Emotional Detachment - The Hard Lesson Of Letting Go Of Fear

Let it go, man. Just let it go.

I actually hate that advice (regardless of how true it may end up being), because it downplays the effect things have had on someone, and it doesn’t do anything to actually help anyone. If it was so easy for that person to let go of, then they ALREADY WOULD HAVE! Who on this planet ever heard someone say “Don’t worry about it” or “Just let it go” or “Don’t let it get to you” and went “Oh cool. All better. Thanks!”? Apart from saying it with sarcasm, I mean.

There have been so many things in my past, connected with relationships that would have been so much easier on me if I had actually had the presence of mind to distance myself from the overwhelming emotional reactions. But I couldn’t figure out how to “just let it go.”

It’s like every challenge needed to be met and overcome. Why did the anxiety of a situation overwhelm me? Why couldn’t I just have let something slide?

Some believe it’s because I’m a guy and guys just have to fix stuff. Trust me: a whole lot of women do too. So I don’t think it’s just that.

Some think it’s a Virgo thing. Like there aren’t any other control-freak signs in the zodiac?

Some think it’s because I have a disorder. I actually do, probably more than I have discovered. But I let so many things in my life just go on by. Somehow in close relationships it’s different.

I didn’t need to fix each situation. I needed to fix the person, and each issue that came along seemed to be yet another crack that needed patching. It wasn’t that I was trying to be mean about it. In fact, I thought I was being a good, helpful, dutiful partner.

“I was just trying to help.”

“Yeah? So at what point did I inform you that I needed your help?”

Ouch, that’s the hard truth right there.

It’s funny, because I was busy proving the truth of the Biblical admonition: don’t be trying to focus on removing a tiny splinter from someone’s eye when you’ve got a big old honking roof support beam in your eye. My cracks were the ones I should have been working on patching up. But of course, without the perspective of distance, I couldn’t see that.

Here are some examples of moments I wish I had had this Perspective Distance:

The Other Person Is Angry!

The comedian Louis CK made a perfect observation when he was talking about how men nowadays don’t really know how to be in a relationship. He mimicked a young man who was so stressed over the fact that his girlfriend was angry with him.

“Well, later she won’t be!”

So this is almost like a hiccup in the philosophy of being Present, living within the moment. In this case, the person can become myopic, short-sighted, only aware of what’s happening right in front of him without having the insight or understanding that moments pass. “The moment” should never be interpreted as being how things will be forever.

I don’t think I assumed that a girl would be forever angry at me once she started being angry at me. But I did see her mounting frustration or sharp edges during moments of anger as a threat to me and the relationship. I saw her anger as being the harbinger – the herald – of Relationship Armageddon. If she was angry, it meant the End was Nigh.

Totally ridiculous, of course, but that’s how I felt. And now I understand why.

My mom and dad.

Kids (and many adults) sometimes see things in a very Cause-and-Effect way. In fact, it’s how superstitions and misunderstandings start.

“A crow flew into Mabel’s house, and the next morning she was dead.”  Never mind that Mabel had a heart condition, her arteries were so congested that they were featured on local traffic reports, she had an undiagnosed and untreated medical issue, or that her family had a history of heart failure at a young age. All we know for sure is that one does not experience a crow flying into one’s house every day. Since that very unusual event was observed the day before Mabel passed away, it follows that the two “were connected.” So, stay away from crows!

All your cattle died, so start looking around the village for the girl with the unusual birthmark, wart, or hair color. Burn her as a witch, and then all will be restored to normalcy. Never mind that the cattle’s water or feed supply was tainted, or they got hoof-and-mouth. It was all a witch’s fault! And if the tainted water that killed the cows was partly due to the drought that caused your crops to wither, maybe there are two witches!

A kid walked into his school one day and killed many of his classmates, and he had been listening to that awful heavy metal/rap/rock and roll/whatever. Obviously we need to protect our impressionable youth from such demonic music. Never mind that the kid had an undiagnosed chemical imbalance (because “no kid of MINE has a problem like that!”), his parents never spent any quality time with him (“Yes we did! We drug him to church every Sunday like good families do!”), he felt estranged from his friends as he grew in a different direction from them, or he simply succumbed to a mental or emotional tipping point and fell into the abyss. Nope, it had to be the music he was listening to. Granted, the music may not have helped and may have contributed to the problems, but he was probably now listening to music that mirrored how he felt rather than listening to music that influenced him.

Cause and effect. Of course, in my case, I see it now: Mom and dad used to be happy around me, then they started being unhappy around me, then they were angry at each other, and then they split up. Let’s see, they were together when they were happy, and they split up when they started being angry and yelling all the time. Anger = family and relationship break-up.

It totally did not help me that my parents tried to hide it all from me. I know that it’s not great to fight around your kids, but there’s no reason for them to grow up with this ideal that married couples always smile and get along and are just happy all the time. When that kid grows up and he doesn’t experience that fairy tale that was so carefully placed around him during childhood, he might well wonder what’s wrong with him, or more likely what’s wrong with his partner.

So it would have totally helped me if I could have had some perspective about anger within relationships. Maybe I could have stepped back and seen that the issue was the other person’s. Maybe I could have seen that it was not only her problem but also her responsibility to deal with whatever the problem was and get over being angry.

Of course, my mom and dad were angry at their partners prior to their breakup. Because they were so wrapped up in their own heads and trapped in the straight-jacket of how they were raised to believe relationships worked, they just knew that they were both angry and it was the other person’s fault.

So instead of having the distance, it followed in my head that if she is angry, I must do whatever I can to reverse that, for her sake, my sake, and our sake. It didn’t help when she was angry at me particularly, because that’s what I learned as a kid:

Step 1) Mom is angry at dad

Step 2) Mom ends up kicking dad out.

True, I couldn’t have grasped my parents’ problems, so having them sit down and explain it all to me would have been a waste of time. This is especially true since I’m pretty sure they never understood why the train was so severely off the tracks for them to begin with. They knew down to the tiniest detail what the other person was saying and doing that was so frustrating and wrong, but they didn’t know where the problems really were. They saw symptoms, not the disease.

But that doesn’t mean it was fair to keep me, the child, completely in the dark. When my marriage was on the brink, my kids totally saw it. Hard as it was on them, they saw the stress all over me and felt it in the house.  So my wife and I sat down with the kids together and separately to explain things as best we could. By not springing the separation and eventual divorce on them as a total surprise meant (in our case) that the children were prepared and somewhat armed with the ability to deal with it.

So now I need to step back and examine a woman’s anger with understanding. I understand now:

·         A mood will pass.

·         Anger is an emotion, not a reality. No, not even when you’re “really angry.”

·         My parents split up because they worked to control each other instead of resolve their issues.

·         My parents were angry because they would not behave the way the other one wanted them to.

·         My parents had unrealistic expectations of each other, so disappointment was inevitable.

·         My parents could not accept each other as they were, could not force the other to change (even through violence), and could not escape the prison of what they believed “relationship” really was.

·         My partner can be angry, even with me, and she has the right to her emotions.

·         If my partner is angry, I do not have the right to try and “correct” her mood. The same holds true of she is sad, happy, or anything else.

·         My relationship does not have to suffer like my parents’ did, because while a child is shaped somewhat by his or her parents’ example, he or she is not condemned to repeat it. We have choice.

Knowing that a mood will pass, even a bad mood is valid, and just because someone is angry with me does not signal the end – this allows me to have the distance to see the mood as a thunderstorm; a lot of wind, a lot of noise, a lot of stress. But it will pass, birds will chirp again, and blue skies will return.

Alcohol.

All I can say is alcohol was a primary factor in shaping my early life and views. But since it loomed so large in the bad things that I remember early in life, it took on a mythic stature. It was the fabled monster lurking in the darkness, waiting to bring you to ruin. So it became my policy to avoid alcohol studiously. I convinced myself I was allergic to it, to the point that I had a terrible reaction to even tasting it.

The only problem for me was that I had no objective viewpoint. I did not understand that alcohol in moderation was not something to fear. Mostly I didn’t understand that because there was no such thing as moderation, from what I saw. People drank to get drunk. Drunken people did bad things.

When I found myself in a relationship with women who did not have the same problematic past with alcohol abuse in their families, they did not really understand my panic over the notion that they wanted to occasionally drink socially. And crud, did I ever panic over that! Remember what I said about anger being the herald of the end of a relationship? Well, alcohol was the catalyst of that end.

Wine coolers in the house caused me to scowl every time I looked in the refrigerator. How many nights did I spend lying awake waiting for someone I cared about to leave a bar or club, after all the anxiety I felt upon finding out that was their plans for the evening in the first place? Not to mention that some family friends used to pity me mightily because I did not partake. They actually hoped one day I could have the freedom to drink. Yuck!

It didn’t matter if these people in my life explained that they would be fine with their alcohol consumption. My mom said she was fine after she drank all morning then crossed the median into oncoming traffic as she drove me to a book store (I was too young yet to drive). Drinkers lied a lot, I learned early on. They could not be trusted. Therefore if I cared about a woman and she had plans to drink socially, I automatically got angry because my insecurities teamed up with my past experiences to tell me I could no longer trust this person.

Children of alcoholic parents have a lot of these issues. They can also find themselves in failed relationships, co-dependency, or even trapped in a bottle (alcohol or pill) themselves. Again, what I grew up with was the only reality I had access to as I grew up, so I internalized the idea that that was how things were for everyone everywhere all the time. It’s sad, as cosmopolitan as I was in many ways, I was so backwards and ignorant in many others.

I have two people whom I can credit with helping me come to grips with my fear of alcohol: my psychologist for explaining how alcoholic parents shaped my viewpoints, and a certain young woman who proved that even if she got very inebriated, she was still a mature and responsible person whom I could trust.

I still cringe around alcohol. But I have the emotional distance now to realize that it is a reaction to deeply-rooted trauma in my past and not a reflection of reality in every case. So if someone I care about wants to go to a club and have some drinks with friends, I no longer stay up fretting. She isn’t going to behave badly, she isn’t going to abandon her morals or common sense, and that margarita isn’t going to bring everything I care about to a painful end.

But I’m still going to stick to water or soda.

In large part, my fear of anger and alcohol has been moderated because someone helped me have faith that my past experiences aren’t the only experiences. So it seems only logical that we turn our attention to the pillar of Mindfulness that might make folks a bit wary: Faith.

Emotional Detachment - Angry Asian Apparitions!

This will tie together some issues relating to emotional detachment in relationships, but first we’re going to look at some Asian horror movies, because they have a Buddhist backbone where emotional bondage ties a person to “a bad place.” The bad place varies, but a lot of people who have had “bad relationships” know exactly where that bad place is: they lived there once.

I love Asian horror movies. A lot of Americans do. Unfortunately, a lot of American film makers do too.

Why “unfortunately?” Because they are so affected by these films that they want to remake the films with an American sensibility. Then they re-film the basic flick with the same kind of imagery but it’s skewed towards how American culture views the universe. In the process, much of the horror is lost.

The notion of ghosts is that sometimes spirits are prevented from moving on into the afterlife they are meant for, and instead remain tied to this realm for some reason. Usually the tales revolve around some malevolent motive, such as “the ghost is trying to get revenge” for some slight.

But just as cultures have different values and social mores, their ghosts are different as well.

Short detour – American Horror vs. Asian Horror.

What Scares America? A Lot, It Turns Out.

As time moves on and cultures change, the things which scare them changes too.

Americans have been afraid of a lot of things, but from early cinema down to the most recent suspense and horror movies, there are some things that help form the American fear experience:

Alienation – Remember how the Doors sang about people being strange when you are a stranger? Look at films that scare you the most and see if the foundations involve small towns or immersion in different cultures (such as getting into trouble abroad where you are not familiar with the language, customs, laws, etc.).

Isolation – Like alienation, minus the chance that some kind-hearted soul will show up to help you out. Do the films that scare you the most involve your fears of being trapped somewhere, being separated from family and friends, having no one believe you when you try to warn them, or being unable to trust those around you?

Powerlessness – One thing that really scares Americans is being in a jam and unable to do anything about it. A good American horror movie makes sure that during moments of high tension:

·         The lights go out.

·         Someone who is running gets hurt and can’t run anymore.

·         The phones don’t work (storms take out telephone lines, cell phone batteries die or there is suddenly no signal).

·         Cars won’t start (or Annie gets in the car and realizes Jeff had the keys).

·         Doors won’t open.

·         Annie gets in the car but she can’t leave because Jeff is still in the house somewhere.

The notion of powerlessness especially frustrates me, because I don’t know very many girls who would just totally wilt in the face of a guy with a knife who is slowly advancing on them. Based on most of the girls I know, a psychopath would find things flying at his head that no one even knew were in the room. And I don’t think any psycho really wants a piece of a girl who comes at him all tooth-and-claw. So to get the appropriate feeling of terror, the girl has to wilt. A guy who is in the same position will probably swing a pipe or something, so the writers have to make sure he misses, loses his weapon, or the weapon doesn’t really hurt the menace.

Either way, you have to make sure the protagonist on the screen at the moment of confrontation is powerless to prevent bad things from happening to him or her. Even a guy with a machine gun will empty his cartridge into the menace, only to find out that bullets aren’t effective. See, once the menace stops being a menace, you have two problems:

1.       No more horror.

2.       No chance for sequels.

Now if weakness in its various forms seems to be what drives the American fear-film market, what got the whole Japanese horror market (and soon everyone else’s) horror market screaming for relief?

It seems to be change.

As their traditional cultural values continue to be challenged by one generation after another, it begins to affect how stable they perceive the world to be. That fuels fear, and that drives filmmakers to tap into that mindset.

Enter: Ju-on and Ringu.

There are other films that are landmarks in contemporary Asian horror films, in my opinion, and they seem to share the same fears. But to focus on how it all applies to Mindfulness and emotional detachment, I’m going to look at these two briefly.

Girls With Long Black Hair Are Everywhere!

Ju-on’s self-definition on the film tells us that a curse is born when someone dies “in the grip of a powerful rage.” That curse then sets up shop where the death occurred, and anyone encountering it will suffer from it as well. Similarly, a curse is born from such anger in Ringu, although it gets to be a bit more mobile.

Curses born from extreme emotional states which were unresolved at death: a true Buddhist issue.

Abandonment of traditional roles and obligations is a huge theme in Asian horror. Parents abandoning children, husbands and wives abandoning marriages, adult children abandoning the care of their elderly parents, and even social care systems abandoning their duties to society are all things which keep cropping up.

So just as Godzilla is a cautionary tale of the dangers of man’s nuclear folly (among other things), Ju-on and Ringu are cautionary tales of the dangers of segments of society who do not uphold their end of the social contract (among many other things).

But instead of a big lizard blowing radioactive fire all over Tokyo as a symbol of cinematic payback, you get women with long black hair defying the physical universe’s laws for their own payback.

Make no mistake – there is a fair amount of revenge going on in Asian horror films.

But the revenge is often not against the people who caused the problem in the first place, but against innocent folks who are not connected to the event except by accident later on. That’s another standout issue in these films – you and your generation are blatantly flouting social conventions and maybe nothing will happen to you, but just as you are causing your forefathers pain, your actions will impact the generation after you.

Ringu and Dark Water fans, take note.

Okay, What Does This Have To Do With Emotional Detachment? Focus, David!

Focus, right!

PS: Spoiler alert.

In these films, the spirits’ revenge is driven by events after the parties are wronged. So the Vengeful Ghost motif is used very well.

But it’s not the wrong that led to the formation of the ghost directly. Sadako in Ringu did not become a ghost because her dad swatted her over the head with a shovel. Kayako didn’t become The Crawler in Ju-on simply because her husband Takeo tried to give her a makeover with an Xacto knife.

They died with unresolved emotions. That led to the various curses and ghostly manifestations.

Note – Kayako and Sadako were still alive after their abusive treatment at the hands of men who traditionally were obligated to care for them. The little girl in Dark Water, the sick patient in Infection, and on and on: people who lived long enough to have those negative emotions set into concrete. That tied them to this realm, preventing them from moving on. Then they died, still tied. Viola: curse!

So the ghosts are not tied to this realm by murder, negligence, incompetence, or any other abandonment of traditional caretakers. It was those unresolved emotional states which forced their spirits to linger in an effort to attain resolution.

Sadly, it just wasn’t to be.

Emotions can have the same effect on us today, tying us to a moment in time or a person in our past that prevents us from moving on. The curse isn’t going to be perpetuated by your vengeful spirit (I hope) but by your own mind. You and those around you will be affected (infected) by the curse of the emotional cage. You will be trapped, and others are liable to be pulled in like objects encountering a black hole.

Although I’ve never known anyone who has come back to wreck havoc due to dying while in the grip of a powerful rage, I do know a whole lot of folks who live with a powerful rage. Sadness, anger, frustration, and a host of other emotions end up causing the person to haunt himself or herself. Like a vengeful spirit, these emotions begin to take on form and substance, affecting people physically as well as mentally and certainly emotionally. And then he or she gets into a new relationship, where those emotions come out to wreck that havoc on the new partner (just like Rika entering the house in Ju-on – she had nothing to do with the original events, but she was the new blood. So to speak…)

If we are to move into a peaceful existence, whether we call it Nirvana or Paradise or just a happy and contented life, we need to figure out how to free ourselves from bondage to our emotions. It may take professional help – in my case it definitely did. But as soon as we determine what we are going to let go of, what we are going to refuse to let control how we feel, we have more energy and resources to deal with life.

If someone hurt us, for example, that’s something that will affect us for a long time; maybe forever. We may not be able to control the fact that it hurts, but we can control how much the hurt affects us. A failed marriage, or an abusive relationship, or any other relationship configuration that caused us damage, will leave scars. These things do not have to prevent us from being happy with someone else (so long as we make good choices), or even happy alone.

Everyone has different capacities for things in their lives. Controlling their emotions is one capacity that will differ from one person to another. But no matter what our personal capacity, we can all improve.

Next post:  some concrete suggestions and experiences in detaching oneself from emotions and gaining the mastery over them (well, most of the time).

Emotional Detachment - Taking A Step Back

I remember a big complaint with men back in the day (and really, it hasn’t gone away) is that men weren’t really in touch with their feelings.

That was ridiculous. Maybe individual men weren’t, but most men are familiar with their feelings to a degree. It’s really no different with women – some are more familiar with their feelings than others.

What stinks though, and stunk then, is that men were less likely to openly express a lot of them. It was drilled into our skulls that it wasn’t right or acceptable to do that. Feelings were always there, but they had to be kept inside. That was the manly way.

Oh, unless it was like anger. That was perfectly fine to express if you were a guy. A woman in public, however, needed to keep her anger in check. In private she could let it rip, but in public? Nuh uh.

I remember being told quite a few times not to cry because big boys didn’t cry. What a stupid thing to teach kids. It’s good not to cry over absolutely everything, but it ought to be criminal to teach a boy that he should not ever cry.

Criminal, I tell ya.

Jesus cried when he visited the tomb of his dear friend Lazarus. Even though Jesus knew full good and well that within the hour Lazarus would be up and eating, emotion happened.

It is not necessary to do away with emotion. It is a catastrophe to do away with emotion. However, if life is t be at all manageable, emotions need to be controlled. Control them, or be controlled by them.

To focus on this point, let’s look at another religious and philosophical character from history.

Buddha and Nirvana

Why is the Buddha smiling? Half a hundred reasons could be (and probably have been) given, but the serene smile may have something to do with his enlightenment, as he figured out how he would see Nirvana.

Well, not the band, or course. Kurt Cobain wasn’t born yet; although Kurt might have really benefitted from the enlightenment of the Buddha.

So real quick I will do a terrible disservice to Buddhism and chat a moment about Nirvana and the Buddhist enlightenment.

Nirvana was not a place, really. It was a state of being.

·         Mankind’s life was seen as just a big cycle of suffering.

·         To break free from the cycle of suffering, one needed to understand the cycle and one’s place in it.

·         Why does man suffer? Because man is eternal, and instead of finding the ultimate bliss, he mucks around on earth, life after life, tied to this realm.

·         Why is the tied to this realm? Because he is a victim of his perception of needs.

·         Man will be reborn, one life after another, reincarnated until he learns how to sever the things that tie him to this realm. In other words, he needs to learn his Karmic lessons.

·         He is tied to this realm by constantly trying to become happy and stop being unhappy. To do this, he strives all his life to acquire money, property, a spouse, children, something.

·         If he doesn’t get all the things he wants, he’s unhappy.

·         If he does get all the things he wants, give him a few years, and he will be unhappy.

·         Happy, sad, angry, afraid, on and on – these are emotions that people are enslaved to at various times.

·         If you want to stop being enslaved by the emotions, you must master them and stop trying to travel away from a place called Unhappy and trying to make it to a place called Happy.

·         Be happy where you are, and content with what you have. Struggle over.

·         Nirvana!

Of course, it’s really not just all that, but you get the idea. Until you master your emotions, you will become a volleyball. You will be forever bouncing from emotion to emotion, on the positive side of the net, then the negative. And eventually you’re going to hit the floor hard.

We struggle; we fight, trying to resist crossing the net. That makes us alter our behavior and try to alter the universe if possible to stay on this one side of the net.

When we accept that sometimes we will be happy and sometimes we will be unhappy, things get a lot easier. Negative emotions aren’t pleasant, but they are temporary. Emotions are temporary. They are just thoughts that affect us.

We’ve talked about intrusive thoughts and we’ve talked about acceptance. Emotions fit in here too. It all boils down to accepting things we cannot change, and changing things which we can when they need to change, and realizing that thoughts are not reality – they are just thoughts.

It’s funny: we can’t really control very many external events or other people, yet we spend so much time trying to figure out how to do exactly that. Emotions are one huge aspect of our existence that we totally can control, and yet it’s like the last thing we try to rein in.

But we will never be able to control our emotions if we just get swept away by them. We need to step back.

Going Backward To Move Forward

So you’re in a relationship. That means that you have another person’s emotions to consider besides your own. Add kids to the mix, and your life can become emotionally busy.

So many arguments start because of emotional triggers. He said this, she did that, and now I’m sad/mad/scared. A person external to you says or does something that triggers an emotional reaction – those reflexes – and before we know it we’ve returned fire or run for the fallout shelter. But in either case, we did not stop to really look at the situation.

There’s no way we can expect ourselves to rationally consider everything that someone says or does, but we can practice this rapid analysis to get better and faster at it. In time, little things will not bother us as much because we’ve already retrained our brains to recognize that a trigger has been pulled and will reflexively start to respond in a more even and controlled fashion.

This can be important, because it’s not usually huge issues that we blow up on our partner about: it’s the little things that start the chain reaction of emotional meltdown. One tiny straw that finally breaks the poor camel’s back.

Here’s an example from my life. Some of my wife’s friends came over to the house one day for a little get-together. I was working around the house, still trying to get the place straightened up for guests. I came up from the basement and there were women all around.

I said something, and I was launched upon. See, one of the guests had just been in her most recent bad relationship (yes, many men and women are unable to say they’ve only had one) and the last thing she wanted was for a man – any man – to say anything to her. Anything. What gets me is I didn’t say a word to her the entire day.

What did I day to the group?

“Have a good party and let me know if there is anything you need.”

Woman: “Why don’t you leave?”

Sensing a confrontation (since I said something to the group and was launched on by this one woman), I started to say I’d better go in the other room and give them some room to play. I got out “I’d better…”

The woman cut me off (I still hadn’t said a word to her): “No, you’d better shut up is what you’d better do.”

Okay…..

I was angry, upset, and so on. A bunch of emotional triggers were being pulled in sequence. But I held my tongue and went into the other room. Why?

Simple: I was not going to ruin my wife’s party, and I wasn’t going to try and reason with a woman who only wanted to scrap. That would be a total waste of time and energy.

It bugged me for a long time. It still does, down inside. That was totally rude to tell the husband of a party host to shut up in his own house, particularly when the only thing he did to provoke this reaction was to exist in his own house. She was hating on men at the moment, and I fit the description of “the enemy.”

So with Mindfulness, I’ve got a tool for dealing with the sudden spike in anxiety when I recall the incident. It means being mindful of how I feel, what led to those feelings, and how I want to feel.

Here are the steps I take to get enough distance not to let the memory ruin my mood:

1.       I remember the moment. Ugh. I don’t like remembering it, mostly because it begins to bother me again the moment it leaps to the front of my mind.

2.       I recognize that it’s bothering me. That slight chilly flush that hits my skin. I no longer have to wait for the pulse and breathing to be affected before I realize a negative emotion has been triggered. That’s one of the nice things about practice – my reaction becomes one of choice, and it gets faster!

3.       Quickly my mind reviews the particulars of the incident, picking out the trigger moments that I still haven’t fully put away. It’s like watching the whole thing on fast forward, with my practiced eyes falling on specific points while the images race by.

4.       I make a semi-conscious acknowledgement that this happened and it is starting to bug me again.

5.       I run down the factors that can free me from that anxiety.

a)      She was coming out of her latest bad relationship, so she was hating on all men (it wasn’t personal against me).

b)      I was hot because I didn’t deserve to be treated that way. At least I’m realistically in-touch with why I got angry.

c)       I was also hot because it was embarrassing being called out in front of others like that. People usually don’t like being thrown into the Smackdown Spotlight, especially with no warning.

d)      I did not respond in kind, so I saved my dignity at the time.

e)      I do not need to retaliate against others for being wronged. I can choose to, but I don’t need to. It’s not like I have anything I need to prove to anyone.

f)       This lady, and everyone there that day, has no doubt entirely forgotten the moment. I’m the only fool still holding on to the stupid thing. If I can let go, it really is gone.

g)      If I still feel that twinge, it’s my natural reflexive desire to return fire. I can control that and it will save me needless confrontations. If a war really isn’t necessary, there’s no point in fighting it; especially if you know going in that you cannot win it.

h)      That twinge is just my inner critic hollering at me for not retaliating. Shut up, inner critic. I will not feel guilty for choosing the course of peace.

6.       I am now free from the unpleasant emotional bondage to a moment that is years long past.  And in under two minutes. Yay!

I don’t want to feel angry over all that. So I choose not to be. All it takes is effort, choice, a little analysis and reasoning, and sometimes a little prayer.

Oh, and apparently ten years. (Slapping my forehead.)

Next post, let’s look a little deeper into the Buddhist enlightenment about the dangers of not controlling one’s emotions. That’s right: we’re going to discuss Asian Horror Movies!

Intermission - Let's Chat & Meditation vs. Medication

This blog has been of great value to me so far, because it has been very helpful to write out the stuff in my head as a healing process. Even though it's fairly personal stuff, I don't want it to be hidden.

It has also been helpful for a few other folks, some of whom see themselves or folks they know in some of the things I write. Go figure: my personal experiences and insights aren't necesarily just mine. I'm not alone.

It's really nice to receive feedback for things I write. Even if folks disagree with my position or views, it's cool. We are each free to see and experience things in our own ways.

So I'm taking this opportunity to invite folks to get in touch with me about the blog. All I ask is that if you don't like what I write and want to tell me, at least be courteous.

Ask questions. Make comments. Share experiences.

There are two main ways I can think of off hand to comment:

At the bottom of each post is a Comment box. Feel free to write your comments there.

If that's too public, then feel free to e-mail me at dreamwalkerblogger@gmail.com

In either case, I will try to respond, because I think if you write something for public consumption, you're not done yet. Writing something and walking away is only one-sided communication, and I like a good dialog.

And of course, if we're friends on Facebook, there are public and private messaging options.

But I want to make this little intermission have some value beyond just letting you know how to reply to my blog. So....

Mindfulness And Anxiety

I used to have a regular prescription for Xanax. It helped, but I really didn't want to use it. I needed to use it.

Or did I?

My anxiety triggers have been too sensitive most times. I would sometimes trigger them myself just anticipating something else setting them off. That's mighty proactive, but awful.

If I felt it coming on, kind of like feeling thunder rather than hearing it, I began to head for the storm shelter in the form of a little white pill. As I began to really grasp Mindfulness in my experience, I found myself running to the shelter less often. I haven't had the prescription renewed in awhile now, because I don't need it.

Now I'm totally not suggesting anyone else follow that path. Only you know what you need to do to cope and make it through. Even if you don't know, only you can truly decide on a course of action.

But I found that thunder is loud and scary but can't really hurt you. Lightning's a different story, but thunder's pretty harmless.

Likewise, many of the things that scared me, or triggered anxiety in me, was thunder. Loud, scary, but ultimately just a lot of noise.

Now I didn't discover that truth from the safety of the Xanax Cellar. If I got through stuff without a scratch I chalked it up to the wonderous protection of the tiny pill. If I got scratched, I figured it would have been worse if I had been out in the open, figuratively speaking.

Really, how things ended up is how things would have ended up, pill or no. My decisions and my actions made the difference. The pill just helped take the edge off while I did what I had to do.

Now I meditate instead of medicate.

Not like sitting on the floor and crossing my legs. If I tried that, my anxiety might spike once I realized I wasn't able to get up.

Meditation is a key aspect of Mindfulness. But the form of that meditation isn't fixed.

I just start focusing on my breathing. Then when I have achieved some semblance of calm, I start looking at what caused me to get antsy to begin with.

Intrusive thoughts are often the culprit. What If scenarios playing out in my head can make my anxiety surge. So what I try to do is get involved early on.

If I feel my anxiety growing, I become aware of my physical symptoms first. Breathing becomes faster and more shallow, my heart is speeding up, I feel hot and cold flashes and my stomach knots up.

It doesn't take long to figure out what caused the surge. I don't generally have to think, "now what was I just thinking about that did that?" In the middle of scene 4 of the disaster scenario playing out on my mind's stage, I stop the play. In fact, I just say "Stop."

Now whether it's out loud or to myself, this is my little verbal cue to focus, to become more aware of what's happening within myself at that moment. By saying that, and hearing myself say it, it halts the building anxiety in its tracks by instantly taking my mind off of its unhelpful course and sets me at square one of the analysis course.

In BSDM relationships, there is a word agreed upon by both parties to be used if one or the other becomes too uncomfortable or fearful. That is their "Safe Word," something that isn't going to be said in the normal course of their activites. That word comes out, everything stops and the process is over.

In professional wrestling, a guy might take a chair shot to his leg or something near it, and he will scream out, "Augh! My leg!" That's part of the show. However, if you ever notice someone take a bump (a fall or a hit) and the referee or the other wrestler nestles up next to the "injured" wrestler, generally what's happening is that they are trying to find out if the wrestler might really be hurt. If he isn't, the match goes on. But if the wrestler tells his opponent or the referee "I'm hurt" or some variation, the other parties in the ring know to finish the match quickly to a predetermined conclusion so the medical folks can get in there and take care of business.

Why these two examples? Because they both involve reality rushing in to derail fantasy before someone really gets in danger.

In BDSM, someone really is getting some discomfort put on them, but it's within the framework of a mutually-agreed scenario. Both parties agree to one person putting some kind of discomfort on the other. It's part of the fantasy.

In wrestling, the same thing happens. The match may be choreographed down to the individual moves (or in the Independent circuit, maybe nothing is known besides the ending), but getting whacked on the bare back with a metal chair hurts. Folks agreed that one person gets to use the chair, one person gets to make faces when it hits. It's part of the fantasy.

In my case, my fantasy is the scenario in my mind. As it gains momentum, I come into some discomfort. Now for me, if I let it go on and experience discomfort, I'm making an agreement with myself to let it. Folks who experience these things feel compelled to watch the disaster unfold with their mind's eye unblinking. You become so immersed in the spectacle that it doesn't even dawn on your conscious mind that you can stop it.

So learning how to derail the process is your first step in Mindfully dealing with this mess. You say or do something that takes your mind off the fantasy in your head and drags your focus right back to the present moment.

After I get my own attention, it's time to examine. Do I like the way I feel at the moment? No? Good. That means I'm more likely to do something about it. I need to conentrate on my breathing.

If I breathe in as deeply as I can, I will start slowing my breathing as well. Between the two I increase the amount of oxygen flowing into my bloodstream and circulating around my noggin. As I get the breathing so slow, my heartrate begins to slow as well. Quickly I am in control, whereas a minute or two ago I was rapidly losing control.

Already I have performed two aspects of meditation:

·         I have brought my mind into focus using a mantra (a word or phrase which is repeated, kind of a dinner bell calling the complete mind to gather in this one place). I may or may not have to repeat the word “Stop” depending on how deep I got into the quicksand of the fantasy.

·         I I have controlled my breathing by making it deeper and slower. Anxiety makes it fast and shallow, so by doing the opposite I achieve the opposite.

It takes time, but the more often I practice this intervention, the faster my mind and body respond. It’s really just retaining my mind and body in how to reflexively react when anxiety strikes.

There. I’m feeling calmer already. Now I can ask myself some questions.

“Dude, what was all that just now?”

“What makes you think that would happen?”

“Yeah, I know it could possibly happen by some stretch of the imagination. You could get a phone call telling you that you’re a millionaire, by some stretch of the imagination. Is that going to happen?”

“So really, what are the odds that scenario is going to happen?”

“If it did happen, what really could or would you be able to do about it?”

“So it isn’t going to happen, and if it did, you would deal with it or collapse then, right?”

“So let’s stop wasting all those stress chemicals on this fantasy that only makes you unhappy. Look around at the present. Things are okay. You are okay. And things will be okay.”

This is a kind of simplified version, but not by much. Sometimes I don’t even need to go this far. Nowadays, once the bad scenario begins to raise my anxiety, I say “Stop,” I breathe, I recognize right off that I’m being ridiculous, and I get back to whatever I should be doing. Anyone who practices Mindfulness when dealing with unpleasant thoughts probably has some similar pattern they follow as they learn their path.

I have to mention that I need to do this with kindness to myself, though. Just like you need to discipline your children but not to the point of abuse, you need to discipline yourself but not to the point of abuse.

Yeah, I just went too far. People do. Some people go too far in other things than I do, but we all have to regain balance sometimes. And some folks go too far down that self-destructive road and don’t get a return ticket. I need to forgive myself and be thankful that I stopped another runaway train of thought. I have chosen to be happy instead of unhappy.

And with that, let’s look at what all of this is called: Detachment.

Being Present - Remember The Future

What will be will be. That’s a fact.

We can control what will be. That’s sort of a fact.

The reason that’s not entirely a guarantee is because there are so many things that happen in the universe that are outside of our control. That includes other people in our lives.

The future is unknown, and as H. P. Lovecraft pointed out, the unknown is probably man’s biggest fear. That explains a lot of the appeal of fortune tellers, astrology, and other forecasting. Yes, including the weather.

When the future interferes with the present, usually because we spend the present swimming in a Worry River, we are short-changing ourselves. Rather than being open to the marvels of the unknown future, we want to know it in depth so we can plan.

Planning is fine. Worry is not.

Don’t get me wrong, worry is a nice enough hobby. I’m a Virgo; I have a black belt in worry.

But worry uses energy and doesn’t prevent bad things or prepare us for bad things. Because now we’re going to encounter bad things while we’re all negative and exhausted. Probably at best, our worries will be proven accurate. More likely, things will be worse than they could have been if we had just gotten a grip.

I was always making mole hills into mountains, even if there was no support for my fears. Heck, probably ESPECIALLY when there was no support for them. I would worry about little things particularly.

Big things usually don’t get to me. I’m broke and the bills all arrived in the mail today? It’ll be okay. Someone hit the car in the parking lot? I hate that! But it’ll be okay. Federal furloughs with no real good news on the horizon? I don’t really know how, but I believe it will be okay.

Can’t find my badge in the morning before I leave for work? I lose my mind! I can still go to work, get in, and function all day. It will be an inconvenience, but it will be okay. And I firmly don’t accept that at the moment.

I’m a Tree Person. So when issues crop up involving the whole forest, I am usually fine. I guess that, although I can focus just fine on the Forest level, I typically don’t need to. I’m surrounded by Forest People. They worry over big stuff. I’m down here sweating over little stuff.

Consequently, they don’t understand why I can be so calm in the midst of true catastrophe, and they REALLY don’t understand why I’m worried about stuff they didn’t even notice until I pointed it out.

But we both have one thing in common at this point: we are both worrying. And we are probably both worrying over stuff that we really don’t need to.

My view is that I rarely worry over things I can’t do anything about. If the issue is so big that there is simply nothing I can do, then I’m usually fine. It’s out of my hands, so I am free from the need to worry about it. It will all sort out somehow; good or bad, it will all work itself out.

But particularly in relationships, thanks to my past, I worry about the future of the relationship. Not even the Forest View of 40 years down the road. I’m worrying over what I just said, how she just reacted, what I need to do to FIX THIS. Rather than let it go, I begin to obsess: what will this mean to the future? Will it be the beginning of the end? Will my stupid remark become the small snowball that grows as it rolls downhill and eventually crushes a sleepy little village at the bottom of the mountain?

From this fear, I developed a habit.

Habits are funny things. We often think about bad habits and good habits, but what about the good habits that become bad habits? Did you know that could happen?

Men! Hmph!

I grew up in an environment where men were often first-class citizens, and women were on the next lower rung of the ladder. Again, Eve came from Adam, remember. God didn’t create the two together to be equal. Woman was to be submissive to man. Even if you weren’t overly religious, this was an unspoken attitude that just existed.

One of the side effects of this attitude was constantly rubbed in my face: Men don’t apologize! Like, ever! They are so totally wrong, so totally caught at being wrong, but they won’t say they’re sorry. Oh, that was a huge complaint in my world, 1970s Rural America.

So I got the message. Man, did I ever get the message.

In time, I began to apologize in relationships too much. I’m not saying I didn’t do things wrong or own up to them. I believe that any time I said or did something wrong, I apologized. But it went further. Soon I was apologizing for stuff I wasn’t involved with. I began to apologize pretty much as soon as the storm clouds began to appear in her eyes, no matter what the reason.

I was soon apologizing too much, as I either felt guilty about something or I felt the need to show I was a caring, thoughtful man unlike the Neanderthals I heard so much about.

While this is clearly the past intruding into the present, it is really about worrying over the possible future. What if I wasn’t groveling? Soon the familiar echoes would ring in my ears once more, I reasoned. Men don’t apologize. Men don’t admit when they’re wrong. Men really don’t know how to care about a woman’s feelings.

I was not about to let that apply to me, and I sure didn’t want the future to be nothing but her telling her friends “Yeah, he’s a typical guy.”

That’s what it boiled down to, for me. Subconsciously, hearing such negative views on men much of my life scared me from being quite like those men. But in grand fashion I over-reacted. I began to apologize inappropriately, all out of worry:

·         What will other people think about me if I don’t apologize?

·         Will the woman in my life begin to have disdain for me because I don’t apologize enough?

·         Will the woman in my life begin to draw away from me because I’m not sensitive enough, as proven by my lack of consistent apologizing?

Ah ha! Right there, that’s the culprit. That’s her, officer! That’s the woman who robbed me!

Actually, that’s all the women who robbed me, all because they were stuck in marriages with guys who didn’t learn advanced relationship skills. Like there was anyone around who could teach them anyway. Traditional roles didn’t require those skills. Their dads didn’t have them, and women were dismissed, so who would have been left? I had no good role models for any of this.

I’m Sorry I Keep Apologizing!

So I was worried all along about what might happen as a consequence of my lack of apologizing. My abandonment issues suggested that I would lose important people from my life, either emotionally or emotionally and physically, simply because I wasn’t actively, CONSTANTLY proving that I wasn’t like those other guys. So I went too far and apologized ALL THE TIME.

There was probably no such thing as too much apologizing in the marriage. It was one strategy that kept the tempest at bay. But the next relationship had a different kind of dynamic, and my incessant apologizing was an obviously harmful habit.

Now I’m not going to wallow in self-pity because of this bad habit. I did enough of that in the past, and I need to accept what happened and move on in growth and understanding. I am sorry it happened, but it did happen. Trust me, I’ve apologized about it.

Interestingly, as I apologized for every dust molecule that settled near this woman, it caused her to push away from me. It was suffocating to be with someone who just inundated her with these “I’m Sorry” showers. Since I had developed the apology as a defense mechanism to prevent this moving away, I was not equipped to understand that what was needed was for me to back off and chill the heck out. So as she moved, I apologized more for causing her more discomfort, which caused more discomfort, which I then apologized for, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.

This woman deserves an award of some kind for not simply tagging me with a series of uppercuts on the couch one evening. Probably while we sat watching The King And I.

So I was apologizing to the point of nausea, simply because I was determined not to ever hear those accusations again, nor to lose a woman I loved simply because I was just like every other guy: future events that were simply not realistic for the present I was living in.

That’s not because of me, that’s because she wasn’t like those women either.

As I said, I worry about little things; little things that I can have some impact on, and that are within my scope to do something about. I couldn’t prevent bad things from happening, and I couldn’t always keep from saying or doing dumb stuff. But what I could do was apologize until the person next to me had completely forgotten what happened. By that point she was telling me it was okay, just to shut me up.

So now can you see why the future intruded? It wasn’t because something bad was going to happen. It was because I worried that something bad was going to happen. And I became determined that I would do whatever I knew I had to do to prevent that bad future eventuality. Regardless of how wrong I was for doing so.

I allowed the future to intrude. I did not simply let go f the past, accept the present, and have faith in the future. I didn’t have faith in myself, or in the person I was with. All I knew was what I had grown up with, which is true of most children. It’s especially true of people who had alcoholic parents. My view of reality was shaped by dysfunction, but I assumed it was normal because that’s all I ever saw.

Letting Go Of Compulsive Apologizing By Accepting The Uncertain Future

Here’s a sobering truth, one that came to me in the Mindfulness Process: I cannot prevent someone from entering my life, nor can I prevent them from leaving it. I can sure do things that encourage certain people to stay in my life, but it’s ultimately their decision.

Just like it’s my decision to stay with him or her, it is his or her decision to stay with me as well. I rule my life, but they have sovereignty over theirs. Even if he or she invited me to rule their life, I should always say no. It’s not my place, and I rob them of the dignity to make their own decisions.

I don’t want to be abandoned. I don’t want to care about someone, get my heart all tangled up with theirs, only to have them leave one day and I find myself lonely.

But if it happens, it happens.

It’s not defeatist, nor fatalist. I can do my best to be the best ME I can be, and I can adjust aspects of my life to accommodate someone else’s life. I can do things that enhance the relationship, but in the end I’m just one half of the equation.

And as scary as that is, it is also one of the most liberating things you can ever learn.

Don’t think so?

Which would you rather carry: one barbell or two; one suitcase or two; one case of breakable glass or two?

One side of a relationship, or both sides?

A controlling mentality might consider being solely responsible for both parties in a relationship the safest, most efficient and most reasonable choice. But relationships aren’t safe, efficient, and certainly aren’t reasonable a lot of the time. They are usually risky, inefficient, and tossed around on the waves of an ocean where two weather fronts meet.

We want them to be havens of safety, security, and peace, but until we let go and accept them as they are, they can never truly be what we want them to be. The more we try to second-guess the future and control the person we are with to “ensure” A Happy Ending, the more we jeopardize our own future together. We jeopardize the chance we will be happy, safe, and secure.

So the past was what it was. The present is what it is. And the future is going to belligerently be whatever it pleases. Accepting the future is necessary because I will just be miserable if I let my imagination run wild with What If scenarios all the time. I might be miserable in the future anyway, but at least I need t give it a chance to work out happily.

Actually, just as I can choose how to act, I can choose whether or not to be miserable or happy. If doesn’t even matter what the future brings, because I can choose to feel how I want to feel when I get there.

Emotional Detachment, our next topic.