By Joyce Alexander, RNP (retired)
Each one of us has more power than we generally perceive we do. Some people, in fact, do not recognize that they have any power over either what happens to them, or to how they react to what happens to them. Yet, we are totally powerful people; we have total power over what goes on inside us.
Recognizing that I am a powerful person with ultimate control over my emotions and actions is a heady feeling, and a scary feeling too. It is heady because it gives us a feeling that we can control ourselves, but it is scary because we also realize that there is no one else who can save us if we fail to exercise that power fully or competently.
When we were children, if we became frightened or sad, we could call on the god-like adults in our world to make us safe and to keep us safe. They could turn on the lights to scare away the monsters that might be lurking there when we could not reach the switch.
At some point in our lives, though, we must recognize that no one can do for us what we must do for ourselves, and that is to exercise our power to keep us as safe as possible from external events and internal tidal waves.
External events
Sometimes things happen externally that devastate our internal and external worlds: A trusted friend/family member/lover dies or betrays us, or a recession, depression, bankruptcy, or war intervenes in our carefully built and safe life that we could not have foreseen. This external event sweeps us away into an abyss of loss and despair. We see our own mortality, or that our life is half gone and we have not accomplished the “you should do x-es” that we had always thought we would do.
We let our sense of devastation externally and internally push us into an abyss of grief and pain. How do we take back our power when we feel so powerless, so naked and vulnerable? How will we ever feel safe again?
Recognizing that we are not in complete control of external events is a scary feeling, yet one that we must, as adults, face. Recognizing the truth that our plans for our future may not all be possible at this point in life is also necessary, and may sadden us.
Phases of life
Just as a child grows through various stages from birth to leaving home, adults too pass through various stages of adulthood. Erick Erickson described them as x, y, z. Unfortunately he did not describe them in great detail, but left his theories for others to expound upon.
I agree with Erickson that we go through various phases in adulthood as we move through the decades of the twenties, thirties, forties, etc. We are not the same person in each of these decades of our lives. We have different wants, needs, skills and knowledge as we move through life.
While it is easy to see that it would be an inappropriate thing for a 60-year-old woman to be sad that she could not marry, conceive a child and raise a family at that age, sometimes, we are saddened because we cannot have all the options at age 30 or 40 that we did at age 20.
Taking stock
When an external event precipitates a major change in our lives, or even an internal tidal wave of regrets or realizations of our lives makes us “sit up and take notice” of where we are on the life-time continuum, we pass through a stage where we may feel powerless over our emotions.
An encounter with a psychopath may be the precipitating external event in our lives, but it can be anything, or nothing in particular. A painful encounter, though, gives us the opportunity to take stock of where we are, where we wish to go, and who we are in the next phase of our adult lives. It is a time to truly recognize that we will not live forever, and that we are subject to the natural laws of this world, and yet, to rise above this and to find significant meaning in ourselves and in our lives.
We can use the external events to grow and refocus our lives, realizing that we do have power, complete power, over some things, and that we have no power over other things. We can live while we live, and find meaning and satisfaction in each of the stages of our lives.
I’ve notice there hasn’t been many comments on the NLP techniques I’ve posted. So I’ll expand on it some. Here’s what I want you to try. Think of something that has happen in the past that has some emotions hooked to it. It doesn’t need to be a bad memory. For this a good one will work just as well as a bad one. Now see the memory. What I want you to check for is do you see yourself in the memory or is it like your there seeing everything with your own eyes? If you see yourself pick another memory because you want one where your seeing with your own eyes. When you get a memory like this. What I want you to do next is to take notice of what your feeling. Try and name the emotions if you can. There is no wrong answers. When you’ve done this, step out of the picture to where you see yourself in the memory. Take a new check on the emotions your having now where you are seeing yourself in the picture.
Association is where we are in the memory as if we are seeing it with our own eyes. Disassociation is when we see ourselves in the memory. When the memory is associated we have access to the emotional state that is hooked to the memory. When the memory is disassociated we no longer have direct access to it’s emotional state.
Now try this with a bad memory and you should see that the emotional state lessens quite a bit or stops all together when you step out of the memory. This is what the technique does that I have posted. It strips the emotions from the memory. And since we run off of our emotional states. These bad events no longer have power over us.
Some people can get pass emotional events in life easier than others. Not because they are better but because they have learned the trick. They may not even know what they are doing.But they have the resources to deal with these events where they don’t have the big impact on their lives. For others that don’t have these resources in them to deal with these types of events there is NLP and other things similar that can be a big help with removing traumatic events that haunt us.
NLP techniques are basically what the spath uses to hook their prey emotionally. And it can be used to undo what was done by the spath. A traumatic event can be turned into just an event. With no meaning and no triggers. The compulsion to relive the event is gone.
http://livingwellnlp.com/25-techniques-for-treating-emotional-trauma-and-ptsd/2010/
“A trauma is not an experience. It is an emotional response to an experience. If the emotional response is positive, the experience is not traumatic, no matter how harrowing its sensory details. (Think of all the people who pay money to have scary, dangerous experiences such as white-water rafting!)”
[The experience is the meaning we give the event. The emotional response is the hook we place on the experience.]
If nothing else listen to this video. If you can’t see this let me know and I’ll post the important part.
Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) Andrew T. Austin
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cbyehMFeqAg&feature=player_embedded
http://cyberpaths.blogspot.com/2006/12/nlp-mind-control-and-seduction.html
http://www.soulwork.net/sw_articles_eng/bonds.htm
http://recoverfromemotionalabuse.com/2012/05/could-you-have-spotted-an-abusive-man/
Enjoy
My 2 Cents
skylar:
I just read “Good Country People.” That Bastard.
GRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR.
Kathy, dear, I agree with spoon….we have only so much we can do and we have to prioritize things. Mother #1, house and stuff #2.
Worrying won’t help things….good insurance will….and just remember, it is JUST STUFF. I worried so much about my stuff, my house, etc. and I now realize that it is JUST STUFF….in the big scheme of things, not important.
I actually have a lot of KOOL STUFF…fun stuff….STUFF I have collected from all over the world…each piece of furniture in my house chosen and with a “story” behind it…but really JUST STUFF. If it burned tonight, it could all be replaced with MORE STUFF that would keep my butt off the floor, would cover my nakedness that would hold food while I ate….etc. none of us take a U-Haul to the graveyard…and STUFF doesn’t love us back, or worry about us. It is JUST STUFF.
Back when I was worried about my own life, I couldn’t figure out how I could get all my STUFF out of danger so I took what I could and worried about the rest…but living in the RV I realized I had very little STUFF with me, but I was comfortable, had enough to wear, a place to sleep, and enough to cook with and eat off of, and I realized that the rest was not really all that important. So take a different “look” at your house….your STUFF…and think about it as unimportant….and you know what, at that point, the crazy neighbor psychopath can’t hurt you if the STUFF you have is not important to you and doesn’t worry you. Just be sure you have plenty of insurance and go take care of your mom, enjoy what time you have left with her without worrying about your STUFF! ((((hugs))) and hope she recovers as quickly as possible.
Louise,
lol. it’s just a story! you crack me up.
yeah, he is a rat bastard. Typical spath. we need to focus on Hulga. Kim Frederick pointed me to that story. She can explain it best, I hope she shows up.
I want you to heal from your trauma and I thought this would help. Hulga represents our vulnerability. She has no idea that such evil exists. All she knows is that the life her mother has pointed out to her is meaningless. She tries to understand everything intellectually. The missing limb/limp is a typicial mythological symbol, for a person who doesn’t have a connection with their mother. Consequently, they didn’t develop an emotional understanding of humanity.
Not pointing fingers at you. It’s what I’ve experienced myself. Spaths just have it worse than we do.
Willow888 also has a great explanation on her blog.
skylar:
Haha, yeah, I was triggered just a bit! 🙂
Kim…yes, explain this story if you are around please 🙂
Wow, I had no idea what the missing limb represented. Do you really think I didn’t have a connection with my mom? You are making me wonder now. I thought I did. But remember I told you about how she was super over protective of me and never allowed me to go anywhere…I see now that was control. And what about this not developing an emotional understanding of humanity…does that mean I never figured out how the world works and thinks? I love this, skylar…please tell me more…I may be having a breakthrough.
What is Willow888’s blog please?
Thank you!
Click on Willow888’s name on one of her posts, it is red and will lead you to another site. (her blog)
Oxy:
Thanks and so sorry you have been struggling with pneumonia…horrible. Get better soon.
I can’t find any of Willow’s posts…
Thanks, Louise, I’m on the mend but it is slower than I wish it was but that’s part of getting older, things take longer to resolve. I’m just taking things VERY slowly and doing what I can do and then when I get short of breath I sit down until I am rested then do a little bit more. As my grandfather said “I’m doing it like the cat ate the grind stone, a lick at a time” LOL
She wrote an article, and she posted in the article….http://www.lovefraud.com/blog/2012/05/24/letters-to-lovefraud-partners-in-an-unhealthy-dance/ click on her name in red on toward the bottom where she answered someone.
skylar:
Which post on Willow’s blog relates to what we were talking about above?