Wise protectors: examples + practices

Here is the first draft of the 7 main socialised wise protectors I see that can dampen or dim our aliveness and pleasure. We may see one, many, or all of these character in our actions. 

These characters are our wise and resourceful strategies in a world of structures and institutions that tries to separate us from ourselves and each other. 

With pleasure, this can be layered with collective shame and guilt. 

They are usually learnt to ensure core needs such as safety, belonging, and dignity. 

Each of these have often been rewarded, encouraged to perform, exaggerate, reinforced, mimicked, reinforced our value comes from these. 

We can begin to find agency and choose these characters when it's useful, rather than default to these characters. 

How can we acknowledge, thank and appreciate these socialised characters within us, while simultaneously exploring more choices? 

The overgiver
Common socialised experiences: often prioritise and give to others first at the expense of themself. Can struggle to receive, or ask for what they need and want. They can measure their worth and value by how much they give, and their relationships can become synonymous with giving.
Barriers to pleasure and aliveness: Can end up feeling secretly resentful, burnt out, isolated because of giving too much while not allowing/asking to receive. As they often struggle to prioritise pleasure and life-giving actions for themself, they can feel distant from their own needs and wants, and when asked don’t even know. Even masturbation might feel like being too self-focused.
Supportive pleasure practices: pausing feeling you body and if it’s aligned before offering things to others, practicing asking for what you need and desire/giving people an opportunity to receive, prioritising your pleasure before others’ pleasure and feeling how edgy that may be.
 
The people pleaser 
Common socialised experiences: they often focus on being likeable and pleasing over being self-fulfilled. They generally default to others actions, wishes, needs, wants, fantasies, and desires. They will skilfully managed and even unknowingly manipulate other people’s perceptions of them, like their own PR manager.
Barriers to pleasure and aliveness: they often live outside themselves, attuned to others first and foremost, and this makes knowing and feeling their own thoughts, feelings and sensations, needs, wants and fantasies murky and more challenging. Then if they know these things, it can be challenging for them to advocate for what is pleasurable, life-giving, and affirming. When they are struggling, they can perform vulnerability by speak in a consider, filtered ways rather than raw expression or drafts. Because they only want to share in appropriate, palatable and likeable ways.
 Supportive pleasure practices: write a list of your needs and desires for pleasure regularly even if awkward and don’t know, practice building capacity to not be liked or misunderstood as you prioritise your pleasure, advocate and make clear requests for your pleasure with others. 

The rushed optimiser
Common socialised experiences: can have exaggerated focused on performance, efficiency, measurable results and outcomes, and therefore achievement. Slowing down or pausing is challenging for them, as they don’t know how to shift gears or go beyond the boom bust cycle. With this can come a lot of self-judgement, critique, and overriding of self.
Barriers to pleasure and aliveness: they can often see pleasure as something to optimise, rush through, or “fix” with “one quick tip”. They can go through the motions of a pleasurable action or moment to tick it off the list, and then miss or skim over the available subtleties, sensations, and savourable moments. Can be focused on going faster, harder, longer, stronger to ensure pleasure is “maximised”.
Supportive pleasure practices: meet their need for optimising with tenderness and ask your thoughts/feelings/sensations what other options there are in the moment, do small doses of slowness, microdosing experimentations in being “messy” and in the process, tune into one subtle sensation in the body when notice.

The intellectualiser 
Common socialised experiences: predominantly in their head, which has served them well in life and society. Yet they can avoid feeling into their sensations and emotions as they can be harder to neatly “resolve” or make sense of. Often they can intellectualise the experience of embodiment but not actually be embodied.
Barriers to pleasure and aliveness: They can enjoy the pleasure of the mind, yet exploring the full spectrum of pleasure can feel disorienting and they can often try to grasp to thoughts and ideas to try and think their way out of a “problem” with 1,2,3 abc steps, rather than feel their way through an experience. It can become a barrier, and resistance to the unknown and messiness of being human and pleasure.
Supportive pleasure practices: allow your thoughts to run like wild horses for 1 minute then shift to be curious about feelings and sensations, start doing the pleasure practice before trying to understand the practice, thank your mind for how it serves you. 

The soft small slow defaulter 
Common socialised experiences: they can live a very contained life with a lower range of intensities, paces, and experiences. They can believe that bigger pace or intensity is inherently worse or bad. They might want to make their world smaller to make it more manageable. They often dim their light, and dampen their power and presence as they’ve been told they’re too much/not enough. They often present to the world as quiet, shy, playing small, and believe that being seen/heard means danger or being ostracised. They perhaps experience chronic pain, muscle bracing, or body tension. They say things like “just a little _____”, “if it’s ok I’d like _____”.
Barriers to pleasure and aliveness: even taking a deep breath and sighing in front of others can feel like taking up too much space or being too “big”. They mostly contain their pleasure to soft, small and slow forms and ways of being. Sometimes they can see the soft, slowness of “sensuality” as morally superior to “sex”. They can avoid building capacity to meet moments of pleasure and aliveness, which rob them of feeling more aliveness and pleasure. Yet, we often need to resource ourselves with pleasure and hold charge to build our capacity, so we can have the extra capacity, to expand our capacity in the long term (does that make sense?).
Supportive pleasure practices: microdose aliveness and intensity (joy, excitement, elation) and see how it feels, reflect on your relationship with intensity, practice being visible by others in moments that are supported, find places in your body to feel expansive. 

The self-doubter
Common socialised experiences: they can often struggle to believe they are worthy or “enough”, or able to have the experiences they desire. Often their first reaction is dismissal or doubt to protect themselves from change and disappointment, and maintain the known and predictable. They can doubt/judge themselves, others, and any new experience before the experience even happens. Often they look externally for guidance and view others as the expert on their own experience. They can feel indecisive, confused, and frozen, don’t know how to listen to their intuition, and constantly looking for a ‘sign’ or an external affirmation of something being the “best” choice. 
Barriers to pleasure and aliveness: firstly, they don’t often believe they are worthy of feeling pleasure and aliveness. They’re socialised not to trust themselves and their intuition, so they can struggle to experiment and explore anything new. The don’t let themselves be open to being moved by an experience, pleasure, or letting themselves feel more alive because of the expected doubt and disappointment. They can think everyone is experiencing incredible pleasure except them (not true fyi).
Supportive practices: testing, ‘what if’ scenarios, microdosing new experiences (ie. try a new practice for 1 min then checkin), and experiment, build capacity for disappointment.

The perfectionist
Common socialised experiences: often can't start as has to be all or nothing. Thinking "now is not the right time, I'll do it next time/later". Things have to feel perfect to begin. 
Barriers to pleasure and aliveness: With pleasure and aliveness, if not perfect conditions to begin or feel, then believe it’s not worth it. They delay their pleasure and life-giving experiences waiting until everything is “perfect” to begin. Think that pleasure and/or sex is a performance they need to master.
Supportive practices: practice feeling calm, messy, creative with pleasure for the sake of feeling alive. Beginning before everything feels right. Finding the simplest, and most easeful way into a pleasurable experience. Treat beginning pleasure as an experiment in practicing, feeling and learning.