The Good, the Bad, and the Good in the Bad
Wouldn’t you love to be amazing? Well, it’s like this …
I read this earlier in the week …
Some days I AMAZE myself. Other days I look for my phone while I'm talking on it.
Straightaway I thought, Wow, that’s me.
Saturday,for instance, was one of those days when I seriously doubted that I was a competent adult. There we were in the car with me driving, and I felt my husband push his foot on an imaginary brake a microsecond before I braked. That was it – enough to make me quite sure that he thought I was a bad driver. I tensed up. At the next junction, a van stopped to let me go, and then suddenly changed their mind and shot forwards. I braked quickly. Feeling a bit flustered, I turned left, but somehow hit the curb. I felt stupid and incompetent, and wanted to blame my husband for the crime of just sitting there making no comment. “Go on then! Say it!” I snapped.
Hmmm.
I love amazing myself. Don’t you? Those days when you’re flying, and everything is coming good and you’re full of optimism and energy.
The Run-a-Mile Reaction
And then, suddenly, you’re not. Something goes wrong, and you go into overdrive –anything, everything, to avoid that unbearable feeling.?Not this, I don’t want this! Almost always followed by a demonstration of the opposite: That! That’s the way to save myself! Just as, in the car, I felt feeble, and so went for guns blazing.
Do you have examples of that? They could be:
·?????My supervisor is on my case. Not that! So, I withdraw into myself, dissociate.
·?????My partner is withdrawing their affection. Not that! So, I make every effort to move closer, to be more intimate.
·?????My children play up. Not that! So, I do everything to gain control. I raise my voice, physically move a young child from A to B, throw my weight around and force control on the situation.
Efforts to move in the opposite direction from what is happening often make things worse, and we feel awful. The automatic response – aggression, neediness, withdrawal, or whatever – is usually what we have been expressing since we were very young, and it probably didn’t work then.
The Wallow Reaction
On the other hand, sometimes we react to the immediate pain of an unpleasant moment by remembering other painful stories. In this case, our mood acts like a magnet, attracting other bad feelings and drawing them in. Negatives from all parts of our life and history come crowding in - that feeling of awkwardness or hopelessness aged fifteen, that unpleasant altercation in the supermarket yesterday, that misunderstanding with your friend, the company that screwed you, that Mrs McTavish bullying you when you were 4 years old …. In they all come, flying on the mood, deepening your mood even further. And, acting the victim now, you may feel a weird masochistic enjoyment in collecting all that negativity:
So,wallowing in our stories, instantly rejecting what is happening… what might be a more helpful response?
Well,obviously, life can’t be all amazing; it has its ups and downs, many of which are out of our control. But we can turn things around. The moment for intervention is as soon as something negative happens. That’s the time to stay with it, avoiding escape and avoiding stories.
Let’s say you go in for a competition that you’d dearly love to win. Instead, you are thrown out in the first round. Perhaps you instantly tell yourself a story. “I knew I didn’t feel very well that day.” “It’s because they changed the rules this year.” “If so and so hadn’t been on the panel, I’d have stood a chance.”“These things are always rigged…”
Stop. Stay with the raw feeling of being gutted and disappointed, of feeling hurt. Animals, when they feel distress and fear, often shake to release their adrenaline and cortisol at the time of the event, which enables them to recover surprisingly quickly instead of storing the trauma. We can do the same by allowing our actual feeling to run through us. Yes, that’s painful, but it moves through. Ouch. But good ouch. And IF you allow it space, out of it comes your best and truthful intuition.
I really like the explanation of the famous symbol in the image at the top of this article. [I'd put the image here, but the technology doesn't allow :-))]
Happy Summer! Go well,
Judy
Coaching: Every week, I rejoice in the power of coaching to give people control over their lives. There are many times when asking for help opens the way to success, undoes a block, reveals something new, restores your mojo, gives you peace. Don’t be afraid to take a step into personal development – whether counselling, therapy, mentoring, training, group work. Or coaching. If coaching, do contact me here to find out more, and we can have a chat if you like.
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Voice and Speaking Skills For Dummies – Everything you wanted to know about voice and speaking in a book that’s easy to dip into to answer all your questions.
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