Plenty to find fault with here, kiddo …

‘WAH! NO! Stop it! Stop it, Toxic Super-Ego!’ Charles immediately counters. ‘I’m calling you out, see? I’m wise to your games now! I know who you are! I know what you do!’

In the Introductory Module which Charles has only watched half of because he suddenly felt terrified and overwhelmed and tired – tired, just so ludicrously, deliriously tired – Richard Grannon stood majestically in front of a whiteboard wearing a newly pressed blue shirt and calmly outlined the role of the Toxic Super-Ego. The Toxic Super-Ego was sitting (Grannon drew a little cartoon with his trusty marker pen) in its own small bath of ‘toxic shame’.

Grannon is funny and handsome and ‘buff’ and Charles finds it difficult to believe that Grannon was also an unholy screw-up a mere two years ago. Two years. Before he cured himself.

He and Richard Grannon are approximately the same age.

There is still hope.

Although there is already something about this picture that doesn’t entirely add up. If a person is truly, authentically an unholy screw-up then how the hell do they still manage to hold down a job as a life-coach/therapist and teach high-level martial arts and do a series of other remarkably cool and interesting things like becoming an NLP Master Practitioner and living in the Far East and having an encyclopedic knowledge of Important Cultural Moments in both fiction and film while owning a giant, blonde dog which lollops about shedding hair and stealing socks?

?

Who looks after this beloved dog while Grannon’s kicking back in the Far East?

Huh?

If Grannon doesn’t take good care of his dog, how do you know you can trust him to take proper care of YOU?!

Charles has inherited a hairless Sphynx cat called Morpheus and the cat refuses to either eat or drink if Charles goes away on a trip. When Charles went to an uncle’s funeral (not a real uncle but a real funeral) in Wick for three days the cat had to be rushed to the vet and put on a drip.

Fucking co-dependent fucking cat.

This is your Toxic Super-Ego at play, Charles tells himself. Grannon warned you that the Toxic Super-Ego (TSE) would start trying to undermine and ridicule ‘the process’. The TSE doesn’t want to be eclipsed.

You are AT WAR with the TSE. The TSE is a vicious rogue element – a terrorist – which has secretly hijacked your brain. It is bloated beyond all recognition – like a degenerate mid-seventies Elvis. It is marching around vaingloriously – like a psychological Napoleon in a ridiculous cocked-hat. It has short man syndrome.

But remember – remember! – that you don’t want it to know you are AT WAR with it. Too risky. You want to sneak up on it and catch it unawares. To set a cunning trap. To approach it, with stealth, and then …

to POUNCE.

Because … shhh!

YOU ARE NOT STRONG ENOUGH TO DECLARE OUTRIGHT WAR ON THE TSE! IT WILL CALMLY AND SYSTEMATICALLY PULVERISE AND DEGRADE AND HUMILIATE YOU IF IT CATCHES WIND THAT ANYTHING – ANYTHING – UNTOWARD IS UNDER WAY. BECAUSE THAT’S SIMPLY WHO IT IS AND WHAT IT DOES.