Dear nrk2208:

It reads to me that you found yourself trapped in the last year or so, a situation almost every person finds himself or herself in, trapped within a family, a work place, trapped within a role of husband, father, employee, consumer, commuter and so  forth.

It is the complex society we live in. In nature, an unsatisfied animal can move elsewhere, no clothes to pack, house to sell, employment elsewhere to look  for, family members to deal with, the animal just… walks away.

In human modern society, there are rules and laws to every step you make.

Even as a consumer, in primitive times, or just older times, there weren’t many choices, nowadays there are so many choices it is almost a full time job to just choose: what cereal to  buy in the supermarket, what insurance policy to buy, and so forth.

Am I understanding your situation correctly, somewhat?

anita

You know, people tend to forget this simple fact, but change is a constant of life. But it’s not very obvious until something hit you in the face that you’ve realized that thing(s) had changed, you just weren’t aware of it happening. Yet it still happen. From 10 to 20 to 30, life was never the same from then to now, it only seemed to suddenly change then reverted back to ‘everyday’. Rather the illusion of ‘everyday’ is only disrupted by the changing date. Even then, it is merely the perception of the date changing and not the people.

So what’s changed? What used to work that’s not working now?

Look over your life from a few years back. What have you been doing that is similar from one day to the next when suddenly something had changed? Yet when had the change suddenly reverted back to ‘everyday’? Then examined your feelings. How are you different from the you a year, two years, three years ago to the current you? What are your feelings about your current life compare to the past? What is different? What is good and bad? What are your current thoughts as compare to the past? What used to make you happy yet is now a neutral feeling? What used to make you feel bad yet there is a curiosity to explore that?

Who are you?

Or it might be that there is something in the past that is coming back in a new form. Form like self, -worth, -esteem, -confidence, -respect is something that people have to learn to build for themselves over and over again. Why? Because life is never a linear sequence but a chaotic web. People can never see the end of the road until it is the end; the line you’ve chosen to walk on the web is ever connected to other lines so there will always be some kind of tangle and knot in the line. Maybe you’ve decided to turned left or right at some points that you’ve walked a different road then you intended before. And maybe you’ve come back to the same knot on that new road you’ve chosen.

Just because you’ve released a past that was painful does not mean that you won’t encountered a new problem on a new stage, but old pattern of past hurt. So your integrity and identity is now under the microscope, yet your fragile heart might not be able to hold together under the new circumstances and you grow stagnate. You slow down and life starts to feel like a constant battle to just autopilot from day to day. Then it start building on each other to the point you don’t know what happened until you’ve seemingly fallen into a pit. So to build the proverbial ladder, you’ll have to ask a lot of questions and be patient. You’ll have to face what is your neglected child, your voice/intuition/heart at its most basic. That child will try to tell you what is it that you’re neglecting to be honest about, whether it’s about yourself or your situation in life. Or it’ll help you identify what is is you’re missing at the current moment.

If these introspection into your psyche is new, it would be best to employ the assistance of someone who has experience in helping people identify their current self, the good and bad. But make no mistake, this is not about fixing your emotions. It is about acknowledging and validating your emotions and the thoughts that comes with those emotions. Regardless of how depressing these emotions are, if you didn’t have them, would you have the opportunity to understand its counterpart? Of course, getting to know yourself emotionally is never an easy thing to do, but as an mammal that has the habit of reflecting on their emotions, it is something that is all too natural to do.

Good luck.

Dear nrk2208:

Regarding 40 minute meditation, this is a very long time requirement. There are very short guided meditations available online, theme: mindfulness, a few minutes in duration and effective.

You wrote earlier that you “think a lot and speak very little”. Things appear good on the family front and on the work front “from superficial level”.

Advertisement, social media, peers keep sending messages about how a man in your circumstances in life (being 35, husband, father, and so  forth) should behave and do. You compare your behavior and accomplishments to that should-messages and it makes you feel that you don’t fit the messages, that you fail expectations. You feel that you don’t only fail society’s expectations but that you are hurting the people closest to you (wife and baby? Others?)

You are worried that your actions are wrong or inadequate and are hurting others,  and that there are actions you are not taking, and that inaction is hurting others.

Back to what you wrote earlier, that you “think a lot and speak very little” and that on the superficial level your family life appears good. I ask the following because I need to understand better and for the two of us to explore the matter further:

What is the status on your communication with your wife- maybe you need to talk more to her and with her, share with her what you think and feel. I wonder if you tried and gave up  on it, or if you never tried?

(Working with a wife as a team, helping each other, is most important for the well being of the husband, as well as the wife, it makes for a deep connection, not a superficial one).

anita

Dear nrk2208:

You are welcome. I believe I understand better.

You wrote: “I am a very unemotional person”- this means to me that you were born an emotional person, just like any other baby, that you were emotional as a young child but that over time, as a result of early life experiences,  you have become unemotional, that is, you disassociated from your emotions. Some disassociation happens with every adult, this is why adults don’t act as joyfully and impulsively like children, at least not most of the time.

Some of us disassociate more than others to the point where it becomes a big problem, a problem because we are animals after all, and in the course of  evolution we were emotional before we were logical. Like other animals we know what to  do because of emotions: hunger-> looking for food, fear-> running away, anger->fighting, and so on.

When a human animal disassociates from his/ her emotions, trying to be strictly logical, like a robot or a computer, we get confused (“Inability to take any decision- A feeling of confusion”)- because as hard as we try, we are still animals, we still need our emotions to direct us, to make it possible for us to choose. We become more sensitive to media messages about what we should do when we are lacking the internal compass that tells us what to do, aka emotions.

In addition, without feeling emotional attachment to your wife and child, without the emotions of love and joy, you are not experiencing the benefits of your hard work as a family man, it is all work and no play, no joy, and so, life is a burden.

To top the ineffectiveness of significant or severe emotional disassociation, when we don’t experience our emotions, it is not calm that fills in the emotional void, it is anxiety and distress.

What do you think of my understanding at this point?

anita

Dear nrk2208:

It is difficult to change mental habits because they are already set in place. It takes conscious effort, paying attention on an ongoing basis, to change a habit. It is like tying your shoes, once you are in the habit of tying your shoes in a particular way, you do so inattentively, not paying attention, and you do it well. If you want to tie your shoes in a different way, you can’t do  it automatically, you have to  pay attention to every moment of tying your shoes.

If you want, specify one particular mental habit that you have and we can talk about an alternative habit to replace it, and how to go about it.

anita

Dear nrk2208:

You are welcome. What you are after is not an easy aim to achieve. If I am to be of any help to you in your aim, it will take back and forth communication, time and patience.

You wrote: “both my parents are also not positive thinkers. And this has been the case all throughout my childhood… In fact now a days I end up giving them suggestions about taking things positively. This is quite energy draining at times”-

-to understand better I ask: as a child and a teenager, do you remember then trying to help your parents feel better, turn their frown (negative thinking and feeling) into a smile (positive thinking and feeling)?

Do you remember how you did it then, how  you tried?

anita