Why We Sometimes Feel Crazy, Neurotic and Fragmented
Ever noticed one part of you fighting with another part?
“I want a donut”. (What’s up, craving part?).
“I’m gonna feel so bad if I eat the donut”. (Howdy, aversion part).
“It’s so bad that I always want to eat donuts”. (Ahoy, shame part).
And this is before you’ve even got out of bed, amirite?!
:D
I have often felt pulled in a hundred different directions at once.
I want something, yet I'm terrified of it. I need help, yet I’m too ashamed to ask for it. I want a beer. I don’t want a beer. I want a beer. I don’t want a beer.
Often the only response is simply to collapse under the strain.
This inner conflict occurs when one part of our being is trying to overcome another part.
So our ‘craving’ part comes up to numb out our ‘hurt’ part. Then our ‘aversion’ part steps in to take control of the ‘craving’ part…and then when this is all kicking off our ‘shame’ part comes in to rain on everyone’s part parade.
This process is very unconscious, seemingly endless and totally, utterly knackering.
Why does this happen?
The Self Is A Smartphone Full Of Apps
I’d like to introduce an analogy to help us understand how this inner conflict comes about.
While our personality appears from the outside to be unified and cohesive, it is actually made up of thousands of individual patterns of thinking and feeling.
You can think of it like a smartphone.
Your body-mind is the phone itself. And the individual “I” patterns (established reaction patterns of thinking, feeling and behaving) are the apps installed on the phone.
You might have an app that gets angry when someone criticises you.
You might have an app that people-pleases to avoid conflict.
You might have an app that likes reading philosophy books because it makes you feel smart (and, deep down, worthy of love).
And on and on.
Now, when developers create apps, they try everything to get you to use the app as much as possible, making it addictive, pinging notifications, architecting them for maximum dopamine hits…
Your mind is the same.
Each thought pattern is like an ‘app’ that is trying to perpetuate itself and get used as much as possible.
You may have noticed that your patterns repeat themselves!
This is why the inner conflict feels endless. The ‘job’ of each app is to perpetuate the same pattern as long as possible (until it gets resolved).
And it will ping ‘notifications’ into your body-mind space whenever any situation arises that feels relevant.
These notifications take the form of thoughts (projections, anticipations, expectations, self-criticism etc.) as well as emotions/sensations (anger, fear, shame etc.).
Now, imagine that you have hundreds or even thousands of these apps. Each one trying to send notifications and be used as much as possible.
Next, consider that it’s totally possible for there to be COMPLETELY CONTRADICTORY apps that push in opposite directions or try to control and overcome other apps.
Welcome to your body-mind!
This is often why we feel crazy, neurotic and fragmented.
Because what we ‘are’ (in a certain, limited, personal sense) is thousands of noisy, attention-seeking, mutually-contradictory ‘apps’ running at the same time and trying to perpetuate themselves indefinitely.
How did things get so out of hand?
We Resist The Thousands of Patterns
The reason these apps accumulate is that, often, their content is too emotionally intense: hurt, fear, anger, shame…we just don’t know how to deal with it.
So in order to get through the day we need to control them, repress them, deny them, project them onto others. Anything other than look at them.
And notice what this involves…the creation of more apps! Apps to resist and repress and so on.
You need apps to control the apps and then apps to control the apps controlling the apps and on and on…
And these then start pinging more notifications into the mix.
There’s nothing ‘wrong’ with this. In many cases it was totally necessary at various points in our lives.
It’s just that once you start accumulating too many apps, the internal conflict really gets rolling!
And we start feeling like we’re ‘crazy’, disconnected from ourselves, being pulled in a million directions at once…
This occurs when we try to CONTROL our patterns of thinking and feeling rather than trying to BE with them.
When we do this, our apps stay stuck on loop.
We become like a computer that’s running software that hasn’t been updated in years. And is full of defunct anti-virus software from the 90s.
And that little paperclip from Microsoft Word.
In this place, our operating system is reacting almost exclusively from PAST conditioning.
We react to the people, places and things in our present environment with patterns that originated in childhood (i.e. old software).
Like needing to people-please or feeling like it's unsafe to ask for help (even from anthropomorphic paperclips).
This is a painful place to be.
What Do We Do?
The lesson here is this: that you can’t resolve the ‘too many apps’ problem by creating more apps, i.e. by controlling, resisting, repressing, fixing, distracting, denying and so on.
Again, nothing wrong with these things. They just don’t work.
We need to update our internal software. And bring it back to the present moment.
This involves listening to the notifications.
Tuning in to what that particular ‘app’ needs to move on from that moment in childhood when it was created…
Giving that app space to run its particular program as loudly as it wants, without trying to control or repress it.
When we can just ‘be’ with these apps (i.e. the reactive patterns of thinking and feeling)…then they kind of ‘update’ themselves and start to integrate more harmoniously into your overall Being.
And we finally start to feel less conflicted, rather than more.
But this is a process. It takes time, skill and patience.
If you need a hand updating your operating system or uninstalling some apps you might not need anymore, give me a shout :)
I’m always available for a free and quite chill chat about what’s going on for you and how I might be able to help.
