Psychoanalysis

 As the time since my husband's death has rolled on, I have noticed a range of emotions. Sometimes, I am functioning quite well, but other times I notice a cascade of emotions. I wouldn't say that they topple me over. I don't lie in bed or find I can't cope with the many challenges that I have inherited. I get on with it.

Yet, I do notice that I am going through some sort of change, or transformation, or growth, or maybe it's regression. Whatever it is, it's undeniable. 

I found myself tangoing with the hypnotherapist I have used, sort of banging on his door seeing if he had a fix, and he doesn't have a fix. It's far too existential for hypnotherapy. It's not a structural sort of problem - like, add exercise to your life, or find a new man using this particular dating site. That stuff is well intended but it's not for now.

For now, is dealing with big emotions and violent dreams and thoughts that feel very true and unexpressed, and that don't have a loving or accepting component at all.

In fact, I have found myself wrestling with a thought. It's this: I worked ultra hard to give what has happened in my life the nicest packaging in every way. The goal was unconditional love, forgiveness, kindness, good intention. All that. 

However, what is really happening under the hood is much more vehemently judgmental, unforgiving, and carries the sentiment of 'What the f**k just happened?'

In that state, you can only move on so fast. It's not the time to date since I found that I was just so disappointed in the men I was dating. I had so little patience with them. I didn't express that. They didn't know until I said, 'thank you, but no thank you' but under the hood, I was thinking, 'There's no way I am listening to this shit for the rest of my life.' I was and am just so picky about it all, far preferring my own company.

So, hypnotherapy and hypnosis were no good for now. It was too...prescriptive. I don't want a prescription, somebody else's version of the 'solution'. 

I read a bit and located a psychoanalyst. Ahhhh, exactly right. I wanted to talk and I wanted someone to listen as their job. Perfecto. That, I am happy to pay for.

Bring me your dreams, your daydreams, the thoughts you don't speak, she says. Brilliant. That's exactly what I want to do.

I have never felt before in my whole life this urgent need to express myself so freely and I am going to enjoy every second of this process.

The story goes that eventually the patient runs out of things to say and it's what they say after that to fill the silence, something that can't be rehearsed, where the real juice is. Right now, I don't know what that is, but I am sure it is sitting in the subconscious awaiting it's turn.

Oh, thank you Lacan. Thank you for your invention. At last. Let the chips roll where they may.

Thinking, not always the clever choice

We can't stop thinking. We can be fast asleep and the mind might be processing the day with some obtuse and weird dream. We might be in silence but the mind continues to wander all over the map. We might sit down crossed legged and determine to meditate only to find that the mind won't shut up in spite of our insistence that it should not provide a single thought. Geoffrey Rush in A Beautiful Mind told his imaginary friends to leave him alone but they refused to go. Could anything be more demanding than the mind!

A thought leads to a feeling and thus if we were to make notes all day of the goings on in our heads we'd discover that our mind is constantly having feelings too. We might feel relieved to be home, followed by sad at something we hear on the radio, followed by a sense of frustration when we don't get a call back, followed by a sense of pleasure when we bite into that apple. We might feel tired and then elated to note a parcel on the table, and then bewildered when we watch the news on television.

We might be angry with the comment made to us and then feel guilty that we allowed ourselves to anger. We might be annoyed that we know it is better to hold in a thought when we would so like to speak our minds. We may wish feelings away much as we wish away our unwanted thoughts. We may be unaware of nearly all these thoughts and feelings, so immersed in moving forwards through the day that they barely register, until we become mindful of our own mind. Such a busy mind!

Some people think more than others. Some people easily fall into the category of over-thinkers, those people closely related to over-achievers. I am probably guilty of both, in a way, when I am not castigating myself for not achieving more, that is.

Can you imagine therefore how delightful, how utterly delightful it is to give yourself up? Don't think, you're told. Bimbos don't think. An insult, a put down? Never. I, as a bimbo, luxuriate in the non-thinking state.  In that state, I can be "excited", "happy", "frightened", "confused". But, as much as it is humanly possible to do so I don't attach these feelings to thoughts. I mean, I know that a thought leads to a feeling and so I must have had a thought. But, it is not registered as such, that's all I can say about that. I'm in the hands of another being that I trust implicitly. I am open to the possibilities presented to me. I've given up my power and the decisions aren't mine to make. That's bliss for me.

So, the feeling is "I am happy" and although I am not aware of the thought, don't mindfully know its presence at all, I must have had a thought on some level. I think the thought is something along the lines of a sense of freedom and pleasure; time out. I'm aware I've been granted a time out and there is thankfulness, gratitude and pleasure, which leads to the expression of the thought, "I am happy", perhaps shared, perhaps not.

I have a friend who expresses her feelings which come from thoughts. She might say, about to enter into a difficult work project, "I am feeling a wee bit vulnerable" which comes from the thought, 'I am nervous about this project and working with particular people and having to perform professionally when I am just a vulnerable person myself, deep down.' I remember when she first started doing this with me and I didn't know what to do with it. Of course I listened, consoled, assured her it was a bit of nerves and she'd be absolutely fine, which she was. But, I don't do that. I don't run around saying, "I feel angry" or "I feel upset" or "I feel nervous" or "I feel incompetent". I just deal with that stuff myself. If I am making those kind of comments about my feelings I am in quite the state, and I hate to be in a state.

If you take the feeling of' 'incompetence' I am experiencing right now, well, I'm not incompetent at all, but the feeling arises from the thought that I am putting off today getting ready for tomorrow. It will get done quite shortly but I am aware I am procrastinating. There's the thought. 'I am procrastinating and that's stupid'. In fact, I've done a great deal of preparation and just need to tie up loose ends, but it's boring too, 'I am bored', and all that dumb thinking in my head has led to an uncomfortable feeling.

We all run around with a bunch of useless thoughts in our heads and wonder why we have an uncomfortable feeling in our body. I suppose it's not all useless. Would we get things done if the voice in our heads didn't whip us into shape?

Over the last several years meditation for me is a time to come home. Home is a place inside myself, the place where peace resides and thoughts are not invited or welcome. What interests me about 'home' is that in a state of as little thought as possible, the thoughts coming and going but not taking hold of the mind, there comes a feeling which is always wonderful. It's a feeling of love, of peace, of gratitude, of understanding; of compassion. It's a feeling of rich wonder at the business of being alive on this Earth in this moment. Non-thinking states create happy feelings, and there's my kink in a nutshell.

My friend once gave me the suggestion under hypnosis, which I think I have mentioned before, 'You have an irresistible desire to go to your cushion'. I absolutely do have an irresistible desire to go to my cushion. Nothing is going to change that now.