Clinging to the past
Jun. 2nd, 2004 01:47 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
smokingbootI just read a very interesting LJ where the above subject was mentioned and it got me thinking. Last weekend was full of little conversational gems about good mental and emotional health/habits.
How does one let go? If it was so easy, we'd all do it. If we feel pain then being told it's an illusion doesn't help. If the illusion convinces you that you are being hurt, it's on a par with reality, whatever that is.
So how does one get better? One can't let go until the pain stops, and the pain can't stop until one lets go. So how does one let go?
Real life with all its concerns is a great answer. Creation and fun and friendship and travel and work and money and pets and houses and all the banal crap of cleaning the kitchen really helps. This is what seems to have happened to me, but only after my share of obsession and unhappiness, monumental, cataclysmic...and in the end, remarkably dull.
I was told two exercises once, and they kind of helped so I'll put them here.
Both required pencil and paper, and a commitment of time beyond the convenient. Two months is often good, but three is good for brooding obsessives like me.
The first was to write a long angry letter to the offending party, or a long angry description of the situation. Work on the letter. Give it lots of time and energy. Then flush it down the loo, cleaning the loo afterwards. Do this every day for the time period you've set yourself.
The second is to create a detailed pencil sketch of the person/situation that one can't let go of. Really, really detailed, work from photos if you have to, but no cheating, no photocopying. Everything by hand. Once it is done, erase every single tiny detail, particle by particle until there is nothing left, or you've rubbed a hole in the paper. Put the paper in the bin, throw out the rubbish, clean the bin. Start all over again tomorrow.
By the end of two/three months, you are so heartily bored by the subject, you don't feel anger, resentment or anything any more. Even when the situation pops up again, your mind is bored, your heart is bored, your body is bored, you suspect your soul is bored, and you just don't want to know. You'd rather do anything than pick up that bloody pencil again. You go find something else to do. And revel in your freedom.
These methods are only aids to moving on. They are extremely trivial, but then, they are meant to 'trivialise' (i.e put into perspective) the moment's fixation by dwellling upon it in deliberate, absurd, painstaking detail.
They can't help much if you are revelling in the pain, or need it to feel powerful, it'll take huge amounts of time and effort if you were in love, and it's nowhere near as good as clearing the air and being honest. But it certainly helps if your preferred course of action is to drop henbane in your foe's pint and watch them gargle to death on the pub floor!
How does one let go? If it was so easy, we'd all do it. If we feel pain then being told it's an illusion doesn't help. If the illusion convinces you that you are being hurt, it's on a par with reality, whatever that is.
So how does one get better? One can't let go until the pain stops, and the pain can't stop until one lets go. So how does one let go?
Real life with all its concerns is a great answer. Creation and fun and friendship and travel and work and money and pets and houses and all the banal crap of cleaning the kitchen really helps. This is what seems to have happened to me, but only after my share of obsession and unhappiness, monumental, cataclysmic...and in the end, remarkably dull.
I was told two exercises once, and they kind of helped so I'll put them here.
Both required pencil and paper, and a commitment of time beyond the convenient. Two months is often good, but three is good for brooding obsessives like me.
The first was to write a long angry letter to the offending party, or a long angry description of the situation. Work on the letter. Give it lots of time and energy. Then flush it down the loo, cleaning the loo afterwards. Do this every day for the time period you've set yourself.
The second is to create a detailed pencil sketch of the person/situation that one can't let go of. Really, really detailed, work from photos if you have to, but no cheating, no photocopying. Everything by hand. Once it is done, erase every single tiny detail, particle by particle until there is nothing left, or you've rubbed a hole in the paper. Put the paper in the bin, throw out the rubbish, clean the bin. Start all over again tomorrow.
By the end of two/three months, you are so heartily bored by the subject, you don't feel anger, resentment or anything any more. Even when the situation pops up again, your mind is bored, your heart is bored, your body is bored, you suspect your soul is bored, and you just don't want to know. You'd rather do anything than pick up that bloody pencil again. You go find something else to do. And revel in your freedom.
These methods are only aids to moving on. They are extremely trivial, but then, they are meant to 'trivialise' (i.e put into perspective) the moment's fixation by dwellling upon it in deliberate, absurd, painstaking detail.
They can't help much if you are revelling in the pain, or need it to feel powerful, it'll take huge amounts of time and effort if you were in love, and it's nowhere near as good as clearing the air and being honest. But it certainly helps if your preferred course of action is to drop henbane in your foe's pint and watch them gargle to death on the pub floor!
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2004-06-02 08:45 am (UTC)Another thing to realise is that you are master/mistress in your own head. Nobody else ahs the power to hurt you, only you have the power to hurt yourself.
Noone can make you do anything, or stop you from doing anything.
Only physics really has a say in these matters.
Wisdom indeed
Date: 2004-06-02 09:18 am (UTC)Re: Wisdom indeed
Date: 2004-06-02 09:41 am (UTC)Alas we'd be mad as cheese but we'd have lots of pencils.