The following idea is not a revolutionary one or a quick fix, rather, it’s an idea to keep in your pocket that may help bring about small therapeutic change when you’re stuck. If nothing else, it’s a simple, little mnemonic device to help you in your daily life.
As the title implies, I like to refer to the idea as “Wile E. Coyote Syndrome”. Some of you are probably too young to remember the Roadrunner and Coyote cartoons so let me set the scene; There’s a coyote (Wile. E Coyote, an obvious pun on ‘wily coyote’) and an unnamed roadrunner that live in the desert. There’s typically no dialogue in the show but it’s very obviously implied that the coyote wants to eat The Roadrunner and The Roadrunner doesn’t want to get eaten. Wile E. comes up with endless crazy schemes to try and catch The Roadrunner, frequently using dynamite and/or some zany “ACME” product but, somehow, always fails to catch his prey. The Roadrunner either outwits the coyote or just simply outruns him, always with calamitous and hilarious results and this running gag was the main, if not only, premise of the entire show.
In this scene, the coyote would be strapped to a rocket. In the next, he’d be using a bow with exploding arrows. In another still, he’d have a large fan attached to a sail while wearing roller skates. With nearly every new scheme, the coyote would almost catch The Roadrunner but would ultimately get smashed into a pancake or get hit by a truck or get blown up or fall off a cliff (with only a tiny umbrella to help slow his fall) or somehow end up under a rock the size of a house. And like most of the cartoons of this genre, in the very next scene, he’d show up, still alive and without a scratch, feverishly working on a new and equally ridiculous plan.
As a kid, I sometimes got frustrated with the cartoon and caught myself on more than one occasion yelling at the tv; “YOU ALMOST HAD HIM YOU DUMMY!! JUST TRY THAT SAME THING AGAIN AND YOU’LL CATCH HIM!!” Regardless of how close he came to finally getting a meal, Wile E. seemed to try out every plan once and only once and then give up and move on to something else when didn’t work. Hopefully, you’ll forgive me and my 7 year old self for being a tad too concrete and for expecting a cartoon coyote to act logically but it always seemed like a pretty big problem with the story line of the show.
And that brings us up to my point here today. Do you have Wile E. Coyote Syndrome? Have you found yourself constantly trying to find the silver bullet that kills the werewolf? Have you tried to find “THE” one and only answer and when you found it but it didn’t work, did you give up? The Wile. E. Coyote, one shot/one kill strategy rarely works in real life and when it does, it’s usually out of pure luck. Gaining control over your mental and emotional wellbeing isn’t a quick fix where you do something one time and catch The Roadrunner once and for all. It’s an ongoing, developmental process; it’s a life’s work that may still be in progress when you die. It’s rarely ever linear; there are starts and stops and circles and backtracks and stalls and speedy progresses followed by complete dead ends. Sure, make changes, make course corrections but you have to keep working at it and sometimes, you have to do the same thing over and over again, in the same way you did it before in order for it to work. Have you started drug and alcohol recovery and failed? Don’t be the coyote! Try it again. And do it in the same way you did before! Are you putting off talking to your spouse because it didn’t go well last time? TRY AGAIN! Did you meet with a therapist for 3 sessions and found yourself unable to mesh with him? Try again! The wonderful thing about Wile E. Coyote Syndrome is that it’s an entirely curable condition that requires no medication or even any real treatment. It requires only free will and effort and a little bit of persistence.
Unrelated Book: The End of Faith by Sam Harris – As alluded to in other blogs, I’m not a fan of religion. This book is a grim reminder of some of the many reasons.
Unrelated Band: Amorphis – Privilege of Evil: An oldie but a goodie all the way from Finland! The vocals are garbage, the cover art is stupid, the blast beats are poorly recorded and I’m pretty sure they misspelled their own band name but there are lots of catchy guitar riffs and memorable moments on this record that make it worth a listen!
Brandon Peters, LPC 