What is getting in my way? Part4 of: How Do I Get Out of My Own Way? (iteration 1)

The particular ways I can get in my own way are as numerous as the stars in the sky. Rather than try and define every thought that arises it’s more helpful to recognize the repetitious patterns that arrive in higher frequencies.

If not all, I can recognize these patterns for what they are, echoes of previously functional adaptations. My brain and behavior were shaped by a context that caused me to learn ways of dealing with certain circumstances. These things I now continue to do outside of their original environment, applying the hammer I developed in response to nails, to the current screws of my life.

These reactions have much less utility in the current conditions of the here and now. Why should I expect them to? Everything has changed. The situations are different. The people are different. I am different. While the conduct was acceptable from and appropriate for a 3-7 year old child, coming from a 36 year old man, they simply don’t pass muster.

Nevertheless the child’s mind remains.

Not only figuratively but neurologically as well. The connections that my brain created thirty years ago are the foundation of the current network. The physical infrastructure is still in there. Yes the brain does change and grow connections connections. Certainly some of those old connections are out of use, but some of it is still the most frequently used pathways to send signals. Due to this heavy use these connections have been optimized for peak performance and throughput. According to Mindsight by Daniel Siegel, connections across these routes have been minimized, effectively creating an intercity express route instead of trains that stop at every station.

This information helps me take comfort when these patterns re-emerge, outside of suitable situations. Conditions arise that harken back to those previous times. It is said that the American humorist Mark Twain said that “history doesn’t repeat itself but it often rhymes.” If my brain’s structure remains then I behave in ways that create almost a gravitational well in the space-time-like fabric of human interaction. Since we are social creatures, all behavior happens between two or more people. My repeated actions automatically sort for the other side of my behavioral equation. My roles is paired with the roles of people whose brains/lives adapted them similarly to those who initially influenced my very adoption of these behavioral patterns. We hold each other in an orbit of repetition, since we already know the steps of the dance.

Our roles are paired, and the familiarity of our interactions whether healthy or not are comfortable. Brad Branton author of Radical Honesty writes, “we would rather be sure of a correctly predicted negative outcome than face the realistic uncertainty of an unpredictable future, even if it includes the possibility of great joy and success.“ There is truth to that, leading me to maintain these types relationships with the same types of people. Rhyming if not repeating.

(Warning quasi-related tangent I should probably delete and rework independently, but I am too in love with to let die right now)Groups have an in emergent intelligence that arises by this behavioral sorting. Unconsciously electing people who are the most sensitive to particular triggers to act out archetypical patterns. To put it bluntly, people get pissed off when their patterns/strategies don't work the way the expected them to/normally do. They then represent the voice of a subgroup or undercurrent in the system.

Explaining the awkwardness that arises every time I’m in a situation with someone “new” and my organic strategies of manipulation or winning approval don’t work. I either am confronted with extremely valuable feedback that reorganizes my consciousness, if I am open to it. Or I resist the new information and develop a resentment towards this person for vague and undefinable reasons I can’t quite explain.

I have learned to move towards these people that trigger this "I don’t like you for some reason." Curiously, I often forget these people’s names or to consider them when I normally would.(end tangent)

Resistance and attachment

I may find myself resisting some aspect of what is happening. Resistance is organic, acceptance is divine. To me this statement has 50% of a complete truth. I would re-write that quote to say “Resistance and attachment are organic, acceptance is divine” however I find this statement much less poetic.

Resistance and attachment form the two poles representing the spectrum of all the manners I get in my way. Either resistance, busy paying attention to what I think I don’t want to happen, reducing my cognitive bandwidth for only everything else, or in attachment, hooked/obsessed with what I think I want to happen or keep, with a different sort of tunnel vision. Tunnel vision is a good analogy, because it speaks to the effective blindness as the world outside the focus of the tunnel decreases in resolution dramatically.

What does this mean?

That I am less aware of the rest of the field of action and opportunity outside of where my attention lies.

As the truism states “where attention goes energy flows.” By this measuring stick resistance is perhaps the most inefficient investment in my human catalog, generally resulting in directing the course of my motion and life towards the outcome I specifically don’t want. Resistance urges me ever further down the tunnel as what I dread gets nearer. From simple aversion/stiffness all the way to uber rigid dissociative/catatonic/detachment in relation to the realization of my worst nightmares is current at hand.

Attachment on the other hand can be equally as overtly negative, as I cling to the sandcastle I want to keep standing during the incoming tide, but also much more insidious as it interacts with false hope.

Obsessing towards a goal is a great way to accomplish it, but is the goal a mirage? Is the finish line I fantasize about actually what I want or is it just a means to some other end? Do I actually want that car or do I want the love, respect, and appreciation my mind believes that car will bring me? How disappointing it is to realize that there is no opportunity to actually enjoy what I have when it is primarily a strategy to manipulate the perception and relationship I have with others.

I may be busy actualizing a goal to get me what I think I want and it may fail to fulfill my fantasy, to give me all of what I thought it would. All the while perhaps moving me in a direction that I don’t actually want to go, my attachment becomes its own burden. Insidious indeed.

Reality Gap

Both resistance and attachment are examples of a reality gap. The reality gap is a phrase that comes from Russ Haris’s Reality Slap. The basic gist is that the greater the separation between the current reality and my fantasy of the way I think things should be, the more I suffer.

The solution here is to make contact with the present reality. By transmuting the separation and finding the sensation I wish for in the future eliminating the need for the transaction and the passage of time. Now I can move my feet freely, from the space of already having what I desire, to wherever I want to go. Of course this is easier said than sometimes done because my mind has a diverse toolkit and a myriad of ways it can have me barring my own progress.

I imagine the line graph of the resistance-attachment spectrum bending in the middle, the ends coming together to form a circle as attachment to the past becomes resistance to change. This is the reality gap, a whole within the center of my being, this circle is a well of overwhelming fear charged discomfort. Outside the circle are two assumptions of security and safety from the discomfort, false power and false hope.

False power.

The child’s mind remains mostly intact within my mature brain. When I was a child I was helpless and had no capacity to satisfy my own needs and desires. Solving my problems was always a function of someone else doing something for or on my behalf. I continue this pattern in the here and now of adult life with my fantasy that external situations must change to satisfy me. Sometimes I still feel like a child, powerless and immobile, dependent on others to change my experience for me.

This false power takes the form of all sorts of stories that usually start with:

I need you to…

If only someone would…

What they should do is…

These are all perfect examples that while perhaps valid and sometimes objectively true, reflect an assumption of some inability for me to make progress towards the wished end state with my own energies and actions.

A major influencing factor that can increase the degree of difficulty in managing this false power is the size of the reality gap. The greater the distance between the observed/current reality and my fantasy of the way I think things should be, the more I suffer. For some things this suffering is modest, however when what is going on either is, or feels like it is, light-years away from what I wish, this magnitude of suffering can trigger this remembered sense of helplessness. This uncontainable vulnerability can reinforce the reality gap and these create a synergy, a sort of flywheel spools up, increasing the space created by the other and building to an "I’m stuck" status.

My head fills with the echoes of false hope "what should I do? What should I do? What should I do? What should I do?..."

False Hope

I can be equally as trapped in suffering while feeling like the captain of my own ship. When I believe that story of “if only I...then I will be...” I am equally trapped in the grasp of an insidious form of fuck up known as false hope. The dream that I can somehow achieve a state of satisfaction that I always wanted “if only I...” can keep me running towards a horizon and tomorrow that never comes. This is the lateral motion that moves the finishing line with every step I take. The "carrot at the end of a string" sensation I described around attachment.

Fear of rejection

Usually my stories of fantasy have to do with earning some form of achievement, especially knowledge, that will eternally liberate me from the rejection and thus my fear of rejections by others. As Jan Geurtz describes, this fear of rejection is quite close to the mother of all the ways I fuck myself up. This is my last and greatest safeguard. And as such I have developed an entire military industrial complex of weaponry to achieve the desired state of security. If I were a nation state my defense spending would dwarf all other budgets combined.

My power to go, to do, to attain, acquire, to execute, to win, to perform, stems from this fear of rejection. My false hope to earn the right to be admired, desired, loved, appreciated and accepted, to earn the literal right to exist, if only I am perfect then I will never have to be vulnerable again. If only I am better then I will be perfect. If only I am more, then I will be better. If only I am some other thing than I am now, then I will be more.

Shifting the point of fear from a possible incident to every single waking moment of my existence. Every instance of the great and everlasting Now that I could possibly stumble and fall, fail to cover the humanity and show that I am not only a big fat phony but that I am not whole. That I am rotten to the core, unworthy of love, acceptance, belonging and being.

Shadow conviction

If I were to fail I would be confronted with the, as what Annette Raaijmakers describes as the shadow conviction. This is as Ingeborg Bosch describes the primary defense against the original narcissistic wound. The moment that the immature brain, feeling with its fully developed limbic system, could not bear the trauma of transition from the experience of oneness, or fusion between the subject and object, to the terrifying realization that it is in fact an entity separate, from its caretakers in particular. This is the moment Lucifer fell from heaven and Adam and Eve ate from the tree of knowledge, evicting them from paradise, the beginning of all suffering.

The theory is that this sensation of suffering is so great that it must be denied, consciousness divides itself and hides the painful existence of this division behind a veil of assumption, a conviction is born that itself is so painful it once more must be denied and turned away from. Placing this belief into what Carl Jung called the shadow, that container, black box if you will, which the self does not identify with. Regardless of this rejection of recognition these parts of life/being continue to exert influence over me whether acknowledged or not.

These patterns form the essence of the whole(s) in my being/consciousness and the basis of the ways that I behave to try to avoid coming into contact with it(them). These behaviors are exhausting, ineffective, simply cost too much energy to maintain. So what do I do about them?

Coming next: my solutions, the answers to "how do I get out of my own way?"

Thanks for reading. I find it very interesting that this section more, than any of the others, triggers this sensation of "it's(I am) not good enough." It feels a little too disorganized and scattered, unpolished and raw. It scares the shit out of me and that's part of the reason I am pushing publish, to test that assumption. I say this not to win your pity, it is of no use/value to me, but to open the opportunity that someone, perhaps you, can provide me some meaningful feedback that can help me improve it.

If you're not embarrassed by the first version of your product, you've launched too late.