Difficult emotions. How to survive?

My reasoning for those who perceive life for the most part emotionally. If you are emotionally stable, and you are almost always guided by considerations of rationality and expediency of your manifestations, I think that what I write will seem at least strange to you ...

Life is always different ... On emotionally - mobile people, to whom I fully belong, impressions of participation in various events and contacts with Others, first of all pass through the filters of sensory sensations, influencing our emotional states. After all, emotion is our first response to interaction with our environment. We weep, we laugh, we rejoice, we are distressed, we test a lot of other conditions. And so every day.

When we constantly stay in this emotional "boiler", it turns out that almost all of our internal states depend on those who surround us. Yes, it is impossible to become completely independent of one's own environment. But we certainly have the opportunity to be more of ourselves than a mirror of the world. Which only reflects what happens outside. And then so ... often "crooked" reflects, refracting many of their reactions through the layers of the previous experience. By giving out "learned" and often "protective" emotional answers, which once in such situations rescued ...

Where is the possible root of our greater independence, and therefore, the ability for a more sustainable self-determination in the most diverse challenges of reality?

The psyche of man is mosaic. We are cohabited by a whole company of all sorts of different characters, read either roles or parts, from which, depending on the current situation, we are accustomed to react in one way or another to what is happening to us. I really like the metaphor that a person is a house. Each one is built primarily on the design of the primary, parental family, and built-up - reshaped by us, already adults. Someone disguised from strangers close dug-out, someone - a high-rise building with a bunch of different people, often new to each other. And all these tenants are our different manifestations. Reactions to the environment. Ways of dealing with Others.

Well, when in this house for the most part is clean and comfortable. Every tenant knows his place. Eternal brawlers and constantly sullen plaques are either not at all, or they still know how to ... quickly calm down. And if in our house there is a Manager, for whom everyone in this house is familiar, who is able to observe the order and at least somehow control the manifestations of our characters, who have the opportunity to reassure him, to cheer him up, and this - "to put in sight" consider, life was a success.

The manager is our deepest part. Which little depends on the immediacy of life. Someone can call her the Soul, somebody the Self. Psychoanalysts call it the observing part of the Ego. Followers of Berne - Adult part of personality. Which "centers" our psyche, gives it stability in the living of uncertainty and protects us from decay and chaos. And our roles, "characters", ways of perception and reaction are the things by which our Self learns itself and the Universe.

You can live all your life in ignorance, that it exists in you. But sometimes, in rare moments of silence, you can come into contact with it. When you seclude yourself and give yourself the opportunity just to be. As a sea tide, like the noise of wind in the forest.

For this you can do very simple things. Ensure loneliness for at least half an hour, comfortably settle down so that the body feels warm and supportive of what it is now leaning on, and quietly watch your breathing, thoughts, traces of emotions ... As if you are in front of a screen on which all sorts of different scenes unfold , where you are one of the main characters. Such attentive, but slightly detached contemplation is a good way to gradually realize your inner "characters". Which for the most part manifest in us unconsciously, impoverishing our fixed reactions by our possibilities of contact with ourselves and with the world. Just try to watch. Through the smooth, calm breathing and safe relaxation of the body slightly slow down the cycle of his thoughts. To hear, see, feel, what emotion is now what part of your psyche makes active. And what - shut your mouth. And just how much this emotional reaction really corresponds to what it is called "here and now" in your reality. Or this emotion, thought, sensation is just a habitual "shield", which insures you from meeting with something new in your life.

When we have a happy period in life - for example, we are in love, or we have a new interesting job, or something else that is exciting us joyfully, we are all ready to give ourselves to these positive emotions with all our pleasure. At such moments, it does not matter at all to us that everything that now excites us so much is just the outer side of our life. We are ready to open our borders and with pleasure we appropriate to ourselves these delicious events of these wonderful people who give us so many wonderful things for us ...

But since the source of our joy is outside, we certainly do not have sufficient resources to control it in such a way that it will supply us with nothing but positive. Anyone at any time can say a word, or "make a deal," which will really upset us. Yes, and more - euphoric states take too much of our energy so that we can remain in this forever without further exhaustion ... Let's see what can happen to us when the "first cloud" reaches our "rainbow" sky. For example, our love ended in parting. You have remained with a very nasty and painful feeling that you were abandoned. They betrayed your feelings. You are "torn" from the most controversial moods: then you want to run after him and do everything to bring him back, then you want to "tear" it to shreds, to make his life without you a hell. Then you want to become an ice block, which is still the same ... And in these cases you with the same ardor and ardor are given these painful emotions entirely. Life practically stops, everything focuses around the core of your experiences.

Of course, this always takes time. It is impossible to suffer for a very long time in the same way as intensely rejoice. Over time, everything always calms down. But time "blurs" the pain. It simply "dulls" it. And here is "running through the rake" - in other words, getting hit again and again into similar passions - how to be with him?

I think that in the "prevention of suffering" it can be very useful to develop the Self, its observing part.

When we are captured by something entirely, we are dissolved only in one of many quite accessible possibilities for perceiving reality. And we lose touch with our Depth. With the manager of the house of his soul. I want to offer you something: instead of cherishing your pain, or anger, or despair, or traces of childhood trauma, try through the method outlined above, just to meet with your ability from a participant in your current tragedy to briefly go on an observer. First, take a closer look, listen to yourself - which part of you is involved in the situation that is most traumatic for you now? It can be your inner child, which any form of situational rejection plunges into the acute desperation of abandonment. Or it could be your young female part, which was often wounded in adolescence. Or it may be you, who, like the air, need the recognition of Others.

When you try to do such a job, you just get rid of the totality of your experience. And then you can, for example, say to yourself: "Yes, my little girl is now in tears, she is hurt, empty, lonely and scared. But this girl is only a small part of me - today. And I have quite adult, supporting me now areas of my life experience. To which I can rely, to console myself - a little".

In activities to save myself from difficult emotions, I want to warn you against an immediate transition to all sorts of actions. When our feelings cause us to suffer, a good way to "fuss" them, placing the energy of experience in all kinds of self-switching. Yes, of course, if you feel the inner void from parting with your beloved, you can try to fill it up quickly with someone else. But, if you are still filled with the content of the relationship with the one who left, then in a new contact, instead of actually trying to build it, you will be struggling to "catch up - to agree - to finish" the previous relationship. And this new man, most likely, will fall into the transfer of your perception, fears, the whole "unfinished" of your past.

Yes, this is the right way to arrive at a conciliatory conclusion by type: "All men are the same!" And another: "I'm a poor baby!"

My suggestion is to LIVE your sorrows. Restricting their perception of one of its own part. But give her a proper cry, burn out her current losses. Supporting her with other aspects of her personality. First of all, with the participation of his Adult Observer.

Every grief has its own depth. But the bottom is always there. And you can flounder long and tiring, trying to "jump out" of the experience, or you can just take your grieving part for today. To give her the opportunity to plunge into sorrow, so that later, pushing away from the bottom, go up, to new sensations of life. From my own experience, I know this method is the best way to get out of grief. Because it helps to finish the traumatic situation. And - as a result - to draw quite encouraging conclusions, how in the future to cope with life in all its diversity.

Author - Irina Lopatuhina

Psychologist, Gestalt therapist

Website: lopatuhina.ru