growing down

feeling trapped is a feeling i have never done well with.  i’m not sure anyone does really, but if my perception is that i am trapped (which might not be everyone else’s perception given the same situation) i don’t do well.  i sink.  i begin to feel hopeless and helpless and i want to be rescued.  i hate this feeling.  what would i help a client to do.  sit with it.  stop hating it and listen to it.  but instead, i’m going to just sit here and write about it for now to take the edge off.

it takes me to a place of panic.  i want to just act, and act quickly.  i disregard reason and logic, they do not exist.  i do not care.  i just want out.  i lose all sense of responsibility, of being a grown up, and i just want to do what i want to do.  

there is a tingling in my face, a gnashing of my teeth, and an emptiness inside filled with fear.  how can an emptiness be filled with something (fear)? it covers the lining of the empty area and stretches out to the edges of my skin, leaving my organism feeling the danger of existence.

i also freeze. because i can’t necessarily do what i want, which is flee, and fighting is sort of an option, i usually freeze.  i am stuck between my child and my adult.  i hate when they don’t get along.

i envision all other lives as safe and comfortable.  i look around or think of those i know and wonder how nice it must be to have their freedom and comfort.  i disregard rational thought here and decontextualize my problem and their comfort.  envy beats me down and begins dangling all sorts of carrots in front of my face.

i lose all desire to eat.  allowing substance from the world into my organism is not an option.  when in protection mode, opening up, welcoming in, is not an option.  jaw clenched and throat nauseous are bodily experiences keeping the world out.

what i want to do is plant my feet solid in position and swing.  swing hard. i hate being frozen and want to allow my anger to mobilize me.  i value my anger more than many aspects of me.  it is my friend, my gift to myself.  move over fear, in comes anger like a well fed tiger.

energy rises up and fills the emptiness.  protection becomes a reality as i take control of my fate and fight.  i move, i mobilize.  fear is there, not far, but not in control.  it makes attempts to be heard and take over, but the well fed tiger says not today.  it says things like “fuck this” and “i don’t think so” when noticing danger encroaching.  the well fed tiger always knows where the boundaries are and naturally draws them without question.  listen to the tiger, listen to the tiger, listen to the tiger.

Anxiety creeps around like Gollum.  He attempts to steal my ring and my ring is my essence.  When anxious, a fear, a gnawing occurs within my being that can often feel mysterious and maddening.  I sat with it the other day when it came out of nowhere and I connected with an aspect of my anxiety I had not experienced before.  Anxiety is a question.  What I realized in sitting with my anxiety was that it was an embodied experience of my essence being in question.  I cannot explain how the question got into me at that moment, but it comes from a variety of perceptions, thoughts, feelings, and experiences.  I believe anxiety to be such a multifaceted human experience with a variety of “causes”, but in that moment, it was not existential threat as an organism but an experiential threat to my essence - to me.

Another word for essence-in-question would be shame.  A feeling that I am not right, something is amiss, a worry that others might be questioning me, doubting me.  Shame is about exposure and how we respond.  Are we okay with what is exposed?  Adam and Eve is probably the best metaphor for shame, for realizing one’s nakedness and covering up.  The way we all cover up creates an everpresent feeling that all human nature is shameful, that the essence of anyone is so shameful it shouldn’t be exposed.  Why wouldn’t we all just be ourselves?  What’s the big deal?  Why is our essence so easily in question? Why is this the fundamental obstacle in life as a human being?

In reflection of my experience of anxiety that day, I decided I disagree with Sartre that existence comes before essence.  Much of our anxiety around death and personal threat is not just about fearing physical death, but death of self, death of me, death of my essence, my individual nature.  I disagree with Buddhism as well in that self is illusory.  Covering up shame and denying a self are both ways to avoid the true fear of exposing our essence, living true to it, embracing it, in the face of non-being, in the face of no more possibility.

This is why social anxiety and fear of rejection are likened to fear of death, of self-annhilation.  Not because it might actually kill our physical body (our existence) but because others’ judgment, even our own, is experienced as essence-in-question.  This is why we fight, why we argue, why we hide, why we pretend.  We are protecting our essence with psychological structures and spiritual structures the same way we might protect our existence with fists, guns, and tanks.  I believe the threat of essence is more profound and fear inducing than the threat of existence.  These are not mutually exclusive either since our physical body is a fundamental part to both our existence and our essence.

I might be getting into a Cartesian mindset here, but I am okay with that.  I might have to work that out later.

In my experience of essence-in-question I had the sense that something was around to take my essence from me, some energy, some threatening being wanted to be there to help question. It seemed to come out of nowhere.  The threat was unseen and unheard.  This was my sense of Gollum creeping around wanting his ring back, wanting my ring, what belonged to me.  Other good explanations of this threat would be Satan (Christianity) or Mara (Buddhism).  Some sort of evil exists to help us and others question essence.

I can only stay with this questioning and have dialogue.  Maybe it is about knowing our enemies, knowing the process of essence-in-question and not fighting it, but allowing the process to re-birth essence each time.  It was actually quite helpful to the feeling I was having at the time to realize that some sort of mysterious aspect of my being was pushing me towards non-being in the form of questioning my essence.

There has always been a disconnect between what people believe and what they do.  There has always been a disconnect between theory and practice.  There has always been a disconnect between what I read that profoundly hits me in the face yet doesn’t actualize into my life.  I think in many ways this disconnect is what I have been searching to work out in my life and my profession (psychotherapy) - it’s at least one major piece I’ve been searching.

Lately I’ve learned more about phenomenology and the idea that many beliefs from the Modern era, and still into now, have been heavily influenced by Rene Descartes’ dictum, “I think, therefore I am.”  What this did is not only cut off the the mind from the body, but it cut off the mind from the environment.  I’m not going to get into phenomenology here as I’m still trying to get my head around it, but it is a way to “return to the things themselves.” Instead of arranging beliefs and cognitive thinking ‘about’ me, my life, my relationships, and my surroundings, it is more about that actual experience as I’m having it.  It is about those actual surroundings as I see and experience them.  Or something like that.  Ultimately what I want to say here is a huge piece to all the disconnect I see is a result of what has been entitled a Cartesian way of thinking, separating out belief and thought from an embodied experience.

I’ve been reading more Christian writers lately, ones that are coming from a perspective that is not Cartesian, and looks to get back to the actual experience of things.  In many ways this entails the body.  It entails a focus, not on my beliefs about my life or experiences, but on my bodily experience.  If there is anything I have ignored in my life it is my body.  Although I was a very active kid and played serious soccer through college, I completely neglect my body.  I’m always searching for “answers” in books and my thoughts.  I keep reading and thinking and reading and thinking and reading and thinking.  Now, just reading that last sentence can ignite a common sense response that that isn’t going to answer my questions alone, but it is something I think many of us do in this world.

I’m currently reading a book entitled The Strangest Way: Walking the Christian Path by Robert Barron.  Barron is a Catholic Priest.  I grew up in an Evangelical Christian home and have always thought that Catholicism didn’t get it because it was more about works.  But what is interesting to me in my reading is that the impact of post-modernity and non-Cartesian ways of thinking, brings us closer to an embodied Christianity, something that Catholicism is better equipped to provide.  To me, it isn’t about believing in Catholicism but seeing how important acts of the body are on our beliefs and our emotions and experiences.

Barron talks about William James’ discussion of the body and emotions and how he said that it isn’t sadness that brings tears but tears that bring sadness.  Barron goes on to explain that it isn’t always our beliefs or feelings that bring a virtuous response but our physical activity that brings a virtuous response.  One example he used was kneeling for prayer.  We might better experience submission by kneeling than by just thinking about it or praying for it.  I am coming to see the real power this idea has on our lives.  I also think it explains many things.

What I believe we have missed by the way we construct meaning and understanding of our lives is the power of embodied knowledge.  What Barron and James and others looking to bring us toward a non-dualist type of understanding are saying is that there is actually knowledge in our bodies.  Now this sounds strange if you’ve always thought it’s all in your head and all in your brain.  This is what we have been told.  But sometimes it is in our bodies, in our behavior.  Although behaviorism did not get this right, they did get some of it right in that behaving a certain way can change our internal way of constructing our world.  But due to behaviorism’s reductionistic way of approaching human behavior, it lost the power of an integrated whole.  We need to see that we are whole people.  We need to see that thought alone does not change our experience and our emotions.  We need to understand a full embodied experience of our lives.  We need to understand that sometimes we need to do something that relies on a physical experience.  We need to understand that listening to a sensation in our body can actually bring thoughts and images “up” into our thinking brains and not the other way around (see Focusing).

I believe this is another disconnect between theory and practice in psychotherapy as well as any philosophy of life.  We might argue against a theory, or we may argue against a religion but until we actually fully engage in the impact of what those philosophies offer, we cannot really know or judge them.  But we do this all the time.  It is like we stand outside a roller coaster and discuss the merits of its ability to bring fun and excitement but never actually get on the stupid thing.  I might argue against Buddhism or Christianity from a purely intellectual understanding, but I will never know their impact on my life unless I fully engage myself in their process.

This is where subjectivity comes in for me and where Cartesian, “objective” science has wronged us.  If we are going to discuss theories of life, in many ways we need to share our personal experiences with them.  We cannot just argue them because it all just becomes a matter of words and logic and semantics.  This eventually means nothing without some sort of personal/subjective embodied experience that puts a “reality” to the way of organizing experience (belief, thought, etc).  I’m not saying there is no room for objective or outside perspective.  Other people’s experience of me also helps me to gain understanding of myself and my experiences.  We can easily hide behind our thoughts and our beliefs without ever experiencing their impact on our lives (Rollins, 2012). What is the point of personal human beings arguing about philosophies of life without expressing their own personal experiences with them?  Do they just believe it because it’s a good argument or because their parents thought similarly or because some quantitative research says so?  Beliefs and ways of thinking or constructing our world become meaningless without an embodied subjective experience of their impact.

So where does this leave me and my journey/process of things?  Well I realize how much I need to not just listen to my body, but use it as a means of “thinking”.  I cannot rely solely on my cognitive thinking process (which I guess could be argued that my body has always been a part of in some way I just ignored it) but find a way to listen to my whole experience, to listen to my whole being which includes a body that takes up way more space than my head alone.  What I feed it, how I exercise it, how I rest it — these are more important than just being “healthy”: how I care for my body has a direct result on how I live my life, on how I understand my emotional and intellectual experiences.  My body is connected to me.  I am in and around my body.  Why would I ignore this?  Why wouldn’t I listen to this?  So, instead of always thinking my way through problems, I want to utilize embodied processes that integrate my entire mind/body experience.  

Sometimes I want to hide.  I don’t want to see or hear any people.  There is also this sense of wanting to retreat far into myself. I don’t just want to go somewhere on vacation alone, or go for a walk, but I want to hide within myself from the world.  Not really to hide, but as a getaway, a place to rest, a place to revitalize, a place to regroup.  One thing that sometimes helps this process is having headphones on.  It’s a weird thing how they can help one be in their own world.  I like this feeling.

Life doesn’t stop calling for attention.  Life doesn’t stop slamming responsibilities on your plate.  Bills come everyday in the mail whether or not you can afford them.  Time doesn’t slow down or stop. People don’t stop needing you.

When I feel this way, I know it’s time to figure out a way for me to meet this need without actually retreating from my entire life.  I’ve waited too long when I get to this place.  This place isn’t helpful to me because I don’t want to see my clients or play with my kids or help with the dishes.  I just want to sink way down into the recesses of my soul, and go ahhhhhhh, like a warm bath.

Then I’ll feel ready to come back out and be there for all the people in my life.  I do try and do this on a regular basis.  Sometimes, like right now, I don’t have a client until 11am.  I enjoy this time, I need this time.  I might dick around on facebook but no one needs me.  I do feel guilty though, only because I know how much my wife needs this same exact thing and doesn’t always get it by staying home with the kids.

I like to also retreat into books, words, authors, and insights that feel like home.  Going inside myself feels like home and a lot of the time another’s words helps me do this.  Words and insights bring me images that act like doorways to my soul, stairs that help lead me to my deeper self, to my home.  Music also does this.  It slows me down, and gets me out of my obsessive thinking about my responsibilities.  It isn’t just an escape, but a doorway into soul, into an archetypal experience of something I cannot figure out how to describe right this second.

Writing can also help me get there, which is why I wrote this piece and it has felt good.  Writing helps me get home, another’s words help me get home, music helps me get home, and solitude helps me get home.

not sure what to write about this morning.  early on a Saturday.  the family is leaving a little later for a birthday party and i’ll get some time to myself.  i need that, but also feel guilty that Kristi doesn’t also get some time to her self.  

listening to soft bluegrass on grooveshark and wondering what to write about.  i don’t know.  but i think i’ll just keep typing away until something comes.  i’m excited for spring and summer.  i want the sunshine back.  

not knowing what to write is annoying, but maybe i stay with that annoyance.  i’m doing this because i should be doing this.  it’s what i’m to do.  write.  so if nothing comes through this whole exercise, shouldn’t i just write anyway because it is about the process of writing?  the practice, the discipline, the habit.  i think i’ve come to hate all three of those words.  i remember absolutely loathing having to practice anything when i was a kid.  too impatient for the beginner level of things.  i want to dive right into expert mode so that i can truly enjoy the experience.  i remember never wanting to go to baseball practice, partially because i didn’t really like baseball, but also because practice mode was so boring.  i also played a variety of instruments as a kid: violin, piano, guitar, saxophone.  i quit them all because i hated practicing.  i was an active boy and needed to be riding my bike or in the woods, doing stuff.  sitting idle was not an option, and i felt stifled and trapped.  this is why i hated school as well.  sitting there behind a desk that was like a two by two entrapment.

i know practice is necessary if one is to develop a craft.  i’ve always needed to feel motivated or inspired.  maybe i’m always just waiting for good feelings to fuel practice and discipline which would seem to be irrational, but i do seem to be plugging away in some sort of direction with things.  with writing.  i don’t write in any sort of disciplined way.  do i need to?  not sure.  i’m not a professional, full time writer, but i do need to write.  i know this.  i just sat down with nothing to write and the discipline and practice has helped me come to this.  to the reality and experience of seeing the three words, “practice, discipline, and habit”.  They hit me.  Something about them seem stifling to me, and then another part of them feels good, feels like the present moment.  Whatever goal we might have in our life, it is the doing on our way to that goal that is going to end up being the most important piece because once we arrive, there will just be a new journey after that.  “Arrival” never lasts that long and is usually some sort of bitter sweet, never amounting to our expectations and dreams.  

so it really is the journey that is most important.  We don’t know where we are always going either.  Trusting the practice and discipline of life, art, and soul seems to allow for more meaningful experiences.  Grasping for the end, for results that bring pleasure and good feelings, almost always leave one with empty feelings.  It also leaves one always extending themselves into the anxiety of the future.  The constant movement away from dull practice to the perfection of the end causes anxiety and emptiness for right now.  It causes addiction, because I need something to anesthetize me to the emptiness and deprivation I feel due to not having what I think I need at the end.  

this is why I think we are all addicts.  I have not had any major addictions, but I am an addict.  I struggle with staying present and craving some sort of pleasurable experience or high.  I return to certain things for that same feeling and its never the same, never there again.  Addiction is mostly about chasing the first high.  

this is also why I think we are all meant to work.  To labor.  Get rich quick schemes and organizations like Amway sell a false life that can only lead to emptiness for many if they do not bear the fruits of their own labor.  No one really wants to work and we might all have our ideas of what we’d do with our time, but most people would just do what they wanted to do and may or may not end up feeling empty.  It is within our limitations and within our “work” that we experience freedom - it is where we experience ourselves.  Small bits of friction is where we experience truth.  The dirt and grind of working in the yard.  Maybe I’m glamorizing work somewhat here, but there does seem to be something about practice and discipline that we hate but also need and realize have unseen value and fruit.

If Christ brought a new creation with his death and resurrection, that new creation should be identifiable in nature: both physical nature and within the nature of man.  We should be able to break down human nature and existence on earth and find the truth of Christ.  I find much of theology backwards and disconnected from any substance.  Just believing something intellectually is disconnected.  Believing that Jesus was the Christ and that he saved us from eternal damnation is almost random to any person’s present experiencing.  Our present ecological experiencing (bodily, psychologically, spiritually, relationally) should lead us, if we follow, to Christ resurrected.  Moving through his words, to his death, to his creation of new life — we must be able to find this in our lives today.  We must be able to experience the truth of this ‘reality’, not just believe in some rational argument or even the existence of Jesus.  At this point, none of that (Christ’s life) is here and now, but the truth should somehow be there.

 If I am to ever fully return to the religion of my childhood, it will be because I find Christ in the midst of the truth of my own personal experience here on earth, not because it just seems like the best intellectual argument for the meaning of existence: that makes it arbitrary.