It’s a lot harder than it sounds.
Because to do it, you have to calm yourself down. And not just in the present tense. You have to be prepared to let go of all previously stored emotions and all the assumptions and perceptions that come with them on the subject at hand.
You know, whatever it is you want to help yourself with.
And letting go like that is truly the hard part because all the stuff attached to the subject comes to be part of your sense of reality. They are taken as real, at least subjectively, and it is always a delicate business indeed to peel the residue of illusion away from the truth of our reality.
When peeling off that residue, your best tool is often Occam’s Razor. A lot of the convolutions and complications of the mind that cause us such distress really do not stand up to the Razor’s test.
For example, say I am traveling in public and I pass a group of people who burst into loud laughter as I walk by.
The immediate conclusion my Avoidant insanity would leap to is that they are laughing at me because they can’t believe I have the audacity to drag my horrible and contemptible self out where people can see me.
Or something like that.
But isn’t the simplest explanation that one of them said something funny that had absolutely nothing to do with me? To presuppose all that crazy nonsense makes no sense, and is rather narcissistic to boot.
Like dude, you’re not the main character. Not everything is about you. Chillax.
And that is undoubtedly the truth. But that does not mean it immediately becomes what you believe. Belief is based on a lot of things, of whom logic is only one.
If you still feel the same way, the lie will simply regenerate.
That’s why the ability to modify your emotions based on new evidence is so vital. An what do you know, that’s the hardest part.
Our emotions don’t want to change. They are the central pillar of how we see the world and therefore need to have a very robust ability to resist the winds of change that blow from our ever vacillating conscious minds.
In general, when they come into conflict. our minds assume the emotion is correct and the thought, idea, or information is wrong or mistaken.
Explains a lot, dunnit?
But the toxic, harmful lies NEED to be changed and that’s where the bullet hits the bone when it comes to getting out of your own way.
Once you have scraped the surface convolutions away and revealed the emotions they were expressing, it’s time for the showdown.
This is where you don’t fight the erroneous emotion – that will just make your mind fight you back and you cannot win against yourself.
Instead, you just watch the emotion. Calmly. Neutrally. And with a clear eye. And as you watch, the errant emotional will wither and crumble away because it fundamentally does not make sense and the mind has ways to get rid of beliefs that do not make sense.
You just need to get out of the way first.
More after the break.
Welcome to Darkness Falls
Population : Me and a fuckton of demons, spirits, ghosts, ghoulies, and things that go hump in the night.
Don’t worry about the nasties. They are only harmful to me, provided you keep your distance. Get too close and they will suck the warmth right out of your soul.
Such hungry little beasts they are.
Feeling pretty depressed right now. Got the whole waves of sadness and despair rolling over me and smashing me against the rocks of mental illness over and over thing going on in this rusty ol head of mine.
This time, I am trying to just kind of go with it. Let the emotions take me where they need me to go so I can feel what they need me to feel. All of it. Every drop.
I am not interested in avoiding suffering at all costs any more. I’m fine with suffering. Sign me the fuck up. I will suffer the torments of Hell if it gets me closer to sane.
Plus I can concentrate on how good it feels to feel things after a long frozen life. Even the pain of the pins and needles that come when a sleeping limb awakens can be a welcome thing when you have been numb for as long as I have.
But how do I convince that scared little animal inside me that I am safe? That it can let me unfreeze and nothing bad will happen? Nothing is going to GET me.
But I guess we’re beyond that now and have been for some time. My icy prison doesn’t need logic or evidence to stay the way it is.
It learned to self-refrigerate a long long time ago.
So I don’t know how to convince my deeper self that everything is OK now. It still feels like I am surrounded by hostile forces and that my only hope of survival is to remain unnoticed by them.
And therefore that I have to stay in this morgue freezer of a bunker way down in the deepest sub-basements of my soul.
Maybe it’s as simple a this life being all I have ever known, making any deviation from it a trip into the unknown. the void,. the merciless Outside, and I am scared out of my mind to go someplace like that.
After all, it’s cold out there. And loud. And bright, and busy, and loaded with stimulation of all kinds, and I can’t handle that shit any more.
Bunker life has ruined me from the outside world.
Even on a virtual level. The thought of headed out into the digital wildness in search of work and/or networking opportunities chills me to the core and freezes me in place.
More of that god damned freeze response.
So yeah. I dunno. I guess this is it until I die, then.
See ya later folks.
I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.