Habitual regret and self-punishment

Numerous times throughout each day I experience something I think of as sudden regret and self-punishment. I notice some action or non-action of mine and immediately feel an unpleasant clenching in my chest and throat and a stoppage of breathing, and a mind-state that I think of as "feeling bad about myself". Very recently it occurred to me that this experience is composed of two parts: first, a part of my self telling another part of myself, "You stupid idiot!" Second, a bearing down or clenching to silence that voice and perhaps punish myself.

As usual, I feel delight upon noticing my experience in finer detail. The experience feels lighter and therefore I have more freedom in my life overall. It could be seen as bad news that I am calling myself an idiot over and over throughout the day. I had heard before of people who call themselves idiots and felt a small bit of pride that I was not one of those people. Now I see that I am, but I feel happy and free to see this.

This morning during a 5 minute sit I encouraged the inner voice to freely and completely say "You stupid idiot!"; I relaxed so as not to subsequently clench and silence. That made the experience pleasant and even comical.

I've been developing a view of this sudden regret and self-punishment as an effort of the ego to maintain its illusion of control. I experience this regret/self-punishment fleetingly every time I sit to meditate: "You should be meditating more. Whatever you were doing before this sitting, you should have been doing something more beneficial, probably meditating." I have become so dis-identified from this habitual regret-upon-sitting that I greet it almost as a familiar friend and allow it to pass in one second or less. However in other areas of my life, times when I am not sitting to meditate, I usually still identify with, and suffer from, this regret/self-punishment habit.

When I look at all the things I regret doing or not doing, I see that it is utterly impossible for me to avoid all the things I regret doing and to do all the things I regret not doing. To begin with, many of them are incompatible with each other. For example, I regret that I haven't switched to a job I love, I regret that I wish to escape my current job without resolving the issues that arise there, I regret that I work at a job at all (I should be meditating 24/7). I can either stay at my current job and resolve the issues there, switch to another job, or be unemployed -- cannot do all three. Whichever I choose, this voice will express regret that I haven't chosen the others.

Smashed

I had another session with my child self this morning after returning from my Friday stair run. I've been feeling really distressed when thinking about advocating on my Mom's behalf regarding her care in the dementia care home. So I looked at that distress and asked my child self what she had to say. I sat in the attic with my hugging pillow for about 30 minutes. The child self wasn't speaking very easily; in the middle she said, "let's not think about this anymore, let's go do something else." But I persevered in asking her what she had to say. Eventually I realized that there was something so terrifying in my consciousness, and so ever-present, that it was almost invisible to me. It was the sense that I was about to be smashed. OK, the sense that I'm about to be smashed is something I've been aware of, but the looming terror of it, I hadn't seen before. I didn't imagine pain, I didn't imagine the actual being smashed, but what I imagined was that I would be stopped cold in my tracks and silenced.

A session with my child self

Went out for dinner with Z this evening. Starting when we arranged this dinner at 5:00, and continuing through dinner and a walk until we got home at 7:00, I felt pent up. I was pretty sure that a session with my child self would make me feel better. So I sat on the brown couch, put an afghan over my lap, put a brown couch cushion over that, leaned over the cushion, and allowed my child self to speak.

Speaking with my child self is a skill I've been developing slowly over the last two or three years. I'm pleased with the proficiency I've developed. Now, often, when I'm agitated in some way, I can easily see it as my child self being in distress. As I've written in many posts since the start of this blog, my emotions present themselves largely as strong sensations in the right side of my body, and more and more I've been viewing these sensations as the physical manifestation of my child self.

So now when I'm agitated I can ask my child self, "What's up?" And she will almost always have something to say. I'm not embarrassed anymore to do this.

I want to make clear: when she speaks, it's not like a hallucination. I don't hear a voice as though from outside myself. It's more like this: I tune into the urges and emotions in the body and make an effort to give voice to them. What comes out (silently) is not unlike what comes out when I am lashing out in frustration at a loved one. Basically, I'm splitting myself into two personas, child and adult, and giving the child my emotions while the adult calmly witnesses and comforts. When I first read (in books) and heard (from my therapist, T) about this practice, it seemed distasteful and hard to do. But now I find it enjoyable and very useful.

Here is the interaction I had with my child self while I sat with her for about an hour today:

Child: I am so agitated I don't know where to begin and I can barely speak. There is not enough time. I'm not doing the right thing. There isn't enough time! I don't know what to do! Not enough time, don't know what to do (repeated for several minutes). ... I'm very angry and frustrated. I want to be alone with you. Why did you invite Z to come sit with us? (I had indeed invited Z to sit next to me on the brown couch.) Now I have to be on guard. I am not going to be able to relax!

(As it happened, Z did come to sit with me, and she reached out and hugged me and squeezed me rather vigorously.)

Child: (Feeling even more agitated) I told you! I told you she would attack us! Why didn't you protect me? Why did you let her sit with us? I'm never safe! I wish we could be alone together.

Adult: Do you want to go up into the attic?

Child: No, I don't want to be up there, I want to be here where there is life. Up there it is so alone and almost suffocating. If we go up there I will become quiet and probably fall asleep.

Child: (Calming down after being heard for 5-10 minutes after Z left) I am so glad to be alone with you. There are so many things I want to tell you!

Adult: What would you like to say? I am eager to hear.

Child: So many things! But, I can't think right now of what they are. But I can't wait to think of them, because I really want to tell you. Some bad things happened to me, and I want to tell you all about it. I am so glad to be with you.

Child: (Later.) Actually I can't think of anything to say. But I can feel all these sensations. I just want to be here with you and feel them. I want to feel pleasure. The front window of the living room is so beautiful, the pattern of light and shadow on the mist-covered glass, so very beautiful. I feel such longing. So much longing. I don't know what I want. I don't know what I want. (Sensations of longing felt mostly in right jaw, sensations I've experienced for at least the past 3 years.)

At this point I felt the session with my child self had come to a close. She seemed content, OK with me moving on to outer-directed activities. I arose to write this blog post.

Working with anger ... yet again

Learning to tolerate anger has been a long, slow, but rewarding process for me.

Just now, Eric was expressing frustration and disappointment that his day had not gone as well as he wished. This typically triggers aversion and anger for me. His expressions of anger continued for about 30 minutes. Toward the end I had a strong urge to distance myself. First I tried to stop my aversion and anger by controlling Eric's actions. But, as usual, this was not effective. Then I considered escape, coupled by emotional distancing: "I don't have to subject myself to this outburst!"

But then I realized that Eric's upset was an excellent opportunity for practice. I had no other tasks I had to attend to. We were in a private and comfortable place. I could witness Eric's agitation and attend to the reactions in my own body. I reminded myself that the problem was within me -- it was my psyche that was reacting to the agitation. I observed the sensations and the associated stories. Increasingly, I notice the anatta of the sensations -- that they occur of their own accord, without my direction. This made them easier to let go of. It was quite a show -- tensings in various parts of the body. The stories took more effort to discern. I asked the inner child what she had to say. "I'm not going to get what I want! I'm out of control! I can't make him do what I want him to do!"

Desire for disability and death

I've been doing affirmations about my health:

• My physiology now speedily shifts to healthy balance, and stays in balance
• With good health I can enjoy and accomplish much. I release any need for a health problem as a point of focus.

My doctor referred me to a podiatrist to treat my foot soreness. The diagnosis is plantar fasciitis. But what about the soreness in my hips and hands? I suspect something systemic, and it seems likely that the mind can both cause and correct systemic imbalances, at least to some degree.

A big reason I'm focused on a mental approach is that I see clearly an attachment to illness. I see a desire to have something to fix, something to worry about. Something to keep me company. Without a problem to solve, I feel alone, adrift, uncomfortable. What juicy material to work with!

Another mental dynamic: I am now so aware of my own fragility and mortality that I want both disability and death to come soon so I can get it over with, rather than fear it. As recently as 10 years ago I believed that with my good genetics, vigorous exercise, yoga, meditation, decent diet, and positive attitude, I would avoid nearly all frailties of age. I would be strong, flexible, and vigorous into my 80s and 90s. Now I see that the frailty of age affects everyone. Some more than others or sooner than others, certainly, but there is no avoiding it. Further, I see how dismal the prospects are for old people who are frail: the loss of control, the loss of personhood in the eyes of society. Perhaps I'd rather be middle-aged and frail rather than wait to be old and frail.

I want to investigate and soften these mental dynamics so that I will live vigorously as long as possible. After all, "with good health I can enjoy and accomplish much".