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!