7:34am. You know it’s bad when you have a life of experiences to write about but you keep returning to your same old tired thoughts. Fear. Shame. Loneliness. Regret. But mostly fear.
Fear reduces you to your basic survival instincts. I am alive. I have enough bread to pay rent this month. I have food to eat. I am, on the whole, OKAY.
Fear is backward-looking. Fear is status quo. Fear is holding on to whatever hope you have and praying to God things don’t get worse. What is the opposite of fear? Courage? Let’s go with courage.
Courage is forward-looking. What can I overcome? Who can I become? What good can I do in the world? That kind of shit.
Courage is switched on, fear is switched off.
Courage is life, fear is death.
Is fear a death instinct? Was it Kierkegaard who coined the term death instinct?
Or Schopenhauer?
The death instinct…
Feel sad, cower from the world and eat your feelings. Feel scared, self-soothe with entertainment and food and exercise and booze and drugs.
Feel lonely, watch double blowjob videos on YouPorn. Cum. If it takes you five seconds to shoot, that’s five seconds of relief. Catch breath, detumesce, and now you’re sitting on the couch with a droopy worm in your hand thinking, “What am I doing with my life?”
Ejaculation is a vacation from your problems
What does it take to elevate one’s thoughts? Something to do with managing moods and emotions maybe. Feelings govern human behavior. Can we agree to that?
Feel bad, you misbehave.
Feel good, you behave.
Although it doesn’t have to be so deterministic.
Deterministic is not the right word, but it’s the first word that comes to mind.
How to manage your moods and emotions?
The first step to managing your emotions is noticing them. What are you feeling? Until you’re able to feel what you feel, and put a name to that information, you are a rudderless ship.
The second step is understanding where those emotions are coming from. I have an avoidant personality type. I see conflict, I run. This is actually my default behavior that stems from the fear feeling. Fear of what happens during and after confrontation. Fear of being put down, dismissed, chided, scolded. Fear of wrath. Fear of punishment. My strategy? Avoid the whole thing entirely. Bail. Run. Kick the can for another day. It’s a self-preservation thing. It’s a shirking responsibility thing. Those are the behaviors, but feelings are what drive them.
Let’s recap:
Step one is notice the feeling and name the emotion.
Step two is investigate what triggered the feeling.
Simple enough.
Step three is practice strategies that relieve negative feelings. The main benefit of therapy is, you learn to map your feelings. A good analyst will help you figure out your feeling and behavior patterns. Why do I feel this way? Why do I behave this way? How do I change? Once you have a map, you sort of get X-ray vision into your emotional operating system. If X, then Y. If I feel scared, then I run. If I feel confident, then I take action. Knowing these formulas means you have a choice in how you behave. You can’t control your emotions. You feel what you feel. But you can develop strategies to nudge these things toward a higher level of conscousness.
A strategy that’s helped me: Pull up the map and identify the feeling --> behavior pattern.
Oftentimes you’ll find that your behavior sabotages the idea of the person you want to be. In those moments, the rational mind pipes up: “You really don’t want to do that. If you do, then you’re just falling into the same pattern that got you here in the first place.” Someone breaks your heart, you pound a pint of Cherries Garcia. Difficult conversation at work, pound a sixer of Pabst Blue Ribbon. Feel lonely, pound yourself.
So, notice your feelings and identify them. Then see if your default response behavior supports your vision of the person you want to be. Have the hard conversation, or avoid it? Go on a date with Simone, or jerk off at home alone?
Life is the sum total of these sorts of decisions. It seems to me that’s the whole game. Make uncomfortable decisions when your body is telling you to rely on behavior patterns that no longer serve you (or never did).
Or whatever.
