by Tom Tomaszewski | Oct 18, 2023 | HELPLESSNESS
HELPLESSNESS / RAGE
I often work with people who have had to end a relationship with a person after they have been treated very badly. Sometimes that person will leave them … but in either case a strange situation seems to develop. The relationship in some horrible way seems to go on as before, with the person who has left or been left continuing to look on while their former partner carries on as they did before, and continues to be a part of their life.
This is largely a RAGE problem, of someone not being able to communicate how angry they feel in a way that makes a difference.
If this is you try thinking of your ongoing experiences of your ex as like watching a film. A film does not have feelings or intelligence, it inspires them and your emotional experience is what keeps the film being shown, just like a film in a cinema will keep being screened as long as there’s a good audience for it.
Your ex is in fact like a producer. The person who gets the film made in order to profit from it … and as long as you keep ‘watching the film’ your ex will be getting something from you doing so.
Look away. In every situation try to take your attention away from your ex. Use your angry energy to stop looking, to fire you off in another direction like a rocket to the moon. If you are, for example, talking to one of your children and your ex surfaces in a conversation (as they inevitably will) step away as though you have just seen a land mine lurking where you were about to tread.
And turn off Instagram, Twitter, your WhatsApp ‘family chat’ and whatever else keeps you stuck to them. Anger can serve like a magnet when it finds the wrong form. As Leo Bersani wrote: ‘contempt cements the couple’.
by Tom Tomaszewski | Oct 15, 2023 | INEXPERIENCE
INEXPERIENCE / FEAR
If your instincts for safety have been compromised you’re likely to end up forever hanging out in the mainstream, eating what most people do, listening to what most people listen to, believing in things that most people think are reasonable … or eyeing the mainstream as a place where lies get told, where the truth is being buried and in which your interests are never being served. The mainstream, in other words, preserves you perfectly or seeks to destroy you unmitigatedly depending on where you swing to in your struggle to accommodate FEAR.
The secret to complacency or paranoia is the same. Go wide and deep, not narrow and shallow. If you’re standing in what gets called the mainstream or consider yourself outside of it … be kind. Look to be open when you can. Embrace complexity.
Spend as much time as you can working out how you can safely do these things and you’ll discover something your life never easily granted you: how to cope with feeling frightened.
by Tom Tomaszewski | Oct 12, 2023 | MONOTONY
MONOTONY / SEEKING
Imagine a colour that you like, some music that calms you and a scent that you enjoy. Picture yourself in a room decorated in that colour, with that music playing and that scent in the air. What happens to you if you linger in this place? Now imagine a colour, some music and a scent that aren’t objectionable but which you don’t care for.
When I do this I come up in the first place with a kind of bluey green, Miles Davis playing All Blues and Andy Tauer’s Les Années 25 Bis. Imagining sitting in a room with these three things and nothing else leaves me feeling as if I am coming together. If I let my imagination go I start to daydream of autumn leaves and rooms you’d get in a film by Jean-Pierre Melville.
Then if I turn my mind to things I do not care for, which I won’t mention here, I realise I feel irritated having to be with them. I feel depleted. Some things run us down and take from us, other things build us up and give. Try to keep this in mind when you are around people: are they giving or taking? Neglect is a form of taking, of running you down. It can be very subtle. Life may feel monotonous, depressing, when you are neglected o neglecting yourself in some way.
Make your life more one that gives and you will find enthusiasm for it.
by Tom Tomaszewski | Sep 23, 2023 | ALIENATION
ALIENATION / PLAY
Look at all of the connections occurring in your life. Maybe think of yourself like an old-fashioned telephone exchange. Here’s a link to a short film about Enfield telephone exchange that will help you understand.
To do this properly you need to find a way of representing your connections: a list, a scribble, a drawing, a model made out of plasticene. It doesn’t matter what as long as you feel like it’s your way of doing this. And don’t try and do this in your thoughts because keeping too much in your thoughts is part of the problem we are trying to deal with.
Look at all of these connections: meetings with friends, paying for something at a shop, answering the telephone, speaking to a colleague at work. Go through them one-by-one and ask yourself ‘how much am I trying to fit in with something when I do this?’ Then ask yourself: ‘is there some small thing I can add to this exchange that might make it more me.
This exercise is about you finding your way of doing something that may involve an element of compliance – but which respects a sense of you. It’s about becoming more properly connected to the world so that if life is like a game it’s as much your game as it can be.
by Tom Tomaszewski | Sep 23, 2023 | FRUSTRATION
FRUSTRATION / CARE
Here’s a way to think about regret. The feeling we surely all have at some point about something we wished we’d done differently, or about something we wished we’d done – or not done.
This feeling can only ever be solved through understanding what your body wants. Remember, when I say ‘what your body wants’ I mean unconsciously.
In the past, at the time of the thing you think about when you feel regretful, your body wanted something. Your nervous system reached out for a feeling but it failed to find it.
You can spend the rest of your life feeling dead inside, or sleepy somehow, wishing you’d done something differently when all your body wants is to find that feeling in the future. If you feel dead inside then it’s likely it’s lost hope (don’t ask me how a body does that). If it feels sleepy then sometimes you’re coming close.
When you find this feeling your life will become more predictable. It will have continuity because you will seem more present to those around you. They won’t automatically think about asking you to do something for them because they will experience you more like a rock in a stream than a sandbank or some weed floating beneath the surface. You’ll be more there. Less interruptible. More resilient.
This is how you find the special kind of resilience called agency.
Satisfy the feeling you experience through understanding what you regret.
