Continual Progression and Personal Evolution - Episode 22

Awareness That Heals, Episode 22.

So remember, every time you see self-rejection and you have that shifting of gears to move toward self-acceptance, there's a fulfillment of our potential. There's a meaning, there's a purpose to our lives.

The Awareness That Heals podcast helps its listeners learn to develop the capacity to have a more healing response to emotions and situations rather than becoming stuck. Your host, Robert J. Strock, has practiced psychotherapy for more than 45 years. He wrote the book, "Awareness That Heals: Bringing Heart and Wisdom to Life's Challenges," to help develop self-caring and the capacity to respond in an effective way to life's challenges, especially at times when we are most prone to be critical or to withdraw. Together, we will explore how to become aware of our challenging feelings and at the same time, find alternative ways to live a more fulfilling and inspiring life.

A warm welcome again to Awareness That Heals, bringing heart and wisdom to life's challenges. We're going to continue to deepen our conversation about something that is what we've already acknowledged as very subtle and in almost all cases hidden. And the effect on us is insidious because when we're unaware of our challenging feelings and how we reject ourselves, it's like we're held in a pretzel, like, like our body is almost like having rigor mortis set in on a minor level around these certain difficult emotions when they arise. And we don't have a way of softening this hardening of our inner life. And that's gonna obviously come out to everybody that we talk to in one form or another. And the theme, of course, that we're dealing with again is the normal reality for most of us, which is that when we're really challenged, We don't like it. We hate it. We're against ourselves, not consciously, but we don't like feeling anxious or depressed or helpless or inadequate, inferior, competitive, jealous. And so we then, that not liking leads to self-rejection. And so we're really going to explore the roots of it. And it may sound repetitive and some of it is, But each episode we're deepening different nuances. I'd like to start with introducing Dave, my longstanding partner through life, co-president of Global Bridge Foundation. Dave, thanks for joining us again.

Thank you for the invitation. As always, I am so happy to be here and participate.

So it's really important to see that most commonly The original cause of what we think created our feelings is outside ourselves. Society, our parents, peer pressure, standards, goals, ideals. It's a setup for self-rejection because they made us feel this way. We were just following what we were told we should be like, telling us when we're supposed to get married, how we should feel about money, how important it is to be having self-esteem and be validated, having kids, being a good looker, staying young as possible, looking young. But the truth is that we are individuals that don't have to just be carbon copies of what we see around us. We have the capacity to think for ourselves. We have the capacity to look for ourselves. We have the capacity to see that all these standards, yes, they affected us, but they don't have to define us. And the more we develop this autonomous capacity to witness what's going on with our challenging feelings, with our self-rejection, and moving towards self-acceptance, the more we develop this autonomous self. We go through a process that might be called We identify— we're identifying, or identification with feeling like we have to be a certain way, and if we aren't, we're failing, then we feel bad— to then gradually disidentify, because we see that those feelings almost always are based on unrealistic ideals, and we want to be grounded and what we truly believe. But we've got to take the time to say, what are our values? What do we truly believe? And then we're starting to disidentify, and then that allows us to move toward self-compassion, tolerance, acceptance. And if we don't do that work, as we've seen in our society and our culture, we're going to be scapegoating other races, other countries, other religions, and we're going to be caught in a reactive mode identifying with what we were taught and in a sense victimizing ourselves by staying unaware, obviously unwittingly. So I'm going to start with a case study that is all too common. And again, if you have something parallel, but it's different, go with yourself, don't go with me. And this is somebody that was quite dear to me that from childhood had a chemical neurological depression dominantly with some anxiety. And if it was just looked at from society's perspective, Oh, he's defective. Poor guy. You know, he's inadequate. He's kind of a bit agitated. And that would be him. And what we're encouraging is the ability to see, no, that's not him. That's his chemistry. That's not his fault. He didn't earn that. He has something in his DNA or something in in his body that's going to make his moods be that way unless he's enlightened enough to be able to pursue other chemistries, to balance the chemistries, see if there's a possibility of therapy can help. And in his case, he shared a lot with me and a few others that this is how he felt. He identified his challenging emotion, and he also went on to say that he hated it. He hated being more uptight than everybody around him. He hated being anxious all the time and depressed. Couldn't stand it. And my response was to congratulate him for his awareness. And that his awareness was a very hopeful sign. And he was a little bit disoriented at first. And fortunately, I have enough friends that further supported that same message. And that led him to pursuing therapy and to pursuing psychiatry and medication. And over a period of 3 or 4 years, he went from somebody that hated himself, that was agitated on a regular basis because he couldn't tolerate feeling depressed and anxious, which is all too common, and took a couple medications that helped him sleep, that helped him be more relaxed during the day, but he still felt anxious and especially depressive. I wouldn't say depressed. So he still had a lot of work to do. And so we went on to, what do you say to yourself when you feel depressed? And at first he said, well, really not much, nothing. Yeah. Then he went, but I don't really like it. So, well, do you think you have feelings inside that you don't really like it, but you just aren't saying anything? And he said, yeah, I find myself being contracted or irritable still, even after the medications. So do you think there's another possibility? Can you see how innocent you are, that you have a hero's journey ahead of you if you choose to take it, which is you're the responder, you can be the responder to this very difficult state. And that's a lot harder than just being born where you feel relaxed and it's easy and you feel loving. You have a chance to be an example of someone that can live more from your wisdom and guide yourself from your wisdom that's saying, I'm not doing this on purpose. I inherited this. This isn't me. This is my chemistry. Yes, it results in feelings, but I can't change the feelings. I've done my work with professionals and I'll continue to do my work with professionals, but it's not going to get an eraser and just erase all my feelings. And so we explored what kinds of things could he say to himself, what qualities did he need to lean into to be able to be like what we talked about in the last episode, be like a car where how could he shift a gear when he was noticing that not only was he in the challenging feeling, but he was maybe already reacting in irritableness or just cathartic in general, or going on long monologues, which he would do at times. And he was saying, I can just admit that to myself and to those people that are more trustworthy. I can tell them that I'm feeling anxious and I'm not a cripple. This doesn't mean that there's something wrong with me. As a matter of fact, it means kind of like an illness. I have something that I'm suffering with, but I actually am identifying more and more with the one that's the responder that can say, in spite of feeling anxious, I can put out a decent vibe. I can admit this to myself and to those that I trust, and I can be disciplined at work. I don't have to be rebellious. And to me, this is a very moving example. And as you are looking at yourself, whatever level you might identify with this, that's a very heroic awareness, especially if you follow the steps and do everything you can do. A few nights ago, I was doing a workshop with teenagers, and the first 3 or 4 were talking about really serious stuff. Anorexia, bulimia. One of them had had 3 suicide attempts and had gotten to a psychiatrist and was 48 days since they'd done anything destructive. They were counting the days. And then the 4th person came up and she said in kind of an embarrassed way, gosh, I don't identify with any of you. And, you know, it's like, you know, I'm sorry to say, I don't mean to put you down, but I feel good. You know, I don't have these kinds of problems. And there was a bit of arrogance, nice person, but a bit of arrogance. And I sensed that she was suffering from the exact opposite, which was a superiority complex. And when I said it to her, I said, you know, I think your challenging emotion might be that you feel superior. And she was absolutely shocked because she knew that for years she was saying that to herself. I feel superior to you. I feel superior to you. I feel superior to you. And she was busted because she knew she wasn't really superior because she was smart enough to see that that was her challenge. It wasn't her gift. As I said to her, I think you know, if you were really superior, you'd be compassionate. You wouldn't be feeling superior. You'd be feeling like, how can I help? If you really have extra. So she went on and was kind of thrilled to out it because she hadn't seen it as being a challenge. And she was also able to see that the result of the superiority led to a form of self-rejection passively in that she withdrew from a lot of people and she felt alone. So withdrawal and aloneness were some of the self-rejecting feelings that she wasn't aware of because she wasn't even aware of the superiority to start out with. So again, that's why it's so important to be able to track where your challenging emotion is, because it could seem like it's a good thing. You may be identifying it as as something like superiority and really believe that you're part of the chosen race or the chosen person.

Just want to say, in both of those stories and situations, brings me back to when I was about 20. And they started way ahead of me. In the first case, somebody aware of their challenging emotion, When I was that age, very early, I feel I was vacant. I was put in a situation just by chance in a psychology class at school where people were sharing stuff. And like your second example, I had nothing. The difference was in this circumstance, everybody had something to share and there was no room for approval of my having nothing. When I said I had nothing, it was like I was full of shit. And I was hammered. And I left there really depressed and really out of sorts and really like, well, what does this mean? I just have no clue. I had no language inside to see what was going on inside of me. I was an external person moving through life feeling what was going to please other people. I was a pleaser. And I know I may have mentioned this pattern, and I think anybody listening throughout these podcasts is going to get to know me in this way, but it's such an advantage to be aware at least of your challenge. And I didn't even have that until it was hammered home to me in a very devastating way. And my reaction to it was also very devastating. My reaction to it was to, well, I guess I better be the opposite. I guess I better be selfish. I guess I better learn how to be upset. I get, you know, all these other things came in, very confused time in my life.

Yeah, it's a great example. And interestingly enough, I had a session before we did today's podcast, where a man was saying that he's been a pleaser with his wife. And I said, even the word pleaser is distorted. It's really more accurately a dependent and not really operating from a place of independence where you're going to take care of yourself, you're going to take care of others. And, you know, if you're really independent, that's where you'd be. So even the word pleaser becomes a confusing word because it sounds good, just like superiority. You know, I'm better than they are. You know, that it sounds good, but it has a trickiness to it because the word itself can be so beguiling, or let's say, leading you in the wrong direction.

And I just want to amplify that point by saying I was so vacant at that time. In retrospect, I see that I was a pleaser, but at the time I had no clue. This is just, as you said before, the adoption of the conditionings, the way I was brought up, other things. No clue. No clue. Just how I operated and moved through life.

Yeah. And one of the really important things of what you're saying is for those people that feel like, well, I don't really identify with this because I don't have anything that challenging. There's a very good chance that you've adopted one of the conditioned standards of life. Like, oh, I'm very successful and I have 3 houses. And so I'm happy. And the success has blocked the more challenging emotions because you're living off the egoic identity of being successful. And you might be a bit of an ass as a father or as a husband or as a boss, or you might not be able to tolerate 2 days of being alone without feeling very, very empty because you're living so much on your success and the validation you're getting from somebody. And in a certain way, you're dependent on culture and you're dependent on the validation you're getting. And you're not even aware of it. And so it becomes very important to not just see your feelings and hear what your mind tells you about it, because your mind's going to have a way of framing it in the positive for many people. So as an overview, and this may seem redundant, but if you really hear the whole thing, you'll realize very likely you haven't gotten there yet. So it's for emphasis to penetrate deeper. Firstly, do you get the importance of seeing the challenges emotionally or situationally as being the good news rather than the bad news, that it gives you the opportunity? And do you see the importance of asking the question of, do you like yourself there? Do you care for yourself there? Because if you don't, then you're going to be fixated and you're not going to see how you're rejecting yourself. And then do you see the importance of following through with moving toward the healing qualities and actions and thoughts to support a direction in your life that's going to serve you those you love, and hopefully well beyond that as well. This makes the whole process of inner looking optimistic, if and only if you sincerely have a part of you that wants to do what's needed to grow. Because if you see something that isn't good and you don't want to change it, you still want to keep acting out, well then in that situation, I agree it wouldn't be the good news. But if you're ready to be honest with yourself and really look at how you can be more caring towards yourself and then not let that challenge lead you to actions and inactions in the world that are harmful, then it's all going to be good news. It's really like a pregnancy. Where you're pregnant with potentially great growth and evolution. It's one of the reasons in our society, frankly, why aging is viewed as a bummer, because you're older and this and that. And this idea of continuing to grow is a theory, it's a philosophy. You know, maybe a religion, but it's not rooted in something that we learned in first grade and is as important as achievement and success. But there are quite a few cultures, indigenous cultures, where they do recognize that because of this very thing, that you can keep evolving as you get older, that those extra wrinkles have the potential to be extra wisdom. And I think it's so important for us to embrace this so that we can start to see aging in a different way too. That my God, by the time I'm 80, I'm really going to be really beyond. And yeah, at one level it's a joke, but at another level it's utterly sincere and serious. So remember, every time you see self-rejection and you have that shifting of gears to move toward self-acceptance, there's a fulfillment of our potential, there's a meaning, there's a purpose to our lives. And so many of us are suffering from, well, what's— I can't find meaning, I can't find purpose. What that probably means is your feeling of meaninglessness hasn't learned how to shift gears, purposelessness. And so you need to look at that as one of your challenging feelings. So again, seeing that we are rejecting ourselves can be the great news when we are ready to look closely, be curious. Gee, is there more than what I'm seeing? I'm not only rejecting myself, but maybe I'm doing it in 5 different kinds of ways. And then maybe I'm also rejecting others because of it. Wow. It's like, if you look at it on a fishing level, you can reel in the line and come back to your real self instead of being way out there as a flag line that's probably nicked quite a few people along the way, including yourself. And so what's so important is when we see that we are rejecting ourselves and we're having challenging emotions, is to ask yourself, how can I support the caring for the wound or the effects of my challenging emotions and self-rejection? I'm gonna repeat that again, because I think it's a really good, important question to leave and let percolate in your being, which is, how can I support myself when I see the challenging emotions and the self-rejection? And if you get to that point where you're sincerely asking that question, you'll know that your life has more purpose. You'll know that you trust yourself more, and you'll know that there's a goodness and a wisdom inside you that you're accessing. And all of us have that potential, but we need to find the, the will and the curiosity to individually inquire inside ourselves. And when we do, there is a real payoff. So again, I, I thank you for hanging in with this. These areas are not easy to completely be honest about, but the rewards are immense, and they're immense right up through our death. Thanks again.

Thanks for listening to Awareness That Heals. Please click subscribe so you won't miss an episode. If you love the podcast, the best way to help spread the word is to rate and review the show. This helps other listeners like you find this podcast. We're deeply grateful you're here and that we have found each other. We encourage you to download our introspective guides at awarenessthatheals.org. They will be helpful to you while listening to our podcast.