Here’s a few guys I’ve met inside my brain:

can’t let it go guy

this guy is fine until I’m arguing with someone who’s Wrong¹. At that point, his mind gets completly consumed by it. He’s pretty loud. Even when a bunch of the other guys are arguing against him, he’s really pulling his hardest, and he’s a big strong broad-chested square-jawed guy who’s really good at tug of war.

He might be trying to say: “This is actually important to you and we might not have a solution yet! Don’t compromise just for comfort. Also, you might be out of brain space to make decisions.”

When he arrives: Change the subject, look at it a different way, delay until later (though this is so hard!), listen to what the other person is saying or feeling more

sorry forever guy

This poor guy gets into a loop where he’s sorry, but that now’s not a great time to express that he’s sorry (maybe because he’s already been saying he’s sorry for too long), so now he’s sorry for being sorry, and boy he should really pull himself together, he knows, it’s so much, he’s so sorry

He might be trying to say: “Oh man, I’m stuck; I’m worried my friends and family might abandon me so I better make it clear that I’m not going to be like this often.”

When he arrives: Change the subject, accomplish a small thing, remember that we all receive grace, remember feeling grace, remember sometimes wallowing is just wallowing and it’s not productive and still we all receive grace

car human cannonball

He’s always just sitting in the cannon, ready to launch. When a car does something bad, the safety is taken off the cannon, but he stays in there. If the driver yells back at the biker, though this guy is fired from the cannon. He explodes at the car, yelling profanities at the top of his lungs until the driver drives away.

He might be trying to say: “Feeling oppressed by people in cars is unacceptable². I don’t know what we should do, but I’m not going to settle for it.”

When he arrives: I don’t actually know. It’s nice not to launch him in the first place; I can yell at a car once and then move on. But once a car has decided to go all Car Brain, it’s hard not to go Anti-Car Brain back. My current M.O. is “feel pretty ashamed for a few hours”, which doesn’t feel right.

banged knee guy

When I bang my knee, he comes front and center for a few seconds. He gets a little dazed at first, and then screams loud as hell, trying to rally everyone else (including the mouth and lungs) to scream loud as hell too. If they do, he is encouraged to stick around and keep screaming! But if not, after a couple seconds, he quickly retreats into the background, sometimes sending some endorphins my way to actually make it not so bad.

He might be trying to say: “Remember your self who is in pain! Sometimes you hurt so much!”

When he arrives: Just don’t yell anything for a couple seconds. I don’t really mind his visits anymore.