• • • Fear

    • Shame

    • Anger

    • I feel like a victim.

    • Sadness

    • Confusion

    • Panic

    • I don’t know what I am feeling.

    • I am muted

What it is and its usage

This is a quick list that you can use to help yourself identify what you are feeling or thinking. Self-observation only works in the present so grab this post at the very moment you go into your self-observation and are sure what you are feeling/thinking. 

Notes

The above list is high-level, and obviously, you may miss the exact emotion or thought that you are looking for. Also, it doesn’t contain a cause-and-effect relationship. (Like, you identify that you are feeling shame, but this list doesn’t try to give further possible clues why you may be feeling it.)

The above list is intentionally not bolded and written with not too high a font size because you may need to grab it in public and not want others to see what you are doing.  

My consciousness and me

My consciousness is me in fact. If I have this image that there is my consciousness and there is me, then I am separating myself from consciousness. What a trick. ‘Me’, trying to convince myself that I need to get there. 

When I realize that my emotions, thoughts, body, and ‘constructs’ are also part of me then I can start to stop this crazy fight. 

This has something to do with letting go. Or with forgiveness. Or with love.

I can acknowledge that my thoughts, emotions, body, etc. are also part of me. I don’t have to feel disgusted about them and try to get rid of them, or be angry at them, or feel ashamed of them. They are part of me. And maybe those parts of me are suffering. It can be a better idea to see them and acknowledge them – and through this acknowledgment help them to run their course.

I can feel consciousness any time

It is this inner feeling or image that is described many times as a presence, a gentle energy field, as God, as space, as some subtle joy that is in us and around us.

It is not that hard to feel it. It is my emotions, thoughts, and other ‘constructs’ that occupy my attention and sometimes I forget that this consciousness is always there. 

Become mentally and emotionally free, and have a strong sense of Self. Have the level of individuation that I can correct myself, calm myself, make decisions from my inner knowing, and so on. The majority of us – either consciously or unconsciously – are working to reach this state. And only a few of us can get there in today’s world.

This article is primarily a reminder of the importance of mental and emotional independence.  

Dependence before independence 

Our biggest problems are relationship related. How is it? Why not some other things? What is it about relationships that make them so hard to manage? 

I agree with this view – not my view, it comes from Developmental Psychology: The development of the self is in stages. The first stages (the very early years of life) are dependent in nature. In these early stages we are dependent on the outside world physically, mentally, and emotionally. As we develop, we have certain needs that depend on the ‘outside world’, and certain developmental steps to make ourselves. To make the long story short, we rely on our caretakers to have our needs met.

And problems do happen in these ‘Dependent’ stages. And those ‘problems’ are relationship ‘problems’. 

And if those problems are not resolved then those early stages of development cannot finish properly and our next stages of development  – Independence – will not be able to finish either. Want to learn more about these stages? Look here: My Past

Is it normal to have this many problems with our relationships? 

I personally do not think that this is normal. This level of suffering should not be normal, and also its systemic nature, happening to the whole of humanity tells me that it is not going in the right direction and shall be changed.

Is my independence so important?

(At this stage of our history/evolution) I am not sure what could be more important. This is instinctive.  We now want to leave our dependencies behind, we want to finally get out of our victim consciousness, we want to get over our narcissistic wounds (just to name a few things). 

Shall I try to ‘sell’ Independence to you?..it won’t be hard: You feel very much together, you have a strong sense of self, while you understand and relate to others’ emotions and thoughts, you are not dependent on them – you have strong limits and an independent view. You can take care of yourself and your self-trust is coming from your own self-awareness. 

I am writing this post in the second half of 2022 and I believe that we are nearing an inflection point, and we will see positive changes in the near couple of years in connection to our independent state of mind too. (And some pain and fear before.)

I can imagine that you are noticing too that while people, institutions, groups, and systems around us are acting as very independent entities, it is becoming clear that these behaviors are false and are in the process of falling apart and changing. And the change coming is for the better.

Am I already independent?

These are just a few ideas. A quick consciousness checks if you will.

• Do you have any addictions?
  • Addictions are forms of dependence.
• Do you get triggered around your family of origin?
  • Most of our problems are relationship related and the people closest to us can trigger our unfinished business around relationship needs the most.
• Do you many times fall back into a ‘black-and-white’ mindset?
• Independent in some areas, not yet in some others
  • Keep in mind that in certain parts of our life we may be more mature than in others. This is normal. 

Most people in westernized countries live an adrenalized lifestyle. It is so widespread and so widely accepted that we do not even know that we do it, why we do it, and how destructive, and useless it is. 

Addicted to adrenaline

Yes, adrenaline can be addictive. Imagine what a continuously heightened physical state does to your body in the long run…And to your state of mind, beliefs, and relationships.

We praise our adrenalized lifestyle

Many people secretly, and openly praise our adrenalized lifestyle. Our society secretly, and openly praises our adrenalized lifestyle. It’s a cliche but true: Anywhere you look you find a call for an adrenalized lifestyle. We do this to ourselves. We take on this addictive and obsessive behavior unknowingly and unconsciously. And we pass it on to each other without noticing.

We mistakenly find that an adrenalized lifestyle is better

(The whole thing looks like some kind of collective hallucination…) 

We find that working faster creates more value (at least many ‘managers’ do). 

We find that drinking more coffee will make us more effective.

 We find that talking fast is the way to do it.

We like to use our ‘need for speed’ as an excuse not to go deep into something. 

We like to overvalue people’s activities when they are doing them in a hurry – ‘Oh, he must be doing something very important if he is in such a hurry.’

We find that it is good to encourage each other to do more, overwork, and hurry up. 

We teach our kids to always be on the edge.

Let’s live a de-adrenalized lifestyle

How about valuing relaxation.

How about valuing deep thinking, and deep emotions,  how about not being half-cooked.

How about claiming back our peace of mind and common sense.

How about valuing the type of kindness and confidence that comes from a mature person. 

How about not letting others break our limits.

How about not letting others even try to control us or make us do things that we don’t want to.

Forgiving has much more to do with me than with the other person.

The English word forgive is pretty descriptive, because what I do is ‘give back’. When I can get to that point where I am not emotionally attached to that situation anymore, then I have the opportunity to become conscious of it and see the situation more realistically. I am saying it this way because most of the time (with me always) I also have something to do with the situation ‘going bad’.

Anyways, coming back to the point – Someone hurt me, someone did something bad to me – I ‘give’ that thing back to that person. It is very important to realize that I don’t forgive in the sense that I bury the hurt, or explain to myself something like ‘It is ok after all’. No. I do not forget, I remember, I don’t allow it to happen again. But I can separate myself from the situation with an open heart, give that wrongdoing back – as it is not mine -, and release myself. 

It is important to understand why such things happen; Understand, so that they may not happen again. We are all different and this is my personal understanding of why hurt happens most of the time: It is because we have some relationship-related problems that are yet unresolved. Put more simply, we have an unmet need and we bring that into situations to solve them. One example: I am a people pleaser and I act like that. This behavior triggers people. I am likely to meet people sooner or later who will want to take advantage. My unmet need may be that I am afraid to lose my sense of safety and I chose a behavior that I think will help me get some level of safety: I become a people pleaser. The other person will have some kind of unmet need also if they want to take advantage of the situation.    

I know I have forgiven when my energy shifts.

A change happens in me when I deeply and clearly see the problem I have about myself and realize that it is not true.

Let’s do it through an example: Belly shame

Although I write about it through a specific example and through imagined happenings, please focus on the abstract behavior and mindset behind it (Though I find that the example may be very relevant to most of us). 

1 – I start facing it.

I sit down, close my eyes, and start focusing on my belly. I am feeling the curves, its big size, and the discomfort it is causing me. I am looking at myself from the outside with my imagination and what I see is an ugly, chubby person. I start to feel disgusted with myself. And I start to become depressed. 

I want to escape from the emotional pain and want to give up. I have my usual escapes: I pull back my belly, start to sit up straight, and put a relaxed smile on my face – ‘I am fit and beautiful, I am fit and beautiful…’. It works for one or two minutes and then my disgust and sadness are back. Probably this is the time I should go to the fridge… or head to the gym and start starving. Not that those worked. Nor the idea that I ignore the fact that I am fat and tell myself that I am still ok. 

There is no escape, I sit back in my pain of disgust. Maybe I can take it for one or two more minutes…No, but I cannot, I pass out. I cannot take it any longer. Let me just cry. You won. I am a failure. I admit I am fat.

(what happened: You could come closer to it. You had the courage this time to face it.)

2 – I am separating from it

I am genuinely facing my emotional pain and thoughts about my belly shame. Somewhere I read that the method to start processing my pains is to ‘revisit’ them and look at them consciously. Observe it while being in it. Good that this comes to my mind just at the right moment.

So I try to look at this situation from the outside, like an observer. Sort of like there is me and there is the situation. It is happening to me but I am not it.

Holy shit!! It is working to some degree. I am starting to feel some relief. And I am able to stay in it. What I experience is that I am still feeling those curves and how big my belly is, but I am basically just looking at it. I am not saying that it is physically pleasing but somehow the emotional pain is fading. 

(what happened: You have started to rewire yourself. On all levels.)

3 – Window of additional opportunity

In addition to the above, you may experience some other things. You may consciously realize that your beliefs changed (or even that you can decide how you want them to change.). And maybe not only in connection to the given issue.

If we take the above belly shame example: While you may not like the size of your belly, you are not shame-bound to it. And you may experience that you are now less shame-bound in other areas of your life also.

Notes

• Seek professional help or someone you trust if you feel unsafe! It is important!!! Someone who can hold you emotionally as you are doing your work. Tell that person what you are doing and what help you wish to receive.
• Don’t give up if it doesn’t work ‘soon’ enough. Trust me, you will find no one who did it ‘soon’ enough.
• Experience shows that although we all dream of a sudden and everlasting release, what happens to most of us is that we are going in and out until we fully process it and integrate it. 
• Although the above outlines a specific and consciously known issue, I find that it can work the same way for problems that we are not fully conscious of. 

This article is for the overthinker in you.

Do you know why we don’t remember the first couple of years of our life? It is because that part of the brain that stores memory is not active yet at that age.

Nevertheless, we do have body memory. For many of us – especially the ‘overthinkers and overdoers’, and for those of us programmed not to listen to our body – this fact can stay on a conceptual level. And that is a big miss. Almost like a different world.

Why do I mention trauma in relation to body memory? Because I want to make conscious that it is traumatic experiences that get registered in the body (be sudden and ‘big’, or long-lasting, ‘small’, and ‘subtle’ in nature.) And mostly, they are the real causes of long remaining physical issues. (As I mentioned above, this article is for the ‘overthinker’ in you – which I have been-, and my only goal is to trigger your consciousness (maybe the article finds you at the right time) to concentrate more on your body. But anyways, if you want to go deeper, I can recommend a great resource: The Body Keeps The Score )  

What worked with me

(In short: Learn what to let go.)

I have been a serious overthinker. It has become my habit that I wanted to find the cause-and-effect relationship behind all of my behavior. My general logic has been that if I could state clearly and honestly (i.e. it resonates) what was the cause behind a problem of mine then cool: I was almost there to solve it. While this habit of mine proves truly valuable in my life, it took some time for me to realize that there is a catch: It just simply wasn’t effective when working with my body (I mean things like yoga asanas, meditation, breathing, jogging, etc.).

It just simply did not work. Why? The way I started to put it was that those memories in my body are not conscious – in the sense that they are not connected to my thinking/memory-keeping mind. And more importantly maybe: I just don’t know. Luckily life is not as mechanical as our thoughts and our thinking mind. 

The change started to happen when I stopped wanting to conceptualize, verbally describe, or ‘understand’ my aches, cramps, and all those kinds of things in my body. I changed from trying to make them conscious through my old ways of doing it, to just simply looking at them. It was such a good feeling for me that I could let myself stop doing something that actually never resulted in anything useful ( perhaps other than the realization that it was not useful…)

The story would not be complete if I did not mention this: Ok, I stopped trying to find causes all the time as my main tool, but I also did this: I kept in mind that they are traumas and I started to look at them as ‘beings in their own right’. I am not sure if this is the best way to put it but what I am trying to say is that somehow this developed in me: They are with me, part of me, they exist – but they are not me. 

For an overthinker, as I have been, it was a huge change. It helped me to start to think less and let things happen more naturally. 

Are you among those who change jobs frequently and you feel that it comes from some inner struggle that is not clear to you what causes it? If you may not have heard yet: It is happening to a lot of people recently.

I am listing some inner mental constructs (belief systems if you will) that may help to understand this behavior of yours.

(This article is not about the job or work environment, but about your inner relationship to your job/career. And there is any suggestion that one behavior is better than the other or if any is unhealthy. Perhaps quite the opposite.)

See what resonates with you the most.

There is a transformation taking place in me

You may be going through an awakening like a lot of other people in current times and your constant quitting of jobs is a byproduct of it.

However distant it may seem and you may not have originally come for such an explanation but consider it. (This somewhat stands out from the rest below.)  

The career/path is actually not for me

It speaks for itself, although it may not be conscious in many (most) of us that this is the core of our problem why we don’t enjoy our job. It is unfortunately common in our society today that we land in a career path that is actually not for our true nature. This is my oversimplified take on it: We ‘must’ choose way too early in life before we have the level of independence to be able to decide for ourselves. And then we carry on doing something we don’t really want and over time it solidifies more and more. 

To me, the great question here is: How do I get out of this? The circumstances work against me. Most of us (including me) who came across this will probably agree that it is tough to make the change – both from a practical/physical, and an emotional point of view. (I don’t have the silver bullet. I know from my personal life that my inner urge to change the course of my life in this regard became big enough to make changes.)

I mirror my unmet needs onto my workplace

This is about the mostly unconscious unmet needs that I carry into my workplace in an attempt to have them met. My goal with many of the articles on Self Chatter is to provide possible cause-and-effect type explanations, and since this subject is rather deep, I have put it into a separate article. See if this resonates with you with respect to job quitting?: I Have Been Waiting All My Life.

My inherent understanding of the dysfunctional and toxic nature of work life in today’s world

I find that this is becoming the main theme recently (the Pandemic was one main trigger for it). And frankly, this is truly good news. I wrote a separate article on this – The Cause Behind the Great Resignation. 

A huge amount of us are getting conscious of how toxic, inhuman, and dysfunctional our life at work is. I sincerely hope that a critical mass is building up that will trigger a positive change in how we want to work, how we want to relate to the world of work in general, and how we want to create meaning through what we call ‘work’. It will not be the old structures and systems that will suddenly want a change, but we will do it.

I don’t know what I want

It may sound a bit awkward to state something like this but there may be great deepness to it. I wrote a separate article on it here: Why don’t I know what I want?

I have a disorganized attachment style

I refer to John Bowlby’s Attachment Theory and from those four Attachment Styles (Ambivalent, Avoidant, Disorganized, Secure) I find that the Disorganized Attachment Style is common among those (including me) who keep changing jobs. 

With a Disorganized Attachment Style (you can read about it more in the link above) we do not have a clear attachment pattern, we experience a confusing mix of behavior around us, and our relationship with our workplace serves both as a source of comfort and also fear.

(If you ever wondered why workplaces can be so disorganized and chaotic (even if companies pretend not to be such), well, with so many of us having some sort of dysfunctional attachment styles, what can we expect?)

Again, my oversimplified take on it: I gravitate towards workplaces where the main style of attachment is disorganized in nature (because it is ‘fa-mil-iar’ to me…). And when I get overwhelmed and fed up, I quit. If this is your main theme then the good news is that your decision to leave such a workplace means that your Self is actually healthy: You don’t want to be in a relationship that is disorganized in nature. 

I have low self-confidence

Again, it speaks for itself that it is impossible to feel good at my workplace if I do not have or cannot build a certain level of self-confidence in what I do. This is here as a possible ‘Aha’ paragraph because so many of us are blind towards ourselves regarding our self-confidence.

I let this thought come to my mind when I am in a state of despair: “IT DOESN’T HAVE TO BE THIS WAY.”

As simple as that.

I stand in my own energy. I do not let others invade my space or drain my own personal energy.