Monthly Archives: September 2023
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There are three
kinds of men.
The ones that learn
by readin’.
The few who learn
by observation.
The rest of them
have to pee on
the electric fence
for themselves.
― Will Rogers
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It is a grave injustice
to a child or adult
to insist that they
stop crying.
One can comfort a
person who is crying
which enables him
to relax and makes
further crying
unnecessary;
but to humiliate a
crying child is to
increase his pain,
and augment his
rigidity.
We stop other people
from crying because
we cannot stand the
sounds and movements
of their bodies.
It threatens our own
rigidity.
It induces similar feelings
in ourselves which we dare
not express and it evokes
a resonance in our own
bodies which we resist.
― Alexander Lowen
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My definition of anxiety i s
the gap between the now
and the later.
Whenever you leave the
sure basis of the now and
become preoccupied with
the future you experience
anxiety.
And if the future represents
a performance, then the
anxiety is nothing but
stage fright.
~ Fritz Perls
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It’s no coincidence that people
who had angry parents often
end up choosing angry partners,
that those with alcoholic parents
are frequently drawn to partners
who drink quite a bit, or that those
who had withdrawn or critical
parents find themselves married
to spouses who are withdrawn
or critical
Why do people do this to themselves?
Because the pull toward that feeling
of “home” makes what they want as
adults hard to disentangle from
what they experienced as children.
They have an uncanny attraction to
people who share the chacteristics of
parents who in some way hurt them….
It’s not that people want to get hurt again.
It’s that they want to master a situation
in which they felt helpless as children.
~ Lori Gottlieb
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Why are Americans so hungry
for the approval of others?
The adjusted American lacks
self -approval; that is to say,
he has not developed a self-image
that he can believe is both
accurate and acceptable.
To do so he would require successful
techniques for creating an accurate
and acceptable self-image through
honest introspection, candid association,
and meaningful action.
The patterns to which he has adjusted
do not includes such techniques…
Half certain of his own inadequacy,
he attempts to present himself to
others in an appealing way.
When (or if) he has won their approval
he hopes that they will be able to
convince him that he is a better man
than he thinks he is.
~ Snell & Gail Putney,
The Adjusted American (1964)
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If you can see your path
laid out in front of you
step by step, you know
it’s not your path.
Your own path you make
with every step you take.
That’s why it’s your path.
~ Joseph Campbell
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There is something in
every one of you that
waits and listens for the
sound of the genuine in
yourself.
It is the only true guide
you will ever have.
And if you cannot hear it,
you will all of your life
spend your days on the
ends o f strings that
somebody else pulls.
~ Howard Thurman
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When people pursue a life
dedicated to feeling good,
they become overly sensitive
to their feelings, and can
begin to obsess about any
changes in their emotions.
When they attempt to organize
their lives around feeling good
or, at least, feeling good about
themselves, they prevent true
involvement because they are
continually analyzing and
interpreting their slightest
emotional changes….
They then can become paralyzed,
limited, narrow, and confused
— all because they fear
unwanted emotions.
~ Robert Fritz
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“I must say a word about fear.
It is life’s only true opponent.
Only fear can defeat life.
It is a clever, treacherous adversary,
how well I know.
It has no decency, respects no law
or convention, shows no mercy.
It goes for your weakest spot,
which it finds with unnerving ease.
It begins in your mind, always …
so you must fight hard to express it.
You must fight hard to shine the
light of words upon it.
Because if you don’t, if your fear
becomes a wordless darkness that
you avoid, perhaps even manage
to forget, you open yourself to further
attacks of fear because you never truly
fought the opponent who defeated you.”
~ Yann Martel, Life of Pi
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Letting go involves being
aware of a feeling, letting
it come up, staying with it,
and letting it run its course
without wanting to make it
different or do anything
about it….
The first step is to allow
yourself to have the feeling
without resisting it, venting
it, fearing it, condemning it,
or moralizing about it.
It means to drop judgment
and to see that it is just
a feeling….
Let go of wanting to resist
the feeling.
It is resistance that keeps
the feeling going.
~ David R. Hawkins.
Letting Go: The Pathway of Surrender
(Hay House, 2012)
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If you treat every
situation as a life
and death matter,
you’ll die
a lot of times.
~ Dean Smith
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Anxious people (and we are
all anxious people) try to control
other people mainly by editing
themselves — hiding the parts
they think others won’t like.
Most importantly, they bury their
feelings instead of expressing them
That last sentence defines the heart
of anxiety.
That’s because feelings are — excuse
this analogy — like shit.
Like feces, feelings are supposed to
be expelled and expressed, not
hidden and buried.
When they’re buried, they don’t
go away; they collect.
The person then becomes
emotionally constipated,
lives in a constant state of
internal self-interruption,
pressure, and emotional pain.
Anxiety is the name we give
to this pain.
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Neurotics are always trying to
change themselves by using
willpower, but this only serves
to make them more neurotic.
Emotional health can be gained
only through self-awareness and
self-acceptance.
Struggling to change one’s being
only enmeshes the person
more deeply in the fate
he is trying to avoid.
~ Alexander Lowen
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In school, in the workplace,
in learning an art or sport,
we are taught to fear, hide,
or avoid mistakes.
But mistakes are of incalculable
value to us.
There is first the value of mistakes
as the raw material of learning.
If we don’t make mistakes,
we are unlikely to make
anything at all.
~ Stephen Nachmanovich
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We students of control addiction quickly come to realize that a monkeytrap is not really a trap at all.
It’s an invitation to trap yourself.
It succeeds because of a part of the human personality I call the inner monkey.
This is the part dominated by monkeymind, the addicted part, the compulsive part.
It’s the part that grabs on and won’t let go.
I once invited my own inner monkey — whom I call Bert — to introduce himself to my blog readers.
Bert wrote,
I entered Steve’s life early, probably well before kindergarten, probably before he could even talk.
My mission?
To protect him.
From?
Everything.
Scary situations. Painful feelings. Discomfort of every sort.
Uncertainty. Rejection. Failure. Disappointment. Frustration. Conflict. Rejection. Sadness.
(Just noticed I listed “rejection” twice. Sorry. I really really hate rejection.)
I did it mainly by searching relentlessly for ways to change things, edit things, things both outside and inside him, to somehow move them closer to what he wanted or needed or preferred.
I also taught him tricks.
Coping tricks, like avoiding emotional risks and surprises.
And relationship tricks, like hiding his feelings and obsessing over how others see him.
Even perceptual tricks, like selective memory and blaming and imagining that I can guess the future or read other people’s minds.
None of these works over time. But they gave him a kind of comfort.
We grew close quickly. I became his constant companion, trusted advisor, and — he thought — very best friend.
I meant well. And at times I’ve been useful, even helped him out of some bad spots.
But in the end ours have been an unhealthy relationship.
Why?
Because in the end my need for control set Steve at odds with reality instead of teaching him how to accept and coexist and cooperate with it.
It’s like that with us inner monkeys.
We mean well. We really do.
But we’re kind of, well, stupid.
For example, you may already know that the title Monkeytraps refers to a method used in the East to trap monkeys, where fruit is placed in a weighted jar or bottle and the monkey traps himself by grabbing the fruit and refusing to let go.
That’s my thing. That’s what I do.
I grab on and refuse to let go.
Like I said. Stupid.
One last word:
I’m betting you have one of my brothers or sisters inside you.
You have it as surely as you have fears and anxieties, and a monkeymind that whispers and worries and scares you.
You may not have noticed this secret tenant before.
But look anyway.
As I said, monkeytraps are just invitations. They work because of what we monkey-driven humans do.
We set traps, then reach inside them.
We build cages, then move in and set up housekeeping.
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