You’re on Your Own

You’re on Your Own — no matter what you think is going on, your experience is being invented by you.

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So, about Sub­stack… kid­ding, sort of.

I’m get­ting close to shift­ing this blog over to Sub­stack. I’m waf­fling on keep­ing The Phoenix Cen­tre Press site going. My books are for sale every­where, so link­ing to them on Sub­stack may be enough.

But the rea­son that I men­tioned Sub­stack is that (of course) I sub­scribe to sev­er­al blogs or what­ev­er they call them, and I’m see­ing the val­ue of the sim­ple format.

One that I sub­scribe to is writ­ten by a ther­a­pist I trained with back in 1981–83. Her lan­guage is quite dif­fer­ent from mine, and it’s inter­est­ing to see her describe her process.

In a nutshell, her last article was about what I call self-responsibility.

When I use this term, I’m talk­ing about tak­ing respon­si­bil­i­ty for the “whole enchi­la­da” — not for exter­nals, but for what we do with exter­nals.

I say it this way as a means of cut­ting to the chase — if we are to come to our sens­es, we need to bring our focus to what we can observe, and some­times even shift. 

We want to focus on our stories

I linked to my work­book, Liv­ing Life in Grow­ing Orbits, above, because I address this in the very first chap­ter. I sug­gest explor­ing your “Rock Beliefs.” These are the under­stand­ings that are so old and deeply dug in that they seem unassailable. 

Most don’t even know what they are. So quick­ly are they enact­ed that there’s bare­ly a blip between stim­u­lus and response. But just because it’s almost instan­ta­neous does­n’t mean we can’t find the gap, an insert a thought — a choice.

My friend’s arti­cle was explor­ing a sim­i­lar way of think­ing, and engag­ing in what I would call “let­ting go.” Stim­u­lus -> recog­ni­tion -> choice -> imple­men­ta­tion of anoth­er way of being.

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When I was in train­ing, I’m sure I learned a com­mu­ni­ca­tion mod­el. I def­i­nite­ly learned one while study­ing at The Haven. I’ve men­tioned this before, and includ­ed it in my books, but the Haven Mod­el looks like this:

What we like about this mod­el is that it encour­ages you to speak clear­ly and self-respon­si­bly. It’s described as “using ‘I’ lan­guage” for short. And peo­ple do learn to speak this way.

We work to push it to the next lev­el. For Dar­bel­la and me, it’s a lifestyle choice. We not only use it, we have com­mit­ted to cor­rect­ing our­selves when we mis­peak. You get bet­ter at it by always fix­ing your language. 

Let’s look a how this might “flow.”

As you can see from the chart, it’s drawn to sug­gest that any of the five out­er cir­cles might trig­ger first, and they also can trig­ger in any order. This is so. How­ev­er, I think the pat­tern I’m describ­ing here is pret­ty common.

Per­cep­tions are raw data. It’s what’s out there, it’s neu­tral, it’s just stuff. Stuff has no meaning.

So, I take in that raw data using my eyes and ears.

The data hits my brain. Until it does, it lacks mean­ing. My brain takes in the data, and first of all labels it. As above. “Look­ing around,” etc. It then, imme­di­ate­ly, begins the process of evaluation.

This stage, for most, goes on inter­nal­ly. Yap­pi­ty Yap, we talk to our­selves, judg­ing the exter­nal stim­u­lus and fit­ting it in to our Rock Beliefs about how oth­ers treat us, or whatever.

A feel­ing is phys­i­cal. Thus, “I feel you don’t like me” is NOT a feel­ing. It’s an inter­pre­ta­tion. Just lis­ten to your­self and your friends, and you will hear this silli­ness all the time.

All of this is going on in the blink of an eye. And sure, you might feel the feel­ing first and then gen­er­ate the inter­pre­ta­tion. Whatever.

OK. Let’s have a look, eh?

First, notice that every­thing that went on, until the action, was hap­pen­ing inside me — the observ­er. Sure, the behav­iours exhib­it­ed by “my friend” were exter­nal to me, but again, they are neu­tral until they “enter” my head and I start mess­ing around.

Before I look at what I con­sid­er a “bet­ter” approach, here’s a tad more info. What I did­n’t know (because I had­n’t asked) was that my friend’s moth­er was hav­ing heart surgery and she was wait­ing for news.

Change any­thing?

We all make the same assump­tion about our assump­tions: we take in raw data and think we know what it means. We do this end­less­ly, and even more so with peo­ple we love — as in fam­i­ly, friends. I hear it all the time.

“He’s my father / son, and he said or did this, and he did it because…” “My wife nev­er under­stands me!” “My chil­dren are dis­re­spect­ful!” And all of it is “me” inter­pret­ing what I think I say based upon what I think I know.

Let’s say I decide that my friend was disrespecting me.

Here’s a hint. They can’t. They can only do what­ev­er they do. The “dis­re­spect” part is you, in drag, tak­ing on a role, and blam­ing anoth­er, based upon your Rock Beliefs. 

But it con­firms my pre-held think­ing (my sto­ries) and I’ve react­ed this way for­ev­er — “It’s just the way I am!” so I keep doing it and try­ing to con­vince oth­ers of the “right­ness’ of my twist­ed Rock Beliefs.

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What’s the Alternative?

Here’s what an ele­gant pre­sen­ta­tion of the mod­el, above, sounds like.

Per­cep­tion
“So, I notice that you are fid­get­ing in your seat, look­ing at your phone, and seem dis­tract­ed. I notice that you haven’t respond­ed to my com­ments and questions.”

All of this is fac­tu­al. It’s “what’s happening.”

You now have a choice.

Let me “do” the rest of the con­vo as if I were talk­ing Dar­bel­la. Then I’ll do “a friend.”

I’ve already start­ed at the top, with “Per­cep­tion.” As Dar and I have a con­tract to always use the Comm Mod­el, I’d want to “run the mod­el” so she gets yet anoth­er exam­ple of my weird inter­nal theatre.

Feel­ing
“I’m notic­ing that my body is tight, my stom­ach is grum­bling,
and I’m feel­ing dis­tant from you.”

This is the Feel­ing Cir­cle. I am report­ing what sen­sa­tions I’m notic­ing in my body. Not debat­able, as they’re feel­ings… in MY body. Notice that this is not “I feel that you are ignor­ing me.” (I’m not stu­pid. I know the dif­fer­ence between a feel­ing and an interpretation.)

Inter­pre­ta­tion
“The sto­ry that I am telling myself (or I’m judg­ing) is that you are mad at me, and are pun­ish­ing me for some­thing, and don’t want to be here with me.”

Dar­bel­la and I love the clause “The sto­ry that I am telling myself…” Learned it, of course, at The Haven. We like it because it is such a clear reminder that our minds are invent­ing stuff all the time, baaed upon what we believe to be so, and it has no basis in real­i­ty. IT’S A STORY!

Inten­tion
“My first inten­tion is to get all self-right­eous and judgy, blame you, and try to manip­u­late you into mak­ing me feel bet­ter. My actu­al inten­tion is to tell you what I’m spin­ning in my head, and invite your feedback.” 

I then ask for feed­back. I invite shar­ing, so that I can hear what is actu­al­ly going on for Dar, as opposed to what is going on in my head as I “play Dar­bel­la in drag.”

Action

Action
“Would you tell me what’s up for you right now?”

With a friend, or any­one that does­n’t know this mod­el. I’d want to step through all of this in my head. I catch myself before I buy into my self-cre­at­ed sto­ries, and say:

“The sto­ry I’m telling myself is that you seem dis­tract­ed,
and I’m won­der­ing what’s up for you?”

Really?

Yup. Dar and I have been fol­low­ing this mod­el since 1996. 

As an exam­ple, I might say, “That per­son real­ly piss­es me off,” and as those words flow out of my sil­ly head and mouth, I say, 

“Whoops. Let me try that again. “I am real­ly choos­ing to piss myself off over the sto­ries I’m telling myself about that person.” ”

Really?

Yup. Every time. No let­ting me off the hook. Stu­pid needs catching. 

We real­ly need to look to our heads and the myr­i­ad of games and sto­ry­telling go on between our ears. Let­ting it go on unno­ticed and un-dealt-with is sim­ply lazy. In Bud­dhism, this is the point of being present.

No expec­ta­tion that the game will stop, but a strong under­stand­ing that we can pay atten­tion, cre­ate a wedge between — stim­u­lus — sto­ry — response. That we can catch our­selves, and final­ly become, moment by moment, self-responsible. 

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