RE: [ET2] Breaking Free From Thought Loops

> -----Original Message-----
> From: maalberse [mailto:maalberse_at_pM9gXKhGWiHOoZq2XvWKkKjM4n9zUnosfsLJwTa_Xhbe-ENEGEWT90YyWks-xTOrGXuWPJNxT8_wx-Em8w.yahoo.invalid]
> Sent: 04 April 2003 12:27
> To: emotrance2_at_yahoogroups.com
> Subject: Re: [ET2] Breaking Free From Thought Loops
>
>
> Hi Silvia
>
> Here's a little bit more about my experiences so far:
>
> "Putting the worries behind me" continues to give
> clarity in my head and shivers in my spine. Only I
> can't put a label on it anymore - it seems quite a mixture.
>
> More interesting maybe: it happened twice that I woke
> up the next day feeling really concerned - that is
> about stuff I really need to pay attention to, or else...
> Concerns that seemed to be the more essential part of
> what I first thought in the form of hardly relevant worries.
>
> So, maybe the thought indeed "doesn't go away" by
> putting it behind me; maybe it's "just" a way to create
> space for what really needs to be attended to, of which
> the worrysome thought was just a pale, almost
> irrelevant reflection.
>
> I keep on being fascinated about this.
>

Yes, me too.

I don't believe the thought "goes away" but it is passed over to a
different system for further processing, resulting in different
behaviour or should I say, state with the resulting emotions,
behaviour and thought when it has completed the cycle.

I have passed over a fleeting nagging annoyance about an old car
which was stuck in my drive for over 18 months for two weeks, on
and off, and yesterday I took it to the scrapyard - just all of a
sudden, I got so very annoyed with it still being there, I just
went, "Dammit that's IT! I can't STAND this anymore!"

So now, it's gone.

Finally.

At long, long last!!

When it did NOT go for 18 months for all the - how many? thousand
times, ten thousand, I thought about being annoyed and that I
should really do something about it.

I passed over the thought to "those other processing systems"
perhaps ten, 12 times in all. I thought about it more often than
that but was probably busy with something else.

And that's the result - a sense of so much annoyance just bubbled
up that I had no option but to take action at last.

It came from nowhere, was quite irresistible and just washed my
previous, "Ah, groan, yeah maybe later ..." completely into
oblivion.

This pattern is NOT about sticking your head into the sand at all.
It DOES something quite dramatic with the things you hand over to
it and it brings it back to you IN A WHOLE NEW WAY.

Actions certainly speak louder than words, as far as I am
concerned, and that car not being there anymore is a nice piece of
proof to me.

Ok, but here's a very different example altogether.

My ex takes younger son to Judo every week as a bonding sort of a
regular thing.

On this occasion, he was on holiday but it was the annual awards
evening so I had to go instead.

Any parent will have an idea of what that's like, seeing your kid
*in comparison to others* and being judged by these people.

Now my kid is unusually big for his age (more so than you are
picturing, he's 13 and 6'2" and nearly as wide as he is tall) and
not one of the most elegant movers in the world. He is bigger than
both the blackbelt trainers and totally towers over all the other
kids there who flow lightly and easily through these moves which
are a huge effort to him. He is very self conscious because of
this and this, of course, inhibits him further still. The other
kids don't want him as a training partner so he is often left out
altogether when there are partner exercises and the group is
odd-numbered.

Still, he tries as hard as he can.

So I'm sitting there, thinking all these things, making all these
comparisons, gritting my teeth, making all these judgements and
defenses and what ifs and if onlys and and - aaarghhhh ...

Right. Get a grip Silvia. Pass it over, every single thought that
comes, one after the other.

For nearly 2 1/2 hours I did this and after the first 15 minutes,
it became like a standing flow of thinking things that would just
go straight up and over and away in a constant riverlike motion.

And as time is going on, I'm feeling more and more at ease, more
and more loving towards my boy, more and more appreciative of who
he is and how difficult all this is for him, and I am beginning to
see *who he is* more and more, and am having more and more faith
in him as a person in his own right until there was some sort of a
switch point near the end where this extended not just to him but
to all the kids there and even the instructors and their
assistants.

When we drove home, he said to me, "It was really great having you
there. I really felt as though you supported me and it was much
easier than usual, somehow."

Well, it was much easier for me in all ways too. Indeed, it was an
amazing experience and I have so much more confidence in him and
his abilities to overcome the challenges of the "hard", it's quite
astonishing. I also feel I learned a lot - probably more than I
consciously realise right now (remember the energy of learning??
perhaps that's how to do that, setting up this flow which keeps
the conscious mind right out of it and it doesn't get in the way).

It's well worth having a go with this pattern on such things, just
when watching a loved one at work or play or even asleep. Passing
all the judgements and conflicts over, see what comes of it.

And at the end of the day, it feels good and right in a most
unusually relaxing way.

waves,

SF

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Received on Fri Apr 04 2003 - 07:51:00 BST