People talk about feeling part of a group. If you feel inclined towards to ALIENATION you will still feel this ‘groupishness’ (a hard to describe combination of unity, solidity, possibility and protection), but probably in relation to a select group of one. Yourself. You may believe that you can do the ‘team player’ thing but I imagine that, on reflection, you might acknowledge that you never properly feel part of a group.
To begin to resolve this, without losing the special, clear sense of yourself that you already have practice stopping interpreting.
Pick any situation and when the part of your mind that starts to suggest to you why someone is doing something, or what they are doing means or symbolises, STOP.
Yes, STOP IT.
Lose yourself in the process of what another person is doing. Recognise how this affects you. If you really have to say anything at all maybe draw that person’s attention to what they are doing. If, for instance, you believe they may not be aware that they are doing something: ‘oh, you’ve got your wellingtons on’ (and it is sunny) … or ‘that was quite loud’ (when someone speaks with more volume than a situation seems to demand, ie in a cinema during a boring bit), or ‘you’ve got your arms folded’ (when a large adult is standing in front of a timid child and looking very defensive). That sort of thing.
You will be surprised how this way of being with someone, bracketing or setting aside your thoughts and allowing theirs to come to light while you somehow keep a beat going (like the rhythm players in a band) do, protecting ‘the beat’ of your time together (a way of thinking about life’s rhythm, perhaps), will allow you to feel connected.
You will be more connected to someone else instead of to your own internal sense of life with all of its suppositions, predictions and ways of forming conclusions.
You may have heard people talk about ‘attachment’, meaning the way you feel a solid connection to someone or something in the early years of your life and how this affects your relationships as you grow older. People with attachment problems often hesitate (see the posts about HESITATION).
What about your connection to the future? All of the drives are involved in trying to ferry you, in as good a state as possible, to tomorrow. Let’s look at your FEAR drive for a moment, though. INEXPERIENCE troubles you if your responses to your FEAR drive have been difficult. Part of managing how to safely do things, to assess risks, for example, engages with how present you can feel right now – and in the future. Discovering how to find a sense of safety that isn’t also likely to limit you (hiding all of the time, for instance) will leave you with a sense of direction.
You will find yourself sticking to arrangements that you make, and plans that you draw up for yourself because you know that a certain degree of selfishness is essential if you are to be of any use to anyone apart from yourself. This way the future happens best. Not as a fantasy that avoids difficulty or the truth but as a movement resilient enough and fluid enough to give you the best chance of imagining yourself happily doing something in the future.
How can you get this kind of thing going for yourself? Arrange some things each week just for yourself and stick to them. Talk to other people who do things that you feel you’d like to do. Approach them, whoever they are. My career has been hugely affected by people I have approached like this and who took time to offer me some advice.
Don’t hold back. What have you got to lose, really?
Noticing something can happen in many different ways. It can be a moment in which something comes to your attention. It can involve an experience of something inescapable: a thought, a sensation, a sound. A certain kind of helplessness might accompany either experience. ‘I couldn’t help but notice …’ or ‘I couldn’t stop thinking about …’. These experiences have something in common. In either case what you might regard as your ongoing feelings and thoughts, the ones that you might want to hold onto, are interrupted. How easy do you find it to return to them?
Notice how often you find yourself being unexpectedly interrupted and unable to return to where you were, emotionally and intellectually, before the interruption. The more often it happens, the more vigilant it is likely that you are being. In some way, maybe even if you don’t recognise it at first, you will be living your life feeling ‘on edge’.
There are many ways you can begin to deal with this kind of precariousness. One of the most effective ways involves trying to notice how ‘present’ you are in situations. Do you, for example, find yourself sitting among supposed friends and believe that they are talking about things which seem strangely, indirectly critical of you? Are you able to say anything directly about what you believe is going on?
If you’re not then in a way that surely isn’t hard to imagine … you’re not really there with them. And that will put you on edge. It may put them on edge; it may relax them knowing that you are unlikely to respond. They may believe they are helping you by telling you a ‘truth’ gently. Or you may be projecting something onto the situation. The only way that you will find out what is happening, and to stop feeling so on edge, is to discover a way of articulating your point of view.
Don’t just jump in and say something. That can be destructive and painful. What’s at stake here? Trust. Think about and find someone to speak with (when I say this I usually mean a psychotherapist, if you can find one who’s any good) about how you might be able to do this.
Asserting yourself safely is a good response to your RAGE instinct.
If someone has abused or exploited you it’s likely you’ll have been left with a terrible feeling that you did something wrong. Maybe you think you didn’t listen to something inside yourself, an instinct, a feeling, a thought, that told you what was going on was wrong. Perhaps a friend said something and you ignored it. Maybe up to a point you wanted something.
You didn’t want what happened.
Whoever did this awful thing to you will, from the moment they became aware of you, have done all that they could to tune into any signs that you could have wanted to feel loved, thought special or beautiful.
Who doesn’t? A person, however, who hasn’t been loved enough, securely enough, or who feels there is something wrong with them, will set aside their doubts more easily than someone who rarely doubts how people feel about them.
Abusers bank on this playing a large part in their victims going along with them. More than that, abusers rely on people they abuse being frightened of reporting what has happened to them in case they, themself, are blamed … because that abused person already blames themself. They feel ashamed. It’s a horrendous bind.
Draw your anger out like a sword and cut through it. Search for somebody you can trust, discover how to trust them, and tell that person what has happened. A psychotherapist may be the best person for this.
When you do so you will begin to realise all of the things you have never said out of a fear that people will think badly of you. You will see what your anger can do for you.
Next time you notice you are holding something, whether it’s someone’s hand, a steering wheel, a tennis racket, a musical instrument or a pen, try to see how much more loosely you can grip it without feeling out of touch with it (or whoever’s connected to it). The chances are you will begin to feel more in touch as soon as you start to hold on more loosely. Practice this often. Do life with the loosest possible grip.
When you feel stuck you believe that nothing will change. Bad things repeat and the future looks bleak. Other people tell you life will improve but you don’t believe them. You can’t, however much you wish you could.
These pages are about how to get unstuck by doing things differently. Being stuck governs what you believe. Painful, contrary, invalidating feelings rule your mind and lead you to do all kinds of thing to try and get unstuck. (more...)
