Invasive Emotions and Feelings
Invasive emotions and feelings are lower-minded subcortical storyless processes. The highly uncomfortable feelings you’re experiencing are not generated in the cortical executive part of the brain. But the left hemisphere cortex generates stories to give context to these emotions and feelings. The stories are not necessarily related to emotions and feelings. But the stories become ruminations that generate feelings and emotions. So it is the proverbial vicious cycle. Even though cognitive issues are important to deal with, primary-process emotions have to be dealt with on their own terms. Thoughts are not as strong as affects, which is why cognitive therapeutic interpretations often do not work well with serious psychopathologies. Cognitive therapy is rendered ineffective in the face of dominant primal passions.
Self-therapy involves replacing rumination on unresolvable problems with a focus on the process of rumination. Instead of focusing on feelings, emotions, and thoughts, you focus on the process. It is all about attending, or where your attention is focused. Open focus, ATT and metacognitive therapy (MCT) are part of the process of focused attention.
We cannot solve many problems yet we can’t easily run from them. Marriage, family, and work are hotbeds of irresolvable problems. Life is inherently difficult and painful. There are no answers to chronic problems. The process of discovery is sometimes painfully slow but without limits to our growth.
Seven Primary Affect Systems (“low-minded” ways)
Jaak Panksepp discovered that the lower brain seems to be organized in such a way that one primal affective state prevails at any one time. He calls this monomania and it causes the upper thinking neocortex to follow the lower brain and also focus obsessively or ruminate on one thing at a time. And so Panksepp considers a goal of therapy to facilitate taking control of one’s passions by understanding the “low-minded” ways.
- SEEKING (expectancy)
- RAGE (anger)
- FEAR (anxiety)
- LUST (sexual excitement)
- CARE (nurturance)
- PANIC/GRIEF (sadness)
- PLAY (social joy)
Mirror Neuron System (MNS)
When you are around someone projecting negative feelings, the MNS automatically mirrors their negative feelings that I’m experiencing. These are uncomfortable feelings and emotions set off by the MNS reflecting the way someone else is feeling or behaving. Try and focus on your breathing and work on accepting the reflected feelings without claiming ownership of them and without blaming the owner of the negative feelings for passing them on. You can avoid an escalated loop can do this with mindful meditation.
Mindful Meditation
Mindful meditation shifts the focus of attending from rumination and clinging to irresolveable problems to attending to the process of thought, feelings,and emotions. You stop clinging to irresoveable thoughts, feelings, and problems. The mp3s you can download from the Insight Meditation Center offer sessions in focusing and attending in virtually every aspect of life, and serve as a rich source of therapy. The goal is to Incorporate mindfulness into your daily space.
Attention Therapies
Focus on the process of attending with open focus and ATT. Open focus concerns spacial focus; ATT more on sound. Both a focus on attending and it is this focus on process and away from problem-solving that is healing. A focus on ki breathing leaves no room for anything else. Spend your focus on ki breathing meditation, open focus, and ATT, in place of ruminating on thoughts, feelings, emotions. and problems.
Ki Breathing Meditation, Cognitive Therapy (CT), Open Focus, Metacognitive Therapy (MCT), and Attention Therapy are all effective self-therapies. You can believe and have faith in them by understanding how they work. Find a balance of therapies that work for you. Include the body as a process. Somatics, yoga, jogging, swimming, resistance exercises, whatever balance of therapies that work for you.
Northwestern Medicine scientists have discovered for the first time that the rhythm of breathing creates electrical activity in the human brain that enhances emotional judgments and memory recall.
Whatever your religious beliefs, prayer is an affirmation of your beliefs, faith, and expectation. If it is at all possible for you to include prayer as a part of your daily routine, you are affirming what you want to be and expressing a belief, faith, and expectation that you expect it to happen.
No room for rumination. Never time to ruminate when you practice healing self therapies for mind and body. Each time distracting thoughts pull you away, come back to breathing meditation and a focus on posture. Don’t try to push thoughts away. When you try not to think of the white elephant, that is what pops into your mind.
Moment by Moment
When we hit a peak it feels like we are making progress. When we sink to a trough and it feels like we are back right where we started and nothing we try is working.
The solution is in the moment, the only place we have control. The moment is the place we can practice open focus, ki breathing, and ATT, Cognitive and Metacognitive therapy. We undoubtedly forget to employ these therapies and the only place to get back on track is in the present moment.
As Albert Ellis would say, “It is fucking hard, but it is never too fucking hard.” When we are knocked for a loop, we get up and start again. Over time we hit higher and higher points on the graph that was not so long before beyond our reach. Then eventually, we break through limits that were unimaginable.
Put your ruminations to work. You cannot push them away. You can use them as a reminder to focus back on breathing and posture. You may get hundreds of chances to practice each day. That is how you will eventually break through unimaginable limits.
But it takes day by day, moment by moment mindfulness. As my father would say whenever he loaned me the keys to his car, “Keep your wits about you.”
Self-help books that help:
Total Self-Renewal through Attention Therapies and Open Focus
The Open-Focus Brain: Harnessing the Power of Attention to Heal Mind and Body
