Meeting Instead Of Avoiding (how To Deal With "difficult" Feelings)

2024 Author: Harry Day | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 15:43

How many times have I heard such words: “I will not survive this!”, “I can’t stand it!” some kind of failure, the whole space seems to collapse into a black hole, and all that remains is your own insignificance, despair from powerlessness to do something with it, a painfully pulling melancholy in your chest, a feeling of uselessness and meaninglessness of your existence … Someone trembles with guilt, experiencing a wild urge to begin to atone for your sin, a willingness to lie almost at your feet, just to get forgiveness / redemption, and throw this incredibly heavy stone from your chest, back and head, pulling the body to the ground. Uncontrollable, boundless fear of death turns into a panic attack, in which it can be hard to even breathe, and there is no one to grab onto, no one to turn to for help … there is a desire at all costs to find someone, otherwise you will howl from despair and longing for the moon - you are alone in the whole Universe … because what future can there be when she … he … he / she is no more …

There are many experiences that seem intolerable, and so much so that you need to do everything to avoid them, not to collide in the future and prevent their occurrence in principle. The most "popular" experiences on this list are loneliness, fear, shame, guilt, and grief, and their intensity is often denoted by the word "pain." As in the case of physical pain, we tend to avoid contact with psychological "pain" (or rather, with very intense feelings), both on a conscious and unconscious level.

However, unfortunately, these feelings will have to be dealt with if the goal is to get out of the corner where you huddled, avoiding meeting them. According to the rough, but apt expression of the psychologist A. Smirnov, "there is almost always a way out of the" ass "; And one of the "numbers" of the program is a meeting with "difficult" feelings. But what is the “difficulty” of shame, or loneliness, for example? Of course, all these are very unpleasant phenomena, but how much are they really intolerable or what makes them so?

These or those feelings become "intolerable" if one important phenomenon is present in their experience: complete merging of a person with his experience, "diving" into him with his head. And then a person loses contact with any resources, using which he could withstand severe grief, fear of rejection, narcissistic shame, painful guilt and much more. That is, if you dive headlong into feeling, then the following happens:

A) Loss of context of what is happening … All of our feelings are associated with specific situations or figures protruding from an undefined background. If we cannot accurately name the object / situation that arouse certain feelings, this does not mean that they do not exist - it is difficult to see them, to isolate them. But until the object of our experiences is isolated from the general background of various experiences, feelings, events, processes, we will not be able to do anything with this object and, therefore, with the situation. And then the feeling unwinds and unwinds, it begins to exist "by itself", running in a circle (which of us is not familiar with this downward spiral of thoughts / feelings!).“I failed today at the performance … What did the audience think? It's a shame … I can never wash it off … People finally realized what I am - nothing, zero without a wand, a dummy, an impostor … Awful … It's impossible to go out … It feels like everyone around you already knows everything … ".

B) Loss of resources for coping with the situation … The fact is that if you lose sight of the concrete that causes the feeling, then it becomes extremely problematic to do at least something about it. As if he was in a dense fog, where nothing is visible at all, and it is not clear where to go or what to grab onto. If you find yourself deep under water, the most important thing is to determine where the surface is, and the person who is "covered" becomes like a diver at a depth in complete darkness, who has lost all orientation in where is the top and where is the bottom, and it is not clear where swim to get out. Imagine his feelings?

c) Disappearance of time perspective (this is forever). The feeling that the present state will be eternal and will never end often accompanies strong negative experiences. That is, this is the same loss of shores and landmarks, only in time and not in space. "I am lonely, and it seems to me that this is forever …"; “He died, and my grief will always be as strong”; “I am a complete insignificance, and I will never fix this situation”; "He will never forgive me, I will always be guilty …" - such thoughts may not be realized, but very clearly felt.

This is the context of unbearable experiences: it is incomprehensible, nobody and nothing, forever. A person hangs in a complete NOTHING, emptiness, impenetrable whitish fog or under the blackest water column, and it is not clear what to do and where to run. Out of time and out of space … Panic covers, and as a result - impulsive actions due to the loss of sight of the shores, the lack of lifebuoys and the feeling that everything is before the (soon) end of life. The intolerable fear of loneliness pushes to impulsive acquaintances, running around people and events; shame - on desperate attempts to somehow "swell", urgently at someone's expense to restore a sense of self-worth - or on suicide; guilt - into automatic, impulsive justification and self-deprecation; grief / pain from being thrown leads to the bottle or to attempts to “pull myself together” … And so on. The main thing is to do at least something so as not to feel, not to hang in this absolute emptiness and darkness, hopelessness and despair. Hence a very popular question for psychologists: “What to do ?! Tell me what to do in order not to worry about it! I'm so tired of fighting!"

Emotion can also be enhanced by such a phenomenon as worries about experiences. Shame of your own shame; guilt because of guilt; fear of fear. You are not only ashamed of something, but you are also ashamed of being ashamed, and this is wrong, psychologists have written a lot about shame, and you, a nonentity, cannot do anything about this wrong shame. Uff. In general, the already difficult experiences become heavier.

Salvation, however, is not about "not feeling." If we return to the metaphor with a diver, then impulsive, feverish actions are, for example, swimming without discerning directions, just to swim. Although sometimes - when there is a resource - it is enough to look in which direction the bubbles from the exhaled carbon dioxide eye began to rise. But for this it is important to slow down, and then the flow of feelings will not carry you into the “deaf and gloomy distance”. "And they carry me away, and carry me away into the deaf and gloomy da-a-al / Three black horses, three terrible horses: / Nothing, never and nobody!" (impromptu).

"Salvation" is to make the feelings bearable, and then something to do with what causes them. This topic is immense, and I will outline several important points that help in this matter.

BUT) Return the context of what is happening. To begin with, return to your own body. The best thing is to feel your own ass sitting / lying on something. And then the whole body. When "takes away", we lose sight of the bodily sensations, namely they "ground", and allow us to realize the real source of our experiences - our body. Returning to the body, we begin to experience feelings as specific bodily manifestations. Shame is like feeling a sinkhole in the chest, for example. Guilt is like a heaviness on your chest, shoulders and neck that makes it difficult to breathe. Fear is like a burning lump in the stomach or weakness in the arms / legs … And so on. This is no longer a global universal catastrophe, but a physical phenomenon. If you manage to perceive an emotion as a specific process in the body, this is great, because the feeling is appropriated and the boundaries and context are acquired. It is only important to breathe with all this, and not to hold back the flow of oxygen.

The second point is to look around and answer the question, "where am I right now and what is happening right now." See the room / street; people passing by; hear sounds. It also helps to dispel the total fog and return yourself to the real world from the suction funnel.

B) Gaining resources that promote experience, not avoidance. It is very important to link a specific emotional process in the body with a specific (!) Situation related to emotion. Not globally, “I’m terribly lonely, because men don’t look at me for a month, and they don’t look at me because something is wrong with me”, but “I feel lonely because I didn’t manage to find anyone today”.

Knowing about yourself or what this feeling is and why it is, helps to structure and be aware of your own experience. Knowing why grief is needed and what its stages and duration are, helps to accept this grief and give it the opportunity to “work” (yes, grieving is a whole job). In the past, tradition was responsible for this (with its commemorations, memorable dates and times of mourning), in the present, alas, there is “no time” for this or there is no knowledge. Knowledge of the characteristics of narcissistic shame allows us to accept it as a characteristic manifestation of their so far automatic reactions. Being aware of oneself as, for example, a person prone to cyclothymia (alternation of euphoric-manic and depressive moods within the normal range) contributes to a calmer perception of the next change in mood. Awareness of the peculiarities of your own character and the fact that your reaction is partly determined not by the real situation, but by this very character, often reduces the intensity of experiences. That is, not "a situation of horror-horror-horror", but "I, by virtue of my character, feel this situation as horror-horror-horror … No, perhaps already just as horror."

Allows you to structure your experiences and telling about them out loud (not necessarily to someone, you can do it yourself). According to M. Spaniolo-Lobb, “the essence of being is grasped not when“we allow ourselves to live”, but when we create our own story, which always follows from the experience of a certain situation..”. The search for words that are appropriate in the meaning, metaphors describing the state, helps to concentrate on the meaning of this state, to weave it into the context of one's own life. “A person who knows“why”will endure almost any“how”.

So, such experiences that are perceived by us as related to a specific context (external situation and features of our character) become transferable; as limited in time and space (located in the body), and as meaningful.