THE WHITE TIGER: It's Just Emotion That's Taken Me Over....(Bee Gees)
One thing you can't hide - is when you're crippled inside - John Lennon
If you do not now have a Bee Gees song looping relentlessly in your mind, you were definitely born in the 21st Century or very late in the 20th…
Life Itself
We live every moment of every day based in what and how we are feeling. Feelings are the sensorium of emotion. Our journey through life is experienced as emotion. Emotion is the experience of life itself.
Managing our emotions is the daily psychological task of mental health and well-being. However, at the end of the day, when all is said and done, the only emotion/feeling we really want, and seek, is Love.
Looking For Love in All the Wrong Places…(Johnny Lee)
Love & Belonging are an inextricable part of the equation of survival. It is a fundamental component of the human psyche. That is why we are social animals. There has to be society in order to experience and understand love. And we will do just about anything to get at least the illusion of it. Sometimes we simply chose Belonging. Belonging meets criteria for Survival. It meets criteria for tribe, and sometimes that is all that we need in order to survive.
Love is the hallmark of a safe and secure attachment. However so so many of us had tenuous, insecure, uncertain, even unsafe attachment experiences. This has caused us to mature in a continuous state of Fight Flight Freeze (explanation covered in the post titled “The F-Word”), the daily experience of which is measured only by degrees, the persistence of which is manifested through mental health struggles and anxiety.
Because our attachments do not have the hallmark of deep and well developed Love, we struggle to love ourselves, because we feel that we are not good enough. We struggle to find deeply loving relationships, because we do not feel good enough. We are deeply insecure - insecure in ourselves, and insecure in other.
Living in Fight Flight Freeze, with a persistent low grade thrum of anxiety, causes us to struggle in relationships, and subsequently, in finding Love and Belonging, ie developing secure and healthy attachments/connections. Why? Why is Fight Flight Freeze a barrier to establishing solid relationships, strong attachments, and deep love connections? The answer…Fight Flight Freeze only elicits negative emotions, none of which facilitate Love & Belonging… Let’s take a closer look.
THE EMOTIONS OF FIGHT
Feelings of….
FEAR/FEARFULNESS
ANXIETY – AKA STRESS
FRUSTRATION
IRRITABILITY
RESTLESSNESS
EDGINESS
SHORT TEMPERED
ANGER/ANGRY
HATEFULNESS
BITTERNESS
VENGEFULNESS
RESENTMENT
DISCONTENTMENT
UNHAPPINESS
These emotions are both strongly negative and highly PROVOCATIVE-they precipitate ACTION (i.e. acting out - aka fighting).
This can manifest as bullying, cruelty, and any number of acts of unkindness. It can present as someone who is chronically stressed, anxious, unhappy, discontent, grouchy, and easy to set off.
The Fight state also causes a restless mind, racing thoughts, inability to focus and concentrate, hyperactivity, feeling of always being “on” - like you are plugged into the wall and can’t get the plug out of the wall - making good connections almost impossible to either initiate or maintain.
THE EMOTIONS OF FLIGHT/FREEZE
Feelings of…
Numbness
Dissociation/Disconnection
Coldness
Unemotional-unable to feel emotions
Sadness & low mood
Hopelessness
Low motivation/energy
Worthlessness
GUILT
These emotions cause DISENGAGEMENT & WITHDRAWAL-they cause psychological and emotional SHUT DOWN - not conducive to developing relationships of any kind.
This can manifest as depression, and/or social withdraw, or full retreat from society and engagement with others (avoidance). A hallmark of the Flight/Freeze state is low self-esteem, negative self-talk, and mountains of self-judgement (aka Guilt).
The Flight/Freeze state will often lead to hypersomnia (excessive sleep) and low motivation.
In sum, living in Fight Flight Freeze makes everything feel stressful and challenging. Life feels like heavy lifting. Everything requires Efforting. Many things, particularly relationships, feel stressful, anxiety producing, and just feel like hard work.
Looking for Love in All the Right Places
Even if we did not have the good fortune of a secure attachment, even if we struggled most of our lives navigating engagement and relationship with our fellow human beings, even if we can barely comprehend what it means to love ourselves, and have absolutely no idea what it means to feel, understand, and be good enough-there is hope!
Hope lies in learning to live in Calm & Relax. At first blush, that may sound over-simplistic, however, it isn’t. Try working on learning to love yourself while you are running from a tiger. …mmmm…Good luck with that.
This is another reason talk therapy has left many clients wanting. I had a client once say to me, “my therapist is telling me to look at all of the colors in a blade of grass, are you kidding me, my mind is going a hundred miles an hour. That is impossible for me to do.” Fight Flight Freeze meets the Mindfulness exercise…
Let’s look at the emotions of Calm & Relax and see how the groundwork can be laid for developing love of self and love of other.
THE EMOTIONS OF CALM & RELAX
Feelings of…
QUIETNESS/CALMNESS OF MIND
INNER STILLNESS
PEACEFULNESS
JOYFULNESS
HAPPINESS
WHOLENESS/COMPLETENESS
COMPETENCE/SURENESS
CONTENTEDNESS
BEING SAFE/SECURE
LOVE
These emotions manifest as kindness, goodness, peacefulness, and the ability to LOVE self and others. Here is the only place that self-esteem (love) can grow. Calm & Relax only elicits positive emotions and a positive state of being.
In the Calm & Relax state there tends to be a desire for social engagement. Living in Calm & Relax, everything feels negotiable, navigable, and doable. There is almost never a sense of Efforting. Security and love of self makes it easier to be secure in the love of other.
Finding Psychological Freedom
Fight Flight Freeze is where you will find PSYCHOLOGICAL STRUGGLE AND SUFFERING. Calm & Relax is where you will find PSYCHOLOGICAL FREEDOM.
The keys to the process of healing ourselves, the keys to Psychological Freedom begin with learning how to move out of our entrained responses that were hard wired in Fight Flight Freeze, and also were/are normal and natural reactions to our upbringing. (Let us all begin the practice of cessation of self-judgement)
We can learn to rewire our neural pathways away from the emotional hijacking of Fight Flight Freeze, and shift to Calm & Relax where Efforting is not required. If you are reading The White Tiger, that process has already begun, whether you realize it or not. For the very first step towards Psychological Freedom is understanding created by new learning….and we have only just begun.
____________________________________________________________________________
The White Tiger is written sequentially. To gain the greatest understanding it is recommended, and helpful, to read The White Tiger beginning with the original post forward. All preceding posts can be accessed by clicking this link https://substack.com/@thewhitetiger