down, usually with Robin or Morgan. That means that we’re… what is it?

James: Co-conscious. That’s the word for when two parts of a plural system are foregrounded at the same time, like you and I are right now.

Fox: Cool. So the other part really tunes into their feeling, and kind of shows me and tells me what it’s like. Sometimes we feel it inside our body, and sometimes we have an image. Like that last feeling in the book from Morgan – we got a strong image of that classic Peanuts comic where Lucy pulls the ball away from Charlie Brown.

After they’ve shared the feeling, I find a way to turn it into a monster picture. And I draw, with a mechanical pencil, whatever comes out. I like to draw in this sketch book we got from WHSmiths, it has a hard cover so it looks like a proper book. And that means you can’t just rip out pages if you don’t like it. It feels important that we keep them all – however they come out. That’s part of the welcoming.

Once it feels like I’ve got the sketch right I go over the pencil lines with drawing pens. I like the ones that have several different sizes. Then I rub out the pencil lines, and we do the colouring in. That’s very soothing and often we do it together. I like these felt-tips which have a brush end and a fibre tip end. It feels good to use felt-tips because that’s more child-like than pastels or pencil crayons or paints I think. And I like the bright colours.

James: We might need to get you some more of those felt tips for your birthday. We’re close to using some of them up.

Fox: I’d like a bigger set because there’s only one grey and it doesn’t come out great on the scanner. There is a really big set you can get, just saying.

James: Heh, that is a whole lot of felt-tips. 

Trauma, shame and monster feeling practice

Fox: Can I ask you a question?

James: Unconventional, but fire ahead.

Fox: Well you’ve written a graphic guide about trauma and mental health, which goes pretty well with my zine, right?

James: I guess I was the main author of that one – on behalf of the whole system and what we’ve just been through. It’s like the grown up version of your zine in some ways – except not that grown up because it’s still a comic with lots of superhero references. Hopefully Jules will be illustrating that one this year and it’ll be out in 2023.

Fox: Grown up books take a lot longer it seems.

James: *grin* I do think they go well together though, you’re right. What was the question?

Fox: I wondered why you think monster feeling practice is so helpful, given all the stuff you’ve learnt about trauma.

James: Ah yes, I do have a few thoughts about that. One thing that we explore in the graphic guide is how trauma is often the result of violence combined with silence: painful things that happen to someone which aren’t heard or held by anyone around them. We realised that many of the things that help with mental health struggles – like meditation, therapy, or activism around social injustice – are about the opposite of violence and silence – they are about kindness and honesty. Make sense?

Fox: Kindness is the opposite of violence, and honesty is the opposite of silence.

James: Right. And drawing monster feelings is all about being more honest with ourselves about what our feelings actually are, and more kind around them – that gentle process of drawing them and colouring them in, and the whole idea of welcoming them rather than trying to eradicate them. 

Sharing those feelings with ourselves is also a great way to connect more with the different parts of us – to really hear what it’s like for them and to hold them in their tough places. 

Fox: The holding and hearing monster! Kind holding and hearing the truth.

James: Yes! The zine also helps us to connect with other people when they resonate with your drawings. That’s a way of healing the disconnection (with self, others, and the world) which lies at the heart of so much trauma.

Fox: But why is it so important for us to be able to feel the monster feelings? 

James: Ara and I explored this a bit last year in our Staying with the Big Feels blog post. One reason is that it’s hard for a person to be authentic – to be real about who and how they are – without all of their feelings. And it’s hard to have real intimacy – or good relationships – with other people too if you’re still hiding some of your feelings from yourself and/or from them. Being able to be yourself, and having good relationships, are both vital for mental and physical health.

Another thing is that the feelings that many people, including us, most often avoid or repress are the most vital for self-protection and for caring for others. Robin has held much of our fear, and Morgan much of our anger. We’ve realised recently how those feelings are so important for keeping ourselves safe-enough and for acting with integrity.

Fox: The integri-tree!

James: That’s right, you drew a few pictures relating to this. Robin’s fear of shame – when it isn’t unbearably intense – helps to guide us in what we take on, and what we don’t, recognising when other people are trying to pull us or push us into things, or when it’s coming from a dodgy motivation inside us. Morgan’s anger – when it isn’t twisted into confusion – helps us to state our needs and boundaries, as well as seeing other people more clearly. Your anger sunshine picture captured this beautifully.

Fox: Thank-you.

James: There’s lots more I could say about this, but the point is that without access to some of the supposedly ‘negative’ feelings, it’s very hard to empathise with others, to recognise danger, and to value ourselves equally with other people, rather than seeing ourselves as worse-than, or better-than.

Fox: For us it’s often worse-than. That’s why a lot of our pictures are about shame.

James: Mm, and it’s very common for shame to be at the heart of people’s tough feelings as Brené Brown has pointed out. We’ve been reading a lot about shame since we did a workshop on the topic last year, linked to the shame and medicine project. 

The book we’re reading right now says that it’s very hard to express shame verbally because it’s often non-conscious and not available to the language parts of the brain. So perhaps you’ve really hit on something with these drawings – giving us a way to communicate feelings that would be impossible to express in any other way.

Fox: Wow.

James: I know right? And it’s vital because so much of what people do that hurts them and others is an attempt to avoid painful feelings – particularly shame and the fear of shame. If we were able to get to a point where we were okay with all those feelings – where we could weather them, if not actively welcome them – then potentially we wouldn’t do those hurtful things. It’s a lifelong journey though, as Pema would say.

Fox: Life long, and many books of monster feelings!

Where next?

James: That’s a great segue to the final question I have for you. Where are you hoping to go next in your creative pursuits, now that you’ve got us here.

Fox: Well I’ve already started Welcome More Monster Feelings, so that we’ll keep going. Most of the monsters in the first book were Robin’s ones, partly because he was foregrounded for a lot of the time we were making it, and partly because Morgan initially didn’t want to do her feelings because she struggles so much not to be critical of them.

James: She really didn’t like the volcano drawing you made of her rage.

Fox: I knew that would happen! It’s the only one where the colours ran, and you can’t see the face very well. But then I did the one of her snake-eating-its-tail, and the sunshine anger, and she loved those, so I think she’s on board now. She has quite a few more monsters to share.

James: Anything else you want to do, or is it all monsters all of the time?

Fox: I would like to make more plural zines now that we all know each other better. I’ve started one about how people can learn to love their different parts, and there’s another one to do about how they can communicate better between them. 

But I also want to listen to H and do some more stuff that’s just about our own experiences – not trying to be a self-help thing. Maybe I could do more plural comics like the Chalk Board one. Also I think Morgan would love to write about our journey of embracing our inner critic, perhaps with fairy tales!

James: It would be great if she could feel free enough to create herself. She has such a powerful and tender voice when she can find it through all the horrors she’s experienced.

Fox: Totally.

James: Okay. Well thank-you very much for sharing some of your precious time with me today Fox, and for joining me at the keyboard instead of the sketchpad for once.

Fox: You are very welcome. I expect extra cuddles later.

James: You got it. And I hear there’s a new Ghostbusters movie…

Find out more

• For more on this topic check out our monsters and feelings zines, and our workbook with Alex Iantaffi, Hell Yeah Self Care.
• Patreon link: If you enjoyed this please feel free to support our Patreon.
• Plural tag: This post was by Fox and James.

The post On monsters, emotions, and drawing: An interview with the artist behind the zine ‘Welcome Monster Feelings’ appeared first on Rewriting The Rules.

The team who brought you Staying With Feelings and Plural Selves, now brings you Welcome Monster Feelings – a zine of comics illustrating feelings as monsters – and Welcoming Your Monster Feelings – a zine about how to do the monster feelings practice (if you want to).

Here’s a taster…

You can download the zines on our zine page, or here.

Welcome Monster Feelings

Welcoming Your Monster Feelings

Coming soon! Interview with the artist.

The post New Zines! Welcome Monster Feelings! appeared first on Rewriting The Rules.

First I need to come out. Coming out is something I’ve done perhaps more than most people do in one lifetime. However this time it’s a bit different. After much reflection I need to let you know that I am a shape-shifter. Transmogrifier, lycanthrope, trickster, chameleon: call it what you will. I have the mutant superpower of magically transforming to fit my surroundings.

In the rest of this post I’ll use my own example to illustrate how you might come to identify, explore, and embrace your own inner mutant superpower.

Which mutant super hero/villain are you?

There are two ways of figuring out your own inner super hero/villain nature. You can either start by exploring which characters particularly resonate with you, or you can start by examining your own life for clues. My own realisation involved a little of both.

Read it, watch it, draw it, write it, pin it

If you want to start with fiction then the trick is to delve into genres that appeal to you where characters have magical powers. The obvious examples are the DC and Marvel comic universes (and/or the movies and TV shows based on them), particular the mutant-packed world of the X-Men, or the many and various superheroes and supervillains in the Superman/Batman/Spiderman series. If that doesn’t work so well for you then the fairy tales and myths of various cultures are packed with different kinds of monsters and magical characters, as are fantasy fiction, horror fiction, and science fiction. Check out recent shows like Lost Girl, Penny Dreadful, Being Human, or Once Upon a Time, or long term staples like Lord of the Rings, Harry Potter, Star Trek, or Dr. Who. For me the Red Dwarf and Buffy the Vampire TV series, and the books of Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman, are rich sources of material.

While you’re reading, listening or watching, ask yourself which characters you’re particularly drawn to. Which do you find attractive? Which scare you? Which do you relate to? Which do you fantasise about or long to ship? Check out fanfic based on the shows, books or movies you like, or write your own. Doodle and sketch the characters that you’re drawn to. Use an app like pintrest to bring together pics and clips that appeal to you.

Dream Hunters fox fairy

For me I started connecting the dots when I remembered how much I was drawn to the fox fairy story in Neil Gaiman’s book The Dream Hunters, and to so many other stories about foxes, to the extent that I’ve planned, for years, to get a tattoo of a fox. I found myself linking that to the werewolves in Penny Dreadful and Being Human (the characters I relate to most in those shows). I also remembered how Mystique in the X-men, and the T-1000 in Terminator 2, had always held a particular horror for me. And I thought about how attractive I found Tom Hiddleston’s Loki, and the episodes of Buffy where characters cast a spell which made everybody fall for them, particularly Superstar. Perhaps this could be seen as a kind of simultaneous shapeshifting like the Camille episode of Red Dwarf where the pleasure GELF appears to each person as their object of desire.

Your actual life

The other starting point for exploration is your life. Think back to growing up: What survival strategies did you develop to get through the tough things you experienced? Were these visible or invisible to those around you (or a bit of both)? What patterns have you noticed in more recent years in the way you engage with the world or relate to other people? What makes life worth living for you? What is your worst fear? What would you like to have written in your obituary? Are there any superpower/mutant metaphors that fit these themes particularly well? Talk to friends. What do they notice about you? Which characters do they think you’re most or least like? What superpowers would they say that you have?

Or you might delve into your dreams. Do you have any recurring ones? Are there common themes in the abilities that you have, such as flying or having great strength? What are your nightmares, for example do you dream of falling or being stuck in slow motion? What do you fantasise and daydream about?

Chameleon changing colour

For me, I remember a moment when a partner said that I was a chameleon. Thinking back to childhood I recollect how isolated and alienated I felt when I changed school: how I didn’t fit in with any of the cliques and crowds there, just as it never made sense for me that we lined up separately as ‘girls’ and ‘boys’. At first I survived this by standing apart, but eventually the pressure was too great and I learnt – clumsily and painfully slowly – how to fit in. By my next school I was drifting from group to group and finding a capacity to fit with all of them. I also notice – on an everyday level – how easily I slip into different accents and ways of talking in conversation, depending on how the other person speaks. Certainly recurring nightmares involve going back to being rejected and on the outside.

Quiz time

If you want a quick way to explore these things you could just take a bunch of these handy online quizzes (there are lots with similar titles) and see what comes out:

• Which superhero are you?
• Which supervillain are you?
• Which mutant are you?
• What is your superpower?

Exploring your hero/villain sides

Once you’ve determined your mutant superpower/s, or the heroes and villains, demons and angels that you particularly identify with (there may well be more than one), you’re ready for a bit more exploration. The way I see it, every superpower has its strengths and limitations. The hero/villain binary is not necessarily a helpful one because – as more recent movies and TV shows have showed us – it’s rarely that simple. We can understand both the X-men who want to find a way to live alongside the humans, and the ones who want a complete revolution after years of oppression. We can empathise with the dark-knight version of Batman, or the common trope of the criminal psychologist and the serial killer as flip sides of the same coin.

Superstar episode of Buffy

In my favourite episode of Buffy, which I mentioned before, Jonathan Levinson casts a spell which makes him into a superhero, adored by everyone. However, in order to create a version of himself that is only the positive, strong, heroic parts, the other parts have to go somewhere. A shadow version is also created: in this case in the form of a real monster. You might think also Ursula Le Guin’s Wizard of Earthsea, who summons – and has to eventually face – his own shadow. Or the Confidence and Paranoia, Dimension Jump, and Demons and Angels, episodes of Red Dwarf all of which imagine the best and worst aspects of the characters being made real.

So a useful point of exploration – to consider yourself and to talk about with other people in your life – is what the hero and villain sides of your superpower look like. You can’t have one without the other: the difficult parts are so interwoven with the great parts that they can’t be teased apart. It isn’t even always obvious which aspects are ‘good’ or ‘bad’. But it is definitely worth being aware of the possibilities and pitfalls of your powers. Here are some of the positive and negative shades of shape-shifting.

Superstar

Thinking about myself as a shape-shifter, the positives for me – and I think for those around me – lie in the capacity to flexibly and fluidly adapt to situations. I notice how I can feel ‘at home’ in many different places and communities. I can often get excited by multiple projects – even those that aren’t obviously interesting to me – throwing myself in and investing in them.

Odo: A shapeshifter who uses his powers for good

Also there is the capacity to empathise with different people. That is definitely helpful as a therapist. I find it relatively easy to pick up on how somebody is feeling, and to understand their way of seeing the world if they’re able to let me in. I also think that a strength in my writing is that capacity to hold multiple perspectives simultaneously or to see things from ‘both sides’. And I hope that I have something to offer to conflictual situations as I can often put myself in the shoes of two or more people involved. I find it hard not to.

Monster

But shape-shifters in fiction are rarely positive characters. There are, therefore, many clues to the shadow side of shape-shifting abilities.

Mystique, T-1000, and Loki

First if we think of Mystique, T-1000, and Loki, these are all manipulators who non-consensually trick people into believing that they are other than what they are, for their own personal gain or to further wider goals. There’s very little real empathy involved here other than the small amount it takes to know what other people expect – or want – to see. So the shadow side of the trickster is to be mistrusted and treated with suspicion, to be two-faced.

I don’t experience my shape-shifting nature as deliberate. It feels much more like the werewolf who has no choice but to change every full moon, or the chameleon who can’t help but adapt their colour according to their surroundings.

Werewolf in Being Human

Different versions of myself feel drawn out of me by different people and situations, rather than me deciding – in any conscious manner – that I want to be a certain way. However, like Mystique, T-1000 and Loki, there is often a wider goal behind it: that is the desire to be liked and approved of: to belong. And although I don’t deliberately transform my shape in order to achieve this, it can have the same effect as if I did. I know how it feels to have somebody look at you in disappointment or disgust as they see another side of you than the one they’d come to know and trust.

I mentioned the helpful side of shape-shifting as a capacity for empathy. One flip side of this is that it’s easy to get so drawn into another person’s way of being, or way of seeing the world, that I become somewhat lost myself. There’s a risk that I become very much what they want me to be, but that that is unsustainable and eventually I shift again. Perhaps helpful in the short-term, but harmful in the long-term.

What is your kryptonite? Who is your nemesis?

Of course all superheroes and villains have materials which remove their powers, which send them spiralling up to dangerous levels, or which flip them into their shadow side completely. They have nemeses who wield such weapons and who wish to destroy them. This is another thing worth exploring and remaining aware of.

Kryptonite

 As a shape-shifter there are many dangers. You can become stuck in one particular self, which eventually becomes brittle and may break under the pressure of trying to keep static what is, by its nature, fluid. And, in a world that it very invested in authentic, individuals who can ‘find themselves’ or be ‘true to themselves’, it can be scary to recognise that there is maybe no real, underlying self. It can also be easy to slip into wondering whether maybe there is a ‘real self’ and that it is something ‘bad’: This is exacerbated, for me, if I know that people have stories of me which fix me in a particular way and which I have no control over.

Shape-shifters can also struggle with situations in which they’re called upon to be multiple sides of themselves simultaneously, or in quick succession. I can feel exhausted and confused at the end of a day when I’ve been with many different people – or groups of people – all coming from such different perspectives, positions, or levels of awareness. The other day I felt overwhelemed in a situation where three people were seeing things in very different ways and I found myself flicking faster and faster between each of them. I have an image – I’m not sure whether it’s from an actual film or TV show – of a shape-shifter trying desperately to morph into one thing after another, faster and faster, in order to find the ‘right’ shape, and eventually exploding, imploding, or dissolving into nothingness.

So my kryptonite would be becoming stuck – particularly in a self that I didn’t like or respect, or being called upon to shift too much or too quickly.

Awareness of the danger of becoming stuck helps me to remember to cultivate different sides of myself, and the different relationships, places, and projects which bring them out. It’s important to me to have multiple close people in my life instead of becoming focused on one. It’s also important to move between different spaces (particularly country and city) and to take on different roles and study different areas (e.g. moving between time each week where I’m writer, activist, therapist, and academic).

Awareness of the danger of shifting too much helps me to take time alone, which enables me to find some kind of equilibrium and equanimity when I’ve been spinning too fast. It reminds me that I need grounding, and I cultivate places, practices, and relationships which help me to do that. And it helps me to see the importance of boundaries, to prevent me from getting too lost.

Of course I don’t always get this ‘right’ by any means, but I feel like with each deepening of understanding I get a bit more of a handle on it.

Letting it go and opening up

In Frozen, princess Elsa has the superpower of being able to freeze things. When this harms her little sister, Anna, her parents hide her away, wipe Anna’s memory, and keep Elsa’s powers secret until she can get them under control. After their parents die Elsa has to become queen. She emerges from her room but tries to hold back her powers in any way possible. However, she can’t repress them forever. Eventually they explode out when she’s in an emotional state. She’s exposed as monstrous and, fearing the harm that her powers might do, she retreats to a solitary ice palace. There, at least, she is able to ‘let it go’ and stop holding back this vital part of who she is.

Eventually, with Anna’s help, Elsa is able to return to the world. It seems to me that Elsa finally becomes able to channel her powers when she is open about all of who she is with others, as well as about her own vulnerabilities and fears, and the shadow side of the powers. She needs to be okay with herself and prepared to connect with others. Paradoxically the powers are most dangerous when she attempts to force control over them or hide herself.

Whether we’re a shape-shifter or an Elsa, a hulk or a dark knight, an invisible person or a firestarter, it’s important to embrace our inner hero/villain and to find ways of expressing it to others.

Many thanks to Helen Bowes-Catton who started this train of thought, to Erich and Ludi because I’d never have got here without 9 Worlds, and to Melissa for making me think more about Frozen. The cold never bothered me anyway.

If you want to read more about these kinds of ideas, check out my zine on Plural Selves.

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