Round and round and round and...
...round and round I go. Thoughts lead to feelings lead to action lead to more thoughts... and I'm off round the mulberry bush again.
The name for this is the Cognitive Behavioral Triangle, and this entirely natural and normal way humxns function is really helpful in some ways and also really not. Anyone else spend many, many hours and many thousands of dollars in a therapist’s office struggling to break out of unhelpful repeating patterns?
Every time I go away from home, most recently backpacking in the high Sierras, I get get back and head straight into a week or so of utter uselessness. Uselessness is judgment, of course, meaning I’m not doing the things I feel I’m supposed to be doing. “I just had a week of vacation. I can’t afford another one!” What I’m supposed to be doing is informed by the billboard of dominant culture brightly blinking back at me all the ways I’m doing it wrong. Remember that absurd Yahoo! billboard, better suited to the Las Vegas strip than the I-80 rolling through San Francisco? It’s like that, “Ryan is f*cking-up again!” and I’m left feeling like, “What’s wrong with me?” I know this pattern. It’s not a surprise. But I don’t do anything different! It’s the same goddam thing again and again and again. I feel increasingly fussy and grumpy, which fuels the cycle more. I’m a grown-up person. Grumpy and fussy is childish, and having those feelings proves I’m immature and unworthy. It’s a pernicious, insidious, annoying, underhanded, and downright dastardly cycle.
What helps, of course, is connection. In this case not the warm and fuzzy supportive type connection that’s all encouraging and shit. It’s me going ahead and fussing and grumping *in the presence of others*, others who are willing to see my whole self. Expressing the feelings and being met by some other humxn who will love me anyway is what really helps. This is kinda intense. It’s not surprising that I resist.
Authentic Relating is, in part, the practice of allowing what is present to be fully present and expressed, exposing oneself for others to see, feel, and experience. “Here I am, all fussy and grumpy and irritable and failing”. The risk is being seen. The reward is being seen.
On August 8th, we’ll circle up and practice again, this time focusing on Slowness. Our culture moves fast. Fast movers are richly rewarded with $$, prestige, and power. But when it comes to being seen, truly seen as a human being who is not moving fast at all while they flop around on the floor like a damn seahorse out of water, can that be done on timetable? Let’s find out.
*Please. Do not bring your seahorse. Lake Merritt is not suitable for seahorses.