Emotional exposure

For fear of being hurt, one might take it upon themselves to shut out their emotions, to hide them away and act only in ways which can be perceived as effectual, or intelligent. Though, in doing so, you numb yourself to everything; you numb yourself not only to the bad but to the good. What i'm arguing for here, is that to continually do so actually not only numbs you emotionally to what's going on, but you numb yourself from reality itself! Losing focus of what it is to be, you may find yourself drifting into the real of why bother at all? Especially when the rewards are so benign, lacking any trace of substance; like eating plain white bread.

It's not apathy; where you don't care - it's about caring too much.

When a person is up against ordeals, the person has two options – work them through, or ignore them. The first one is obviously the one which leads down the line to personal growth and success, whereas the latter attempts to divert the focus of the ordeal but reducing how much that individual cares about it. If you deny the opacity of the problem, and extract oneself emotionally from it, the consequences of this trial leads to less of a negative impact on that individual. Like a duck in water – the water may be cold and harsh, so instead of being immersed in it, the duck developed a coat of feathers in which the water just rolls off. However, in actuality, by doing this, it is more like the analogy of making a bet – if you invest fewer chips (money) in a bet, the pay off will be less even if you win. However, by investing a lot into the bet, then the pay off could be great. This of course also has the outcome whereby a loss is made, though, even failure can be viewed as a good thing so long as it is taken as a learning experience – meaning you will be better in stead for the next challenge/ordeal/bet.

Being aloof, or absent in company is never considered a particularly good strategy though. In alienating yourself from reality, you also alienate others, so the strategy of emotional distancing is a poor direction for actual effective living. The question then begs – how to pull yourself from such a place and back into the fray of the living? This is where I am going to ponder:

On the radio, this man, with a name, a name I can't remember and don't really care about, was talking. Yes indeed, talking – on the radio I have you! Anyway, he's some kind of psychiatrist forward slash author. He was talking today about insomnia, and made some points I largely agreed about, particularly when he made the point I was hoping he was going to make about the notion of sleep itself. When a person with a busy mind tries to go to sleep and finds himself/herself unable to do so, they fret about why this is and 'try' to fall asleep by 'focusing' more. Though the problem with this is that the focus is on the 'sleep' part, but at the time the mind is awake with trying to realise this sleep. The more you put into trying to sleep, the further from it you become – you then begin to panic as to why this is and focus on the dawn of the morning where you're going to have to do a big ass presentation or something – perhaps for a stripper position. The oxymoron here is that the more you focus on trying to do something, the further you distance yourself from actually doing it. It's the same for most 'natural' things in your life - where attention draws in on yourself to perform simple tasks, and you stumble when you focus on the part, as you forget about the whole. Like if you focus entirely on walking, where you envisage people watching you, you find yourself walking incredibly awkwardly. For more complex tasks, concentration is beneficial, as you take the focus from yourself and onto the action you're trying to complete. Sleep is of course, not a complex task, and it is in fact, one of those instances where the more concentration you have on it, the less likely you are to be able to reach it.

The point I am making, is that it's quite like that for emotions too – they come before we can even think about it – they are responses to instances in time and stimulus that crop up in day-to-day life. The mind may control them by changing the focus onto itself and not onto the thing in front of it. So, the way to re-engage with your emotions, not internally, but externally, is to be less controlling and allow for the randomness of nature to feed your soul from without to within. In saying that, this is not easy, it's not even easy to understand, so I will try and break it down. The biggest problem with withholding your emotions is that you then engage in a schema where you question everything – you hold yourself back in order to test the waters with your extended toe, instead of jumping in and causing a big splash. Maybe, the entire reason we are here on earth is to do so – it seems rather wasteful to live any other way. If you believe in God, then you should live to the full because God didn't give you your body and mind to piss about, and alternatively, if you don't believe in God, then the insane freedom you have to live life, whatever it may be, to absorb culture, to express oneself is the only choice, as the time we have here is finite – and in relation to everything else, is incredibly short.

The main crux of all this though is the ying-yang-yen of psychology – the id, the ego and the super-ego – all present in the mixture of the weird and wacky world of the conscious. A controlling and negotiating network which identifies the complexities of 'self' and regulates it, as it controls you, in the real world. To be fair, without these we would be raving loons – wild animals without reason or will to be or do anything else than fulfil the core roots of one's appetites. It's necessary to have voices creep up to deter you from doing heinous things – without these controlling aspects of oneself you would be unable to function, and not only that, but the big questions regarding identity would never crop up. So I'm not saying jump in and ignore reason, what I am saying is that let things play out and become more of a participant and not an observer. We are all very capable of doing this, but have become less practised in it since the inception of large-scale media outlets, such as films, TV and theatre. We listen, we watch, but we don't necessarily participate. I'm just dribbling on, but maybe, the key is to reduce the amount of 'watching' we do, and embrace the insecurity of boredom. Boredom for instance, is incredibly important for creativity, but not only that, but would help regulate our standards for how reality should be and how others should be. Our standards change massively, and we become removed from reality when subjected to mass media. Media is an edited and inaccurate depiction of reality, in truth it is largely not comparable to reality, other than the fact that it is a form of YOUR reality.

So, I, like always, have made no sense, but rambled from beginning to end without much of a direction other than the premise of emotional distancing. In conclusion, it comes down to various factors – instances where we have modified ourselves to cope with stresses and ordeals by reducing our connection to them. This programming becomes the trend for the way you adjust yourself to future events too, and a circular mechanism revolves to create larger crevices where your emotions reside. The more you think about the emotional reactions you have to something, the more unnatural it plays out, and from this, the more insecure you feel about it. For, as you know, if it feels natural, it feels right, and vice versa. If you think hard about the saliva in your mouth, within no time, the saliva seems to build up and you end up drooling down your front. That is the power of thought – thinking it makes it so. Though, it is needed to be borne with a sensitive brush – where thoughts are placed where they can do good and not be counter-productive.

Here are some things you can actually DO to try and become more effectually emotive:

1. Meditate on issues and place them aside if nothing can be done about them.

2. Become busy – occupation helps direct focus on something tangible.

3. Try fiercely to become more selfless – move aside the ego.

4. Reduce the distractions of falsehoods of reality – watch fewer films and tv shows.

5. Participate where you would be more comfortable watching.

6. Dance and sing loudly in the car and shower.