Living in An Idiosyncrasy: The Compartment Syndrome Evolves

I was reading this article today which was basically looking at toxic positivity and its outreach into our collective psyche, and this is something I have been talking about for a while now. I have posted it on my feed this morning.

Struggling With Positive Thinking? Research Shows Grumpy Moods Can Actually Be Useful        

Don’t fear emotions such as regret, anger or worry. The Conversation Eyal Winter

Curiouser and curiouser as Alice was wont to say.

This article plays on my ‘grump button’ like Will I Am when he’s bored!

It does however prove my point that there is too much emphasis on ‘positivity’.

In the title here, I mention Compartment Syndrome; a medical term for a physiological event. A traumatic and potentially lethal event. ?It is defined on the NHS website as Compartment syndrome occurs when the pressure within a compartment increases, restricting the blood flow to the area and potentially damaging the muscles and nearby nerves. It usually occurs in the legs, feet, arms or hands, but can occur wherever there's an enclosed compartment inside the body.’

Psychologically, emotionally and spiritually we have been compartmentalising ‘Positive Thinking’ since the 1960’s.

It has been distilled, taken from its natural ecology to become the elixir of happiness and the salvation of us all.

No matter how much paint we put over a crack in the wall it won’t stop it from being there, neither will it allow us to forget it's there.

Or

You can’t make a silk purse out of a pig’s ear.

Hanging an argument on a shaky nail of one word with no contextual back up is the best way to make undermine what is in essence a potentially sound hypothesis.

We have to look at the variables though. The idea of putting a positive spin on things is not new…truthfully there really is nothing new under the Sun many of us just weren’t around for it last time around so it is picked up, given a make-over and treated as the new and unique way to bring you into the state of … [insert latest modality/enlightenment quote here]

Anything, any thing lifted out of its natural space and time then focused on to the nth degree will become a whole different Beastie.

Good intentions are usually at the root of it all. ????????

Happy people tend to have positive outlooks, so what do researchers look for? Happy People!

The idea that we can take one thought, that is in fact only a thought and tell people to think that thought and all will be wonderful is like a game of Russian roulette. ?

Without context the danger is that it will be ‘read’ by individuals in so many different ways.

Nature is a balancing paradigm. This means that when too much of one thing is happening and there is no opposite and equal effect (Einstein’s Law therefore apt) that is to say, nothing to counter balance the phenomena, the resulting imbalance can and will be devastating.

We have all these emotions for a reason. They are there to allow us to check in with how we are balancing our states of being. We are in that state, we go through it and move on.

We may have a tendency toward one idiom that finds us in a cynical or an openly curious mind. That doesn’t mean to say we are always in either state. There’s a spectrum of emotion and at any given point in the day we will be somewhere on it.

The pressure of others telling us to ‘cheer up’, ‘don’t be such a grumpy bugger’, ‘don’t be such a buzz kill’, ‘it might never happen’ etc. puts a lot of stress on a person to adjust to themselves to suit someone else because they are in a higher state of positivity. This will manifest in a couple of ways.

The outright cynic may well answer with the right hook of ‘You’re happy now, but just wait, it won’t last’ and then go on being contentedly miserable because that’s their comfort/familiarity zone.?Somewhere along the line they’ve learned to expect positive feelings to be fleeting and that’s how they handle disappointment, by laying out the red carpet for it. This is not necessarily a bad thing. They may well be cynical, that doesn’t make them totally miserable scrotes. In fact they would probably tell you it makes them pragmatists and they are therefore ready and capable to deal with negative events quickly and with little emotional attachment. Yes they may well be attracting that energy, however they are perceiving life through that lens and that is what is in that remit.

Another way, less pragmatic is the 'People Pleaser' who slaps on a couple of coats of 'happy' so other's are not brought down by their dreadful, and obviously unwanted sadness/worry/uncertainty. They will likely throw in the towel.The 'PP' is compartmentalising their feelings to please someone else. They will go about with a smile tacked onto their faces that doesn't quite reach their eyes, constantly listening to upbeat webinars on how to be fabulously healthy, wealthy and wise if they just keep faking it. All the while suppressing the issue and slipping into deep dark spaces, where they could get very stuck and very lost.

Are they unhappy? Are they happy?

Aren’t we all at some point on the spectrum? don't we all experience it, just in different ways unique to ourselves?

Life happens and we are in it; making it ours through our experiences and our responses/reactions to the events that come with it.

When we are slapping on that positivity paint like Jackson Pollock on speed we’re not really looking at the context of what is lying beneath. We're trying really hard to cover it up.

I heard the saying the other day, ‘So many people miss opportunities because they turn up in overalls and look like work.’

Life is work. It can be hard work. It can be hard when our wiring is slightly off. It can be easy when we find our groove.

It can be a real disappointment when we believe the promises of those dealers in the positivity drug industry and the drugs don’t work. Then like any ‘Junkie’ we pursue ‘stronger and better’ promises. Strung out on hope. The hope that there is a pill to cure this ill.

We may never stop to think and ask ‘What is it that makes me happy?’ ‘When was the last time I remember being really happy?’ ‘What’s wrong with being sad when something sad happens?’

The energy flows where the attention goes.

That’s one of the keys to the emphasis on positivity. Think depressing thoughts, be depressed! Think happy thoughts, be happy! Is it that black and white?

No.

Energy flows, it moves, it transmutes, it changes in constant flux; unless we stop it. There are no riderless horses when our thoughts are racing. Emotions are the Jockeys and they hold the reins and crack the whip! It's usually our selves that give the Horse it's head though.

Happiness comes dressed in overalls. Life is not a career it’s a vocation. We are our own vocation.

It’s not the word that is at fault, it’s not even the act of being positive, it’s the belief that drives it. It’s become dogma. A religious fervour that will save us from the ‘Daemon of Uns’…unhappiness, unworthiness, unlikableness, uncertain, unlovable, unfairness, unappealing, unattractive et. al.

When we strive to demote the emotions of sadness we are only burying them in a shallow grave. How can we truly know happiness if we don’t know how to handle the other emotions?

Arthur pulled the sword out of the stone not because he believed he could; no-one ever told him he couldn’t and he had a need for the sword. ?Had gone up to some of the Knights beforehand to ask permission, even, in fact, especially of his Foster Brother and Guardian he would have been swamped in ridicule and negative denials of his ability or his right to even consider the idea. How different would that story be had that been the case?

As Virgil once said when asked how Birds could fly: he answered, ‘they can because they think they can’. Really they are compelled to fly, it’s in their DNA, unless they’re an Ostrich but they can run like the wind! It’s all about the needs, and less about the musts. How many times have you gone ahead and done something and then said, ‘I didn’t know I could do that.’ Even better when we hear someone else say, ‘Wow, I didn’t know you could do that?’ When we get the 'Aha' moment; that stays with us. It is still possible for it to be dampened by another person's destructively, decimating demeanor... if we allow it.

By compartmentalising emotion we give it nowhere to go.

Emotions like rivers are meant to flow. They are transient; fleeting and therefore more precious. When we focus on one thing, it can become the God of our being, of our belief, the breath of our lives.

Like falling in love; we revel in the joy, the agony and the ecstasy, the excruciating pleasure of it all. That feeling, that crescendo of emotions is unique to the passion associated with the object of desire. Be that a person, a place, the feeling of empowerment from the teachings of a Guru:* the absolute transcendent moment we ‘get’ something, understanding our place in the scheme of things, being so much more than and enough at the same time.

Yes it’s an epiphany.

The real epiphany is that we are 'all ways more than we think we are'*. Therefore we are all ways capable of being and inspiring the state of joy and of happiness in those particular moments when we align the stars for ourselves.

Aligning stars takes work.

Get your overalls on.

Over all we are responsible for our own happiness and understanding its Quixotic, mercurial nature.

Happiness is not a solid state.

We can’t make it on demand. We can go through life expecting to be surprised and delighted by it. Sometimes the happy moment we stumble upon are our best memories. Some situations we saw as potentially sorrowful were actually happiness in disguise, because we took the opportunity to go to that party when we didn’t feel in the mood for it, then we had a great time.

Happiness has its own spectrum of being too. The parameters go from vaguely content, through mildly amused, onto ticklishly inspired, all the way up to laugh out loud fun, shared and self-inflicted, to positively joyful and the crescendo of the full firework display of total abandon, walking on air and just being perfectly attuned to the Universe and back again. The other end of the spectrum is of course the sadness that can go to the way station of depression through the bridge of anger and the tunnel of fear, no compartments, no walls, we are in control of the brakes, and that is what the idea of positivity is endeavouring to help us to understand. It doesn’t have to be a rollercoaster it can be a sedate-ish log flume or the tunnel of love.

At any given time of day, or night (we dream it too) we can be anywhere on that spectrum, going back and forth like a rollercoaster ride sometimes.

The one thing we must remember is that we have the whole pharmacy necessary to fuel all of this ride of our lives, endorphins.

When we truly believe and align the thoughts with the emotions we are on the ride of our lives. A ride that takes us through the full gamut of experiencing all that life can bring to us, good, bad and indifferent.

It’s not about not experiencing the less than wonderful stuff, it’s about HOW we experience them and how we respond and recover. How we ride that race.

If we try to hold onto a state of being we are compartmentalising, which as with all things, when used properly and with the appropriate focus will achieve some great things. It works wonders for tidying the mind. Used to suppress and or ignore issues, or disagreeable situations it becomes a block, it dams up the flow and we become the Don Quixote of our own life tilting at positivity windmills blinded and blinkered when that is what we seek, that is what we will find.

It becomes toxic.

The last thing anyone wants to here at this stage is ‘cheer up, it might never happen!’

What if it already did?!

The antidote...?

*Guru and a definition / Translation from Nepalese

Gu – Darkness

Ru – the one who removes all the darkness of not knowing, hence enlightenment.

'Guru, the leader clears all doubts and misconceptions, ushering us into a New World before our Spiritual Evolution. Bhola Nath Banstola Nepalese Jhankri Shaman

Another way to think about it brings us into the realm of self-responsibility for our own enlightenment

Spell it out… G – U – R – U ???Gee You Are You! (from an American Documentary on New Age Guru’s)

*all ways more… Milton H. Erickson

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