Dear Gaia:

I want to go to what you shared in your post before last:

“It’s strange, because on the outside you wouldn’t say I am on the extreme part of emotional spectrum. People would say I’m the stoic one”-

– an online definition of stoic= a person who can endure pain or hardship without showing their feelings or complaining”.

I am now connecting the Magnifying Glass Principle and Behavior (I am developing what follows for myself and sharing it with you. I am sharing it with you in case it helps your understanding as well):

Your mother’s feelings were magnified in her brain and she acted out that magnification in melodramatic (a word you used to describe her behavior) ways. Online definition of melodramatic: exaggerated, sensationalized or overemotional. Words synonymous with melodramatic: overdramatic, overdone, histrionic.

Online Merriam Webster dictionary on dramatic: “Dramatic applies to situations in life .. that stir the imagination and emotions deeply“; “Histrionics applies to tone, gestures and motion and suggests a deliberate affectation or staginess”.

Wikipedia on Histrionic Personality disorder (HPD): “HPD lies in the dramatic cluster of personality disorders. People with HPD.. make loud and inappropriate appearances, exaggerate their behaviors and emotions.. express strong emotions with an impressionistic style.. Individuals with HPD often fail to see their own personal situation realistically, instead dramatize and exaggerate their difficulties… (Characteristics:) Relationships are considered more intimate than they really are…Influenced easily by others or circumstances… Exaggerated emotions; theatrical”.

(“impressionistic style”, above= “strong opinions are expressed with dramatic flair, but underlying reasons are usually vague and diffuse, without supporting facts and details”)

So your mother, like mine, had her feeling magnified in her brain and then she proceeded to act out that magnification in dramatic ways that “stir the imagination and emotions deeply”, the imagination and emotion of the audience, the audience being me as a child, and you as a child.

Our imagination and emotions having been stirred deeply, have become magnified.

But you didn’t act out that magnification with your own dramatic/ histrionic behavior. You chose the  opposite of dramatic, which is stoic.

Similarly, I also chose stoic behavior. I didn’t want to be like my mother.

But the magnification of emotions and imagination remains regardless of not acting dramatically/ histrionically. So we need to choose and practice moderation in how we experience our imagination and emotions (emotional regulation)-

-and we need to choose and practice moderation in how we express our imagination and emotions, choosing the middle way between behaving stoically (zero% expression of emotions) and behaving dramatically/ histrionically (150%/ exaggerated expression of emotions), so to express ourselves honestly and responsibly.

anita

Dear Gaia:

I am not an expert regarding the term emotional regulation. The way my therapist introduced me to emotional regulation is through the mindful meditation series of Mark Williams. You can download his series of Mindful Mediations and listen to the first. Let me know how it was for you.

anita

Dear Gaia:

Let’s look at what happened last night:

Words have been said that your father may be ill. The words entered your ears and reached your brain. As the words reached your brain, the first thing your words hit was that Magnifying Glass we talked about,  and Bam!  You experience not just anger, but rage, not concern, but anxiety, obsession .. terrified.. very anxious. not sadness, but despair.

-the words I added the bold feature to above, are your words.

Next thing that happens is you  think about “the worst case”, and about other relatives who died-> next, you tense up every time the phone rings ->next, you engage in compulsive checking->next, you feel caged in your compulsive habits-> next, you try to detach from them but crave them and give in to them-> next, your anger and frustration increase-> next, you think  to yourself  that you are overreacting to “any small interactions” and that you sound like a crybaby that always whines”-> next, you feel angry at  yourself for doing all that mindful work but failing to achieve more than “small breaks from the hell I usually find myself in”-> next, you “imagine very violent scenarios” and you feel like an “evil entity takes the control of me”-> next, you worry that some day you will be so angry and so violent that you will “do some regrettable sh**”

It is an avalanche, an escalation of distress, a quick escalation.

The words reached your brain and hit the Magnifying Glass, broke through that Magnifying Glass only to hit yet another Magnifying Glass and another and another … and another.

There  is only one way for you to overcome this series of magnifying glasses and escalation of distress, this avalanche of distress, and that is, to de-escalate, remove the magnifying glasses one by one by one.

You do this de-escalation by inserting realistic, true thoughts into this mix, for example: I don’t know if my father is ill, maybe he is not. (and even if he is not ill for now,  one day he will be ill, and so will  I, and everyone else I know. I need to be face this reality and not get overwhelmed).

More thoughts: I am angry, and that is okay. Everyone gets angry. It doesn’t mean I am evil or am taken possession by an evil entity. I am just angry, that’s all. After all, so far I have been in excellent control of my behavior, I was as angry as hell, but I didn’t do anything that placed me in prison. I am in control.

* If possible, at a time like this, during this avalanche, take a  walk outside, or exercise indoors, or take a hot bath, or lie down and listen to calming music, or watch a movie, or read a book (all healthy distractions so to give your brain a chance to de-escalate).

* If there is anyone to talk  with about your distress, talk or type away here. It helps de-escalate when you share/ express your worries. Do that sooner than later.

* When you find yourself doing the compulsions, stop resisting them and instead perform those compulsions in a slower speed, take your time performing this or that compulsion, so that you are not rushing through a compulsion. (This is the beginning of overcoming OCD compulsions from my personal experience).

Then empathy for yourself, insert thoughts such as: I am not a crybaby, I am suffering. I need to help myself, to calm myself, to de-escalate, hush… sweet Gaia, sh… it will be okay. You will see. I will feel better soon. Sh…

anita

Dear Gaia:

In your recent post to me you picked one thing from all that I wrote to you and ignored the rest of what I wrote to you today. Probably because you are upset and frustrated.

Please re-read my recent post to you slowly and attentively, when you are calm enough to read it slowly and attentively. Then get back to me.

anita

Dear Gaia:

You can “read and assimilate things fast  academically, as when studying for a test in school, and you can “eat, talk and walk fast” but the work required here (“trying to change my mindset”), it is impossible to do fast. For as long as you expect it to be anything but very, very, very….. very, very slow, you will be disappointed and frustrated again and again.

So do take your time and re-read repeatedly my earlier post to you, this part of it, then another part, then back to the first, let this part or that part sink in. And when you understand better than ever one thing in a post, you don’t have to understand everything else in that one post.

This kind of learning, a learning that is more than academic/ logical, an emotional + logical learning, that can not be rushed.

anita

Dear Gaia:

“I’m specifically trying ..to show myself empathy and staying mindful of the present moment by accepting whatever I’m feeling and the reality around me.. break from electronic devices, be more aware of the world around me, slow down, be mindful.. look at myself in the eyes, connect, feel tangibly and in a solid way what makes me, me”- keep practicing these things and get better and better at it.

“I live.. very ‘in-my-mind’, on autopilot, disassociated, cerebral.. Feels shattered, arrested, out of center, existent & non existent in and out of me… it races around in my mind. Did you also feel like this? What do you think about it?”

Yes, I felt like this. I suffered so much for so long, as a child, a teenager, a young adult and onward.

What do I think about it… I think that you better do what I am doing but way sooner than I started, and that is: do all that you can do to lower and lower that suffering. To put it in a different way: do all that you can do every day to die a little less and live a little more.

There is no such thing as magic, no way to make it happen, to no longer suffer today and be happy forevermore (heaven was invented for this purpose- one day, after we die, then .. magic!)

It takes time and a lot of work. I didn’t do the work in my twenties or thirties and my life got worse for it- more bad experiences, dysfunction spreading to a variety of areas, and my life experience got even worse. So the option is not between making progress and making no progress, as in staying in place. The option is between making progress and regressing, that is, you either move forward, or you move backward.

The best place for you to start this moving forward process is in quality psychotherapy. You hire a qualified person with impressive certificates and who knows what he/ she is doing-to help you. You pay the money and you figure: better I do the work because I am paying for it. You want to get your money’s worth.

Without quality psychotherapy, here on this thread- I can help you in the context of this thread. I don’t have a psychotherapy degree and certificates and I am not a psychotherapist. I have no plans of being a psychotherapist, not in person and not online (I don’t think online psychotherapy is possible!). What I do have is a 4 years and 9 months history of reading and studying the stories of hundreds of people from all over the world, often 8 hours days of such learning, a learning I took on myself, a learning that is recorded and retrievable here (starting May 2015).

If you value what I learned here, and what I keep learning, then use what I know to help yourself.

anita