Introspective Guides: Accessing Guidance In Times of Need- Episode 76

Awareness That Heals, Episode 76.

Hopefully you're seeing this as an invitation for you to be you exactly as you are in your depths, and for you to be rooting for yourself, and for you to follow that up with your intelligence, with your sensitivity, and take as long as is needed to be able to find the direction.

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 to find alternative ways to live a more fulfilling and inspiring life.

Thanks so much again for joining us at Awareness That Heals. It is truly a pleasure to have you be joining us again on the program. And what we're going to be talking about today is focusing on something different than what we've been doing the last few shows. We're actually going to be looking at life situations that we all face in different varieties and how we can take care of ourselves when we have a life situation that's very, very difficult. Now clearly that means when we have a very difficult life situation, we're also going to be having difficult feelings, but there's some different nuances when we're dealing life situations. In life situations, we're still gonna have conditioned reactions that we've been taught. So for example, if we're facing an economic risk and, or we're not sure we're gonna be able to pay the bills, we're not gonna be able to maintain our lifestyle, fear, anxiety, all of that's gonna happen. And maybe on top of that, self-judgment. Why did you do that? You made a stupid reaction. And we're going to have a wave of emotions and reactions to emotions that are going to be, quote, normal. And what we're wanting to do, consistent with what we've been talking about, is be able to really slow down and say, what's my deepest core feeling? And I want to give it some time to be able to be felt. So let's say it is anxiety, or it is self-criticism, or hatred, or inadequacy. No matter what it is, that we want to give ourselves time to breathe into it. And I say breathe into it as both a metaphor and an actuality, so that we have a better chance of feeling it. And notice, and really even as I'm talking to you now, notice when you look at these difficult situations and you have your initial reactions, whether or not there's any part of you that says, oh good, I'm aware. And even more important, whether there's any part of you that feels, oh good, I'm aware, or whether it's just of moving right along from one difficult feeling to a constellation of other feelings and thoughts. And the way we've been taught is when we— and I won't say that we've been taught by teaching, but the way we've been taught by example and the people that we've seen is we see a series of reactions and there isn't a steady model for identifying, ah, let me see, what is it that this situation is most triggering? What are the most difficult 1 or 2 or 3 feelings that I want to stop and pause and feel? And so it's like an event where you're mandatorily free associating. You've taken some kind of drug and it's making you just go, oh, I'm afraid. Oh, this is terrible. Oh, I've been stupid. Oh, I've been this. Oh, I've been that. It's like 4 or 5, 6 things that just fleet right in a row. And that we're not really able to do 2 things. One is identify the most important feeling or feelings. And number 2 is appreciate that it's there. And number 3 is being able to go, 'Ah, I want to care for myself, and I want to care for the situation, and I want to take care of the situation.' So you have a place that's not only aware, but you have a place that's constructive, that's on your side. And I don't mean on your side like against anybody else. I mean it's just rooting for your goodness. Now, as I ask you that, is there anybody that's listening that doesn't want to root for their own goodness? And yet when you look at your situation, when you're facing a terrible situation, how many times are you rooting for your own goodness? How many times does that even come into your awareness or into your feeling? So we're talking about creating a hypnotic Pavlovian suggestion where when I'm in a difficult situation, I want to face the feelings as positive way as possible. and I want to be as wishing goodness on myself and being able to find the way to care for the feeling and also to be as resourceful and as practical and as intelligent as I know how to be. And what that takes is really being able not only to know what we feel but what we need, which really brings us again to the importance of being able to identify what we feel and what we need. So forgive me if you've listened to this a lot of times, and especially if you've already got it in front of you, but for anyone that's new to the show, please go to awarenessthatheals.org and look at the introspective guides, download them, they're free, and they will identify the 75 most challenging feelings and the 75 most liberating needs, qualities, actions, and thoughts. And the key here is when you become more literate to identify whenever a situation happens, I want to know what my internal experience is. Now, hopefully you're not seeing this as me laying a trip on you. Hopefully you're seeing this as an invitation for you to be you exactly as you are in your depths, and for you to be rooting for yourself, and for you to follow that up with your intelligence, with your sensitivity, and take as long as is needed to be able to find the direction. When you see the 75 alternative qualities and needs, you'll see that there'll be 1 or 2 or 3 or 4 that you particularly need to focus on, which gets your mind at least focused on caring for yourself. I'm hoping at this point that this is certainly familiar to your mind, but I'd ask you to ask yourself, how much does this feel like it's going in like an organic structure inside you is actually starting to form? It's like developing a computer program and you've plugged the computer program in, or you just know about it. Knowledge is not that helpful. What's helpful is when you want to embrace it, when you see the sensibility that it's going to serve your life in virtually every way, because you're not either abandoning yourself or the situation, and you're also not striking out against it like, I hate it. Can't stand it. It's unfair. This person's to blame. That person's to blame. So ask yourself, and I think for most people, if they really take it in, there's a sort of almost a regret that it took so many years to have something so obvious to you. Because I know what I'm saying is not brilliant. I know that you already know that you want to root for yourself. And I know you already know you don't want to be superficial in yourself. You want to, you want to know yourself. You'd rather know yourself than abandon yourself. So I know what's being said is not coming out of left field. It's coming from inside you. I want to be myself. I want to care for myself. I want to be resourceful in how I take care of a situation. And that's not how I'm programmed. I'm programmed to be an emotional reactor based on my conditioning in the world. And I want to break that program. I want to be the boss of my own life. I want to be the authority of my own life. I want to be the guide of my own life. I want to be a good guide. Now, as you listen to these words, see not only if it's true, but see if you have any juice. Do you have any aliveness? Do you have any passion? Are you taking notes? Are you, are you identifying what your situations are? Because if you don't take it personally, it's not worth listening. It's only worth listening if you have some hunger to want to know yourself deeply and to want to care for yourself deeply and to want to find ways to do it that are based on you following you. So before we start entering into today, I'd like to introduce Dave, my dearest friend of 50 years and partner at the Global Bridge Foundation.

Thank you. I just want to, as a person who has known you over 50 years and clearly by decades predates the advantages the introspective guides offer, the clues that are written, the patterns that can lead to deeper understandings. But as a person that was pretty lost as I wanted to look inside for many, many years, it took a lot of striking out in terms of identification of what was going on with myself. I mean, took a lot of time and willingness to suffer with that lack of identification of it and solutions of it. And to have the introspective guides to offer clues, and again, many of the sequences of what you can do relates to tolerance of whatever it is, so you can hang in with it long enough, be patient long enough to get somewhere. Because as we've talked about before, the initial response is often I hate this. I want to get the hell out of town, out of my inner town. I want to distract myself, and circumstantially, I got a million of those.

I'm really glad you used the word tolerance. It made me think of one of the 4 false starts that you nursed me through every one of them by rewriting what I'm writing to have a much better writer even be able to write it. So that they could understand what I was saying. And in one of the versions, it started off with a 5-step process, and it started off with barely tolerate, and then tolerate was the next step up, and then it was mostly accept, and then it was accept, and then it was appreciate. And it shows how hard it is to even have barely tolerating our experience, which is why we go into fight or flight, because we can't even barely tolerate, let alone tolerate. So I appreciate you bringing that to, to the surface. Also would like to introduce Joel, who I won't repeat myself again other than the fact that I feel very grateful that an engineer isn't just an engineer, he's also an extraordinarily sensitive human being that has something to contribute and is being invited to come in as he sees fit.

I appreciate that, Robert. I would just like to tell everybody that as somebody who's never been exposed to this before, getting a hold of these introspective guides, I find it extremely helpful that it almost becomes like a bullet point. A lot of people are busy in their lives and it's a daunting task to get into it. These are deep emotions and deep ideas. But the introspective guides are great. Robert was nice enough to send me the hard copies. I pick them up, I look at them in my hand, they're immediate to me, and they give me just a guide that seems a little bit less daunting. So they are worth their weight in gold when it comes to that.

Yeah, they don't weigh very much. So I'd like to start off today with really talking about something that I know I have actually been more angry and impatient and intolerant in this area than any area probably in my life in terms of acting out for extended period of minutes, or in some cases, or not so much acting out but acting in, and then having to work it out, but have it really being worked up inside me. And I know that a lot of you because almost everybody I know has a version of this. But it's worse for me because I'm so undeveloped in this area that I have to go on a lot of these calls. And it is a call asking for help with technology. And when I'm asking for help and I'm making a call for technology and I've got Apple or I've got my cable channel, or I've got the geek squad and I'm on hold for half an hour. And while I'm there, I'm going, Jesus, why can't they hire one more person? What the hell's wrong with the situation? And then I'm reminding myself, saying, okay, you're angry, you're frustrated. What's going to help you? Okay, take a few deep breaths, take a few deep breaths. And that gets me to what I would say to bear tolerance. I'm in a state of error tolerance. I'm actually able to get there. Yeah, sometimes it takes 2 minutes of talking to myself, sometimes it takes 5 minutes. And then I reach the technology person and they, they aren't able to do what they've advertised they can do. And so then I ask for a supervisor, and then the supervisor isn't able to do what, what they've said they're going to be able to do. They escalate is what, what they call it. And basically, I'm really impatient. I'm intolerant of what I experience as the incompetence. And I stop myself internally and I say on a regular basis, you're intolerant, you're impatient, you could be an asshole to this person. This person isn't even the one that set up the system. So there's a trail, and I'm saying this to you so So you hear this, there's a trail of sensibility that we haven't really talked about much that is trying to reach myself, my best self. So I realize that my emotions being catharted or even just being felt enduringly inside is just burning up my body. So I need to sometimes even passionately say to myself, this person is not responsible. And it happens in so many areas of life. I think about DoorDash and thinking about, you know, waiting online and complaining about an order or whatever else. And then ultimately, when it comes down to it, I recognize the impatience, I recognize the intolerance. Then I say to myself one of those trails of thoughts, this isn't even the person that's in authority that set up the system that isn't hiring another person. So I've trained myself through 300 or 400 times of not training myself to say to them, Listen, I'm doing my best not to express my impatience with you. And I know it's not your fault that the system is set up. But when you ask me, how am I today? I'm frustrated as hell in this moment. And I don't want to take it out on you. So acknowledging where I am and making it clear I'm not aiming it at the other person is a gift that I'm hoping you will consider when you're in this horrible situation where, you know, it used to be you turn on the TV. Now there's 9 technology companies you might have to call to figure out how to do it, and I don't have a clue most of the time. You know, sometimes I can't even get TV on, you know, let alone hear the sound or have the quality of things or shift to Netflix or something along that line. So The awareness of the impatience, slowing it down to have the intention to care. I have to go through the basics after doing this for 45 years. I still need to go through the basics when this reoccurs over and over again. Now, I think where I have gained is I rarely, very, very rarely will act out on somebody. But will there still be a subtle tone of voice where I'm a little bit impatient? Definitely. And if somebody gives me guff on the other end, or smartass, which doesn't happen too often, might I be a little more impatient? Yes. Or frustrated. And so the important thing to realize here is we don't learn, learn anything. We might learn it, but It's going to be a lifelong practice. We're going to need to be repeating to ourselves, this is the feeling I want to experience, my depth feeling. I want to care for myself and any significant others, or at least be neutral in situations like this. I don't have to be lovey-dovey, you know, but at least be neutral and Most importantly, I want to get my needs taken care of, which is the wake-up. If I have an attitude with this person, I'm shooting myself in the foot. They're not going to want to cooperate to their maximum potential unless they feel that they're being treated as a human being. And so I go out of my way to acknowledge what I'm going through so maybe, maybe they can empathize, and that I'm not blaming them. So then they have a much better chance of empathizing. But most importantly, in that situation, I'm interested in taking care of my needs at that point. I'm not really there to be a therapist to them or a caring person in a big way to them. And so I remind myself, this is about your needs. Don't shoot yourself in the foot. Don't get them alienated. So I'll say something along the lines of, would you please refer me to somebody who may have more knowledge than you or a supervisor, and then I'll go up as high as I have to. And in medical situations, it's that way up the kazoo. And so the, the critical thing is, A, be aware of the feeling. B, recognize you want to find a place that cares for yourself and anybody else. And C, any dialogue that's going in that's reinforcing the negative attitude and extinguish it. And then next Recognize you have a need here. You don't want to lose touch with the need. You need to be taken care of. Don't let your emotions thwart it. It's okay to have the emotions, but don't let them interfere with either your tone of voice to any significant degree or the message that you're giving so that you can maximize the empathy on the other end.

Well, I have to say, as an early supporter of the, at least the computer tech support between you and I and navigating different programs. I'm relieved to hear you're making calls to other places. And, uh, I think you said a couple of things that are really important, and I want to, I want to not miss them. Really two. One is there are circumstances that can't be solved, that need replacement, need— they simply just can't be solved in that kind of a scenario. And that may be in any of these circumstances, or it may not be, depending on whether a skillful person's been reached. But maybe you've reached a skillful person, as I have, and I found out, you know, your stuff broke, gonna have to give you a new one. And then the second thing I think you said and hinted at that's very important is that we, we don't arrive internally at a final place, which you've said so many times over the course of the podcast historically, that there is no place of just sheer gliding into ease all the way through a circumstance where you have needs. Really not possible to be 100%.

Yeah, I think, I think the, the key which really is a relief of pressure, is this is not about perfection or arriving. It's about— I like to think of it as an arrow pointing in one direction. You're moving toward being more patient. You're moving toward being more empathic that the other person didn't set the rules. You're moving toward the realization that your problem may very well not get solved and that you may be calling another whole different phone call, might get rerouted, you might get hung up on, any number of things. And then you get to dial back again, then you get to do it 3 times or 5 times. And each time is such a great lesson, you know, makes me think of, except it's really reserved for more serious things. It makes me think of what's referred to as Tibetan blessings. Where in Tibet, in a certain sect, you know, they talk about when you find out that you're terminally ill, they congratulate you because now you have a chance to really wake up. Now you're really facing something. And if you can see it as that, it's kind of another version of 'Oh good,' except it's a little more extreme. And being able to be kind with yourself that We're never going to get it, get it. And this is a relatively superficial example, but it's so real to life and it's so much a part of our daily life. And I'd ask you to, you know, substitute in medical for technology, substitute in pharmacies, substitute in merchandise, substitute in waiting for a phone call, whatever it is. You're working with going back to your original feeling and you want to care and you don't want your own blood vessels to tighten up. You don't want your muscles to tighten up. You don't want to increase the chances of hurting your body, let alone the obviousness of you hurting your emotional state in your heart. The second situation that is a common one is you have insecurity about money. And this is just going to demonstrate one simple principle that you're in a situation. I have a friend that used to always say, you know, I'm looking for upside. I can't find upside. You know, he was constantly— Dave and I, very close friend of both of ours— I'm looking for upside. I can't find upside. And what we would do is bring it back to sort of realize you're feeling insecure, realize you're feeling helpless. What can you do? Which is another principle of this approach is bring it back to as close to the present as possible. If you bring it to a vague future, which a lot of our issues are a vague future, like I wanna find a way to earn money, bring it back to what can I do? I want it, first of all, I'm aware of the insecurity. And the impatience and the frustration, and I want to care for myself. Bring it back to the present. What can I do this week? What can I do today? Wallowing in the feeling and not bringing it back to what's possible, you know, yeah, you can contemplate, that's fine, but then give yourself the dignity of saying, I'm not stewing, I'm contemplating. If you're stewing and you're calling it contemplating, Drop it. And if you don't, if you aren't doing either one, can I make an email? Send an email to somebody I know that maybe that could get me a job? Can I make a phone call I'm afraid of making? You know, can I go on the internet and look in that category for jobs? And it's like we're frozen in our emotions and we don't realize that the next hour is important, the next day is important, the next week is important, but the feeling itself is futile if we're stewing in it, if we don't move to the next simple need. And then one more example before we, we end today, which is really very, very common in today's world. And frankly, you have to have your head in the sand if you're not there, which is we have a, we have a tremendous fear of the world's situation, or at least anxiety about it. What are we going to do? I feel so impotent. I feel so helpless. I don't know what I'm going to do. And it's so common that either we complain about one political party or we say, I can't handle the news anymore. I'm just going to withdraw. That's the ticket to death. That's the ticket to contributing to the world dying. We all need to recognize that when we have that fear, That's a very healthy fear because we're wanting, really the need is to have courage and to have wisdom to help deal with that fear in the world situation, to make whatever kind of small or bigger contribution we can make. And it's a similar premise to the one before, which is we need to bring it to the present. Don't let yourself stay with anxiety and fear in some vague future ideating about what could happen. It's fine to do that once in a while, but not as a lifestyle. We need to break it into bits and be a courageous citizen of the country, of the world, and just say, do I know anybody I can have a conversation with about this that's a constructive conversation? Is there anywhere I can email? Is there any group I can join? Do I have any volunteer time? And If you don't, then you go into inquiry. You go into that question and say, what can I possibly do this week that could be constructive? And you live in that question sincerely. Now, you may ask that question while you're emoting, ah, it's not going to get anywhere, this is not going to do anything. And then go back and recognize that's that same feeling that's avoiding the original feeling of fear or helplessness. And go back to the question and see if you can have the question have a tone of caring, because you do care about the world situation. That's why you're having these emotions. And it requires tremendous emotional maturity to bring it to the present or near future. It's a lot easier to either complain or to withdraw and space out. But our world needs you, and it needs you to say, okay, what's it— what's needed for our country to be able to vote? What's needed for us to be able to have a democracy? What's my contribution to that? What's the truth? What are my sources of listening to information? Are they reliable? If I'm listening to the internet, if I'm listening to Conspiracy theories, I'm not being honest. Go to multiple sources. Don't rely on one source. And ask yourself, how can I really care? How— first of all, how can I get good information, the best information possible? And that might mean you have to go to 5 sources. And then, how can I contribute this week? Now, I say that, and as I'm saying it, I'm feeling, oh, is anybody going to listen to this? Is anyone going to really listen to this and activate themselves? You know, if we had millions more people that were saying, no way I'm giving up on our country, no way I'm going to be a passive citizen, no way I'm just going to just be a complainer, I'm going to join the world this week, I'm going to join our country this week. Every one of us needs to be involved. We need to vote. We need to make sure voting's okay and safe. And we need to find a way to do our small part at least for our democracy, for our country, for our world. And the fear is a clue that we need to find courage. And courage doesn't happen as an abstraction. It happens by getting real, by being present, and by doing something tangible. Is there an organization I know of or a group that I have respect for that I can join, or maybe not join but volunteer or talk about or support. So the key thing is awareness of the feeling, not getting lost in the content in your head, not getting lost in the future, wanting to care, and staying in the near future or the present. That's a humongous emotional maturity Leap. Please don't just listen to that in your head. Recognize how hard that is, but how beneficial it would be if you could trust yourself that you're going to stay in the present rather than lose yourself in the future and then get— become a slave to fight and flight. So our country, our world needs you, and we all need to stay in the present, near future. We all need to stay aware of our original feelings. And we all need to recognize it's more sane to care than to not care. And I believe you all know that intellectually, but it needs to be developed in the face of a hurricane and the winds are blowing and it's hard to stay centered. And if you can't change your feelings, let your mind go there. Your wisdom is good enough. It's very hard to tolerate the world situation and the country situation, but our intelligence can kick in this week, today. Simple connections. How can I be positive? So I thank you for your attention and ask that all of us do our part to be aware of our feelings, to care, and especially for more important issues like the survival of democracy or the country or the world to give our best selves encouragement to show up. Thank you.

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.