I’m working through the Great Courses History courses. Pretty pricey on their own, but on an Audible subscription pretty cheap.
I find that re-listening to the lecture ive just done is the perfect sweet spot. And I listen to it normally throughout the day in the gym or washing up as well.
Whether I’m learning anything… Who knows.
Cheers buddy. Glad you made it over to unstuck.
I think I’m going to start the mediation thread this week, just because it seems more appropriate as a place for resources. That said, I’m also finding ideas on meditation and presence/consciousness to be inextricably linked to my mental health.
Right now I’m feeling a fair bit of stress/anxiety around the house I am trying to purchase. We’re in that waiting period, when the bank is doing an appraisal and first pass on the mortgage application–which means the sellers are still taking “backup offers,” and the whole thing could fall thru.
On some level, this is kind of a softball from the universe. Why am I stressed about this? Because my mind has tied “buying the house” with a future outcome and image of life.
“If the deal falls thru, that life I imagined vanishes.” Which is like the opposite of living presently. But understanding that is only half the deal. Or maybe not even that much. … How does one become ok with that uncertainty?
I’ve recently attended a couple of “group meditations” facilitated by a guy named Tom Compton.
“Group meditation” probably isn’t wholly accurate. Tom is a facilitator of “The Work,” Byron Katie’s program. So the meditation isn’t really a meditation in the sense of a bunch of folks getting together on zoom to sit silently. “The Work” is, as I understand it, a series of four questions that break down a basic idea: any time you feel stress, it’s because you believe something that isn’t true.
So this 2 hour event, twice a week, is part guided meditation, yes. But also, people (maybe 3 to 5 in a session) raise questions or issues and Tom basically failitates them through the work. It is powerful stuff to watch and hear.
Yesterday, for example: ideas brought up included “life is hard” and “I have to earn it.” Both of which resonated with me deeply.
The four questions of painful ideas are: Is it true? Can you know it is absolutely true? How do you react when you believe it? And who would you be without the thought?
The guy is funny and compassionate. Highly recommend as a good value for $10 and 2 hours.
One thing he said previously was, and I’m paraphrasing somewhat: desire and fear are inextricably linked.
On the one hand, I get this: Wanting something means the possibility of not getting it. On the other hand, it seems possible to want something without fearing not getting it. So. Maybe something I will ask about.
I’m not sure I agree that what you say here this is possible. Perhaps we are not saying the same thing, but I think I’m in agreement with that one line from Tom: desire and fear are inextricably linked.
I can learn to accept the fear and in time cultivate how and how deeply I engage with it, but the nature of something having value to me requires that I also be aware of what it would mean to lose it, or perhaps to never have it. We can debate how much of this awareness equates to fear, but I don’t think a person can NOT feel fear when it comes to what matters to them. That’s the nature of something having value. Something is at stake.
The more I try to fight and rise above the fear, to live in a place where it doesn’t exist, the more I’m really just repressing it until it explodes. So I accept it. I find ways to process and integrate it, to express and share it. This is the process by which I reduce the fear’s power over me. Like the Hulk in Endgame turning into Smart Hulk once he stopped fighting the anger and learned to integrate it.
I don’t agree with this.
This strikes me as an example of dualstic thinking. Fear is an indicator one isn’t truly present.
Don’t get me wrong: I’m not saying I can necessarily achieve this right now. But I don’t think fear is necessary. It often seems like an indication someone is rejecting reality.
Take a spouse or significant other. One day, they will die. Inevitale. Fearing that is insane.
But again. I’m not saying I can be or stay in these states of consciousness, only that I’m pretty sure if one is truly aware then there is no fear.
Okay, then I think we disagree both on metaphysical and scientific principles.
How do you define being “truly aware” and having “no fear”?
To elaborate on my view, my first point is that emotions exist on a spectrum. Each one inseparable from the other. The only way to not feel fear is to numb yourself to it. You cannot numb yourself to one emotion without numbing yourself to the entire spectrum of emotions.
So second, while I can select from the terms available to me how I will respond to that fear, I cannot choose NOT to fear. If a person is experiencing emotions, it is not possible for fear not to exist in some degree. Fighting that is a conflict that would pointlessly engage me for the rest of my life.
This does not mean that I am powerless over whether I exist in a state of fear. I can choose to be brave, for example. But there is no bravery without choosing to proceed despite the risk. Despite the fear. Do you see what I mean? You cannot NOT feel fear.
On a metaphysical level, I just don’t accept the conceptual distinctions between states of consciousness such that a person can ever be completely one and not another. But I also don’t find such distinction persuasive or useful. We exist in a state of entropy and decay. To know that nothing lasts forever provokes a variety of feelings in me that enhance and add value to each other.
When I think of what I love, I feel gratitude to have it. Part of that gratitude comes from having such a thing when I could have never had it. And from having it now when I know that at some point, that thing will end. Maybe it’s because the relationship ends or the TV breaks or in time because I die, but everything at some points ends. The universe itself will suffer a heat death, and outside of theories of eternal reconstitution, that might be the end of “existence” as we know it.
And then there are the things that to have them or pursue them would risk things of great value that I already have. There is both fear and gratitude there. And if I choose not to hold on to something or not to pursue something, there is a fear at what possibility I have given up, even if the dominant emotional experience is bravery to take the chance on saying no to something and gratitude for recognizing how much I love what is already in front of me.
I’m for how to make the best of our circumstances, which is not the same of me arguing that we ought to choose to live under these conditions. I’m saying we don’t appear to have a choice. These are the terms of being born a human. To think that we can think ourselves out of this is vanity. It is to seek to control something we will never control.
Like scientific principles of truth and objectivity, I believe enlightenment is something we pursue in principle while accepting we will never achieve perfectly. But no one would like to be more wrong about that part than me.
I think that’s going a little too far. The teacher at the meditation place I go to puts it similarly as: “almost all human suffering is caused by not seeing the world clearly” or sometimes “by a conflict between how we want things to be and how they are”. However, emotions like stress and fear are sometimes appropriate. Fear is an appropriate response to looking down and seeing that I’m about to tread on a snake.
The problem here is the proliferation of “things of value” beyond the things we actually require for good living. To fear losing something, one must believe that one will be unhappy (or less happy) without it, and this is just transitively the same belief as the belief that acquiring things will make us happy. It’s the flipside of the guy who thinks that a nicer car, or bigger house, or hotter wife will make him happy in the long term. (Edit: This is the same as what Sapo said about desire and fear being inextricably linked). The way out is to see through the illusion that our happiness depends on any of these things.
Recognising that there are very few “things of value” in the sense you’re using it doesn’t mean we can’t enjoy things. The key is that happiness does not consist of a series of cobbled-together pleasant experiences, happiness is a state of open connection with the world and an attitude of acceptance towards it. It’s a context in which pleasant experiences can take place. For example, I am capable of enjoying a meal out at an expensive restaurant, and of feeling gratitude for the experience, without needing to believe that I would be miserable were I never to experience such a thing again.
Pretty much, yeah.
Hi Chris, I have been thinking about this all day. I am going to be honest here that I am in part thinking this through as I discuss it with you, and I’m not always sure how to have this discussion in a way I find productive, so thank you for working with me.
I got a little confused here. I did not say this, so you appear to be thinking through your position rather than actually responding to me? No worries if this is what you were doing or there was a genuine misunderstanding. I have done that a time or two as well.
I am saying that with the exception of people who have brain damage, the spectrum of emotions is a brute fact of our existence. Not what we choose. Not what we cultivate. Just a brute fact of being a human. You may as well be telling me we can enter a state where we don’t experience hunger. Does acknowledging that I experience degrees of hunger at all times also state that I value food in a way that makes me dependent on food to be happy? Does acknowledging that I will feel hunger if I don’t get to eat again mean I am choosing a fear-based state? LOL no. I think that’s obviously not true, not when thinking things through in my terms, not when thinking things through in yours. I’m acknowledging reality.
You can’t choose whether you feel fear. Emotions aren’t rational or within our direct control like that. How I choose to engage with what I feel is what I can choose, and even then, all of us engage with our emotions under whatever terms are available to us as individuals.
What you re saying for me is similar to when Republicans claim that the best way to process a person’s intense sexual desire is to pretend it doesn’t exist. The more a person tries to deny something they feel, the more power they give it over them. For some people, engaging with something at all means giving it complete power over them, so abstinence in the traditional sense applies. But that doesn’t mean they deny that they experience sexual desire.
And for most people, the answer is to find healthy limits and healthy methods to process what they feel. If a person chooses to live in a state where there is no fear, I would fear (heh) they are cultivating a state where they give the fear power and make themselves subconsciously reactive to it.
I wouldn’t want to be dependent on any emotion, be that fear or joy. But that’s not at all the same as claiming I can achieve a state of nirvana where I never experience fear again.
Do you think we disagree on a fundamental level? I suspect you accept a premise or two that I once accepted but now do not find persuasive. There are predictable, reliable aspects of human psychology and neurology that defy what you are claiming. I would welcome whatever evidence you can provide to support your claims.
But perhaps we disagree not on the premises and conceptual definitions but on the language we use to describe them.
For general thoughts about serenity, my intuitions match what you’re saying, but I don’t think all intuitions are valid. I think the intuitions in this case are incorrect and lead to lots of people pointlessly obsessing over ridding themselves of fear.
Serenity integrates fear so that it no longer defines our decision. We feel it like we feel anything else. So that we are actors, not reactors. So that we can feel all sorts of things without feeling consumed and overwhelmed by them. So that I can manifest serenity in the face of something terrifying.
I think where we might agree is that to my understanding, emotions are not pre-defined. They are a kind of energy or arousal. How do we articulate that energy? How do we define it? What stimulus do we identify for it? How do we choose to respond? Like, how do you distinguish anticipation from anxiety? They are both the same of energy. How we engage with that feeling and process it makes all the difference.
Like when you say this
Awesome.
But then you say
To disagree with me, you’d need to be claiming that in this situation, we can choose whether we feel any degree of fear in the situation. Do I misunderstand you? If that’s what you’re claiming, we’re not even close to an agreement, but I am still interested in hearing more about your position so as to understand a position other than my own and to get to know you better.
Beyond that, I don’t see a way to make claims like you are once I take them out of my imagination and philosophical musings. What are you using for internal or external validation? For yourself? For people besides yourself?
I will also concede that there are areas of philosophy and metaphysics meant to investigate things that literally cannot be externally validated but are essential to informing what we should even want to attempt to externally validate. If we are having that conversation, I suspect we will still have some disagreements, but I am happy to stick to mental musings.
Last few days have had a startling descent into a dark place for me.
I am finding help by attending 12 step meetings online again.
Sorry to hear that RF. I hope the meetings help. Your friendly, helpful, curious ways really add a lot to this community and it helps me stave off some of my misanthropy to know people like you are out there.
I’m certain I’m not the only one, but my mood swings and temper have been a real problem lately. Prior to all this nonsense I had considered myself, right or wrong, to be a pretty even keeled dude. I went home from work last shift day because I felt like I literally couldn’t do the work, which is something I’ve never done before.
Anyway, guessing I’m not the only one here experiencing this. Any tips? I know I should try meditation again but in the past I’ve never succeeded in making it a habit.
I think one of the really good things you have going for you is an awareness that we are all in a stressful situation and it has an impact on everyone’s behavior. We are not wired for these sorts of situations. A few things that help me are:
Having a meditation practice. I’m currently using an app called Balance. They are offering the 12 months for free due to covid and you can just cancel before the first renewal if you want. They tailor your meditation sessions a little based on your answers to a few questions.
Doing an information diet. I have muted a lot of threads on this board, and try to be selective in how much I check in on things. I’ll usually spend one period a day of 15-30 mins where I get the latest covid news and then that’s it.
Just reminding yourself that this is going to pass. It might be a while, but at some point we are going to be through all of this.
Hope you’re doing well RiskyFlush.
I’m definitely not suggesting denying our emotions.
You can come at reducing fear two ways. The first is what you’re saying later down the post, which is that we don’t necessarily have to take the fear seriously. When I get anxiety attacks these days, which tend to be less severe and less frequent than at other times in my life, this is my approach. I’m like “Oh we’re doing this? Cool, well I am just going to sit and wait until it stops”. I acknowledge it but I don’t grant it any status higher than something I have to put up with.
The other thing that I’m trying to get at is the way you’re conflating “things of value” and possession:
The glib answer here is “stop having things that matter to you, then”. Like a beautiful sunset is a “thing of value”, but we’re not sad once it’s gone because we are reconciled to the idea that sunsets don’t last. We enjoy it while it’s there and then move on to the next thing. It’s not possession precisely which leads to fear, but the idea in Buddhism generally translated as “attachment” or “grasping” or “clinging”.
Hunger is different because that’s a real need, but let’s say you have a romantic relationship. It’s not true that you can’t be happy without that relationship. This is just an empirical fact, because there were times in your life prior to that when you were happy, because millions of people are happy without such a relationship, and because the brain is infinitely pliable, so there’s nothing irreversible about the state it’s currently in. Fear of losing the relationship arises primarily from the erroneous belief that one’s happiness depends on it. As I said last post, most people are familiar with the idea that one does not become happy by acquiring things (be that possessions, relationships or whatever). The idea that one should not become less happy by losing those same things follows transitively, but is a bit more challenging to get your head around.
There’s a common story, I don’t know if it’s apocryphal, about a kind of monkey trap where a piece of food is placed in a cavity with a small entrance. The hole will admit the monkey’s hand when open, but not when clenched. The monkey reaches in, grabs the food, and then tries frantically to pull its fist through the hole as its captor approaches. The monkey is trapped by nothing other than its own inability to countenance letting go of its possession.
I’m not saying that one can wave a magic wand in the moment and feel less fear. I’m saying that the fear felt is contingent on one’s beliefs about the world. For example, I might feel fear if a man is waving a knife in front of me and I can’t not feel that fear by wishing it away. However, if I come to understand that the man has the knife to cut some vegetables up, my fear will disappear. Similarly, fear of losing something arises from the erroneous belief that one cannot live happily without it. It’s possible to train one’s mind to (partly or wholly) dispel this illusion, the consequence of which is feeling less fear.
The process can be most clearly seen in children. To see a toddler asked to give a toy they own to another child is to see a human being convinced that they will be unhappy without their possession. The best way to relieve the child’s anxiety, if it were possible, would be to broaden their perspective until they understand that they’re quite capable of being happy without the toy. Moreover, if the child came to this understanding, it wouldn’t mean that they weren’t able to enjoy playing with the toy. This is all obvious when it’s toddlers and lumps of plastic, but we’re less willing to acknowledge that the same applies to us and our favourite things.
So I’m dealing with this by dissociating. It’s really effective in the sense that it allows me to continue to work pretty efficiently, keep up with the news, and live in a state of blissful numbness. It’s got a pretty bad come down when I choose to exit it… but given that this thing is probably going to last for at least a year or two it seems like a decent choice.
It does tend to make me a worse person when I’m in that state though. It’s inherently a very nihilistic/sociopathic place to be. It’s definitely a better experience than being a massively depressed hypochondriac though, which is what I was doing before.
If you haven’t tried it before this might be the time to develop a nice warm dissociative state. It takes a situation where the suffering is so intolerable that you can actually will your emotions to shut off. This situation (for me at least) probably wouldn’t have been enough to learn how to do that, but thanks to childhood trauma mine was already very well developed and I’ve discovered that it’s like riding a bike.
I apologize in advance to everyone who gets super hurt/angry about my posts being a lot more jagged over the next couple of years. I objectively know that I’m being a dick in the macro sense, but it’s very hard to detect as it’s happening when I’m like this. Once you genuinely don’t give a fuck you lose some guard rails.
Finally made this thread.
This morning I can feel a ball of fear in my chest. It contracts and it drops. It would come and go but I’ve been focusing on it, trying to get it to … stay? Dissapate? Let me look at it clearly?
I think it manifests most immediately as a fear of abandonment, of being alone. But the underlying idea or question, I’m not sure. I have this idea that it may be related to my mother’s death. She passed away when I was 21. I’m 43 now, which means I’ve been alive longer without her than with.
I also wonder if a part of me wants/thinks I need people (a partner) to tell me I am ok.
Two months ago I posted in this thread about hitting a low-point. Feels like I’m back there. I guess the major differences are: I’m a little more grounded, seeing a little more clearly, and really want to avoid the depths of despair I felt then.
I can totally see that the relationship I was in, was dysfuntional. My journal is just a mix of highs and lows, bouncing back, feeling rejected again. It was never as stable as I like to think.
Yet. In these pandemic times, this person and her kids were my friends and support and at times I really felt like I was a part of a family.
The gnawing pit in my chest … I can tell my brain, ego, self, just wants to do anything to make it go away. Yesterday I meditated quite a bit and it eased some, but then returned. … I have a three-day weekend coming up and I don’t really even want it–though I also don’t seem to be working effectively. My work is definitely suffering.
Does anyone have experience, resources or ideas, for healing old trauma and loss? For grieving after the fact?
Over the weekend I did an acid meditation, which revealed some pretty big things to me. The primary realization was: “A fear that my mother didn’t know I loved her has kept me from growing up and led me to seek her in my relationships.”
She died when I was 21; I’m 43 now. …I don’t think I really grieved and maybe felt like I didn’t do enough while she was sick.
I have been talking to my mother. I’m really not sure if this is helpful or has any impact at all. … I can say that I’ve noticed a few shifts in my recently, but I wouldn’t attribute it to these “conversations.”
The pit of loneliness in my chest keeps coming back, but it feels more manageable and less extreme, in recent weeks. There have also been big changes in my life–moving into the house I bought–so it’s possible I’ve just distracted myself a bit, also.
Does anyone else talk with loved ones who have passed away? My therapist recommended a write a letter, but somehow this feels more spontaneous and accessible.
Perhaps insightful and helpful for any of us on the spectrum.
https://www.liebertpub.com/doi/10.1089/aut.2019.0079
Results: Autistic adults described the primary characteristics of autistic burnout as chronic exhaustion, loss of skills, and reduced tolerance to stimulus. They described burnout as happening because of life stressors that added to the cumulative load they experienced, and barriers to support that created an inability to obtain relief from the load. These pressures caused expectations to outweigh abilities resulting in autistic burnout. Autistic adults described negative impacts on their health, capacity for independent living, and quality of life, including suicidal behavior. They also discussed a lack of empathy from neurotypical people and described acceptance and social support, time off/reduced expectations, and doing things in an autistic way/unmasking as associated in their experiences with recovery from autistic burnout.
Conclusions: Autistic burnout appears to be a phenomenon distinct from occupational burnout or clinical depression. Better understanding autistic burnout could lead to ways to recognize, relieve, or prevent it, including highlighting the potential dangers of teaching autistic people to mask or camouflage their autistic traits, and including burnout education in suicide prevention programs. These findings highlight the need to reduce discrimination and stigma related to autism and disability.