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INFJ Registered: 10/08/10 Posts: 3,277 Loc: United States Last seen: 1 day, 7 hours |
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Background
At 20 years old, I always walked around with clenched fists. I had had a hard life. I'd freely admit to that, but I truly believed that I had somehow walked away unscathed. I was in survival mode, refusing to acknowledge or even see my own feelings. I had a tendency to ruminate when someone did something that I upset me. I'd replay the situation for hours on end attempting to guess the motivations behind their actions. I wasn't letting myself feel. I became interested in self-improvement books. The first one I dove into was a book called "The Six Pillars of Self-Esteem" by Nathaniel Branden. He was known as the pioneering researcher into the subconscious. A few books later, I stumbled upon Eckhart Tolle and read his world-leading research on mindfulness (and not the kind you read about in those grocery store magazines.) These two sources are where I draw most of this knowledge from. Subconscious What exactly is the subconscious? It's the part of our consciousness that we don't have easy access to. We do, however, see its observations and judgements come out through out conscious mind. For example: Jamie has a rough job. When she gets home she just wants to veg out. Jamie has also been gaining weight from ordering food every night. She doesn't feel very good about herself. Jamie consciously knows that she should just make herself a nice and healthy dinner. Nevertheless, she gives in and orders some McDonald's. Consciously, Jamie may think "I really gotta get serious. I'll start tomorrow." Jamie's subconscious has just recorded "energy should not be spent on taking care of Jamie." This, of course, lowers her sense of self-worth. She likely doesn't even realize it. That judgement will begin showing up in her conscious behaviors, however. She may think she deserves less than she does. Our subconscious can also influence the ways that we interact with others. Demi has always set extremely high goals for herself. She joined clubs in high school and graduated valedictorian. Demi only really sees dating as a hindrance and honestly feels fine without it. She is focused on becoming a doctor. When Luisana, a bubbly and attractive student joins one her clubs in college, everyone quickly takes a liking to her, everyone except Demi. Demi doesn't know why, but something about Luisana just rubs her the wrong way. Demi becomes passive-aggressive with Luisana to the point that it's off-putting to the others in the club. Because Demi has suppressed all of her desires in order to achieve, she's not even aware of the fact that she, too wants to feel cute and desirable. Unfortunately for her, her unwillingness to see her own desires damaged her relationships with everyone in that club. Why Do We Suppress Things? Role: In Demi's case, her ignorance to her own feelings was based on the role that she felt she belongs in. Perhaps her mother was a failure or the opposite, her mother was incredibly successful with high expectations for her. Whatever it was, Demi felt being successful was more important than even her own emotions. View of Self: A slight variation on this is the desire to maintain our view of ourselves. Some years ago I worked with a middle-aged woman. She had a deep-seated insecurity about not being fun or likeable. With each employee that quit, she would make some excuse about what a bad person said employee was. Eventually, when it was just me and her she had a breakdown after having to face the fact that she wasn't as fun and likeable as she thought. That self-protection is a reason for her to hide from reality. Inconvenience: In this scenario, recognizing the truth could be embarrassing or cause major inconvenience in one's life. An example: Johnny has been in a relationship for 3 years. He's moved in with his, now fiancee and his life is wrapped around hers. Should Johnny confront the truth that he really doesn't love her, it may been deeply embarrassing and it could really mess up his future plans. Trauma/Self-Protection: This is especially common in those who were abused or grew up in a neglectful home. For someone who is terrified of facing their own negative emotions, those emotions will be suppressed. In extreme cases, he or she may even suppress positive realizations (ie. their crush likes them back) because of the potential of negative emotions. How Do we Suppress Things? There are three main methods that we use to hide from ourselves. The first is avoidance. We may engage in unhealthy coping mechanisms like working too much, using drugs, sex or food to distract ourselves from our own thoughts and feelings. The second method, I actually slipped in in the intro. We can tense our bodies which actually causes emotional blunting. Sometimes, people will stay so tensed for so long that they develop anhedonia. At that point, they're trapped in a vicious cycle of feeling numb or feeling nothing. The final, and perhaps most obvious method is psychological blocking. We literally block the threatening thought, fact, feeling or reality from reaching our conscious minds. This separates us from reality and can cause delusional thinking in the mildest cases. In more extreme cases, it can cause rumination, splitting and obsession. This is because our inability to feel whatever we need to leaves us to use logic to try to think our feelings away. Luckily, there is a super useful exercise to help us access these things. Exercise: Sentence Completion Sentence completion is an incredibly simple but very powerful exercise that anyone can do at home. It works like this, you start with a sentence stem. You then, as quickly as you can, create endings for the sentence. You only need 5-10 endings. Once you finish that, choose one of those completed sentences to frame another deeper question. You can also choose a totally unrelated sentence if none of the answers were particularly interesting. Here is an example: My childhood was... Scary Sad Chaotic Traumatic Not great What made my childhood sad was... My dad died I saw Steph get raped My uncle was mean My mom was mean sometimes We were poor I didn't feel safe My mom was mean by... Not really caring most of the time She told me to kill myself Blaming us when we were sad Moody and unpredictable I didn't feel like she loved me My could've done things differently by... Paying attention Not chasing an alcoholic Listening Making me feel safe Not making us feel like burdens Not being so moody So, that was a real sentence completion for me right now. I noticed a sadness by the second question and I'm also aware of the fact that my muscles are tensing up. Something in me doesn't want me to feel it. Notice, really any of those second answers could take us down a rabbit hole. When doing it with yourself, if there is one that seems like you want to stay away from it, that's exactly where you should go. It may seem simple and not so profound, but I promise you, you can discover some truths doing this exercise. The Self & The Ego Eckhart Tolle has been rated as the most popular spiritual author in the United States. I, myself, tend to be more focused on the tangible, but believe me, this man's work can and has changed lives. Years ago, Eckhart Tolle woke up in the middle of the night. He was full of dread and kept telling himself that he couldn't do it anymore. He was ready to die. In that moment of greatest despair, he spontaneously completely lost the ego inside of his head. For the next two years, he spent his time on park benches feeling at peace with the world. So what exactly happened to him? Eckhart Tolle draws a distinction between the ego and the self. The ego is a sort of survival or pain avoidance computer. The ego is the voice that you hear inside of your head all the time. It makes judgements. It plans and coordinates. The self, on the other hand, simply experiences. The self feels the movie, the ego critiques the performance. Eckhart Tolle believes that many of us have a sort of addiction to the ego. The ego grows out of control and so the self stops experiencing because the ego is filtering everything. The process of pulling out the self is known as mindfulness. In order to experience the environment and feelings around us, we must surely be mindful of that environment. Mindfulness can be achieved by an infinite number of methods. There are entire books full of paths to mindfulness. One area of particular interest in relation to Nathaniel Branden's work is body mindfulness. Body mindfulness is exactly what it sounds like. When using this route, we focus on the sensations within our own bodies. We allow the self to feel those sensations without having the ego judge them or make a plan to avoid them. As I practice mindfulness right now, I can feel the tension in my shoulders from earlier. Truly allowing myself to feel those muscles relax, to feel the air going in and out of my lungs brings a sense of peace to me. Of course, virtually anything can be a thing for you to shift your focus on. Bypassing a Toxic Ego If your life has been less than stellar, there is a good chance you've developed some form of toxic ego. A toxic ego is often a hyper-protective ego. As I mentioned earlier, I could ruminate for hours on end. In many cases, this rumination was the precursor to even allowing myself to feel good feelings. In my early 20's, I had a crush on a coworker. She began acting flirty with me. While a healthy ego would allow you to feel excitement, nervousness and joy, mine told me she "looked like a pig in heat". It wouldn't even allow me to risk being hurt. It would rather hurt me than take the chance. I wasn't truly freed from that toxic ego until I experienced mindfulness for the first time. By allowing myself to feel and experience instead of control and manipulate, the toxic ego began to shrink. It's as if its usefulness had run out. Interestingly, personality disorders (diseases of the ego) have one proven effective treatment method (behavioral therapy incorporating mindfulness). Now, of course, you don't need to have a personality disorder to reap the benefits. It brings such a great peace and clarity. I am typically somewhat anxious in social situations. When practicing mindfulness, my connection to the other people is uninterrupted. I become uninhibited. How is Mindfulness Done? One of the easiest ways I've found to access this headspace is through nature. I feel the wind on my skin, I feel the sun, I look at the clouds, I heard the birds and the buzzing of human life. Your first time, it might be a bit difficult to silence that ego. Don't fight it if it does start talking (if you respond to it with words in your head, it's literally your ego talking to your ego, no self involved). Let it say whatever it's saying and continue to focus on the sounds, sights and feelings around you. For me, I feel like I'm going through a tunnel. Once I arrive on the other side, everything feels more real than real. In the nature setting, I am just in awe. Outro: Wow, you read all the way through! Thanks. I do have a tendency to make these guides a little too long. I do appreciate you taking the time, though and I hope you found something useful in all of that. If it piqued your interest, the two authors are Nathanial Branden and Eckhart Tolle. Branden has books going back decades while Tolle basically said all that he needed to in his two books.
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Xena Registered: 05/09/20 Posts: 6 Loc: nc Last seen: 2 years, 5 months |
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Very well written. I have had many experiences in life 11 years prison, truck driver, business owner, contractor, ect ect. My ego does get in the way. For many years I have read self help books. My favorite is 5 sec rule Mel robbins. The greatest lesson I have learned is to try to treat people with respect and be nice if can. Each person you meet is going through a different stage in life. Mentally and physically. For instance, the guy that just cut you off in traffic might of just lost his job, mother got cancer ect. ect. Always be mindful of your environment. We are all in this life together. I admit some people just plain stupid. But I want to keep a loving mindset and help when I can. I want to enjoy life.
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Stranger Registered: 02/09/20 Posts: 15 Last seen: 2 years, 1 month |
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My thoughts are now related to the pandemic and the desire that it ends soon
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