Robert Strock describes a decade after his kidney transplant when medications left him emotionally numb. He learned to care for himself anyway by choosing helpful thoughts, identifying underlying needs like communication and empathy, and shifting from fighting what he disliked to moving toward what he wanted.
Almost 25 years ago.
10 years.
Now, I really want you to understand that this is not coming from a head trip and a theoretical experience. I had a kidney transplant almost 25 years ago. My brother gave me a kidney, and for 10 years, I was not able to experience any good feelings. None. Now, I know that's probably an impossible reality for you to sense, but when my brother gave me a kidney in the hospital, I was so exhausted and hyped up that I wasn't even feeling grateful to my brother, which was just completely disturbing because I knew something was wrong with me because of the chemicals that were happening and because I was taking a medication that I needed to take for the rest of my life. And so I realized, well, how am I going to take care of myself if I can't feel joy, if I can't feel the intimacy of love, if I can't feel inspired or fulfilled? What can I do? And what came to me because I was sleeping for the first six months, an hour, a night, I had a lot of time, a lot of time on my hands. And so I realized I still had control of my intention and my will, and I was able to have empathy for others, but I just couldn't inwardly direct it toward myself. And I wouldn't say my empathy was that impressive, but it was better than anything else I had going. So intention and will and discipline and really focusing on how can I care for myself without wanting the feelings of caring to be there, but being able to at least have supportive thoughts. Now, in a later webinar, we're going to go into something called Friendly Mind, which is when you are completely, and I'll use non French screwed. How can you use your awareness, which you might just think is your head, but actually your wisdom? How can you use your wisdom to say thoughts that will help you when you can't support yourself with better feelings? So when I was completely wasted, exhausted and driven, I would say to myself, things like, these are chemicals. You know, you're working harder on yourself than you ever have, and yet you're not able to reach good feelings. But you can have supportive thoughts. Like, not only are you not doing this on purpose, but really what you can do is just do what is going to help you relax, what's going to help you not be against yourself. So hopefully that makes it clear no matter what state you're in, even if it lasts for 10 seconds, not 10 years, you are looking for the thoughts that are going to be most beneficial to you. So as I'm starting to talk, we might get a glimpse of the Challenging feelings, Joel, just to flash on the screen. And as you have any of these challenging feelings that come up, and maybe identify one or two that are most frequent for you when they come up, you ask yourself at the beginning, okay, what's the thoughts that are literally going to put me in the right direction? So if you're furious at somebody, you're angry at somebody, then is it going to help you to say, yeah, let's just give it to him, or, you know, I'm kind of an asshole, or is it going to help you to say, wow, I'm really angry. I need to be careful because this is a danger red flag warning signal that I want to try to figure out what is it that I got that I didn't want, or what is it that I didn't get that made me angry, and what are the underlying needs that are there, you know, and maybe we can take a look at the list of the underlying needs as well. And it could be that you wanted communication, or you wanted empathy, or you wanted affection. And if you can stay tuned into what it is you needed rather than what it is you didn't like, it's gold. Then you're able to say, I'm. I'm wrestling with not wanting to be angry. But I realize what I really need is for you to be softer with me or to take an interest in me, or to share a little bit of affection or a little bit of communication. And that becomes a complete shift from being against what you don't like to being for what you do, like.
