A New Series—On Cling­ing

The remain­ing arti­cles in this series:

10– ide­olo­gies

“Me? Split? I am not! There’s my body… right over there!”

I can’t speak for the rest of the world, but most peo­ple in North Amer­ica are emo­tional illit­er­ates. They may have an intel­lec­tual grasp that there are a range of emo­tions, but for most peo­ple, for exam­ple, it’s dif­fi­cult to dif­fer­en­ti­ate between sad­ness, ennui, melan­choly, “the blues,” and some­thing more clin­i­cal, like depres­sion. (Hint: a lot of what is called depres­sion, isn’t.)

Of course, mind sci­en­tists (the priests of the 21^st cen­tury…) want to per­suade you that they can tell the dif­fer­ence, but really, all they’re doing is com­ing up with a diag­no­sis that jus­ti­fies what they already believe to be so.

For exam­ple, a 15-year-old girl we know was recently diag­nosed by a psy­chol­o­gist as being depressed. (Given that this is a med­ical term with a spe­cific mean­ing, I’m sur­prised how loosely it’s applied.)

First, two inter­est­ing bits of information:

• First, the daugh­ter is 15.
• Sec­ond, she was pre­scribed Prozac.

Before I get to the punch line, let me just indi­cate that there is a real issue about pre­scrib­ing Prozac (and Paxil, among oth­ers) to peo­ple under the age of 18, as there is a greatly increased risk of suicide.

Now I really haven’t a clue as to how this bril­liant diag­no­sis hap­pened, but I’m guess­ing that back­wards rea­son­ing played a big role. Goes like this.

First, there is no drug for sad­ness, but there are a whack of them for depres­sion. So, here’s this kid who’s hav­ing issues, who seems sad, who is not sure what to do with her life. Things are just not going all that well.

This is not accept­able to many par­ents, to the kid, and to most of West­ern soci­ety, because as we all know,

we’re all sup­posed to be
happy, ful­filled, suc­cess­ful, and rich.

The diag­no­sis actu­ally starts there. Remem­ber what we said last week, about cling­ing to the habit of how we view life. We cling to, and are addicted to, our cul­tural val­ues. So, given that the kid doesn’t fit, West­ern med­i­cine seeks to nor­mal­ize her. She “shouldn’t be this way,” so they just kind of root around in her head, tight­en­ing the screws here, cap­tur­ing a mar­ble there.

Here’s a flash: maybe she IS nor­mal, for her, and all she needs is to learn to accept and then man­age her sadness!

But I digress. Big Pharma is a key soci­etal “nor­malcy” maker. And Big Pharma tells us that there’s a pill for every­thing. So, here’s how it goes.

The per­son is sad. The per­son shouldn’t be sad. There­fore there must be some­thing wrong. Pills fix what ails us. Prozac and Paxil are con­sid­ered depres­sion med­i­cines. So, let’s diag­nose the kid as depressed, and give her the pills.

This of course begs the ques­tion — was she depressed in the first place? Or was this a sim­ple way to get her out of the office, onto a pill, and prop­erly numbed out, so she would again sort of fit in? Methinks it was the latter.

I used to hang with a doc­tor who was both a friend and a client. He was a really big “pill guy.” He got so enthused with all of the new men­tal ill­nesses that were com­ing out of the DSM-IV that he’d often decide that he had the ill­ness and needed to be on the pill that would “cure” it.

He described din­ners put on by Big Pharma, and after describ­ing the pre­sen­ta­tion to me, would, as a foot­note, say, “Oh. And the guy said that eight ses­sions of psy­chother­apy was just as effec­tive as the pills .”

In other words, a non­in­va­sive, non chem­i­cal approach was highly suc­cess­ful. Duh. But those lit­tle pills are so much more convenient.

This isn’t meant to be an anti drug rant, although it’s turn­ing out that way. I’m try­ing to get at how soci­ety deals with emo­tions.

Early on, we are taught, by word and exam­ple, which emo­tions are accept­able and which are not. I usu­ally use anger as an exam­ple, because lots of peo­ple have it on the “bad” list. Typ­i­cally, when par­ents see their kids act­ing out anger, they try to get them to stop. They may try dis­trac­tion, lec­tures, bribes, or one of the fol­low­ing bril­liant sentences.

• “What have you got to be angry about?” Or,
• “I’ll give you some­thing to be angry about!”

The rea­son this hap­pens is that the par­ent is bewitched, both­ered and bewil­dered by their own anger. So, what hap­pens is that the child learns that

emo­tions on the “bad” list have to be jus­ti­fied before they can be expressed.

Here’s the cling­ing piece.

We go through a lot of trou­ble to learn soci­etal rules. Agony actu­ally. You can some­times see it in the faces of two-year-olds, who scream, “No!” Their faces are beet red with the effort of repress­ing an emotion.

When we finally “get social­ized” we become addicted to society’s rules.

In other words, most peo­ple develop a socially accept­able, lim­ited range of emo­tional expression.

And because it took so much work to get there, they cling and cling to this lim­i­ta­tion. They become emo­tional illit­er­ates, with a minis­cule range of expres­sion, no words for their emo­tions, and a death grip on a lim­ited way of under­stand­ing themselves.

In Western-based cul­tures, black and white think­ing pre­vails. So as most of you read what I’ve just writ­ten, you may think, “Well, Uncle Wayne is argu­ing for express­ing emo­tions all over the place.” And when you pic­ture that, you likely go to your “bad” list, visu­al­ize every­one run­ning around express­ing those emo­tions, and freak your­self out.

Head for the hills! Uncle Wayne has lost it!

That’s not what I’m suggesting.

I’m sug­gest­ing that you exam­ine your emo­tional list, and dis­cover what you’re cling­ing to.

Emo­tions, in and of them­selves, do not mean any­thing. Thoughts, in and of them­selves, do not mean any­thing. You are not your thoughts, and you are not your emo­tions.

Emo­tions & Thoughts are things you have,
not things that you are.

Let­ting go of cling­ing is all about detach­ing from iden­ti­fy­ing with these inter­nal processes.

If you reread that para­graph above, about how our emo­tions get con­di­tioned, or per­haps bet­ter, how the expres­sion of our emo­tion gets lim­ited, you will see that there are two sep­a­rate things going on here.

• One is the bare emo­tion, and
• the other is the socially approved clas­si­fi­ca­tion.

Emo­tions are felt in the body, and then our minds get involved, not by accu­rately label­ing the emo­tion, but by plac­ing the emo­tion on either the good or the bad list. If it’s on the good list, Whoopee! If it’s on the bad list, it’s “stuff­ing time.”

The end result is that we expend so much energy stuff­ing our emo­tions that we have lit­tle left for actu­ally living.

My friend, the late, great Joann Peter­son, is most famous for her course and her book, called “Anger, Bound­aries, and Safety.” This book is really a must read. In it, you’ll find a struc­ture to safely express anger.

The same approach can be taken with sad­ness, grief, bore­dom, dis­ap­point­ment, and the 10,000 other things.

There is no such thing as a safely har­bored emo­tion. Emo­tions build and build, and find their way out over the stu­pid­est things. Much bet­ter, I think, to find a sim­ple and effi­cient way to be our emo­tions. Briefly, and elegantly.

Here are five other tech­niques that will help.

4. Sit down and shut up.

Med­i­tate, Med­i­tate, Med­i­tate! There is sim­ply no other approach to get you into your­self, observ­ing your­self, and learn­ing to let go of your games. Med­i­ta­tion is all about notic­ing, and releasing.

Much of the let­ting go has to do with our thoughts. We erro­neously think that we are our thoughts, as opposed to hav­ing thoughts, as I said above. But the goal is not to talk your­self out of think­ing — that’s sim­ply not pos­si­ble. The goal is to sim­ply notice. Thoughts come, thoughts go — attach­ing to them is optional. Until you not only under­stand this but live it, you are con­demned to a men­tal hell of your own creation.

So sit. Watch. Notice. And don’t waste your time mak­ing a big drama out of it. No one cares, because all that drama is the same for all of us. (You’re unique! Just like every­one else!)

Minds go “yada yada yada,” and then our ego gets involved, and we think each “yada” is gold. Much of what we think is con­di­tioned by our cul­ture, is actu­ally mind­less and mean­ing­less. If you really think you’re bril­liant, I’ve got the per­fect place for all your thoughts:

Let it go?!!!

This week, look at your emo­tions, your sto­ries about your emo­tions, and what your attach­ing to. Have a breath, quiet your­self, and sim­ply let go.