realizing selflessness

[whoknows]

Woke up this morning, as I do all too often, to the low-level torment of feeling resistant to what I need to do today—in this case, both the project I’m working on for my spouse and a new editing project.

I didn’t especially feel like doing work for my class either, but I felt less resistance to that, so I checked my class discussion board and responded to the only new post so far this morning, and I checked my school email and had nothing new. Now, back to the other stuff.

I really hope this is some sort of fucking “portal” for inquiry, which would seem to redeem it in some way. I am so sick of this of this particular sort of suffering!!! Well, y’know, I’m sick of all suffering, but there’s something really annoying about this type of suffering that’s so persistent and seems, in a way, so silly and like it should be easier to deal with.

Remembered to notice bodily sensations while I was still lying in bed in the dark with spouse asleep next to me. Unsurprisingly, the first things I noticed were tightness in the throat and constriction in the breathing, by which I mean tightness from chest down through abdomen, plus tears arising.

Since the emotions are still active, let’s take another look. In addition to sobbing— Well, let’s see, what’s actually involved in sobbing? Tears. Convulsions of torso, coordinated with small sounds of bursts of air coming from throat, which is tightening and releasing over and over. Face all squinched up, all around eyes, forehead, cheeks, nose. Tendency to hunch over and cross arms. No vocalization with sobbing. Might let that happen if I were alone in the house.

I feel like I should go scroll through your old posts to see what I can do other than noticed bodily sensations, but I don’t want to! I’m resistant to that also.

My mind starts to offer up things like noticing that suffering is, oddly, made of bodily sensations, which (even in this case) aren’t really all that bad, plus thoughts, which come and go and seem insubstantial. Or the mind starts to try to recall insights I’ve had in the past about “picking and choosing.” Or I try to remember what it was like when it seemed, once or twice, like I should be able to simply decide to let go of thoughts (although, even at the time, that seemed a little fanciful). But screw all that. Either it seems ineffectual or I stubbornly don’t want to expend any sort of effort and just want the suffering to magically vanish.

There’s always the option of seeing if I can just sob it out: have a little temper tantrum and not try to pretend there’s any hope of doing anything else.

Did some sobbing. Thought, “So, start every day with some sobbing into my pillow? Doesn’t seem like a great long-term solution.”

Thought of the thing I found a last week in another thread about noticing and separating the thoughts and sensations, letting them remain, and then checking, does anything need to be done about the thought right now? Well, yeah! I mean, I need to get some work done, and it’s hard to proceed while I’m still feeling this resistant and convulsively sobbing, and even once I’ve worn this out the sobbing in two minutes or five minutes or, at most, maybe ten minutes, then . . . Well, OK, I was going to say, then I’m left with the same resistance I started with. But will I be?

If I am, then do I just bully my way through and do the little executive functioning tricks like breaking the task down into the tiniest possible pieces: find the email about the editing job, open the instructions, read them, open the document to be edited, open my editing cheat sheet, read the first sentence of the document . . . Hmm, I kind of hate to admit it, but that sounds manageable. But the project for spouse is much more amorphous and emotion-laden, and I just want it to go away!!!

OK, sobbing it is . . .

Enough writing.

I’m reluctant to post this right now, when it might draw your attention away from what I sent you yesterday, while you might be composing a response to that at the end of your day. But, well, it’s related. Whatever. Here it is.

[whoknows]

Continuing from the last post: The sobbing was over in less than ten minutes. It did nothing noticeable to relieve the resistance to getting work done or the unhappiness about the resistance to getting work done.

Realized I left out one component of the current sticky blob of suffering: making decisions, which involves more energy and angst for me (and others of my neurotype) than for most people.

* * * * *

After lunch: Happy to report that the blob of suffering is dissipating.

What finally helped was that my husband, who could tell I was suffering over this project (though I don't think he knew the extent of it) figured out ways to make the project simpler and to be less perfectionistic about it. I had been trying and failing to loosen up the suffering just within the K organism (plus interacting with you), but in some important ways, K is part of a larger K-and-spouse organism. And that is perhaps especially relevant when dealing with what is obviously a K-and-spouse issue.

There are now only a few remaining steps in the project, and they are fairly straightforward and shouldn’t involve too much frustration for either of us. There’s still some related resistance and unhappiness but probably not enough to lead to my starting the day tomorrow by sobbing into my pillow.

Also got some editing done without much trouble, though it probably helped that doing the editing was a credible and absorbing way of putting off tackling the even more unpleasant task.

Still feel like I’m missing some sort of insight here about dealing with suffering.

[whoknows]

Have I been put on an LU diet?
Is it for my own good?
Could I try getting more exercise instead?

[vinceschubert]

"Have I been put on an LU diet?"
not intentionally.
..but good to look at dependence (or whatever it is)

v

[whoknows]

Hi vince,

but good to look at dependence (or whatever it is)

A bit of stream of consciousness here:
Yeah, it does seem like I’ve become dependent in a way on feedback and prompting and questions from you. “Dependent” sounds rather negative, though, like it’s a bad thing. A key feature of the way my mom raised me was to be independent, and that was a good thing to a large degree, but it was maybe a bit too extreme and has caused me some trouble also (especially with being married).
I’ve appreciated the daily boost here. It seems to help keep the momentum up, to keep the focus and the engagement going, or something like that. (I recognize the goal-orientation in that.)
And of course I’ve admitted that responding to your posts has also been a satisfying and worthwhile-seeming way to pass some time every day. And I just enjoy interacting with you.
Maybe I feel more needy and impatient about getting your responses when I’m in the midst of more suffering than usual, like the past several days.
I would really love any insight you might have about how I could have maybe added fewer extra arrows to this bout of suffering or removed them more efficiently.
With gratitude,
K