Shucks, man. Well, sitting with charged emotions doesn’t half make ’em linger.
I’m feeling knocked back. And for the first time since March, I feel a tonsilly throat coming on, like my dwelling in feelings reduced my immune system. Also, it’s November. I have to remember how low my mood generally gets in November – and it will pass.
Want to talk about it?
Yes, please. Thank you, dear Wisdom Within. So I guess the phrase is ‘doesn’t care’ or ‘doesn’t care about me’.
That’s an old friend, eh?
Yes. It used to be ‘doesn’t care about us’, referring to me and my siblings. I can almost hear S’s little voice saying it. It was a bit of a mantra for us, I seem to recall…
And what kind of ‘doesn’t care’ is it?
It’s bitterly felt, and deeply heart-weighing. And impenetrable. And baffling… because we (me and my siblings) are good children! We’re not the… non-innocents we’re being made out to be! We’re not that person… We… I can’t understand why we’re at the end of this…. harshness. What did we do to deserve it?
Because you’re innocent?
Because we’re innocent! But we’re also… dependent. Or at least, locked into a relationship. With someone who doesn’t (appear, in that moment of fury or frustration, to) care about us. Man… I can feel that. There’s no escape, and the vulnerability is then simply ongoing. Cares… doesn’t care…. cares…. doesn’t care…. We never know what to expect, or who we are going to ‘be’ that day.
So, yesterday, this pattern having re-emerged in my current experience over the weekend, I finally had a good cry while doing my qigong in the garden. I decided, I needed to look after my feelings and needs (for comfort and listening), if the other person was not willing to. I had made that commitment to myself. But it has still left me reeling, sad and somehow embittered…. 🙁
And…. “doesn’t care”?
Apparently not. My withdrawal of the Adoring Affectionate Clown has not even been noticed. The absolute, mulish determination not to communicate… My requests for comfort/listening are seen as my ‘sparring’, or ‘manipulating’ – sparking an egoic withdrawal for days… I hate the pattern. It makes me literally sick now.
I know what you said, offline, yesterday. Nothing feared more than the mother having needs. Yes, the old ‘strong mother’ syndrome. My needs are seen by the boy’s inner child as spelling the end of times. Pero no soy su madre.
And you’re owed care and comfort, because you over-deliver just that, right?
….. I know what you’re getting at. Yesterday you said:
Give 50% less. Ask 50% more.
Doing so makes me feel churlish, grumpy and like I’m pulling my love back. But no-one seems to notice anyway.
“Doesn’t care.”
Doesn’t care.
Well the more I sit with these f-ing feelings, the darker and bleaker I’m becoming. I’m not sure if/who it’s helping. Where’s the integration, and will it happen faster than I am speedily f-ing up my own relationship by dwelling on the darkness?
Time to read the text book [TPP] a bit more closely, I reckon! Ok, these extracts from Week 6 have stood out for me, powerfully:
“Charged emotion is like an untapped fuel cell, which through the process of integration empowers authentic movement. This movement manifests as irreversible perceptual shifts. When we really grasp this, we realize that our childhood imprinting is a means of endowing our body with fuel. When we are “living in time,” we seldom fulfil the structural potential of our body, realize the power of its navigational system, or utilize its fuel capacity. Instead, we regard the body either as a vacant lot or as a pit stop between mental excursions into the non-existent past or future. We regard it as a place to pause between making plans. We also use both our physical body and our mental body to distract ourselves by “doing a lot of stuff,” engaging in endless physical doings and thought activity that seldom support our soul purpose.” TPPp176
“When we use the mental body as a tool for thinking, analyzing, understanding, and controlling our experiences, while we use the emotional body as a means of sedation, projection, and all manner of drama, we often feel like we are going nowhere. The fact is, more often than not, we aren’t! The Presence Process begins rectifying this predicament. It gets the motor running, assists us in reversing out of the garage, and places us on the road of life. It accomplishes this by:
- Instructing us how to use our breath to consciously re-enter our body.
- Providing us with conscious responses and text that activate and support ongoing mental navigation.
- Assisting us to consciously tap into our dormant fuel supply by introducing us to the procedure for integrating charged emotion, which is to feel without condition.
While we live in time and are still attempting to have “a good time,” or at least “an easy time,” we are bouncing around between polarities. We attempt to have a good time because we feel bad, and we attempt to make things easy for ourselves because our experience feels hard. The problem is that when we spend our time chasing one experience as we flee another, what we are “doing” is bouncing off the walls of a self-created perceptual prison. This commotion may trigger significant outer activity, and we may experience a variety of physical, mental, and emotional situations, but we accomplish zero authentic movement...
To activate authentic movement requires an integrative approach – one that elevates our perception to a point where it’s no longer necessary to label our emotional experiences as either good or bad. In present moment awareness, there are no good or bad emotions. There is only energy in motion or not in motion. In present moment awareness, all emotional states are considered varying grades of fuel for different intensities of movement. To achieve full throttle and thereby cover the maximum distance we can during our human experience, we use the entire range of fuels available to us. For this to happen requires us to become inclusive of all our emotions instead of excluding some of them….
Mastering the emotional integration procedure ends anxiety because its consequences show us that each life situation we perceive as uncomfortable can be consciously integrated. Up until this point in The Presence Process, we have explored three perceptual procedures:
- 1. We learned how to perceive the surfacing of unintegrated memories as reflections in the world. We call this identifying the messenger.
- 2. We learned how to access insight from the felt-content of these surfacing memories. We call this getting the message.
- 3. We learned how to unconditionally feel the pain and discomfort contained in these surfacing memories. We referred to this as feeling unconditionally.
The emotional integration procedure combines these three steps into one integrated perceptual tool. When used consistently, this tool charts a new pathway for our awareness that transforms us from reactive to responsive individuals. (The Presence Process, pp177-9)
Ok. Less summarise these epic quotes. Key words:
- Fuel
- Movement
- Soul purpose
- No good or bad emotions
- Only energy in motion or not in motion
- Varying grades of fuel
- Achieve full throttle
- Cover maximum distance we can during our human existence
I think I’m getting stuck (no movement or e-motion) because I’m dwelling on stories (aka living in time). He did, I did… I won’t, he won’t…
I need to find a way to combine:
- FEELING the emotion around “Doesn’t Care” (unconditionally) and
- being in PRESENT MOMENT AWARENESS (not past/future thinking)
- So that I can experience this promised MOVEMENT. Maybe this is pressing me towards some kind of soul expanding action… and I’d rather sit stuck in misery (drama) than take the leap.
Now we’re talking!
🙂 So it’s about finding the message in the feeling. Right?
Beware of taking an intellectual approach (analyzing). Instead, develop some interest in the notion of activating authentic movement (TPPp177.9). Use your qigong to move emotions. Play with the phrase of the moment. And welcome your body’s present moment awareness Knowing. The Wisdom Within is always speaking to you. Listen to get the message, within MOVEMENT.
So, is the Movement physical or is it an emotional/energetic shift?
Hard to have one without the other, as the body is the conduit of the emotions. Remember: vibrational awareness. One twitch creates ripples.
Embrace movement today, in all forms. Bring FLOW to your feelings.
Ooh, lovely. Ty. Fits right in with QG and the Taoist Way…. This I can work with. This honours the feelings, and encourages them to do what e-motions need to do: become energy in motion. I should add, there is so much in the air at the moment… yesterday was the US election, tomorrow is Covid Lockdown 2, it’s November…. We all need to keep ourselves processing, feeling, moving on through… I see that. All is well as we flow….
I am bringing flow to my feelings (#EnergyInMotion)
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DAY NOTES:
This video, and concept of CO-REGULATION, is so useful. I realise that I’m asking for a two-way approach to co-regulation pq no soy la steady-state madre. It’s healthy for adults to co-regulate each other, to help each other regulate at different times. It’s the give and take of comfort, caresses, enquiry, affection… to soothe the other.
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And this….!
YOUTUBE NOTES on this Polyvagal safety video : ‘What is trauma exactly? Or the ever-elusive concept known as the “flow state”? [Hullllo…!]And why do some people just flat-out creep us out? It can all be explained by the autonomic nervous system — our body’s autopilot that keeps our heart beating, our lungs breathing, and our gut digesting; without us even thinking about it. The Polyvagal Theory is a new understanding of how our nervous system works, and explains everything from trauma, to the very essence of social behavior; while shedding light on possible treatments for autism and trauma. You’ll never think of your body and brain the same way again.’
YES!!
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- a) to help them regulate (people-pleasing/codependency) and
- b) endlessly self-reg myself, while also suppressing my sense that they don’t care.
Eventually, as yesterday/today, I just flop into frozen danger state, bcs my neuroception eventually overrides my optimism the person will change…. and calls polyvagal ‘danger’.