• • • 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. 

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.

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. 

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.

Why am I restless? Why can’t I calm down? If you ever asked these questions from yourself consciously then congratulations! It is a very good sign. And this post may be of some help to you.

By restlessness, I mean this inner need to ‘hurry up’ may be coupled with some level of confusion – a disorganized type of urge to act. This can be sudden and can be a general state of mind. 

(I am not talking about anxiety or panic. Those are harder forms of pain – and if you think that you have those then I would kindly like to ask you to seek more help.)

The reason I am writing this post is that this state of mind actually offers a very good opportunity for self-development. Because when I am in this “restless state of mind” I think that…Actually, I don’t know what I think. But I am still functioning – shall I say that my nervous system, brain, and consciousness is still available. So the opportunity is that I may be able to look at the root of my restlessness. It doesn’t just come out of nowhere. 

The below ‘method’ works for me. Maybe you will find some parts in it that work for you too. 

1) I Decide to catch myself

I just tell myself that I need to catch myself when I realize that I became restless. This is actually not that hard in my experience. I just take it seriously that this behavior of ‘catching myself’ has to be part of my general setup. To me, this is consciousness in action.

Speaking of “catching myself”. Are you many times in a hurry in certain situations and get exhausted? Exercise catching yourself with this “Self-observation on why I am always in a hurry”.  

2) I Become “basic”, “primitive”, “primal”

This is the key part. I become very basic, ‘primitive’, primal in my approach to phrasing the cause of my restlessness. What I do here is I try to find the reason why I became restless in a very very primitive way. Here are some examples:

• • • I need to achieve something great. 
    • I am afraid of losing my safety. 
    • I will be ashamed if this is not perfect.
    •  I am too stupid to do this.

 It can take time to get used to this but it just gets better all the time. Writing it down can help a lot – Take it as a diary for the very present moment. I find this approach so useful and important that I wrote a separate post on it. Take a look here: The strength of phrasing my problems in a short and basic way.

3) I am ok with how it unfolds

I don’t mind if more than one cause shows up. (Actually, I do. I am just telling myself that it is ok.)

4) I play chicken

I go on in this restless state. What I mean is that I am trying to go on doing what I am doing and try not ‘chicken out’. And meanwhile, I am trying to hold the above realization in my mind also. In other words, I am looking at it and making it conscious.

5) I get fed up 

I have no problem letting this thought go when I get overwhelmed. Or just simply angry and fed up. It is a good sign if I get pissed off. At this time of overwhelm and ‘giving up’ I usually find that I am much less restless than before. For me personally, it is usually still there to some extent but manageable. Even better: I feel a sense of relief. I know that people have this experience pretty similar to mine and that is a big relief too. 

Some other thoughts

I know that the above is a kind of general flow of how we can become more aware. Still, I am proud to have discovered it. Especially the part where I need to phrase the cause of my restlessness in a very basic and primal way. That has been a turning point for me.

When I develop a sense of relief, sometimes I can go as deep as to realize that I am no longer interested in the original belief that caused my restlessness. I actually don’t even have to do anything to feel good.

Writing down your ‘basic, primitive, primal’ thought is very effective because it forces you to become more conscious about them. I also found that with these thoughts, less is usually more – a very long description signals to me that it is yet half-cooked. I used to carry a small paper notebook for this. Nowadays I am sending an email to myself from my phone…

The above is just one method and the same can be done in countless other ways.  

I try not to communicate with others when I am trying to observe myself in this stage. This may be my personal construct but I usually have a hard time listening to myself and others at the same time. Not to mention if there is some conflict involved. 

The strength of phrasing my problems in a short and basic way is about deeply understanding my own self.

There is zero greatness to this post, no big revelations. It’s just that the subject is important, and there is a chance you will become more effective with your inner work. 

The method

Phrasing it

It sounds obvious, but you have to phrase it to name it. Otherwise, you run the risk of just endlessly ‘walking in a mist’. This is much more important than it looks, because it is so easy to be unconscious when we are in a conflict, a great deal of anxiety, or stress. Tell yourself to phrase your problem when it appears.

Why basic?

When you are basic it is a sign that you have gone deep. Your Self is basic. In the best way possible.

Why short?

Your true self hardly phrases thoughts and emotions in 30-word sentences. When your phrasing is short enough, it usually means that you have cooked it well.

Resonate

Go with what resonates with you. Your thought about your problem is only yours; no one else needs to understand it. And no one else needs to resonate with it. What matters is that it is true to you.

Change it as your understanding develops

It is a very good sign if you change it. It means that you are deepening your understanding. And you may change it back to a previous one; and that is all okay too.  

Have discipline

Phrasing your problems in a short and basic way will actually help in having discipline. It is less energy up front, and gives enough punch to get to the next step. 

An example

“Why don’t I get what I want?”

• It is short.
• It is basic.
• (It does resonate with me. There is much more to it for me than what meets the eye.)

In a “perfect world”, conflicts would not be hard to handle. I tell you what I want, you tell me what you want and we find a solution that is acceptable for both of us.

Most of us look at conflicts as dramas and as dangerous situations. We unconsciously connect the present situation to a dramatic/traumatic event that happened to us in the past and we project it to the present moment.

When a familiar situation arises that resembles a previous event that we once deemed threatening we fall into the “black hole” of panic, anger, fear and you name it. And in this “black hole” we can only use a degraded way of coping.

Another aspect that makes it hard for the majority of us to get out of the “black hole” is that usually everybody around us gets triggered in such situations. It is hard not to be in a panic when everyone else is.

Here is another aspect or possible setup: (This doesn’t necessarily involve a feeling of panic and fear, but anger.) We feel betrayed and angry because we find that the other person is immoral or unfair with their request. While this may be the case experience shows that in most cases this is not the case but rather our misjudgment – or it is because the other person thinks the same about us so they “fight back”.

One more possible aspect: Shame. We feel shame that we ask for something. So our shame triggers us and we go into the conflict situation with a sense of fear already.

One – probably the biggest – obstacle to most of us is that when we are in an emotionally triggering situation we cannot think clearly and cannot calm our emotions. This is exactly how trauma works: We become unconscious and degraded in our abilities. Psychologists say that the way out of it is to revisit our trauma(s) and take a look, this time with a conscious eye. And a miracle may happen that we may have a window of opportunity to “rewrite” them.

Once I am not triggered emotionally and mentally by the conflict situation I realize that conflicts are all normal, they are not dramatic or dangerous situations, it is ok to have needs – all in all just a normal part of human life.