Email | Save | Discuss | |

Today, I know the importance of relating to and dealing with reactions that are happening inside of myself. If I don't, I know my mind can result in the shadowy fighting images happening in the background of the angry knight. Not dealing with one's emotions will eventually build resentment and the unexpressed emotions will accumulate energy to such a point of wanting to express 'extreme rage' or resulting in being in a continuously angry state. I've had enough of these angry and agitated states so that I am tired of them and am no longer interested in letting things build up to such an extreme. Now, I know there is a reaction I need to deal with when I see a dialog happening inside of myself or when I have a strong feeling about something. I see that if I don’t clear it up then it will continue on inside, collecting energy of unexpressed emotions and eventually I will react out of this building pressure in a not so nice way. By not cleaning up my internal space of reactions as they happen, I am absolutely certain the energetic unexpressed pressure builds, which will affect by level of overall serenity, acceptance of daily happenings and thusly my enjoyment of life. Knowing this side-affect and seeing how it is not good for me, I am working with each reaction, as best I can, as soon as possible after it happens. These days I am in a mode of continuously clearing out reactions, to let go of the past.

I realize it is a learning process itself, finding out how to clear them up. Most reactions that I have typically relate to people in my daily life, where a person is doing or has done something that doesn’t agree with my point of view. (Notice, I am not saying that there is any right or wrong viewpoint, or that there is any finger of blame to be put onto anybody.) This kind of attitude only creates victims and attackers. The problem is MY internal problem, MY inner space is upset and I NEED to settle and resolve whatever conflict I perceive is present in my life. As these kinds of problems are people related, then the easiest way would be to convey my feelings or point of view to the other person to try to clear things up and come to some kind of resolution directly with them. This would be ideal, but what I’m finding out in reality is that it is hardly possible. This is primarily due to the fact that most people are identified with their self-image, and thusly have the need to defend their actions and thusly their point of view. This makes it impossible to have a relaxed and open discussion to resolve conflicts, because people primarily are defensive and feel attacked if you express something, which doesn’t confirm them.

I have been trying dialog a few times with little things that are coming up, but what I notice is that just after the first sentence or two, there is a defensive reaction in the other (or my presentation was off to begin with) and then what happens is that I eventually react to their defensiveness and then the moment is lost to clear anything up. I do realize my own part in it and see I have room for improvement in dialog… Most often I see for me it has to do with presentation, in that I let things build up too long, I suppress my feelings, then when I express myself it comes out too strong. The other thing I do as a means to ‘win my point of view’ is to use logical arguments showing my rightness, versus staying at the ‘I felt’ or ‘I feel’ level. I see in essence, ‘the emotion’ is what I am dealing with, it was the initial trigger, so I need to learn to stay at and deal with the beginning of the reaction and leave all the complicated justifications aside. I still think the best way to clear up conflicts is directly with people, but also this is the most challenging and finding people who are willing to work in this way is like finding a needle in a haystack.

Even trying different things, still the affect I’m noticing most is that discussing anything direct that is affecting me is making things worse, as new reactions are piled onto the old, blowing the little thing up into a major scenario. This leaves me with a dilemma because I know I have to clear up what is going on inside, by somehow expressing myself, yet I see that dialog is not working as a way to do it. At these times I write in my journal, but I see that if I don’t express myself in some way to the other person, then it still remains unresolved inside of me. Also I see that most conflicts don’t clear themselves up, by themselves, as they involve multiple parties. I still don’t know what the answer is, but I will keep trying different things and keep observing to see if it was effective to clear out the reaction happening inside of me. I am not interested in giving the fault to others for my internal space to be upset with ‘my reactions’, because I know I am generating them and hanging onto them. But I want to keep looking into this and resolve my dilemma; because I know how important it is that I learn to go beyond this.

Today I tried a new way and this was to write about something that came up for me. I saw that this medium gave me the space to voice my viewpoint clearly, without being defensive or attacking by doing so. Again I stress it’s not about being ‘right’ in my viewpoint, most important is that I voice it and then there is some exchange or dialog that might come as a means to resolve the conflict I am feeling. As it involves other people, then to get their verbal feedback about what I voiced would help much. But what happened with this last attempt is that I hardly received any feedback, at least not enough to resolve what was my conflict. So for me the conflict still exists, and without direct feedback about the issue, then there is too much space left for interpretation on both sides, with nobody being clear about what is being felt. This void I notice has the side-affect to generate even more ‘what if’ kind of internal dialogs, trying to predict what the other might be feeling or how one might respond in the future, etc. In general, what I see is that unresolved issues keep ‘internal conflicts’ alive and kicking inside of us. So also it seems this way, isn’t a viable option for me to clear up my reactions, so I will have to look for another way...

Betsy