Home→Forums→Share Your Truth→Old Journal- things that pierce the human heart
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anita.
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February 25, 2025 at 12:32 pm #443244
PeterParticipantHi Anita
That is good advice. As a ‘highly sensitive person” I tend to take on the ‘energy of the room’ which over the last few months have been a overwhelming general anxiety and hopelessness – helplessness. Sometimes its difficult to know what is mine and what isn’t.Its been difficult witnessing, even from those even within my own family a crude celebration of… unkindness. Even as I know such measurements creates its own conflict and suffering. A wish that life as it is be other then it is. What is it Kierkegaard said “The most painful state of being is remembering the future, particularly the one you’ll never have.”
February 25, 2025 at 12:39 pm #443245
anitaParticipantDear Peter:
I want to reply further when I am more focused Wed morning.
anita
February 26, 2025 at 1:56 pm #443269anitaParticipantDear Peter:
Yesterday, I considered discussing politics with you, but I decided against it. Even if you’re interested (and I should ask you first), it’s probably not the best idea given that this is a public forum.
It’s understandable to feel overwhelmed by anxiety and hopelessness, especially when it is difficult to distinguish between your own feelings and those you absorb from others. This heightened sensitivity can be, in different contexts, a gift or a curse.
Witnessing unkindness, particularly from those close to us, can be deeply disheartening. It’s important to remember that while we can’t control others’ actions, we can control our responses and strive to create a more compassionate and empathetic environment in our own lives.
Kierkegaard’s quote resonates with the idea of longing for a future that feels out of reach. It’s a powerful reminder of the pain that can come from unmet expectations and dreams.
Langston Hughes: “What happens to a dream deferred? Does it dry up like a raisin in the sun? Or fester like a sore—And then run?”
Oscar Wilde: “The tragedy of old age is not that one is old, but that one is young.”
F. Scott Fitzgerald: “So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.”
A little poem for you, Peter:
Regret may linger, shadows of past,
But strength lies within, steadfast and vast.
For every setback, a chance to rise,
A beacon of hope, in tearful eyes.The whispers of dreams, they never cease,
In moments of quiet, find your peace.
Though paths may twist, and storms may rage,
Your story unfolds, on life’s grand stage.Each step a story newly told,
In dreams unmet, a spirit bold.anita
February 26, 2025 at 2:26 pm #443271
AlessaParticipantHi Peter
Thank you for sharing your kind thoughts! ❤️
What is interesting is that I don’t dwell on these things anymore. I have accepted the situation and no longer fight against it. I realise that I don’t matter so much anymore. Raising my son well is the most important thing to me now.
It often strikes me that after a certain amount of time, something that I used to worry about no longer matters.
I’m sorry to hear that you’re stressed by the news. I get stressed by it too. I’m on a news hiatus and somehow I still manage to learn about it from others without even trying to.
February 27, 2025 at 9:36 am #443283PeterParticipantHi Anita
When it comes to politics, I try to apply the serenity prayer and for the things that are mine to address the idea of contemplation & action. That action arises from and return to a place of compassion.
The challenge is the witnessing the noble truth that we create suffering for ourselves and others. Buddhism and most wisdom traditions address paths towards the cessation of suffering at an individual level with perhaps the possibility that as below so above. That the individual “awakening” might then influence the whole. I know that as a possibility but also a trap that if it becomes an intention or desire itself will create suffering. That I am disappointed that possibility doesn’t manifest as I would like showing its a trap I still fall into.
I feel that the challenge of witnessing isn’t something to fix, its something that is…
In other words, I don’t feel ‘bad’ about feeling ‘bad’ about current happenings. A step forward as that has been an old trap I often fell into – Feeling bad about feeling bad about feeling bad….I liked your poem
February 27, 2025 at 11:34 am #443288anitaParticipantDear Peter:
Compassionate action involves taking actions driven by empathy, kindness, and genuine concern for the well-being of others. It means recognizing the suffering of others and responding in ways that aim to alleviate that suffering, promote well-being, and foster a sense of connection and support.
“That the individual ‘awakening’ might then influence the whole. I know that as a possibility but also a trap that if it becomes an intention or desire itself will create suffering,”- This highlights the delicate balance between accepting reality as it is and hoping for a better reality. It’s about avoiding the pitfalls of despair on one hand and denial on the other.
“I don’t feel ‘bad’ about feeling ‘bad’ about current happenings. A step forward as that has been an old trap I often fell into – Feeling bad about feeling bad about feeling bad…”-
Primary Emotion (feeling bad): The initial, immediate emotional response to a situation or event. This could include sadness, frustration, anger, or any other negative emotion.
Secondary Emotion (feeling bad about feeling bad): For example, feeling guilty about feeling angry or feeling embarrassed about feeling sad. The secondary emotion adds another layer of distress on top of the original, primary negative feeling.
Tertiary Emotion (feeling bad about feeling bad about feeling bad): Experiencing yet another, third layer of emotional response. For instance, feeling angry with oneself for feeling guilty about feeling angry. This creates a cycle of compounded negative emotions, making it harder to cope with the original issue. Overthinking amplifies this process, giving us more opportunities to judge ourselves and add layers of negative emotions.
The significant step forward you describe is your ability to break this cycle of compounded negative emotions. By accepting your initial, primary negative emotions without judging yourself for feeling them, you prevent the addition of further layers of distress. This acceptance builds resilience.
Thank you for liking my poem!
anita
February 28, 2025 at 7:18 am #443305anitaParticipantDear Peter:
I want to share something with you this Friday morning that’s closely related to the topic of “Feeling bad about feeling bad about feeling bad,” specifically the progression from Primary Emotion to Secondary Emotion to Tertiary Emotion:
Last night, I became emotional and shared with someone about my childhood experience with my mother—a memory I’ve mentioned in the forums several times. In this memory, two adult women were holding her back as she struggled to break free, intending to murder me (her word, “murder”). I expressed anger, a primary emotion, along with sadness for the girl I was and fear of my mother once the two adults left, leaving me alone with the mother-monster. It was a smooth expression of emotions and thoughts.
This morning, I woke up and remembered last night. Something strange hit me: I didn’t feel embarrassment or shame (secondary emotions), nor did I feel self-doubt, like I was making it up or exaggerating, nor did I feel guilt for portraying my mother negatively (tertiary emotions).
However, as I typed the word “monster” above, I did feel guilt for referring to her as a monster, thinking of times she wasn’t one. I erased the word, then thought to myself that in that specific memory, she really was a monster, so I retyped the word.
I can now see how damaging secondary and tertiary emotions are when it comes to processing and healing from traumatic past experiences. Without these extra emotions, the primary emotion of anger regarding the memory stands alone—seen, recognized, felt, valid, uninterrupted, and unmasked by the extra emotions.
My anger finally stands on its own: I feel angry. I am no longer Feeling-confused-about-feeling-guilty-about-feeling-angry. The memory of the event is different now than it has been for half a century. It is no longer shrouded in a fog of emotions that don’t belong with the memory. Now, only the emotions that truly belong are present: fear, anger, shock, hurt, and empathy for the little girl that I was.
This development wouldn’t have happened without your words yesterday, “Feeling bad about feeling bad about feeling bad.” Thank you, Peter.
anita
February 28, 2025 at 9:57 am #443307PeterParticipantHi Anita
Thank you for sharing that. It was a great example and break down of what I think of as the trap of feeling bad about feeling bad… A kind of infinite loop divided by 0.
You have a gift for bringing such notions down to earth. “I can now see how damaging secondary and tertiary emotions are when it comes to processing and healing from traumatic past experiences”
I suspect that when the Buddha speaks of Maya this trap is one of the ways in which we create it. Seems to be my go-to anyway.
February 28, 2025 at 10:16 am #443308anitaParticipantDear Peter:
Thank you for your kind words. I’m glad my example resonated with you and helped illustrate the concept. The “infinite loop divided by 0” is such an apt metaphor for the trap we fall into with compounded negative emotions.
Your reference to Buddha’s concept of Maya is deeply insightful. It does seem like one of the ways we create our own illusions and suffering. Recognizing these patterns is the first step toward breaking free from them.
I appreciate your reflections and the wisdom you bring to our conversations.
anita
May 2, 2025 at 8:20 am #445316anitaParticipantDear Peter:
I want to start by saying that I love analyzing—I’m a big fan of it! I understand that everyone analyzes, and the only way to avoid it entirely would be to be brain dead. However, analyzing can sometimes become problematic if it comes at the expense of emotional awareness and expression—if it serves to suppress emotions rather than engage with them.
Reflecting on past conversations, I know you didn’t seem to mind when I revisited your earlier posts—in fact, I sensed that you even liked it. I certainly do! So, on this May 2 morning, I found myself wondering whether you had posted on this very day in previous years. It turns out that yes—you did! I found a post from May 2, 2023 (page 11).
Your writing on that day reveals how you tend to intellectualize emotions, meaning you often frame them in abstract or philosophical terms rather than expressing them directly. Instead of openly stating your personal struggles, you analyze happiness as a concept, reflect on it theoretically, and maintain distance from emotional exposure. Some examples from that post include: “Happiness, one of those words with so many associations, something we so badly want to grasp and cling to, where the grasping and clink transforms it into something else… usually not happiness.”-
Instead of saying something like “I struggled with happiness, trying to hold onto it, only to lose it,” you examine the idea of happiness in a detached, intellectual way.
“We are complex simple creatures. Of course all these notions are stories, perhaps at some level illusions of our own creation.”-
Rather than expressing a personal emotional struggle, you frame emotions as “stories” and “illusions,” which distances you from vulnerability.
“I want to be happy… but what if I’m happiest when I’m unhappy?”-
This is introspective, but instead of saying something like, “I often feel like I sabotage my happiness and I don’t know why,” you turn it into a broader philosophical question, creating a barrier between personal experience and deep emotional honesty.
While your writing has depth and thoughtfulness, the way you engage with emotions suggests a level of emotional suppression through intellectualization—turning feelings into concepts rather than fully immersing yourself in them. That being said, intellectualization can be a healthy way of processing emotions. It doesn’t necessarily mean avoidance; rather, it reflects your analytical approach to navigating emotions.
Revisiting your first thread: “Do We Change” (Oct 5, 2016)- Similarly, in your original post in this thread, instead of directly engaging with emotions, you explore change through abstract concepts—questioning fate, cognition, and self-transformation. Here are some notable patterns:
* Framing personal struggles as general theories- Instead of expressing how change feels on an emotional level, you analyze it structurally—how it happens “slowly and then all at once,” or how early childhood shapes perception. This creates distance from the raw emotional reality of change.
* Detachment through language- Your shift toward “stretching” rather than “changing” suggests a level of resignation—as though you’re explaining why transformation isn’t possible rather than emotionally grappling with it.
* The Observer vs. The Experiencer- Your concept of “observing the observer” hints at a split between your intellectual self and emotional self, where emotions remain unseen beneath the analytical lens.
* Fate vs. Free Will Debate- Your reference to “Nurture and Nature = Fate” suggests frustration or pain, hidden in philosophical analysis rather than direct emotional expression.
* The lack of emotional words- Despite deep reflection, your post lacks expressions of pain, excitement, frustration, or hope—everything is framed in concepts and cognitive processing.
If I understood then what I understand now, I would have asked you back then: “How does it feel to realize change doesn’t fundamentally alter your inner experience?”, “Do you ever wish you could truly change rather than stretch?”, “Does this realization bring relief, or does it bring sadness?”
Opening space for emotion rather than analysis might have allowed for deeper engagement with the personal impact of change. But of course, being as analytical and emotionally suppressed as I was back the did not allow for a deeper, emotional engagement with you.
Interestingly, you also posted on May 2 the following year, in 2024—this time in response to a thread titled “Why pursue meaning in life?” (page 9).
The day before, May 1, you posted a deeply intellectualized response to me: “Anita…Something I discovered during the contemplation of the problem of opposites (duality). That the go-to metaphor for nonduality is that of the coin…”
Knowing it would take me time to process, I replied: “Dear Peter: There is only one way for me to absorb the content of your posts, and that’s in a meditative/stillness state of mind, which I expect to take place by tomorrow. Thank you for posting again!”
Then, on May 2, 2024, you responded in a very different tone—playful, humorous, and emotionally open: “Anita LOL – I know I can be… odd 🙂 It took me decades to discover that teachings are not meant to be believed but experienced. (I am very much of the ‘head’ type)”
This breaks away from your usual intellectualized tone, instead introducing warmth, humor, and self-awareness. Your response felt candid and emotionally expressive, mirroring the lighthearted energy of my reply. Instead of abstract reasoning, you made space for humor and self-awareness, showing an openness to engaging with emotions in a more relaxed way.
I should have responded with gentle emotional reflection, such as: “That’s a profound shift—from belief to experience. Did something in particular bring about that realization?”, “I like that you own being a ‘head’ type—it’s an incredible way of navigating ideas. But does it ever make you feel disconnected from your emotions?”
Instead, I responded on the same day with a long analytical post, to which you replied the next day (May 3, 2024) with a single-line response: “Thanks for sharing your thoughts, Anita!”-
And after diving into all this analysis, I have to wonder—was my May 2, 2024 post exhausting even for you, Peter? If so, I may have achieved the impossible: tiring out even a heavy-duty analyzer like yourself 🙂! But hey, at least we stretched our thinking, if not entirely changed!
anita
May 2, 2025 at 10:24 am #445321PeterParticipantHi Anita
That is a lot 🙂 The following is my response to what you wrote in Inspirational Words – which I think address some of what your noted above.
After I posted my last I thought I ought to delete it as I wasn’t sure what I was trying to communicate and what I did communicate I did badly.
To clarify the overanalyzing trap, I tend to trip over was related to self doubt about my experiences which included what I learned when I engaged with shadow work. Of course, its possible that there is a resistance to emotions, one of the reasons I decided to explore the doubt. Noting a felt pressure of expectations on how healing should look and that I was “doing it wrong”. Even knowing there are many ways as there are people. (this pressure of doubt something I put on myself)
(I notice I tend to mix-up the notion of emotion and feeling.)
My understanding of the difference between Emotions and Feelings is that emotions are the underlying reaction, while feelings are the conscious understanding and experience of that reaction. Once emotion become conscious feeling my experience is that this is when they start becoming entangled with thought, constructs and states of mind. Shadow work and stillness helping in the untangling.To be candid the experience of the last few weeks of re-processing past events and emotions began to feel masochistic, especially as I was aware that I wasn’t re-processing a past event but a memory of the past in the present now.
Emotions did arise and were felt tending to a re-mourning of what wasn’t and futures that will never be. The feelings of the past event remained unchanged as were the boundaries that resulted which I continue to view as healthy ones.
I noticed a part of me took a kind of pleasure in making myself feel bad, or that it must as I am very good at it.
I noticed the role the mind was playing. To often the unreliable narrator, one trapped within the realm of measurement and self created constructs. The unreliable narrator creating shadow and distortions.
There was a realization that Emotions as Thich Nhat Hanh noted do indeed come and go like clouds on a windy day. Perhaps its my Type 5 personally but for me once emotions are felt and honored its a gift that the wind sets them on their way. I acknowledge this experience of emotion has caused issues with personal relationships. I noticed that if there was choice in choosing a personally type I would not choose the type 5, Type 5 can come across as cold and stingy with emotion even as we feel and love deeply if differently from expectations of the general temporal notion of love. It is not surprising that type 5 more then the other types find themselves alone. Loneliness being The emotion I resist most, a suspicion or fear that once fully felt there may be no way out. I need to be attentive to the feeling of loneliness and how it influences the state of mind.
Its interesting the push back I get when suggesting there is a time for self-reflection and processing of emotions/feelings of an event to end. That one can take what one learned and move on especially as we move into the last quarter of life. Here I wonder if growth is mistaken as the act of seeking and constant movement, the act of looking equated with learning, where what one sees doesn’t matter as much as the task of looking? I wonder at the role of a past addiction to the notion of self-improvement has played.
I’ve noticed similar pushback as my religions experience started leaning into the teachings of the mistics. A move from the head to the heart. I noted in other posts that I was taught, perhaps unintentionally, that following and obeying was the path to love and an exercise of compassion. An implied reward punishment theology that was not allowed to be seen as a reward punishment theology as we were ‘saved’ by grace. (this has taken a great deal of work to untangle so I feel not need to re-examine/live it.)
I discovered that though an experience of ‘knowing’ everyone and everything connected that compassion arose naturally as the defining emotional feeling reaction. From that experience of compassion, one does not need a commandment not to kill or honor one’s parents as the experience of connection naturally flows and honoring all.
I was told that such thinking was dangerous. Surprising as someone who lives in the head, I didn’t view this realization as a thinking but a Being encounter. Perhaps that is dangerous.
What was my point? I notice that when I engage with self examination starting by reconnecting to the experience of compassion the past constructs fade, not dismissed but seen for what they are, and I feel no need to reprocess them. I feel I need to embrace that realization and no longer doubt it.
To the question if I’m choosing that as a path to avoid dealing with my emotions? I don’t think or feel that i am, however, I don’t think its a question my personality type can answer.
My thought for the second half of life is similar to yours, do no harm, help where I can with the added avoid becoming a grumpy old man. To realize the latter I need to move into heart and loosen the grip of analytical mind set. Saying that I know the above will seem to be mostly head, a artifact of my type, and you don’t get to change type. For me though its heart.
May 2, 2025 at 11:17 am #445322anitaParticipantDear Peter: I will reply tomorrow, have a 💙 😊 weekend.
anita
May 3, 2025 at 8:28 am #445339anitaParticipantDear Peter:
I find your use of the words “emotions” vs “feelings” useful for me. Emotions are the raw experience, Feelings are a mix of emotion and cognition.
I hold emotion in my hands, examining the weight, the form, the span.
Does it fit within a measured space? Can logic grant it rightful place?
But feelings slip through grids and lines, scatter past the walls of mind.
They bend and warp, defy the scale, and leave the analyst trailing pale.The Unreliable Narrator whispers in echoes, a voice in the mist, twisting the past into stories half-missed.
A historian of shadows, a keeper of doubt, turning certainty inside-out.
It measures wounds in length and weight, tallies each sorrow, each twist of fate.
It speaks of logic, of reason, of truth— but never of healing, never of proof.It means well—this mind of mine, shielding me from sorrow’s tide.
It builds its walls, it draws its lines, convinced that pain is best confined.
It tells me, Wait—don’t dive too deep, Stay on the shore, let silence keep.
It swears that distance keeps me whole, yet fractures linger in control.A misguided guard, it watches still, yet whispers fear, yet bends my will.
It means to help, to dull the ache, but binds the wounds it cannot break.
What if the mind stepped back in grace, let feeling bloom, let sorrow trace?
Not to protect, not to erase— but simply trust, to give me space... Trust is the essential bridge that transforms the unreliable narrator—a misguided friend—into a reliable guide. When the mind learns to trust and embrace the emotions it once repressed or suppressed, it no longer distorts their meaning but allows them to exist freely. And that—the ability to feel without resistance—is the essence of true, core freedom.
I am just beginning to experience emotional freedom. I suddenly remembered—when I was about 20, I attended an art class and painted a picture of my head with a hand reaching out of it, signaling “help me.” At the time, it felt like a deeply cathartic experience—pouring emotion into the canvas, then proudly hanging it on the wall as if to claim my truth. Now, looking back, I see it clearly: that was me, my emotions imprisoned by the unreliable narrator, crying out for release, for freedom.
anita
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Though I run this site, it is not mine. It's ours. It's not about me. It's about us. Your stories and your wisdom are just as meaningful as mine. 