Beyond McMindfulness & Gaslighting

[Such_Saturation]

More Mcbuzzwords for the buzzword god

 

[Integra]

He himself did not hurt me, but he let me be hurt, the same as he let his mother be hurt, because there was no way to defend her.

I understand. I can understand him, too.

So the problem when you react right, and that it touches others, they do not see that the past hurts them, and they turn to YOU. In the present, you are the one who makes a difference and make the pain shows up.

I take a deep breath and imagine them vomiting. I can tell that they are not seeing me but casting me into some kind of a role, or blurring me into the image of their past. But whatever it is that they see in that moment, it's their reality and all I can do is hold the space. Sometimes all you can do is stand and watch them suffer in prison of their own choice. If they're people you love, and it's worth it, using your imagination in moments like this helps.

Am I crazy to think he is hypothyroid though doctors say... Was I rude and overreacting when... Was it an excess to say...

Nobody here can tell. We weren't there. The only fact is you felt what you felt and you said what you said. Looking back, there may have been better ways to do it, but when blood sugar drops and the body sets off alarm bells, is it reasonable to expect yourself to be in perfect control of how you express yourself? If you could take back time and not yell, and not be upset, of course you'd want to do that now, but wasn't it in some way necessary for you, to stand up for yourself in a situation when nobody else seemed to (or really didn't) care?

 

[Xisca]

in perfect control of how you express yourself? If you could take back time and not yell,

Strange enough, you think I did not control and yelled, and anybody would have seen a normal conversation, as I just said we must stop in the village with the car. I just told my needs with a normal voice, though assertive and letting no place to a no.

 

[Xisca]

About the video talking about narcissism and co-dependency, I was interrogative about the massive flight response from narcisits, who for sure must be suffering a lot!
So I wanted to know if they considered it impossible to cure...
Narcissistic Personality Disorder- can narcissism be cured?

@Hugh Johnson The video was there to show the possibility getting back to feel the feelings, but the theme itself was interresting....

I have been once in such a relationship, and I had to be very wise to save my life or not at least end up in hospital...
But I believe than at a much softer and common level there is a lot of such codependency, and that sometimes both people can be a little narc and a little codependent...

I do not like to admire people, and when someone does admire me, it makes me want to go away!
We should not be magnets in relationships, but like bubbles of the same foam. I half believe in the border theories, the problem is more about being in real contact, like in the foam.

 

[DaveFoster]

Your point,Ivysaur?

 

[Xisca]

Pretty good Dave, I have watched others after this right now, thanks for the source!
Again, how body is important, and in link with emotions.

And this one talks about the help provided by mindfulness!
How to cure a narcissist.

 

[Xisca]

This link is very special to me:
https://www.integralsomaticpsycholo...oying-emotions-when-tracking-body-sensations/

Raja Selvam is a senior teacher of Somatic experiencing but is going beyond it. His ISP - Integral Somatic psychology - approach can be added to any form of therapy.
He did a very good job for example in treating ptsd from the tsunami in India, with only 1 session per person.
And he is right about being careful in tracking body sensations, because on one side emotions can be strong, but they are also shy and can hide if you track them!

I like what Elliot Hulse says about depression being when emotions are depressed or repressed, but if people do so, it is usually because it would come out too strong, so it has to be titulated carefully, though without prohibiting and destroying what comes out.

Catharsis allows sometimes too strong, and sometimes SE can allow too little and be afraid of big activations.

 

[lvysaur]

Your point,Ivysaur?

I'm not sure which emotions you're referring to

 

[Hugh Johnson]

I'm not sure which emotions you're referring to

You have emotions, and then you have emotions about those emotions, and then about those emotions.

You feel betrayed then feel angry about that, then feel shame about that, and you never react to the feeling you had.

You feel lust, then feel shame about the lust, then feel anger about the shame, and then you hate the opposite sex.

Getting it? Feeling shame, when appropriate just tells you "you should not act in that way, it makes you a bad person." Easy to change. Feel anger, than shame about it, and you might never get to the root of the emotional issue, and you might never use that anger to defend yourself.

 

[lvysaur]

So you feel "clearer" emotions, got it. Your original wording was ambiguous, that's all I was pointing out.

 

[Xisca]

There is an idea that a holy man is not one that is without anger, or shame, or lust, but one that feels such emotions immediately, without shame

The holy man has something else IMO, he can stand the first emotion, so there is no need to go to the mix of emotion and thinking about it.
If you can contain the emotion as a LARGE saucepan contains the milk, then nothing goes over board.
When things go overboard, come the secondary emotions.

I like when you say "Feeling shame, when appropriate", because yes shame can be appropriate to know what is a common way of behaving in a culture.
So for me there is no problem with "you should not act in that way", and the problem of shame comes with the second part, if "it makes you a bad person." When parents do it right, then we should not feel a bad person, only that we have to correct the behaviour.

I have another example of 1st and 2dn emotion: frustration and jealousy. The 1st one comes naturally because you want something and cannot have it. If you can be conscious of the frustration, then you do not need to become jealous in the long term.

Tipically, animals like dogs are very good at showing their 1st emotion! They will show their frustration if they do not get the attention someone else gets, and try to interfere, and we interprete this as jealousy! But WE are the ones that are shut from the feeling and concept of frustration! Or maybe we judge this too basic and too animal, and thus we shut from it, and then comes the secondary emotion over it!

 

[Integra]

You feel lust, then feel shame about the lust, then feel anger about the shame, and then you hate the opposite sex.

If you can contain the emotion as a LARGE saucepan contains the milk, then nothing goes over board.
When things go overboard, come the secondary emotions.

Ahaaaa!! So that's what secondary emotions do. Then, how do you increase the size of the saucepan? I read that post about SE and titration, like a case study of working with a client, but I don't really know how to do it myself/on myself.

 

[Xisca]

I think Hugh is right about recognizing and acknoledging the first emotion, and it matches not SE for me, but my experience in animal behaviourism. Just look at what dogs do and my example with so called jealousy that is better considered as a direct expression of frustration. Of course we have skills animals hardly have, but the mistake is to forget about what they do. We have the skills but do not use them enough. Or, unfortunately, we have suffered things that no adult animal make their offsprings endure... Then of course, those skills are overhelmed.

Really, look at dogs interactions! They activate and relax many times a day, but sure, they take time to do it. Just the same as they are panting after an effort and wait before going to play again.
So we have a stock they do not have, and then it would all go out at once, so there is titration. Because before increasing the pan, if you remove part of the stock.... more room!

What I do for myself is to feel, the way Richard Grannon says or even Elliot Hulse (what he says, I do not do how he does). I try to get access to what I can hold and feel without too much reaction, by using a focus on the place representing for me the indestructible, the center of the chest where we put hand for praying. I considere the rest as clouds that will go, and stay firm about feeling my inner sun. I sustain myself with my hands also, where needed.
I do it only when I feel there is something upsetting me.
It is good to remain thinking that it is a memory and that it will go if I accept to feel it. I know it feels real, that it is, but the reality is in the body, the story is not happening. I am safe and in a safe place.

Then go to the interview of Raja Selvam in his website, and he explains also 2 cases.
What is Integral Somatic Psychology? A Conversation with Raja Selvam
He says that basically, the physical feeling of the emotion is very local in one place, and that it is good if we can feel it, as all say, but we can stand to feel it more easily if we diffuse it in the rest of the body.
Make the difference between eating a spoonful of salt and put it in your bowl of broth!

Increasing the size of the saucepan means to go less mad about the bad things we have to stand, and also be able to contact more easily the good things. It is the result of the process, it is general. It is coherence at cell level and at metabolism level, and it is also resilience. You know that you can go up when needed, and then relax.

When resilience is small, you still go up, but you decide to stay activated because it is not worth going down for going up again. Or you do not fully relax. Or you stay activated and you do not even know it because it has been locked in and stays hidden, though still eating your energy.

 

[Xisca]

@Integra forget about doing a technique to yourself!
Understand with your head, and then let the body process the knowledge.

I think it helps to read and learn so that we are more conscious of how we function and react. But we are mostly blind to ourselves. It is better that somebody mirrors us, ...if the person does not mirror oneself!

The main mistake maybe in relationships is not being true, because most people do not accept trueness of others, and react. So of course people are not encouraged to be true to us! I usually push people until they are true, and very often they are true only when they get upset and angry! Then it is too late to tell the truth in a good way...

Why do we hold on until we are angry?

I remember my boyfriend upsetting me everyday with protesting for the noise of the shoehills of the woman living upstairs. And how she could do this and not use slippers in a flat, blablabla. I told him "Why do you say this to ME and not to her? She is not even conscious of the problem. Just go up there and talk to her! I know that you will go one day, but if you wait, you will go angry!" And of course people cannot stand what you say angry and think you should have said it before!

 

[Barliman]

Didn't you also quote Peter Levine that trauma lies not in the event, but in the corresponding activation of the nervous system? A tiger or a mouse, doesn't matter if your legs are shaking.

Words hurt. Actions hurt. Conflicts hurt. Bad environments hurt. Harmful beliefs hurt. Pointless traditions hurt. There are so many things a human being can be sensitive to. But whatever the case is, shaming people for being sensitive will not make them more robust. "Toughen up" may be a well-meaning suggestion, but utterly useless for the sensitive person.

The reasons that these words and actions hurt really comes down to the mismatch between what is said and our expectation of what should have been said.
This touches on the issue of karma- ie if we perform an act in the expectation of its karmic fruit (I did a good thing, so I am entitled to recieve a good reward from it) we will come away with the idea that "we are owed one by the universe".
In the end- whether the list of things that you have enumerated hurts or not depends utterly on our expectations that the universe is a reasonable place where we will be duly rewarded for our good deeds --(THIS LIFETIME).

Now I think that there is a very good argument to be made here ( and I think that Peter Levine, Dan Siegel, Bessel Van Der Kolk etc might agree) -to say that "being a sensitive person" is the same as being a victim of developmental trauma, and never having learned how to self regulate.

In the end, when the sort of things that you list above "hurt", that hurt is a physically really phenomenon. It has a specific physical location and sensory signature.

The point is that that experience stems from an unstable and ill regulated HPA axis, insula and autonomic nervous system. That pain is physically real, but it is not necessary for the purposes of day to day survival. In fact it endangers it. In the end the body becomes such a horrible place to inhabit that you (and I) want nothing to do with it. It gets so unpleasant that death would be a welcome relief.

In dealing with this every day shittiness, we are tempted to dissociate from our bodies. That dissociation ultimately ends in injury of one part or another.

I remember well the first time I had to resort to going for a massage to deal with the severe physical pain from my chronically tensed up neck and back. I was astounded by the extent of severe pain and muscle tension - which I had never known was there. In time I progressed from external application of relief to more significant attempts at working with the problem through mindfulness.

So one of the roles of mindfulness here is to become more aware of the body, and to become aware of the furious activity of "the monkey mind" when a stress response grips the whole body. That activity drives a stress response which informs us we are being threatened- which in turn enhances the stress response.

Mindfulness does not involve dissociation, not if done right. When we sit and we observe our breath, we learn a technique for regaining awareness when lost in thought, for bringing our attention back to the body.

We cannot act in a way that will ever bring about universal behaviour or happiness. Nobody has ever done that. Not Buddha, not Jesus.
So we need to be able to ride above the turbulence caused by the negative actions of others.

I am becoming increasingly disillusioned with the concept of the "highly sensitive person" despite being initially very impressed with Elaine Aron's work.

If we are so highly sensitive that we are de-railed by the misbehaviour of others- how does that help us? How does it help us remain level enough to make a positive contribution?

The answer to both questions is that it does not- and as I said above I suspect that us highly sensitive persons need to think of being "highly sensitive" as being possessed of a painful and maladaptive trait, which is a result of early childhood experience which did not equip us to self regulate in a way that allows us to function competitively in a greater outside world.

 

[Xisca]

Hi @Barliman !
Yes that is right, sensitivity comes from trauma, especially early, and not only developmental, also shock trauma.
I think what @Integra pointed at, is the lack of good help that comes from un-understanding people, when they say "you should....". People can evolve only from where they are, and it is very well understood when people have a broken leg etc, and not when they are sensitive in a more invisible part of themselves.

How can we be so little informed that bully still exist? It comes from not knowing the hurt done, and being afraid of a non understood way of being and behaving in life. It is very easy to help sensitive persons, but it should be a global social task. Or else some people go out of track so much that it becomes dangerous for the whole society.

 

[ReSTART]

snip

So what you're saying is perceive, think, act our emotions?

 

[DaveFoster]

In the end this is the same problem: make you think that YOU have a problem, and that YOU overreact to a situation! Just meditate please!

Problem: this leads to dissociation, just because you treat your nervous system while you are not OUT of the damage that is done to you. You can nicely self-regulate, but in the end nobody stops the big boat nor turn its driving wheel.

Couldn't agree more. Well stated.

It's akin to looking a steroid user and saying, "Hey; he works out all the time. If only I do that, I can have muscles just like him!" No; you may neither match his physiological recovery, nor his motivation to workout twice per day, nor his resistance to CNS fatigue. As the subject, the AAS user might say, "Well, I just workout all the time, and I'm very motivated about what I do; other's aren't as motivated and choose to not workout as much as I do." It's hard to see past your mind-forg'd manacles.

As the subject, we choose our environment, and our environment shapes us.

 

[Integra]

This touches on the issue of karma- ie if we perform an act in the expectation of its karmic fruit (I did a good thing, so I am entitled to recieve a good reward from it) we will come away with the idea that "we are owed one by the universe".
In the end- whether the list of things that you have enumerated hurts or not depends utterly on our expectations that the universe is a reasonable place where we will be duly rewarded for our good deeds --(THIS LIFETIME).

Yes, I think this attitude or this set of beliefs is certainly a part of the picture for my present pain. A part of me still, for better or worse, feels that things shouldn't have happened this way, that I should've known better, that life is so unfair, etc. etc. And though I don't exactly view karma the way you describe, I do understand what you're getting at. To try to address this on a cognitive level, I've also been taking stock of all the things that are on my list of shouldn'ts and ways I think life has been unfair, and I've discovered some really good things that came out of these experiences. So you could say that I am a professional victim, but only part-time. :) But I won't abandon myself and pretend that they're painful because of my attitude (though again I understand how this, once we turn to philosophy, is on a higher level true). For Integra in this time and space, they were painful. Period. To view everything in the cosmic scheme of things as a very sophisticated card game is fun, but I can't (and will not) bypass my ego in that way.

My previous painful beliefs naturally dissipated when I saw, going down the stairs of my mind asking "why, why, why" how they weren't true. As for my beliefs that the world is very unfair, and that the bad things that happened that shouldn't have happened, I am still trying to see how these beliefs do not represent my reality. I still need them. They are doing something good for me even though they're not a perfect solution. Yet they're painful. Until I find a better way to deal with whatever is causing these beliefs to flare up, I have them as the last bastions of self-defense against people telling me I'm wrong. As long as I am this particular individual, with this particular ego, they are very much true for me, and may never stop being true.

If you can prove these beliefs wrong, which I think are the source of my victim attitude/mentality, please do. I would love to see them changed. If you can't, then I wonder what these beliefs are good for, what are they doing for me right now, for what are they acting as symptom-control medicine?

 

[Integra]

I suspect that us highly sensitive persons need to think of being "highly sensitive" as being possessed of a painful and maladaptive trait, which is a result of early childhood experience which did not equip us to self regulate in a way that allows us to function competitively in a greater outside world.

For me, this sensitivity is neither good or bad, just a trait, but growing up, it became a gateway to developing narcissism. As a result, I have been extremely functional and 'objectively' successful by society's standards, yet dissociated/miserable in my free time.