Knowing is not truly Knowing

[Forest]

Perhaps a symptom is coming on, and you ask yourself, "Okay what am I feeling now?" And you try to figure it out logically...This is an interesting thought process, but doesn'thelp you. We develop symptoms because we’re not feeling our feelings, not because we don’t what our feelings are.

Using logic to try and get to your feelings is like going to a Chinese restaurant and ordering in Spanish. You’re using the wrong language.

Logic and our primitive brain do not go together. It is not enough to simply know what emotions you have. You need to start feeling and allowing them in order to recover. This is why journaling can be so frustrating for some people. You can dig up what the feelings are, know what they are, but unless you are feeling and accepting emotions in the present your symptoms will persist.

You can know all about the effect your childhood had on who you are as a person, but if the idea of having intense rage and anger still scares you and makes you feel extremely guilty, then you are not yet fully accepting your emotional state.

Accepting is different than knowing. It is similar to the following scene from Good Will Hunting.

Like the Sistine Chapel, you can know all about your childhood and your emotional state, but unless you feel it you don’t really know it.

Your move, chief

 

[Leslie]

Wow Forest, this was a powerful clip. I've seen the movie several times and can't even recall this scene. Guess it's true the mind doesn't let you know something until you're ready! I think, for me at least, the problem is not being able to figure out how to override the logical, intellectual mind. It's always in control, even when I tell it to stop, it's still the logical side of me intellectually knowing that enough is enough already. The trouble is that the knowledge of how to do anything else, like "feel" for instance, seems to be buried so deeply it's beyond reach. A couple years ago, about 6 months or so before the pain of TMS (and about 18 months before any knowledge of such a thing as TMS) some very well-meaning spiritual shepherds suggested that I was lacking "balance". That once I could strike balance I would be at peace. The full extent of the truth of their observation becomes clearer and cleared to me every day. The trouble is that 9 times out of 10 I still find myself trying to "make" balance. It's incredibly frustrating to be told you're lacking balance, know full well it's true, and not have the foggiest idea WHAT balance is or how to get it. I find the same to be true for "feeling" feelings, if you have no conscious memory of what exactly that is, you have no frame of reference to even know when or if it's happening and when it's not. It reminds me of that story of the civilization that didn't see Columbus' ships on the horizon approaching their location because they had absolutely no knowledge of ships. I guess we're fortunate in the fact that it's not quite that severe, but the real question becomes how do you know that your "normal" is not "normal, normal"?

 

[Forest]

I find the same to be true for "feeling" feelings, if you have no conscious memory of what exactly that is, you have no frame of reference to even know when or if it's happening and when it's not.

I struggle with this all the time. I was never officially diagnosed, but I always felt that I was somewhat alexithymic, as I have always struggled with getting in touch with my emotions. I spent a lot of time in the logical side of my brain.

I am trying to not examine everything as much as I once did. It is difficult, but the main thing is to recognize that something else could be going on. It is like the ships on the horizon. You may not know what ships are, but if you understand that there could be something floating out on the horizon, then, even though you don’t know exactly what the emotion is, you will be able to identify that something is out there. The key is to open yourself up to the emotions.

 

[Leslie]

I am trying to not examine everything as much as I once did.

This is proving to be very effective for me as well. Somewhere on the journey of my life I got this misguided idea that knowing "why" somehow would make anything ok. "Why" seems to be a question that reveals itself most willingly when we're not asking. When I recognize that my analytical self is trying to micro dissect something to figure out "why", I interrupt it. I answer the "why" with "because it is" All the analyzing does not change the reality that whatever I'm trying to analyze is happening, and dissecting it to the atomic level is not going to take me back in time and undo it, it's just going to add stress and pressure and frustration.

 

[Forest]

This is so true, Leslie. It is so easy to get lost in analyzing everything and completely forget to actually experience it.