Classroom Talk
Winter 2002 Archive
Preparing the ground for moving on with the rest of your life. Posted by John on March 08, 2002 at 20:03:48:
In Reply to: Re: About asking one's Self, "Did I go too far this time?" posted by Sally on March 07, 2002 at 18:48:59:
I think this may be nearly "enough" hotseat-time for this time around now, Sally. You've gotten your feet wet at this, and you've done good. And,
remembering Deirdre's criterion, this time has been very productive, from my point of view.
What is it that I'm trying to do here? I have a notion that I've spotted "the most important thing" that I think may have been getting in your way
during your life, Sally. I am trying to provide you with an *experiential* opportunity to get in vivid touch with that hunch of mine, sit with it like a
brick in your lap, "try it on," so to speak, in studying your daily life, to see if this fits or not.
And if it turns out that you can say, "Yes, I certainly understand what you mean," then I can start addressing strategies for moving on with your life,
going after satisfaction, if that is what you wish for.
My focus for now, with you being in the hotseat, has been on a single, finite behaviorism—one behaviorism that can be recognized, and understood.
My first key question was a kind of a dumb question, asking if you understood what I was referring to in singling out the heated eruptions in class of
"PsychoSal;-)" as a finite behaviorism to be studied on its own. You didn't actually answer that question, but it was obvious in the things you had to
say that you knew what I was talking about. Let's call that one behaviorism "outrageous flaming," to keep it simple.
My second question addressed the possibility that envy (cf. jealousy) might have a part to play in this. In your vivid sharings of personal experiences
with envy, it became obvious that the emotional feeling of anger could also be heavily involved in this outrageous flaming, too. And this fits, because
there is clearly a "punishing" quality in the way you go about it, and it is anger that brings about punishing others when we do this in our lives.
>When I envy someone it is because I desire what they have. Whether it is love, money, material possessions, family, friends, a better job, etc. Yet, "WHY" am I envious?
Aha! "Why?" is the anger word! Whenever you hear a person saying "Why?" it is anger that is beginning to come up in them. Now, this is a tricky
fine point in the awareness game. In this approach, we need to let go of always asking "Why?" and start asking "How?" "How am I reacting? How
am I doing it to my Self?"
The answer to that here seems to be: "I am reacting by becoming envious, and by becoming angry, and then acting-those negative emotions out by
outrageous flaming. With this knowledge, you know what is going on. When we know what's going on, we can then begin doing something
intelligent and productive about it.
>You might say the obvious reason is that I envy them because I don't have what they have. True. Yet, I then need to ask myself "Why don't I have what they have? Why don't I have the better job, better relationship, material abundance, more friends, etc.?
Again, as coach, I suggest that a better question than "Why?" is "How?" How is it that I don't have what I'm wishing for? *How* don't I have the job,
relationship, etc.? — "Why?" is just complaining. "How?" is figuring out what to do. — "Why?" is just looking for some general thing to be pissed off
about in life that we can't do much of anything about, except go on being angry. "How?" on the other hand, begins to get us into taking responsibility
for our own behavior. "How?" puts us on a trail of finding out what's actually going on, and what can actually be done about it?
>I don't have those things because for some reason I have either pushed them away, chosen not to go the extra mile to get them, or don't think I deserve them.
Well, those may, indeed, be insights into *how* you do it to your Self. Not going the extra mile signals giving up on you too soon. Not thinking you
deserve the things you wish for, *could* get in your way, *could* prevent you from having what you love in life! These last two explanations, of
course, are the Doormat. More than once you've hinted over the years that you thought the Doormat might be your third type on the wheel. I
haven't had sufficient clues to confirm that. Rebel and Dictator have been the types that have seemed to me to show up most frequently with your
participation here over the years (along with essential Artist and essential Can-Do Woman, that go along underneath those two personality types!).
At times I've thought your third type might be the Martyr, and just in this last posting you've given some clues that might spell Judge, at least some of
the time (when the shit hits the fan!) But you have long perceived your life as being "stuck," so to speak. That's a Doormat characteristic. On the one
hand, you have come across very powerfully, and sometimes aggressively. Yet, on the other hand, there is this historical tendancy for you to be
yielding, and indeed "passive" in having to take life the way it is forced on you by the other people in your life, and not be able to rise up and strike
out on your own after the things that would mean the most to you personally in your own life. So, the Doormat surely deserves more objective study
in the weeks to come.
Is that how it is with you? Do you really feel unworthy of having more happiness and satisfactions in your life? That's a good subject for you to
reflect upon. Tell me what you connect with this idea, if you'd like to.
But for the moment, I'd like to keep the focus on this one item I've been working on here so far, the eruption in you, from time to time, of episodes of
outrageous flaming. (Let's take these things one thing at a time, please.) And when you say, "For some reason I have pushed [happiness, satisfaction]
away," I think it is this flaming that comes into play as the main factor around that one.
People who get to know you see that you are strong, and intelligent; see that you are physically competent, and brave. And we see the art in your
acts. We see that you've got plenty of "all the right stuff." We see that you can be loving, and that you have it in you to be—thank you very much!—a
"faithful friend." If we become pushed away from you (i.e. if you push us away), it might be because you are too pushy with us (not my experience
with you, though others may have felt that way). It seems to me—after getting to know you over these years—that if you push opportunities for
companionship and fulfillment away from you and out of your life, it is this "outrageous flaming" that is the "culprit," the mechanism for getting in your
own way like that. It strikes me that doing that flaming is the major *How?" you do it to your Self in this life.
Let me clarify my key question about Perk's "Sheeeeeeeeesh!" First of all, I shouldn't be speaking for Perk. That was a mistake on my part. But since I
brought it up, here's what I was driving at with that question. I didn't think he said that in reply to your astute remark that "intellectualism is denial
with a college degree." That wasn't what he was talking about then. He was replying to your stinging remarks exposing a classmate for being jealous,
outside of class, of your relationship with your live-in ex-husband. That was a pretty outrageous flame, I hope you see.
>"...kkkkkiiiiihhhhh..... shhhhhheeeeeeeeessssshhhhhh... !!"
If I know my pal Perk, there were tears in his eyes when he said that, tears of frustration. I think he was playing the Martyr when he said that. It
was a "lost love situation," for him. He might have been thinking something like: "Here I have been admiring and respecting you so much, Sally! And
now you have gone and done a blatant stinger like this, one more time. You hurt me badly when you do flamers like this, Sally. It pushes me away
from you. It catches me by surprise, every time it happens here in Classroom Talk, and it *shakes* my fondness and my respect for you." In the
common lingo of the Martyr, he seemed to be saying: "Sheeeeesh! How could you treat me this way, Sally, after all the respect I've had for you?"
I think that's the gist of what he meant by that remark. I know how much each of you have respected each other as colleagues over the years in this
"crazy" on-line TTMT experiment. And when the words of a stinger are put into our space, not only do they impact on the person that the stinging
person may be thinking about at that time. They also impact on the bodies of all the rest of us who are sitting around the circle in this space. You
weren't thinking about Perk when you posted that funny stuff that day. But—evidently, in his posting there—he turned up among the severely
wounded in the circle of colleagues sitting around you.
We all need to learn to understand that our behavior doesn't go forth in a vacuum. Our behavior has impact on the other people around us. We all
need to remember this more often. Sometimes our behavior can alienate other people so severely that they can't handle the heat of it without crying
or pulling away. Certainly our acted-out behavior can determine the direction that our lives take with respect to other people.
Perk didn't put you down, or judge you. He merely tried to express what his own experience was being, under the impact of what had happened.
And knowing that he's a wise teacher, too, a teacher who knows that you respect him, he may well have felt that expressing his reaction to you
candidly, in just that way that day, might somehow manage to serve you in your quest for personal growth. It might enable you to catch on, and out
of respect for him, perhaps, start asking your Self more often around here: "Am I going too far this time? Am I wounding other people in saying this,
without realizing that is happening? Am I pushing colleagues that I like, and opportunities that are free gifts to me from them, away?" — I shined a
light on this with that key question I asked because I thought it might be inspiring for you. I thought seeing and understanding Perk's angst in
speaking up that way might inspire you to make up your mind to start working on change about this.
From my coaching perspective—I'm convinced, at least—that it is *not* that you don't have many more beautiful gifts already coming to you in this life,
Sally, but that you push these opportunities away from you when you are sleeping, again and again, when you unconsciously indulge in a long-
engrained habit of outrageous flaming, and burn other people out . . . . . not realizing the effect that your behavior has on these others. It might
happen just once with certain people and they might never get over the impact of it, never get over the way it alters their perspective of you, and their
capacity to be responsive to you. Do you see what I mean? You are dangerous to your own well-being and fulfillment that way.
Naturally, I can't predict if there is going to be another great love in your life. But from the standpoint of the rest of the world around you, there is
no reason for there not to be. People go on finding soul-mates even in old age. And you have plenty of time before that. And we all have been
amazed in seeing people of all kinds that we would never suppose would find loving company, who do anyway! The organic inference of this in the
human race seems to me to be that there is probably somebody out there for everybody! But I *can* predict that if there is anything that you do
unconsciously and habitually that prevents that satisfaction from happening in your life, it is possible for you to make it come out in that frustrating
way again and again—purely from your own rambunctuous side of the question.
And if there is one most logical candidate for a factor about you that *might be* preventing that satisfaction from happening for you, I would say that
this outrageous flaming surely may be that very worst factor.
>I am angry at myself because . . . I am not "doing what it takes" to have what I want.
I suspect that underneath it all, you may actually be doing what it takes to prevent what you want—i.e. that flaming acting-out envy and anger.
>Even if we complain and blame everyone else around us, there's a part of us that believes that "it's our fault". Thus, again, the self-anger.
Here again, that anger, if it's acknowledged and dealt with directly, as anger, *can* have a value . . . . . if it inspires a person to take a hard look at *
how* they get in their own way, and they decide to start doing something about it.
>So where do we go from here? After having recognized that we are angry at ourselves, we can 1) forgive ourselves for not being perfect.
Well, if all of us can forgive ourselves for that, that is right on for any of us. And how about forgiving ourselves for being angry, and for acting anger
out? That too is worth doing, if we can. We are only human. We are innocent (yet we are sleeping and conditioned to get in our own way).
>2) see if we are angry for the "right" reason or the "wrong" reason.
No! The useful question is not whether we are angry for the right or the wrong reason. The useful question (heh-heh, this is where metaphysics is
called "absurd"—LOL), the valuable question is simply whether we are being angry, or not being angry. What is the reality of that? There are no
right or wrong reasons for becoming angry. We become angry because we do become angry. We humans do become angry *naturally* when "things
are going wrong."
>We are angry at ourselves because we do know the "way out" of our situation, but don't want to take the trouble to do it.
I'm not so sure that you *do* know the way out of your dilemma, Sally. I don't know that "the way out" has presented itself to you yet. I am only
claiming that by acting-out envy and anger on others in the world, that can be a huge factor that gets in your way and confuses you about what to
do. Take this flaming out of the picture, and you may *find* the way out much more quickly!
>see,I am angry at myself for being a "doormat" much of the time!
Then *know* that. Experience that when it happens. Realize: "I am being angry now for being a Doormat." Feel that anger in your face and
wherever the tensions of it show up in your body. Experience that anger through and through, mindfully, and let it go, let it go, let it go. Deal with *
the anger itself* when it comes up. Keep letting the anger off by focusing your awareness on the sensations of it in your body, and releasing it on
through.
Go ahead, right on this moment, Sally, and squinch up your face in a serious growl. And feel what that growl feels like on your face now. And . . . let
it go. — That's what the processing of anger is like.
.....................................................
>Anger breeds more anger, more fear, more resentment, more negativity, etc.
It is suppressed anger that breeds more anger. Anger that isn't acknowledged awarely and dealt with awarely breeds more negative emotions.
Okay, here's what I suggest you can do about all this. Try to catch on (in the present) when you are being envious. Feel it in the hot face and
torqued body. Try to catch on in the present when you are being angry. Feel it in the growl on your face and clenched fists. Realize that when these
distinct patterns of tensions are happening in you that you are highly spring-loaded to put out outrageous flaming that wounds other people. Try to
catch on to this before you let your Self go and do that.
Then start trying to process these tensions—being aware of the sensations of them in your body (the same way that you can become aware of
bathwater, for instance, when it is too hot. It is your *sense of touch* that you are using here in processing feelings. Start practicing (at any time of
day or night) shepherding these tensions on through and out by being fully aware of the experience of them. Don't try to force these tensions out,
but simply be aware of them and . . . let go! Just be aware of the bodily sensations of envy and of anger, and keep letting these sensations go! — It
takes deliberate practice to get the hang of this.
Now, when you are posting in Classroom Talk, and you catch on that this envy or this anger, or both, have got a hold of the musculature of your
body at that moment, process it, and acknowledge it. Let us know about it. (We're on your side!) Share this truth with us.
Instead of the knee-jerk outrageous flaming that you might otherwise do, see if you can substitute for that funny stuff by simply saying: "I'm being
really envious about ______." "I'm being really angry about _______." See if you can let that be the message in your Classroom Talk posting, instead of
the outrageous flaming.
Maybe you might tell us something like: "I was on the very verge of some outrageous flaming here, Folks, but I woke up and realized that I am feeling
really envious here and really angry." Tell us as much as you'd like to about your experience in realizing this. (But be careful not to slip over into
wounding judgments and stingers.)
It is learning to become aware of it this way, that will enable you to become freer and freer of having it running your life automatically for you. One of
these days, try to do what I'm describing here. Give it a shot. See if you can manage to do this here in Classroom Talk the next time you are growling
and doing a slow burn around here. Wake up on it! Rise above it! Transcend this flaming pattern that holds you in its clutches just one time, for a
start.
And remember that "transcending it" does not mean not experiencing it. Feel the emotion of it, know it is there. Transcending it means knowing it is
there, and dealing with the emotion of it directly, and rising above having to act it out unconsciously . . . . . because you have *defused the emotion*
with your own awareness of it.
When you get to a place where you can take a brave crack at trying this exercise out here in class, I'll come in with the next step in coaching about this
then. There will be plenty of strategies I can suggest at that point for moving on ahead, and taking active measures for reaching out to the world for
more of the happiness you have been cheating your Self out of, up to now. But those strategies won't come into play until you can make a start on
getting the chief way that you get in our own way out of your way. Once you take an active hand in freeing your Self up from those conditioned
patterns that push your Destiny away, ideas about "what you can do about achieving your Destiny" will start coming to you.
Gee, I think I do know and understand how tough the situation is that you are living in, Sally. I know it is not an easy dilemma. All I can say is that
being envious and angry without knowing it, and allowing knee-jerk reactions like flaming to come automatically out of that, is not likely to be part of
the solution.
Hang in. For better or worse, I'm in your corner. And I'll do the best I can to help you find a way on your own to move on with the rest of your life.
Try to take it one step at a time. "Tall order," yes! Keep on working on it! You will be doing the groundwork for creating progress and satisfaction.
Muster your strength, and step aside from flaming around here just one time on purpose! And, without judging or attacking, be transparently human
in your natural emotions instead.
Coach
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Archived 05/02/2002