Self-Pity

Time to examine another emotion after several days respite. I persevere with this because it seems to be helping. This one I am writing about while the emotion is happening.

Self-Pity:
Physical Sensation - tears right on the verge of falling, eyes welling up - I blink them back because I know if I let them start I will be on a full-blown crying jag, distinct, somewhat sharp pain in my chest, and the feeling like I am a balloon who has been popped.

Mental - Well, the "poor me" inner-voice is a given which is also accompanied by the old familiar, "No one knows what it's like to be me. No one understands me" voice/feeling (If I could eliminate that feeling entirely I think I would be a much happier person - really how would anyone truly understand another? We all see things through our own experiences and filters so why can't we let go of the expectation/desire for others to understand us).

There is a little bit of defensiveness, too. As in, "I am entitled to this feeling. Look at all I have gone through. Look at all I've given up."

Waah, Waah. A little bit of self-scorn, too. A voice saying, "Come on you big-baby. Why are you going to cry about something so little and stupid."

Defensive voice, "Because! Because all the little things add up and I'm tired. I'm tired of it."

Back to "Oh, poor me. Poor me. Why does it (life?) have to be like this?

Amazing how the same pattern just circles around and around the brain:
Poor Me.
I am entitled to feel this way.
Big Baby!
Repeat!

This exercise just helped immensely. I recommend examing emotions as if they are a rock and you are a curious scientist. It really diffuses the emotion's ability to affect your overall thinking.

Examining Emotions

I have been working on a technique where I allow myself to fully experience all the emotions that flow through me without judging them but without allowing them to affect my overall experience. It has been suggested to me, that a person can examine their emotions as if they were a rock - turning them over and over and observing them in a detached manner.

It has been interesting to me how many different emotions a person may experience in a given day (or at least I do). Some of them are very similar - to the point that they could easily be confused for another if one were not examining them like a rock. Also, some of them are so subtle that a person might not realize they are happening until things start to get filtered through that lens. A few I have examined this week...

Anger (over a letter from an attorney) - Physical Experience: Feeling of vision disturbance, Tight in chest/shoulders, increased heart rate; Mental Experience: Very judgmental and tendency to be argumentative about topics that I actually know I am wrong about.

Jealousy (over custom kitchen cabinets of all things!! I was working on a document for a company I am doing some marketing for and a builder had written about the custom cabinets in their homes and I had a, "When will I ever get to have something nice like this?" thought). This was one of those FLASH emotions that I might have either classified as "sad" or not even known went through my mind but could have led to filtering things negatively - Physical Experience: Felt it in the chest/heart area; Mental Experience - Whiny voice in head and then, interestingly, a judgmental voice telling myself, "These things don't matter. Why do you buy into the American materialism? Are you like all those people?"


Grief (I think this was brought on by a dream that I don't remember - I was in the shower and I had this flash of grief for my kids having to be the "kids whose parents got a divorce". The kids who have to shuffle back and forth between their parents house. Grief for the loss of the life I had envisioned in my head) - Physical Experience: An instant urge to drop to my knees and sob; Mental Experience: Mind wildly running a reel with all my perceived failures and questioning whether I did everything I could (intellectually, of course, I know that I did everything I could and more) and then moving directly into...

Fear - (this is where the mind went from Grief which I'll bet happens to people ALL the time because they can't deal with the emotion of grief. This is when I started worrying about my son taking his first ride on a school bus that day on freshly icy roads) Physical Experience: Eyebrows raised, but other than that little facial expression. Sinking feeling in stomach; Mental Experience: Like a snowball rolling. Thinking about all the other things that could happen and mentally searching for a way to stop these "bad" things from happening.

Indignation: (Over a summons to talk to my Supervisor about some of my "extended appointments") This was actually one of the hardest ones for me to examine objectively. Physical Experience: Similar to anger - tightness high in chest, tension in shoulders/neck; Mental Experience: I guess indignant sums it up best. Again, very similar to anger but the mind is racing thinking of justifications and evidence that the other person is "out of line" in their belief. Very, very defensive mentally. Also a very strong element of flight/wanting to flee with a sense of urgency. Inner dialogue of, "Well, the person does have a point. But they should consider this and this and this and what about this and this and this??"