Can your life be so functional that it ends up making you crazy?
I guess that depends on how you define the term functional and how you define the term crazy. If functional can be defined as the conventional ideal … and crazy can be defined as anything else, then who is anyone to judge?
In my line of work, I expected there would be crazy. I’m a therapist, after all. And yet even though I expected crazy, there was one simple fact I never expected.
There are those that are crazy. But then, there are those that are driven crazy. Loaded up on a bus headed to Crazy Town. A bus filled with people whose experiences, traumas, tragedies, and pain convinced them they had a one-way ticket.
But I would not be convinced. For one reason and one reason only:
That just didn’t make sense.
When people walk through your door day after day after day expecting you to fix the disorders that brought them there, you first have to find the disorder. But what if your therapist can only find “disorders”?
What if she begins to identify that the disorders you thought you had were actually authentic sensibilities in disguise? Moving you from the back of the bus to the driver’s seat?
Compelling you to think that maybe a one-way ticket isn’t so bad after all …
Functional and Crazy is the strange twin of C+F. It’s a 40, 000 word stand-alone companion best described as the love child between Oliver Sachs and the Bill & Ted movies.
While both are self-help, they take more cues in tone from graphic memoirs like Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic and Persepolis than they do from comparable self-help books like The Subtle Art of Not Giving a Fuck and You Are A Badass.
The catalyst for Crazy and Functional was this one question: “Why do my clients consider me so high functioning despite being the conductor of my own crazy train?” Functional and Crazy takes the question to the next level: “What is considered functional, and who makes up those rules?”
And finally through all of my research, media writing and speaking as a therapist, I arrived at this question: “Could it be that the rules of what is defined as functional actually be what makes my clients crazy?”
The books open up larger conversations, such as: Is authenticity reserved for the enlightened, or can it be taught? Does the teacher of authenticity need the wisdom of a guru or the true grit of a rodeo trick rider?
Tabella dei contenuti
Prologue 7
Chapter 1: If You Were Raised by Wolves… 11
Chapter 2: What’s the Worst That Could Happen? 43
Chapter 3: One Step Forward… Two Steps Back 75
Chapter 4: It’s One Thing to Love…
It’s Another to Know How to Love 103
Chapter 5: Two Steps Forward… One Step Back 129
Chapter 6: Knowledge Is Power 159
Chapter 7: It’s Not Pretty… But It Doesn’t Have to Be 187
Chapter 8: There’s Most of the Time… And Then There’s Sometimes 213
Chapter 9: I Know Myself Well Enough to Know That… 243
Chapter 10: What’s in It for Me? 271
Chapter 11: The Unconventional Ideal 297
Epilogue 323
Circa l’autore
Hi, I’m Carolyn Flynn,and I’m the story catalyst.
Story is my abiding love. Nothing makes me braver, more buoyant and more authentically myself than to be in pursuit of story.
If you have found me, you must also yearn to write a book that is bold, illuminating and true.
You want to write a book that is worthy of a greater conversation.
Maybe you know some parts of your story, but not all. Maybe you seek an enduring path to publication, but the ever-shifting terrain of the book business is disorienting.
You’re daunted by discovering the message and delivering that book.
I do the courage walk with authors, and together, we are targeted and joyful, attuning to the passion, vision and purpose of your book.
My courage walk
I’m a writer, and that’s the truest sentence I know. (That’s from my TEDx talk. Watch it here.)
Others would not call me rich, but I feel like I have a fortune. I write. I’m abundant. I always have the path to my sacred yes, and it’s the page.
What did it feel like the day you met up with your story idea?
Or rather, the day your story found you?
The day I met up with my creative inheritance was the October day when seven-year-old daring, curious, delightful me walked into a classroom with orange footprints traveling up the wall. Our teacher told us to write a story: Who invaded our classroom last night? Who walked on this wall? Every neuron in my imagination lit up. The scene was set in motion – ghosts passing through walls, witches streaking across a golden moon, spiders to dangle before my sister’s wild-eyed fright.
It was pen up, game on. The page was my threshold, and it’s the place I return to again and again.
You have a story that someone wants to hear.
What would it feel like to joyfully write your way to that story?
What would it feel like to stir a new conversation, to provoke new thought?
What if your way of illuminating the world was through the page?
What if story was the path?
I believe in the power of story to elevate understanding, whether it’s through trade nonfiction, fiction, memoir or personal essay. I’m gratified to say that science believes that, too. The latest neuroscience research shows that we’re wired for story, and that we’re wired to share.
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