What is your experience like of how you get back to neutral?

Actualism
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Oh and to address this, I see why no report would include a see the silliness approach if the reports were taking about the step after being ‘stuck’ (due to the aforementioned disconnect).

Where I was coming from with this observation is I wondered why the attempt wasn’t , after going from bad to neutral, to identify the trigger and see the silliness , but kept going to feeling good via a set it aside approach.

But if one was reporting a point after already ‘stuck’ then it makes sense why that was the case.

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Thank you Claudiu and Miguel. I want to talk about my feelings for the past 2 days, which may belong under Journal section, but I will post it here also for I think it is relevant to this topic.

I have been feeling bad ( fear, unhappiness and a sense of dread at the bottom of the stomach) on and off for the last 2 days. When I go for the pce walks ( 2 times a day, morning and afternoon ,1+ hour each time - and mostly enjoy seeing the beautiful reflection of trees and the sky against the bottom of the pond rocks) , I can bring myself to feel happy and even maybe experience EE. But other times when I do HAIETMOBA, I came up with not feeling good, So this morning in bed between 4-7 a.m. I tried feeling it out, and told myself that I need to be able to face this [ fear, anxiety, unhappiness, dread] completely, so I am not running from it. In the mix of all this, I came across envy, for Geoffrey having gone snow boarding and having fun ( Freed and I am not). Then I told myself maybe, instead of concentrating on my feelings, I should “see that the whole problem is because of “me” my being” so I should concentrate on getting rid of “me”, instead of trying to get rid of my feelings – and I said maybe I am fooling myself and trying to get away from applying the method correctly ( judging myself ?) .

Leila is translating Richard’s article on man/woman relationship and states how one should shine a light on feelings and be exposed to them, I guess? I came up with the analogy of Us Humans having been exposed to hidden ( like Wifi ) feelings that we can not stand nor understand, we try to avoid them, hide them and run away from them. They scare us, make us uncomfortable and reactionary. Maybe only by staying in the hidden “Wifi Field” of were these feelings are generated and being able to tolerate the discomfort ( dread, hello Hennrrrrrry ), we might be able to discover or develop tolerance or eliminate the source of these Hidden Fields.

The reason I am writing all of these is that fear, unhappiness and dread has been a common theme in my life ( and I have such a rush of bad feelings in all my body writing this now). But maybe I need to face this.

I try to feel good by breathing exercise of { breathing in “feeling happy” , breathing out “feeling good” – this maybe a suggestion for @Andrew ? when he is feeling overwhelmed ), but maybe I am trying to paste feeling good on not feeling good?

To summarize, I am having a hard time feeling good ( ordinary feeling good). I feel so vulnerable and weak, that everything has to be good and no problems, no discomfort, no pain, no worries that then I can be relaxed. I am feeling some shame that I relate these feelings, but I can not control them, so I have decided to expose them and share them.

I feel a little better now, trying to Enjoy and Appreciate Experiencing the Universe ( my body and things around me), at this moment. And I think I do have sincere intent, otherwise I would not be thinking about this stuff all day, and wouldn’t be worried about not feeling good. Thanks for allowing this space for me.

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Next time, @FrankN, instead of repeating/copy-pasting a whole post (here or anywhere else) you can write an intro/few lines and then share a link to your Journal post (or any other post you want to avoid repeating/copy-pasting) -if you don’t know how, you can ask me in the category “Site feedback” or by private message and I’ll show you-.

Regarding your words, I found them very honest, trying to un-cover what you are feeling, because, yes: precisely in relation to this topic (the attempt to at least get back to neutral) and your report, is relevant and very useful the following @claudiu’s experience/advice from his first post:

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I think you’re on the right path with looking at these ‘invisible wifi’ feelings, @FrankN.

So long as enjoying & appreciating is reserved for the PCE walks (I like that btw, good idea), then ‘I’ am ultimately safe because I still get to keep being ‘me,’ and any PCEs or other enjoyable experiences stay restricted to those walks.

What you want, is for that sense of freedom & enjoyment that you experience on the walks to expand into other parts of your life. That means moving the baseline on emotion in all parts of life.

I think there are a couple of different ways of approaching this issue, both with their benefits.

The first is that, attentiveness inherently weakens emotion/self. ‘Self’ does not want to be seen; it wants you to act. By not acting, and instead activating the greatest degree of fascinated interest you can in those moments, several interesting things happen: for the first time you get to see exactly what emotion/self consists of, giving you an opportunity to connect some interesting dots. And, with the fascinated attentiveness engaged, the emotion cannot last long. Just by watching it, neither expressing nor repressing, the emotion goes away pretty quickly.

The second would be dropping the emotion on purpose, getting back to feeling good (or neutral) using whatever method you can, and investigating it ‘from the outside’ via attentiveness, identify the trigger, sincere interest, and using your appraisal to determine the best way to be / thing to do in future similar situations.

I think that both of these are valid investigation and compliment eachother, perhaps a good way to go about it is try one or the other, whichever is most interesting to you at the moment, maybe even do the first and then the second directly after! And keep an eye on how it’s working, do more if you’re having success, make some tweaks or try again if not.

This is also a very relative game we’re playing here, and as more and more work is done and successes had, you will get better at it and gain greater and greater confidence.

For my own part, in the several years I have even had panic attacks where I now just watch what’s happening, watch my body and psyche do weird things, but there’s such a degree of interest and fascination occurring that I’m quite unbothered by the experience - in fact, I’ve benefitted from it because I just got an invaluable glimpse into ‘me’ at core.

It’s just another thing to enjoy, really… very strange!

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How would that be different than psychotherapy ?

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@Miguel i have to disagree with the above because the emotional states are perceived intuitively, and thus their status (neutral=neutral, good=good) remains the same regardless of other changing factors. On the intuitive level, neutral will always be neutral, good will always be good, excellent will always be excellent, because we intuit what we are experiencing.

Our external conditions may change, which is I’m guessing what you’re referring to, e.g. maybe less stomach gurgling when anxious, not having headaches all the time, more energy in the day, more clarity of mind…

But those intuitive categories remain the same, and are experienced the same (though - at different rates) all the way up to becoming free

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Yes, I had thought about that objection/reflection. I think it could be summarized (correct me if I’m wrong): “The important thing is the status you give to a state in any given moment (even if influenced by x or y; even if you think different about it in the future, or what you would have thought about the same state in the past). Anything else is not relevant, and the diagram will work anyway”.

But I did not want to argue about the “true” status of a state, but to expose such reasonings/cognitive aspects as possible problems that may interfere with the communication, description, labeling and comprehension (even for ourselves, as I had said), of what we are observing and reporting to @claudiu (complicating his breakdown of the processes of what I understand he wants to investigate/achieve in certain parts of the diagram -or about the method itself-).

That’s why I give the example about our diffrences in the “basic level” of feeling good, etc.

But if those reasonings/cognitive aspects don’t interfere/affect descriptions, labelings and comprehension (even for ourselves, I repeat), good. I just would not dismiss them outright.

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Understood!

With that in mind @claudiu I would consider rewording that section, because the status is intuitively felt. Rather than something ‘I’ (the doer) give it, it is something the ‘beer’ is

Perhaps the language should be, it’s something that I attentively ‘recognize, intuit’ rather than something that is given as a status

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@FrankN

The words that have helped me the most were when @claudiu was explaining feeling good on the Dharma Overground recently.

Basically, feeling good happens all the time naturally. It the everyday, normal feelings of being ok. I wish i had the direct quote, because it was well worded.

Basically, when someone asks “how are you?” and one responds “i am going well”, in that moment, one is generally “feeling good”.

It’s just a matter of getting used to the entry point being so non-dramatic. So, normal.

Feeling good is the everyday, multiple times a day, down to earth feeling of being ok. That is why it’s so difficult to enact for the neurotics amongst us; it’s a completely easy - “no way it can be that simple” - feeling.

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I’m not familiar with psychotherapy so I can’t comment much :smiley: . But my understanding is the goal of psychotherapy is essentially to get you from being a person that is sad/unhappy/miserable in a debilitating/extreme way, to being a person that is sad/unhappy/miserable in an average way (ie to the degree people normally are). And not to be generally feeing good each moment again 24/7

Actualism’s innovation isn’t in acknowledging your feelings - plenty of people already know how to do that. It’s in using the tool of acknowledging your feelings - among others - to enjoy and appreciate being alive via at least a basic/ordinary feeling good each moment again 24/7, which one knows is possible due to being informed by pure intent what is humanly possible as experienced in a PCE (and one takes as a “seems possible” until one has such a PCE, via it making reasonable enough sense logically/rationally and/or seeing others’ reports at succeeding in doing so).

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You guys don’t stop to amaze, thank you Claudiu :slight_smile:

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Can Claudiu or anyone else please elaborate on “among others” please

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@FrankN I think what Claudiu means is that there are many tools one uses to assist with applying the method, the method itself being enjoying and appreciating this moment of being alive, the tools include things like ;

  • Investigation
  • Nipping in the bud
  • HAIETMOBA
  • Neither express nor repress
  • Keep hands in pockets
  • Tracing back to find the trigger
  • Seeing the silliness of feeling bad
  • Fully acknowledging one’s feelings

Basically they are all the things that as an Actualists you are likely to use in order to enable feeling good, but in itself those things are not the method.

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4 me, when i remember to and can talk my self into employing it, the . . . release back to non-negativity seems to occur fairly automagically upon its noticing

however, it seems to me upon introspection that this may be due to an . . . internal conviction that has arisen from close self observation that almost ALWAYS any uncomfortable feeling is due to a story (interpretation of events) in concept-space that i have been/am “listening to” (believe, have accepted as true by default, without evaluation)

so usually these days, the majority of any negativity seems to dissipate upon re-remembering that, rather than deeply investigating the root “cause” of the specific “insult”

BUT, i think deeply investigating the deep root for a specific causal-chain “behind” any particular uncomfortable event may help it unwind for good whereas NOT doing so - only contenting myself that the majority of the noticeable negativity has fled - may simply put it off FOR NOW and allow for its return where re-cognizing the root thoroughly may “eradicate” it (and its neighbors) and any un-recognized, un-noted, perhaps-deferred negativity as well

man that seems like it took a lot more words than it shoulda :slight_smile:

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So, it’s correct to say that you want to gather info about what happens inside this box/process?

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to get to this box/state?

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Yes! Exactly.

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Interesting article on Microemotions and Amygdala

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Ok so a more successful movement from overwhelmed to neutral has just happened and I can confirm it was following the steps I wrote in - What is your experience like of how you get back to neutral? - #9 by Kub933

I was dealing with one of the hen party companies I work for regarding payment for a job I completed for them. They did not make the payment structure clear upfront before I accepted the job and so I was actually owed more money for the work I completed than they had paid me.
My default is usually to simply ‘be the bigger man’ in these sort of situations and take the hit. As in just accept that I got paid less this time and move on. Today though I realised that I tend to do this out of fear of them turning against me if I dare to question them and so I decided to turn around and go down a different path.

Now as soon as I decided to question them and stand my ground in terms of how this situation needs to be resolved I of course experienced the waves of fear that I usually try to avoid by ‘being the bigger man’. Images of the company no longer giving me work, making things difficult etc were all playing out in my head.

So in terms of resolving the intense feelings this is how it went :

Firstly I ensured that I was fully aware of the fact that I am feeling fearful, as in I did not try to run from it and neither did I try to repress it or turn it into something else - Applying awareness-cum-attentiveness.

Secondly I ensured that I keep my hands in my pockets to ensure that I do not act in a way which will cause further issues with the company down the line or that will set of secondary triggers for me. I made an effort to be (psychically) not moving and as such the intense fear had nowhere to go, it could only burn itself out. I equally observed the fear trying to get up to all sorts of tricks such as the fear inspired scenarios I mentioned above. As this was going on there was the intellectual understanding that this is par for the course and that the sensible thing was to continue not moving (psychically) until the fear is capped sufficiently to allow me to look at it intelligently.

Now that the fear has subsided and I am back to feeling good I am able to look back and see just what it was about the situation that caused such a fear in me, I am now able to look at this fear of conflict with the intent of resolving it and all the while feeling good :smiley:

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I just tried this as well and I think it works even better than the ‘distraction’ method because it’s more engaged. Distraction may be useful for some situations still, but this worked well for me.

While my ‘hands are in my pockets,’ it feels similar to ‘holding my breath’ for a bit. And sure enough the feeling doesn’t last.

It’s a good tip to not re-trigger the feeling. That is an error I’ve made many times in the past out of fear of repressing

edit:

Flashing red-light → hands in pockets → don’t ‘move,’ psychologically (‘endure’) → back to neutral/feeling good happens naturally → investigate trigger → continue with feeling good until the next ‘light’

The flashing red-light can also go to ‘nipping the bud’

If ‘enduring’ is not borne, and one begins to spiral beyond what one can bear, then maybe distraction is a good tool

I see ‘neutral / feeling good / feeling excellent / etc’ as a continuum which it is useful to get to feeling as well as possible given any constraints / not losing track of the trigger

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This ‘not moving’ approach is more efficacious the earlier you can catch the emotion

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