After putting some thought on my current everyday experiences, I reflected a great deal about just what the root cause for some of my current perspectives were bound to. Again the discovery of being “mindful” is an important factor in reexamining prior perspectives that may be operating in the background of our everyday thoughts. While we manage our day to day experiences, our possible misdirected thoughts are fed into our analysis for each and every day and if they go unchecked, they will skew our conclusions. The information we receive from the eyes don’t amount to much, if the mind is blind. Being “Mindful” is being aware of the false conclusions one can draw if one is misdirected by prior incorrect habitual modes of thinking that may not be accurate. They may indeed be formed earlier in ones life, but continue to influence that person through-out their lives if these principles in their analyses go unquestioned, unexamined, and unchallenged in the process.
The practice of attention enables one to wake up! Awareness transforms experience. There is no right or wrong way; there is only being more or less conscious. The goal is to become more fully conscious of ourselves, not to correct ourselves. Because they rely on memory, efforts at self-correction are always removed from the immediacy of the moment.
Jealousy – unconsciously give way to hatred. Struggle against it by thinking equates to guilt. We must instead examine the thought itself and attempt to understand the context. Thought and feelings can then become windows to awakening.
Right Thinking was examined by Gautama Buddha and incorporated in his Eightfold Path that reveals some of the challenges of how the mind can distort experience.
“Thoughts” as Emerson put it, “rule the world” for the simple reason that thoughts determine feelings and actions. We can think ourselves into happiness or a deep depression. Evidence can show that we can think ourselves into healthy state or into unhealthy illnesses.
We can think ourselves into a narrow, limited world characterized by procrastination and paralysis, or we can think ourselves into a noble creative life and the actions that give it shape and substance. If we only take care of our thoughts, our feelings and actions will take care of themselves.
For better or worse, we give to others the fruits of our own thinking by the same token, we are influenced by the thinking of those with whom we associate. It certainly helps to make friends with people who have made friends with their own minds. Observe people who are chronically bored or depressed, and you will find they dwell on negative thoughts. Observe people who are consistently happy, creative, and productive, and you will find remarkable similarities in the quality of their thinking. By our thinking, we create our individual and collective experience of reality. Changing our thinking for the better improves the quality of our own lives, and in doing, uplifts all around us.
The subconscious patterns of thought that can emerge out of an individuals upbringing, training, or exposure from a previous time in their lives to ineffective measures of dealing with their experience in the world can duly proselytize that persons mind set. What is even more difficult to circumvent is the dream states these people experience and are susceptible to unpleasant derivations of their conscious lives if the sleeping untrained mind continues to revert to the faulty subconscious training from an older learned program from the past when they dream. Since they are unconscious in a dream state, the mind will resort to programming fed from the unconscious mind that often takes hold of their dreams.
An empty place inside me visits when I feel no connection to others beside me. I feel abandoned by those whom I have known at times when in need. I must admit that I have sought out others for solace, yet I am known more for my alliance with seclusion much of the time. I tend to turn inwards more than to seek others. My early life has comprised itself with members whom have not mitigated some of life’s lessons when I was younger. I did receive some good counsel but my memory still concedes to instruction that was either not very effective, deficient, or downright contemptible. I wonder if that has some bearing on my disposition for solitude. I do not hold any ill will towards those aforementioned, as I realize one must not live in the past. The wounds of the child sometimes stay deep within me, my invisible scars, but I seek to focus on the teachings learned later in life’s journey. The wounds sustained in childhood can and often do remain with us for a lifetime. But as in any journey, we make choices on paths that come before us.
I found that I turned to my educators to find out answers that might complete my inadequate feelings about myself and thinking about the world. In my studies in speech communications and psychology courses I learned that we as humans will comprehend more from how a person says something, than what is actually said! The body language and the non-verbal dynamic of communication is far more powerful than just the verbal dynamic, hence, the ethical statements such as Mathew 23:3 which states….”All therefore whatsoever they bid you observe, that observe and do; but do not ye after their works: for they say, and do not.” (King James version)
Also noted are the parental affirmations of this concept when they exclaim “Do as I say, not as I do!”
Looking back, the acquisition and purpose of my studies were not for the job quest, but rather an ardent search for an education that would answer my questions about the best possible life. As in the words of John Lennon…”You may call me a dreamer, but I’m not the only one!”
The road of self-reliance is a difficult path, but a path that can result in a greater capacity for free thinking, and resourcefulness, and thus magnifies ones assessment aptitude. The downside, is that one may stumble many times before the lessons are learned in the social arenas.
Amongst the jackals and exploiters of the world that I have met head-on; I have had to shield and fend for myself in the process. (A jackal is one who allows themselves to be used). The proliferation of souls that feed off of others only shows me that many have not been shown a way to better their existence. I also do remember having met some very charming people and inspirational experiences that have balanced out those times of misfortune that cross our paths, but the most hurtful experiences are those who are actually in your family; the ones that you should be able to trust the most. The betrayals of family members happens more often than not and is part of our mutual experience in everyday life. I should also add that many have probably had a similar circumstance in dealing with these social happenings and I do not see them as a significant adversity for most cases. I think them to actually be fairly common. Unfortunately there are also those cases that are far from the norm, continue to exist and leave many to be disposed to some very hellish tribulations.
The shocking truth is that my disposition tends to lead me to the profiles outlined in the ASCA or Adults Surviving Child Abuse. Researching some of these characteristics I found some resources that leave me in utter dismay when looking at some of the correlations to my conduct. Though I do not think I would fit into a classic case outlined here, I must admit there are some strikingly familiar similarities when looking at the cases of emotional abuse experienced in childhood.
Emotional abuse refers to the psychological and social aspects of child abuse, and it is one of the main causes of harm to abused children.
Many parents are emotionally abusive without being violent or sexually abusive, However, emotional abuse invariably accompanies physical and sexual abuse. Emotionally abusive parents practice forms of child-rearing that are orientated towards fulfilling their own needs and goals, rather than those of their children. Their parenting style may be characterized by overt aggression towards their children, including shouting and intimidation, or they may manipulate their children using more subtle means, such as emotional blackmail. Parents may also emotionally abuse their children by “mis-socialising” them, which means that they may encourage their children to act in inappropriate or criminal ways with direct encouragement and/or by surrounding the child with adults for whom such behavior is normative.
Signs in childhood
From infancy to adulthood, emotionally abused people are often more withdrawn and emotionally disengaged than their peers, and find it difficult to predict other people’s behavior, understand why they behave in the way that they do, and respond appropriately.
Emotionally abused children show a range of specific signs. They often:
feel unhappy, frightened and distressed
behave aggressively and anti-socially, or they may act too mature for their age
experience difficulties with academic achievement and school attendance
find it difficult to make friends
show signs of physical neglect and malnourishment
experience incontinence and mysterious pains.
Signs in adulthood
Adults emotionally abused as children are more likely to experience mental health problems and difficulties in personal relationships. Many of the harms of physical and sexual abuse are related to the emotional abuse that accompanies them, and as a result many emotionally abused adults show a range of complex psychological and psychosocial problems associated with multiple forms of trauma in childhood (Glaser 2002).
Significant early relationships in childhood shape our response to new social situations in adulthood. Adults with emotionally abusive parents are at a disadvantage as they try to form personal, professional and romantic relationships, since they may easily misinterpret other people’s behaviors and social cues, or misapply the rules that governed their abusive relationship with their parent to everyday social situations (Berenson and Anderson 2006).
Now it is too common for students in an abnormal psychology class to view abstracts and read the DSM-5 (formerly known as DSM-V) and suddenly relate to some of the disorders discussed within the pages. (DSM -5 is the planned fifth edition of the American Psychiatric Association’s (APA) Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders). In my day my abnormal psyche class used the DSM-III in the mid-eighties and I found out that many of my classmates had some interesting discoveries about themselves, until my professor set them at ease stating the cases in more detail and putting their minds at rest. Can you imagine thinking that you may have schizophrenic characteristics or some other mental disorder just by comparatively reading about symptoms or cases and as you are studying the material you begin to start applying it to your own behaviors?
For whatever the reasons I think I have come to recognize the terms with my unresolved childhood dilemma’s about my upbringing and worked some of them out. I must say that I am not in bereavement about those days since they have opened my eyes to looking at the world in a certain way. I certainly admit that I do struggle at times when some of those memories come up, but I find that the sensitivity felt in this case can be a collaborator and not a crutch. The term I think for this outlook may be “resilience” to such factors and quite possibly the strengthening ingredient in my illustration. Understanding the nineteen-sixties also gives us some perspectives on the why it happens. Emotional abuse can, and does, happen in all types of families, regardless of their background. Most parents want the best for their children. However, some parents may emotionally and psychologically harm their children because of stress, poor parenting skills, social isolation, lack of available resources or inappropriate expectations of their children. They may emotionally abuse their children because the parents or caregivers were emotionally abused themselves as children.
Emotionally abusive behavior is anything that intentionally hurts the feelings of another person. Since almost everyone in intimate relationships does that at some time or other, emotionally abusive behavior must be
distinguished from an emotionally abusive relationship, which is more than the sum of emotionally abusive behaviors.
In emotionally abusive relationships, one party systematically controls the other by undermining his or her confidence, worthiness, growth, trust, or emotional stability, or by provoking fear or shame to manipulate or exploit.
It’s important to note emotional abuse is about the effects of behavior, not the words used. You can say the most loving words with sarcasm and
silently communicate contempt through body language, rolling eyes, sighs, grimaces, tone of voice, disgusted looks, cold shoulders, banging dishes, stonewalling, cold shoulders, etc. There are dozens of ways to be emotionally abusive…
Steven Stosny concludes…
Merely refraining from abusive behaviors will do nothing to improve a relationship, though it may slow its rate of deterioration. To repair the harm done, there must be a corresponding increase in compassion on the part of the abuser. Abusers do not change by receiving compassion; they change by learning to give it. Emotional abuse does not result from storms of anger; it emerges during droughts of compassion.
From fear to freedom, from despair to an awakening, I have seen the emotional gamut via personal experience as well as considering that one definition also conversely defines the other. The understanding of these emotional boundaries illuminates the capacity for our experience and teaches us the wisdom of aspiration. The brilliance of the human mind is the seemingly infinitesimal synaptic connections and associations that allow us to circumvent adversity with ingenuity which we can pave even through the anguish of suffering. The unfortunate burden we have is balancing the emotional and the intellectual aspects of our understandings. I believe it takes the spirit, the drive, or the “gut” response to complete the process. If you subscribe to the tripartite mind, then you will understand the argument made here. We are not just the sum total of our feelings, thoughts, and desires, but rather in the synthesis of these attributes there resides the spark and the essence of our being. Beyond the limitations of our personalities, each of us exists as a vast, largely unrecognized quality of being or presence-what is called our Essence. Real self knowledge is an invaluable guardian against self-deception. As much as traversing the enneagram paradigm in that it can reveal the spiritual heights that we are capable of attaining, it also sheds light clearly and non-judgmentally on the aspects of our lives that are dark and unfree.
Meditations and having “presence” (awareness, mindfulness), and the practice of self-observation (gained from self-knowledge), and understanding what one’s experiences mean, is the beginning of the process to undertake a transformation for yourself.
“Although the world is full of suffering, it is full also of the overcoming of it.”
“The greatest hazard of all, losing one’s self, can occur very quietly in the world, as if it were nothing at all. No other loss can occur so quietly; any other loss – an arm, a leg, five dollars, a wife, etc. – is sure to be noticed.”
― Søren Kierkegaard, The Sickness Unto Death
“I have lived eighty years of life and know nothing for it, but to be resigned and tell myself that flies are born to be eaten by spiders and man to be devoured by sorrow.”
― Voltaire
I sometimes wonder how I have managed to make it through this journey of my life to this point in time. I thought back to times in my life when they were very difficult, when my support group was not really in place, or I neglected to see who would be there for me, and quite sincerely how defeat after defeating moment, I would become numb to the world around me. All of us have difficulties to share, and all of us have experienced some form of grief that once burdened us to the point of despair.
Today I would say that I am a realist, formerly I would claim to be an optimist. When inspecting the memories of my lifetime I think I have led a life I can be proud of. The early optimism probably came out of the naiveté and lack of experience in my youth. The appetite to believe in others and their goodness was a strong influence on me early in my life. I should probably credit my mother for this, I should also remit to say that the consequences of this outlook have both positive and negative outcomes for the person engaging with such a demeanor. I am neither apologetic nor regretful of such proclivities for they shaped me and made me who I am today.
The focus on the darker periods of my life have led me to see things with a different view. I do not fool myself in believing that I have had a difficult life in comparison to others. Frankly, I am privileged in being born in a Country such as the USA when looking at other less formidable Countries, along with the fact that I was not born to a family in poverty, or with single parents, or parents addicted to drugs, etc. etc..
The amplification of dark thoughts on such treacherous grounds can be disturbing due to the lack of resources one feels they have available to them, and the possible outcomes from this temperament leading to the finality of a human life resounds in the statistics of today. The mind can be a powerfully persuasive instrument for it to turn on itself. The belief that you are wasting space in the universe, or that you have no worth to anyone is a stifling thought.
The moment you start believing in the negativity of other sorrowful misguided souls around you can be a windfall for the depressed mindset. This mindset is content on gathering like negative influences which are attracted to the ailing mind. Additionally, the distraught mind will also posit into the world what it most recognizes; that being a dreadful world.
There are an innumerable reasons, conditions, and environments for human beings to become struck with anguish and grief. The human condition through out the millennia has given us a deluge of examples in all of the endeavors humans have undertaken. My own journey has led me on some lonely roads, no, bogs if you will, and navigating them can be a very difficult feat.
When it comes to the point of questioning your existence under such circumstances, you often do not think clearly due to the depleted condition you are in. Changing your circumstances seems very hard to do during these times. The suffering you are encountering is overwhelming, your energy levels are next to nothing, and you torture your mind that continues to dwell on the negative attributes of your life.
When I was training to be a crisis intervention counselor in college I was confronted with some very powerful skill sets. This awakening has not left me to this day as I learned to tune into my emotional states on levels I had never before achieved. It was the first time I had taken a deeper look within my own emotional inventories. During that year I discovered that I had shut out much of my emotional connections to others in my adolescence and childhood. Dealing with others on a cerebral level is much different than dealing with them on an emotional level. I believe that ideally blending these two attributes with your drives or desires, will result in a more balanced account in life.
The training I received was Rogerian, based on Carl Rodgers “Client centered therapy”, which focused on relating to others from an emotional level as to gain their trust and direct them out of crisis, into seeking some solutions for help for them. Sadly, when we reach a state of no emotion as in a crisis; little can be done to convince those under such extremes. There is a lethality scale used from 1-10 in crisis intervention. These levels indicate how much of a threat the person is from harming themselves. The most dangerous kind are those that are calm, and devoid of emotion. The call they might make is a final attempt at help, yet their minds are for the most part made up into ending their lives. This is a “numbness” that is most certainly the worst kind, and one of the hardest to circumvent. The higher the lethality scale is, the more detailed the person’s suicide plan is. They know usually how they will kill themselves, where they will do it, and sometimes even when.
I would have to say I have reached that point a few times in my life. The numbness one experiences some argue is a defense mechanism that shuts down tumultuous emotional aspects the psyche undergoes. In doing so, this process protects the damaging effects of extreme emotional pain from hurting the rest of the body, and ironically the mind itself. The length of time one finds themselves in this mindset can and most likely produce changes in the transmission of neurotransmitters (Dopamine a neurotransmitter that plays a key role in the functioning of the limbic system, which is involved in emotional function and control. It also plays a part in movement, alertness, and sensations of pleasure. Serotonin plays a regulatory role in mood, sleep, and other areas.) between the synapses within the brain.
The Dysthymic foundations that have directed my experiences make it much more difficult for others to spot in the everyday world in which we live. Those of like disorders, are viewed normal since these people have embedded the depressive traits within their own personalities, and therefore many cannot distinguish any differences in their moods, or attitudes. They learn to hide it well, and are less likely to draw attention or diagnose by the everyday person. Furthermore, more tragically, they often go undiagnosed and do nothing to improve their situations.
Not being able to regulate feeling is also a very troublesome condition since it effects so many others that come in contact with the afflicted people in extreme cases. I suggest that those affected probably hurt themselves most of all, but I do not rule out the family members if indeed they have maintained such relationships during this period of time they are enduring the dreadful condition. Experiencing the world with such a vision is like sleep walking. In a sense you are present physically, but you are not all there, psychologically you are not present at all. Zen Buddhists would agree and say “Wake up”! You are not fully functioning and are in essence a walking zombie going through the motions.
Numbness is a very lonely place to be. To be void of any emotion results in becoming sub-human. Not being able to enjoy the fullness of what life has to offer for whatever reason is a tragic matter. Whether one chooses to neglect their power of observation, or whether one is caught in the traps of despondency, the world is much, much more than the observances of the downhearted.
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