Introducing Brianpower

Brianpower is another of my complex internal personalities. Not in a nagging way, as Bernard is. Or as frustrating as Fred, my inner driver. Or as nerdy as Tom the Geek. Or as heroic as Aquatom. Or as beautiful as Thomasina. Or as gothically divine looking as my inner honorary vampire. Or as nimble(?) as Fingers, my inner typist.

Brianpower is completely different to all of my other aspects. He only appears when I find myself overwhelmed by something. When there is too much going on that I feel I can’t take any more.

Brianpower springs into action in these situations. There’s a line in a song (I can’t remember the name of it off the top of my head right now, but that isn’t important in this instance ) that says “When the going gets tough, the tough get going” which is his favourite line of any song. Not in a running away kind of way, but in a call to arms kind of way.

For instance, work is very busy at the moment. I feel as though I am being buried under more and more work as a deadline is getting closer and closer. I feel as though I can’t understand what I’m doing (more so than usual), I have no support, it’s all my fault, I have, I can’t, it’s not, it’s gone, how, where, why, WHO?, ctrl alt del… you get the picture. Brianpower steps up to the mark, in a very “Calm down, dear” way. He says, “Look. You don’t have to do everything at once. One step at a time. Move forward. Keep calm and carry on.”

He doesn’t actually do anything for me… I have to do all the work myself, but when he appears in my mind, and says the above (or similar) I know that I have let things get the better of me. I then have a choice, as he doesn’t force me to do anything either. I can sit gibbering, dribbling, fretting and panicking, or I can respond to his call to arms, pick myself up, pull myself together, and get on with the task in hand.

I may not know what I’m doing, but I’ll be doing it far better than if I allowed the situation to run away with me.