Acceptance
Have you ever thought it was the other person’s fault for the situation? Have you looked around and tried to figure out who among you was the reason for the situation you found yourself in? Externally placing blame for things is projection, right? The psychological term for placing your internal feelings onto an external source. I learned that I would project my unconscious feelings onto another person to see how they manifest in the world. I’m such a visual person, that I had to see the feeling in the world in order to understand it and figure it out. Is that the scientist inside or narcissist or psychopath? I needed to observe the emotion or feeling in order to incorporate it back inside. As one could guess, this does nothing for the relationship dynamic. The other person becomes an unassuming science project for my internal feelings. I’m so foreign to myself, that I can’t just sit with the emotion and understand it while it’s inside me. Talk therapy has helped with this. It helped me make the unconscious into conscious. The only way out is through. That phrase is so true. There are no cutting corners or easy ways to do things, be them mundane or magical.
How does one work through these internal struggles or emotions or feelings? First, one must accept them. They are there and one must acknowledge them and then just sit with them. That’s a hard part for me. I want to FIX everything. I want to grab something up and fix it right away. Or I want to completely ignore it until it gets too big and heavy to be ignored. Hey, weight problem solved right there! I’m ignoring my self and all the things I want in life and I keep getting bigger and heavier until my self pays attention!!!!!
After one acknowledges the feeling or emotion, then what? What is the reason behind the feeling or emotion? From my very limited understanding of human emotion, it usually comes down to the basics. Am I safe? Am I scared? Am I hungry? Am I angry? Am I cold? Am I tired? Maslovs Heirarchy of needs is a great place to look. This simple diagram shows that basic needs must be met before the loftier, brainer parts can be pursued. If the basics aren’t met, the person doesn’t have time or bandwidth to deal with the internal stuff. And I won’t even go into the reason that poor people are unable to deal with anything other than basic survival. Can we talk about the basic necessity of safety and security? I’ll leave that for another blog post.
Does any of this ring true to you? What is your journey? When did you decide to venture out for more information or a connection?