THOUGHT DEVELOPMENT
MEANINGFULNESS
MAINTENANCE
LOVE AND SHAME
SELF PITY
DENIAL
ADDICTION
MAINTENANCE
LOVE AND SHAME
SELF PITY
DENIAL
ADDICTION
THOUGHT DEVELOPMENT
With varying degrees of awareness we maintain and re-evaluate our authentic self. Our unending desire for survival and self meaningfulness perpetuates and motivates us to continuously maintain and revaluate our authentic/real self. Individually designed self preserving mechanisms play a key role in this maintenance and re-evaluation process. For instance, with limited awareness we use defensive and addictive behavior to avoid erosion or further judgment of our authentic self. Moreover, we often are in denial of our sub-conscious thoughts of selfishness and self pity in order to avoid further erosion or judgment of our authentic self.
With every thought and situation our mind accesses conscious as well as subconscious thoughts, feelings and emotions into our immediate memory. Similar to a computer we load our random access memories with related data into our immediate memory. However, unlike a computer this retrieved data is tied to related feelings and emotions which are also retrieved into our immediate memory.
At any one moment the mind is able to process a number of thoughts. Our thoughts and associated thoughts, feelings and emotions happen so close together that they we really can’t tell if they are simultaneous or sequential. Through the study of cyber science and the use of organic/machine based computer systems we can conclude that the mind works similarly to a computer. However, it has some amazing properties or programming. The most significant fact about the mind is that of its adaptive abilities. The human mind is able to adapt, alter and re-evaluate its programming as it performs any task. This is real time self programming. However uniquely, the mind attaches emotional thoughts, actions and circumstances which trigger emotional releases. People don’t attach much significance to our ever day circumstances but under more dramatic unusual circumstances, the mind can trigger more intense emotional responses. As emotional intensity of our thoughts increase so does the number, rate and intensity of our thoughts.
Our mind and thoughts are flipping logically as well as randomly around. Our minds are looking for new and familiar information. With routine thoughts we react as usual. Also, with our more compulsive/ obsesswive thoughts we react as usual in our comfort zone. Moreover, we easily attach feelings and emotions to our thoughts.
It is believed that if we can control or better direct our thoughts then we can control our emotions. Certainly it would seem like "insanity" if we let all our random thought control our actions. So our discerning conscious mind discards certain thoughts as being random and irrelevant. An example of this would be our thought of images that take on an almost fanciful nature similar to our early “play” thoughts when we were children. As adults we discard “playfull” type thoughts as being emotionally and logically irrelevant. I nterestingly enough as adults we still have these "fantasy" thoughts and they can be triggered by certain situations, thoughts or feelings. Moreover, we sort out our thoughts and choose the more logical, well developed thoughts as our most important thoughts and worthy of our action. We take important action based on our most logical, well developed thoughts and feelings.
THE SUB-CONSCOUS MIND - Like a bull in a china closet our sub-conscious mind can conjure up terrible and vengeful thoughts against our precieved enemies. Normally, we entertain these thoughts only for a short period of time before we dismiss them as our peak anger subsides. Sometime harboured in our unconscious thoughts are unthinkable or unholy thoughts which come to our conscous mind but are almost always "over ridden" by our conscious reasoning and better judgment. These thoughts can be frightening in them selves to our conscious mind and as they reach our awareness we usually experience a sense of shame with their appearance. This is why we do not talk about them or recognize them. In the big picture of our "on going" lives, these thoughts are not particularly significant and basically result as a consequence of our primordial sub conscious brain reacting to conscious fixations or disturbances.
Sometimes our thoughts come to us like a second emotional person interacting with our more logical self. More often than we realize our true feelings and emotions towards love, hate, self pity and survival are buried in our long forgotten thoughts.
We all have said to our self, “This is probably a really dumb thing to do”, but then we do it anyway. Another thing we do is second guess our self and then flip back and forth between view points before we can even make up our mind on the more difficult and cloudy issues.
It is possible to get a glimpse of our unconscious feelings and emotions by trying them to a similar current feeling. During everyone’s childhood we have had feelings of loneness or boredom. These are common developmental feelings as we develop new skills, talents and areas of interest. Similarly, even as we get grow into adulthood as well as old age, we are continuously developing newer skills, talents and interests. Thus, our conscious minds will conjure up older unconscious feelings and emotions when we are re-visiting these new hurdles in developing our skills, talents and interests. Most people have had moments and feelings “self realizations”, when they suddenly feel like they are re-experience much older feelings and emotions surrounding past struggles to develop and understand new, skills, talents and interests.
Similarly, Over time we have developed feelings and emotions around our experiences about hate, fear and sadness. We perceive these feelings and emotions as negatives on our lives but they also help us turn around our lives and better understand our situation and hopefully motivate us towards a more fulfilling and healthier life. As we experience hate, fear and sadness in our present lives we unconsciously conjure up and re-experience previous emotions in similar circumstances. It is difficult to understand but our unconscious mind experiences things like they are in a timeless vacuum and easily and effortlessly ties current events with long forgotten adult and child hood feelings and emotions. Most people understand this concept but are unclear on how this all influences our individual lives.
Our experiences during a hate/rage spirals help us understand how we tie our conscious and unconscious feelings together into some coherent pattern. In varying degrees, we all have gotten angry at some one or some circumstance , wth our emotions getting stronger and stronger, until it turns into a anger/rage spiral. We all hate this feeling but it is almost like we can not control our self. These experiences are scary not only to others but to our self. As well, it is only natural that we try to forget these experiences and often find some sort of self justification or blame. It is during the hate/rage spiral when we can come to the self realization that we are experiences something more than just our present thoughts. It is almost like our rage is coming from some where outside of our self and feeding into our already hateful thoughts. Rage spirals seem almost like an out of body experience where you are seeing yourself increasingly angry but have no control of all the emotions. We can realize that we are bring old feelings and thoughts into play but it just seems unbelievable how real and alive these feelings are to us during this hate/rage spiral. This is where our unconscious feelings of hate and rage come to play. They are conjured up and are tied to conscious feelings and emotions. Our unconscious mind holds plenty of examples and experiences of past hates and our conscious, more reasoning mind hold them in check because they serve no useful purpose towards mental health.. Most importantly, a lot of our unconscious feelings and emotions of hate and rage remain totally unconscious and they only manifest them selves in unusual or extraordinary circumstances. Hate/rage spirals can bring forth these unconscious emotions and gives us a glimpse of what is hidden in our unconscious mind.
LOVE - The development of feelings and emotions of love show us how our thoughts operate. Love feelings develop from a perspective of past experiences directed towards an object of love. It is the object of our love which triggers our emotions about our selves that makes the experience seem so external. The experience seems to be coming entirely from the outside and not from our inner self. However, if one’s mind was brain dead to all feelings, then the object of our love would seem nothing more than a stranger. Our own feelings and thoughts about love connect us and this is what gives us those warm and sometime exciting loving feelings. Love is truly in the minds eye.
SELF PTIY - Similarly, as our sub-conscious mind is able to supply feelings about what we love or hate, so does it support or encourage our firm or bound thoughts about our feelings of self-pity. Then as our conscious mind moves toward some sort of purposeful and decisive resolute, our sub-conscious mind encourages and supports its own agenda concerning its own resolute feelings concerning self-pity.
“Protracted self-pity” is an additive condition which is most self destructive. Most people carry these feelings in some slight degree and It continues without our conscious awareness. Small events can trigger subconscious feelings concerning our deeply rooted emotions of self-pity. Sorrow is a natural emotion caused usually from loss or injury and is often mixed with self pity. However, it is mentally unhealthy to continue our self-pity for an extended period of time.
We often associate self centeredness with only people that are arrogant. However, self centeredness is also displayed through self-pity, depression, rage, manic behavior etc. These are self centered experiences which deal with “self” indulgence.
DENIAL - Understanding our natural “denial” of our emotions and feelings is essential in understanding our overall thought process. The amazing human mind is incredibly adaptive not only because of its real time self re-programming abilities but also because of its ability to self adapt to protect itself from unbearable and destructive feelings. The self destructive power of our negative associations and thoughts will at one point become unbearable and almost always creates and necessitates some sort of cover up, false self or splitting. The more we are faced with feels of inadequacy and de-personalization, the greater the likelihood of denial of these shameful feelings. Simply stated, there becomes a point when the attack of our adequacy and our concept of healthy self love becomes so great and that our self programming mind redirects itself towards alternate, safer, thinking routines.
Since these mental “program routines” are more self serving and self centered, they allows our mind to relax into a safer mind set. The primordial mind wants to protect itself and establishes a new set of self centered needs. Often these needs include compulsive / addictive behavior which serve to protect us from further erosion of our true or authentic self.
Ironically, our resistance and disowning of our own feelings of inadequacy, creates defensiveness which further contributes to our feelings of defensiveness and shame. Just as constant thoughts of fear can create even greater fear, our own defensive reactions create even more defensiveness and resistance.
In facing our fears or feelings of inadequacy we have a conceptual problem. People can often sense that they are afraid and feeling inadequate. Unfortunately, we can chose to solve our problems through self centered compulsive/ addictive behaviours. Moreover, the reason for this self centered often self destructive behavior is not to self destruct but actually to protect ourselves from our own feelings of self destruction. This is why in cognitive psychology it is important to building an addicts self worth and not berate or condemn them , because of their addictive, self centered behavior.
SURVIVAL MODE - When we are faced with disturbing or debilitating mental and/or physical conditions our thoughts are pointed towards self preservation. Common behavioral consequences of living in this survival mode are: self centeredness, self-indulgence, self justification and shamelessness. As well, our mentally self depreciating side can evoke feelings of self hatred or rejection, shamefulness and self pity.
More importantly, these survival mode behaviors can continue for some time and become mentally internalized into our permanent behavior after the traumatic conditions which triggered these self centered behaviors have long subsided.
What connotes a debilitating traumatic event is individually and uniquely interpreted by the individual. A child faced with lose of the security and strength of “mother” is living in survival mode as much as a person who is faced with nearly total lose of financial support. Then again a shame oriented person may be mortified and extremely embarrassed to be confronted by personal questions. Most importantly, our subconscious mind never forgets these traumatic events and future conscious events can trigger these feelings and emotions associated with these past hurts.
Over time, from childhood to adulthood, the consequences of continued exposure to periodic survival mode conditions can result in a mix of internalized conscious and sub-conscious anomalies. These survival mode behaviors can be clearly marked by conscious perfectionist, controlling and shameless behavior while at the same time the individual may harbor nearly contrarian sub-conscious feelings of rejection, shamefulness and self pity. These dichotomies result in feelings of anxiety and insecurity which further encourage compulsive/addictive behavior patterns, as well as extenuate sub-conscious internalized feelings of self rejection and self pity. This would explain why a person of seemingly limitless perfection and control can at the same time unconsciously harbor feelings of self rejection/hated and self pity. These unconscious feelings of self rejections/hatred and self pity will expose themselves through our actions over time.
The author wants to bring to light the working concepts of self psychology which are often written in complicated and jargonistic fashion. Through our understanding, healing and reshaping of our selves, we can reclaim those disowned parts of our true self and bring greater fulfillment in our relationships.
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