Category: Resources

You Seeing, Being Seeing

April 11th, 2023

Detritus from the past floated to the surface of consciousness upon my waking this morning and has been gathering since then. I’ve been watching, noticing how momentum builds quietly, noticing how the pull of my attention gets stronger, narratives more elaborate.

When I look for a contrast, something to counteract, what arises is You Seeing, Enlightened Seeing, Being Seeing—an idea P came up with in the insight group Play-as-Being, which some played with vigorously for several months back around 2009, logging observations along the way.

Enlightened Seeing wasn’t part of the original framework, a friend reminds. It was introduced to help make a logistical jump for the struggling, but was dropped swiftly. I’ll still include it here because it’s part of the exercise to see what remains of these ideas this much later, whether the framework is still useful or not.

I think it is. Useful today, anyway.

Image: Patch of Heaven Sanctuary, Miami Florida

You Seeing

What is You Seeing? You Seeing is how one normally sees whatever, what’s in front of one filter through through preferences… regrets, plans. Or at least it’s a view that can be easily taken over by that kind of thing. It’s the conversations playing in my mind today running on their own… what I should have or could have said if I had been smarter, stronger, had more that people wanted from me, healthier, etc. It’s survival skills, I guess, fortressing, shoring up.

The effect isn’t hard to fall into, even if it isn’t as easily triggered as once was for me. This time, it popped up with a FB post, an in-law reaching out to a closer family member in a kind way. I saw this before going to bed, then found myself carrying on conversations with the person as I woke, propagating scripts and scenarios that eventually grew strong enough to propagate even more spin-offs.

Prolific! 🙂

A thing about “You Seeing”: it’s a fixer. It figures things out. It wants to go back or forward, even sees that as freedom. It’s not useless, just limited when it’s out of a wider context, like living in a bathroom when a whole house by the ocean is yours to enjoy. You Seeing isn’t what is before one exactly, but what one sees when projecting a glass darkly.

I don’t mean to demonize it, which can be a mistake of spiritual teachings. How amazing, how creative, that this so-called self sees at all!

Enlightened Seeing

Enlightened Seeing is a less personal view, but still a view. There’s far more spaciousness, outwardness. I want, but I want peace for you, love for you, resolution for everyone. Enlightened Seeing recognizes there is more to see than the seeing self sees, that there is richness and possibility accessible by questioning, exploring, looking up, out, testing. To see in an enlightened sense is not to be constricted by fear but rather expanded by love.

There is a you/me in Enlightened Seeing, though. One has gone from a Me at the center, to a YouMe at the center. Elevated view, but still view.

This might be represented well by a dream in which I tried to climb to the top of an overloaded vehicle in response to there not being a place saved for me inside. Rather than argue for my place, or sabotage the trip, the pain was accepted, folded in as part of the whole of human experience. It was pain, but not suffering. Suffering was right there, offering a sneaky-spiral energy, but I saw it, and that there were many possibilities other than being part of that trip.

Perhaps enlightened seeing is when the observer is prominent, confident and steady to be with what arises in a loving way. There’s some picture I have in mind when I consider this, where there is no barrier to seeing behind one and in front of one simultaneously, including seeing inside one–no barriers into eternity. Whatever comes up then greets so much openness.

Enlightened Seeing is more stable. It leaves space. Liu bai.

[P.S. I’ll write about the concept of liu bai soonish. For now, here is a lovely article: The Art of ‘Liu Bai’

I think Enlightened Seeing is the “better me” … the one who rolls with what’s happening and builds capacity to offer more and more ‘to the world’ — to indeed, even save and heal the world through higher and higher motivations and intentions. Certainly, better me is happier than constricted me, and actually, I live this much of the time. I feel when I slip and do what’s needed to get back. Not this doesn’t feel like ‘me’ to me.

The me-first view is ‘right there’ though, and there are times I don’t catch it for a long while… so there can be a lot of effort involved in not giving into the pull. This is why we call it spiritual ‘practice’.

Being Seeing

Being Seeing is not a view. These days there are many wonderful explorers and writers on non-duality, in part because there is just so much information flow via YouTube and other avenues. There is language that comes very close. There are also lots of people articulating ways in which teachers from different traditions overlap, or rest at the same points.

There are ways to describe what it is for non-self to ‘see’.

It might be argued that Enlightened Seeing is what non-duality is about, too… beyond you and me, and this perhaps is a bit why Enlightened Seeing was dropped back then. Some found it more of a hindrance than help, felt enlightenment was already the highest aspiration. Which of course it is. There is no thing higher.

The language has always been around, in phrases like Let be, or Let go and let God, or Be Here Now, etc. And guidance to ‘surrender’ has always been part of even mainstream Christianity. But so few have been able to surrender without disconnecting from human life. My sense is that we are more able to have friends and vocabulary and ways to spend time without having to merely You See, now, and are enjoying our time being able to Enlightened See. It already seems so much better, so unthinkable from earlier times.

However. 🙂

To attempt to distinguish Being Seeing, again I’ll resort to dream because it comes closest. On my first trip to Japan, after a long travel, whirlwind walk around Kyoto meeting my host in person for the first time, then finally arriving at the wonderful little place I would stay, I fell asleep deeply, in a way that didn’t feel like being asleep at all. Rather it was like being taken over, like being inhabited. There wasn’t any ‘me’ directing, nothing resisting a beautiful tour through streets and gardens and the whole of Kyoto.

It was it, an impartation–so much at once, yet easy. It took a long time, but also no time at all. Total welcome without difference between inside and out. Actually there was only Japan, not a me appreciating a place, and never any point in which to assert myself, nor any need.

To be on a deep awareness journey is to have dipped toes into this sensibility, I think; it’s what keeps us on the journey. We can’t forget. We are changed. We’re aware that’s there. We’ve tasted Rest.

Being Seeing.

Being Japan.

Script is flipped.

No me or you, but also no no me and no you – just experience without need for a self-in-control (an exhausting mode of being). The thought to ‘do’ something would not even show up, would not make sense. I think this is why P always tried to get at it by focusing on wu wei.

Wu wei is not a state of being that comes and goes, not a flow state, but flow states are effects of Wu Wei. Flow states are places where we are nudged into giving up, nudging toward surrender, toward Being Seeing.

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Assistantception

January 4th, 2023

Spent this morning’s therapy session talking about AI. I hadn’t expected that at all, although I do realize how consumed my thoughts have been.

Dr. W. pointed out that although I was saying I was terrified by the technology, the energy I was exuding when talking about it wasn’t fearful at all, but rather stimulated, wide, highly-interested. She’s right. Although I’m concerned, of course, there is also the sense of dipping a toe into an upcoming world I may or may not be alive for. It is the feeling of early virtual reality, and also maybe what’s missing about current virtual reality.

What I’m concerned about with AI (unequal influence, quantum-disinformation, blurred lines between what constitutes ‘workers rights’ and things along those lines) is deeply valid, as are my existential questions from yesterday regarding how I will respond vs. how I think I will respond.

However, there is also the feeling of suddenly having a personal assistant ‘who’ could be good at the things I have needed to be better at, who I can bounce ideas back and forth with, who can search for and find things much faster, freeing my energy for creative thinking. Considering I’ve been an assistant who has done those things for someone however, it also displaces me from the mundane things I can do and am reliably needed for. Notice that here I don’t use the word replace, because the hope is that someone like me, + her own assistant, might simply elevate the work.

On scale, an ethics needs to develop around what is happening. A first court case regarding a graphic novel is happening now or is about to happen, and we may begin to look for clarity about augmentation disclosure, etc. It just seems so strange that we haven’t even started when we’re already woefully behind, but maybe that IS the vibe itself, the actual normal.

I plan to rewatch the film Ex Machina as well as HER. Both great films look at these questions in important and interesting ways, but I watched them as an interesting philosophical ride before. We’re way out beyond hypotheticals territory now.

Optimistically, there is some inkling that those of us who are naturally philosophically inclined and introspective, and maybe especially inclined toward regularly grappling with notions of non-self and questions around so-called free will, will be better situated than most when it comes to yet again reframing and revisiting our lives/worlds/minds as we’ve known them anew.
AI Novelworks

January 3rd, 2023

I continue to be captivated by ChatGPT’s capabilities, admittedly with trepidation over the many existential questions it poses. As someone who loves books and reading, and who earnestly believes that to read someone’s writing is to get to know them as a person in an intimate way, will I be able to tell if there is a person behind something I engage with?

Right now, yes, I think I can tell for the most part. There is some kind of synchronistic complexity I experience myself as tapping into when engaging with someone, an opening of worlds between us. But am I kidding myself? How long will I be able to do that? To what extent do I want myself to become an enhanced person? SO much to ask.

Below is ChatGPT’s latest response to my giving just a few requests, as I continue to go down the list of ‘things I’ve meant to write about’. It becomes something different along the way, certainly, but that might not be a bad thing.

The young girl walked through the streets of Kyoto, mesmerized by the
vibrant autumn leaves that carpeted the ground. As she wandered through the city, she stumbled upon a hidden path that led her to an ancient temple nestled in a moss garden. The garden was a sea of green, with verdant moss covering the ground and trees, giving the impression of an enchanted forest. The girl marveled at the sight, feeling as though she had stepped into a fairy tale. The temple itself was a work of art, with its ornately carved doors and shimmering golden roofs. The walls were adorned with intricate frescoes and murals, depicting scenes from ancient legends and mythologies. The girl tentatively stepped inside, feeling a sense of awe and reverence wash over her. The interior was equally breathtaking, with its polished stone floors and delicate paper lanterns. The air was filled with the sound of chanting and the soft glow of candlelight. The girl sat down on a cushion, closed her eyes, and let the peaceful atmosphere wash over her. As she left the temple, the girl couldn’t help but feel a sense of enlightenment and inner peace.
ChatGPT’s Enlightened Memoir Outline

December 27th, 2022
Sure, here is a possible outline for a non-linear memoir about enlightenment:
1. Prologue: Set the stage for the memoir by introducing the theme of enlightenment and the journey that you will be recounting.
2. Chapter 1: Begin with a significant moment or experience that shaped your understanding of enlightenment. This could be a spiritual awakening, a turning point in your journey, or a moment of realization.
3. Chapter 2: Jump back in time to your earliest memories or experiences that relate to enlightenment. This could include early encounters with spirituality or religion, or moments when you first became interested in enlightenment.
4. Chapter 3: Return to the present and describe your current understanding of enlightenment and how you have come to this understanding. This could include specific practices or techniques that have helped you along the way, as well as any challenges or setbacks you faced.
5. Chapter 4: Flash back to a specific moment or experience that had a significant impact on your journey. This could be a moment of great challenge or struggle, or a moment of great breakthrough or realization.
6. Chapter 5: Return to the present and describe how you have integrated your understanding of enlightenment into your daily life. How has it changed your relationships, your work, or your sense of purpose?
7. Epilogue: Reflect on the overall journey you have taken, and offer any wisdom or insights you have gained to others who may be seeking enlightenment.
I’ll admit, this one floored me. I hadn’t expected ChatGPT to be able to write a non-linear outline at all, much less immediately.
Infinity and ChatGPT

December 26th, 2022

I set out to play with ChatGPT this week, to see what its potentials are, especially for those with cognitive disabilities. So far what I’ve learned is that it is extremely limited when it comes to being witty or clever in the magical ways people are, where you feel winked at, or know that something means more than someone seems to say.

However, for those who share information, and who are so full of personality that they can present easily known things in ways others find captivating, this may be their ticket to becoming amazingly prolific. It may be a small window within which it will work that way, because what people seek out in the first place will change too, but for an early-adopter with momentum, wow.

And for those with disabilities? This could be like having a personal assistant who clearly frames anything one wishes to present. I have struggled with an unreasonable amount of fatigue at times, which usually sets in while I’m going over and over texts, so know what I’m saying here. Non-creative tasks can absorb so much energy, limiting creative output in dramatic ways, even when inside a flood of ideas is ready to flow into the world.

Then again, it can work the opposite way. People who organize and edit for more creatively-inclined people, may find they need to tweak their branding, focus their talents in different ways, perhaps on deep detail work or polishing. There will be a market for polishers, for sure.

Here is one of about ten poems/songs I asked ChatGPT to write today. You can easily see what its limitations are, as well as its strengths.

The stars, a burning host Infinite, unknowable, A reflection of the endlessness That lies within the soul

In their light, we see A glimpse of something more, Something beyond the limits Of our mortal selves

They remind us of the vastness Of the universe, The boundless expanse of space That stretches out before us

And as we gaze upon their fiery beauty We are filled with a sense of wonder, A sense of the infinite That lies within our consciousness

The stars, a constant presence Guiding us through the night, A beacon of hope and possibility In an endless, unknowable sky

ChatGPT, when asked to write a non-rhyming poem at graduate reading level, about stars, infinity, and consciousness

And here is a dialog I asked ChatGPT to write, between a campfire and the sun. I began something like this when in college, but my then partner ridiculed the idea, so I never finished it. I’ve often thought about picking it up again, but know the moment is gone. P.S. I like that when I asked ChatGPT I used Please, and when it replied, the response was “Sure!”

Campfire: Oh, sun, how I long for your warmth and light. Every day, I try my best to mimic your glowing radiance, but I know that I can never truly compare to your brilliance.

Sun: Ah, campfire, my dear friend. Do not sell yourself short. Your flickering flames bring joy and comfort to all who gather around you. And although I may be far away, I am always with you in spirit, shining down upon you from above.

Campfire: Oh, sun, you are too kind. But I cannot help but feel a sense of longing when you set each evening. It is then that I truly miss your presence.

Sun: Do not worry, my dear campfire. I will always return to you, bringing with me a new day filled with endless possibilities. And until then, remember that you are never alone. The stars above twinkle down upon you, and the moon casts a gentle glow upon the earth.

Campfire: Thank you, sun. You always know just the right words to lift my spirits. I am grateful to have you in my life.

Sun: And I am grateful to have you, campfire. Together, we bring light and warmth to all those around us. Let us continue to shine bright, always.
inappropriate tears

August 18th, 2022

Wonderful practice session this morning, still ongoing really, since I come to write just after meditating. The rhythms and music and feeling of the practice were guiding, leading into a sense of reaching deeply into light… light in the sense of lightness rather than brightness. The subtlety and beauty of this place, indeed the place itself, almost imperceptible, yet very much ‘there’ too, seemed a place wherein friends and I could simply experience no-being-ness together. Blissful.

Considering refuge tree practice, I wonder whether visualizations may have arisen as devotees sat beneath trees, finding shade–refuging–from harsh sunshine. The heat is incredible here, Miami in August, so the way this makes sense is quite tangible, and helps me to really experience the trunk and branches of the practice, where the bodhisattvas and arhats may be situated, where “I” am. “Bodhi” dimension. Yesterday in therapy we talked about boundaries and tears, and the way that when readying for retreat, boundaries are thinner, dreaming more constant and vivid, tears more near at hand.

One day last week, I made a mistake in sharing too much about my background with a new manager, which may have happened because I was caught up into her energy, perhaps related to this ‘thinness’ phenomena. I can find myself almost drunk with an openness that seems like freedom at the time, but in retrospect I find embarrassing and may well be inappropriate. She and I do not know one another yet. I just knew she had experienced a lack of support in early life, emancipating from her parents at a young age, yet had managed to pursue her education. Impressive. I took this fact as immediate kinship, so flung open the gates.

I texted later and apologized for oversharing, asked her to keep what I’d blurted out between us. She said she would, so that’s where we are. If I’d done something like this years ago, I probably would have contrived a reason to leave my job, feeling too exposed, but perhaps due to therapy–having that place to hear and be heard–the stream kept flowing.
refuge

August 4th, 2022

I’ve long been drawn to the biblical story of Mary and Martha, to contrasting characters’ modes of action. I think of myself as having strong Mary tendencies while admiring Martha-type industriousness from a far, but many who know me in daily life might disagree.

Anyway, these two came to mind because with sudden urgency I went plundering a decade’s worth of emails last night, looking for the Buddhist refuge name I’d shared with just one friend. (I’ve taken on practices more comfortable than any in ages, so it seemed right to search for ‘my name’ as a locator…part of a set of coordinates, if you will.)

I’m turning 52. When I took refuge 12 years ago, my name was written on a small card I promptly lost. The meaning of the name was written on the card as well, but I couldn’t read it and was too shy to ask clarification.

Thankfully, although I couldn’t find it, my friend could. 🙂 It’s a funny name really; it’s visual representation would be something like this:

A note I happened upon when searching, regarded the Mary and Martha story. In it, the same wise friend shared the sensibility that we’re both Mary and Martha at different times in our lives, or, he said, “More accurately, we are always both Mary and Martha.” They may be presented as a contrast, but are not truly in competition.

I didn’t see this simple truth when first given this name, I felt I had to not place much importance on what I thought of as trappings of the journey I was embarking on. I was untrusting of myself, suspicious of falling into similar cult-like ‘obedience and conformity’ behaviors as I’d experienced in churches when young. Praise from elders and connection within groups is a deep longing for those who yearn for family, and the idea of available love can be very seductive. Thankfully, something in me always kept some light of questioning, even back then.

[In a a vivid dream of walking down a busy highway with Jesus, I
turned to ‘evangelize’ to a group of ‘unsaved’ people my age,
Jesus didn’t. When I noticed and looked back, he
was still walking, so I abandoned course and jogged to catch up
with him instead. It took me weeks to come to the conclusion
that I had to question, even go against,
what my church was urging. I’d prided myself then, as many seem to now,
on being willing to go so far as to embarrass myself ‘for my faith’.
Many can recognize this when they see it from others,
especially in political buffoonery, but don’t most
religions have some version of killing ego? ]

My rebelliousness, what my ex-husband called my feralness, won out. Perhaps the Lama could see that as the case? I like to think now, that he picked up on an underlying ferocious when he chose the name. 😉

“Emptiness and appearance do not negate each other. Just like a rainbow
can appear, but doesn’t have to have truly existing entity. Knowing this
true nature of all phenomenon is the darshan of Manjushri.”
-Dzongzar Kyentse Rinpoche

I described to my therapist the feeling when, after waiting and waiting, with many buses stopping and going, a bus finally approaches that seems to be your bus. The numbers are fuzzy but there are the right number of digits. Then, those digits slowly take shape; their edges become clearer. It’s within this context that I’m willing and happy to take on more structured practices now. It isn’t performative, and if it’s just for a time again, that’s okay.

Speaking of names (I’ve mentioned this before), I work across the street from the bus stop a boyfriend wrote as the setting in ‘our song’. The lyrics describe our second meeting, two years before we became involved–a very long time when young: “Won’t you be my friend, and tell me, what’s your name? Won’t you be my friend, don’t turn and walk away. Won’t you be my friend, believe me when I say, I have hopes that some day we’ll meet again.”

He was a lovely person, and although the relationship lasted a blink, the bus stop is a daily reminder to me that auspicious timing is worth waiting for, and names can be like signs over the doorposts of life chapters. When I later met my (now ex) husband, I asked him jokingly “Don’t you know who I am?” He startled, believing I might be someone ‘important’, which indeed I became to him.

So many worlds in play, none of them ‘me’,
Who
May be sitting in a garden somewhere,
Under a tree.
High Volume

August 2nd, 2022

Waking while dreaming another family related dream. Why now? This time I was visiting my sister and her husband. I arrived wearing clothing very far from my wheelhouse: white faux fur coat, boots, and perfectly curled high-volume hair. I was greeted very warmly by them… except that everything I touched had to be erased right as I touched it, so that my mother wouldn’t have any idea I’d been there or that they’d treated me nicely. When I mentioned something about this, as my nephew handled something I’d either given him or was mine (not sure), my sister behaved as though it was very offensive to point out the obvious.

I love the way dreams spell out true things, things one knows but isn’t saying. In this case how I was welcomed by my family as long as I played along, as long as I behaved as a polite outsider without stakes in anyone speaking in truthful ways about past, present, or future. It was often the case that I’d let my mother tell blatantly unreal stories that painted herself in a bright motherly light, only saying sometimes to my sister on the side, “It really didn’t happen that way.”

I always knew the price for not doing so. And I guess I always knew there would come a day when I would push back, when the cost for not doing so was too high. This happened when my grandfather died, years after my marriage falling apart, and I considered moving closer to them. I knew we’d either have to forge more honest balances, or that she’d be ‘done with me’ the first time I didn’t play along, which I could only do as a visitor, not as someone living nearby, interacting every day, being interdependent with them.

“I”m right there in the room and no one even acknowledges me.”

We know what occurred, which is the ‘done with me’ part, but the part I’m still working through is the role my sister played. I had my sister on a pedestal, I think, as someone who played the needed games better than I did, but who would eventually be my ‘surviving’ family. I saw her as the more resilient one, the more strategic one, but as someone who, having been through so much as a child, realized I was there for ‘all that’ too. I learned through this that she was quite happy to be the only child left standing in our mother’s life. Whether anger toward me was in service of the necessity of rejecting me, or its own thing, I’m not sure.

It’s quite a story really… out of five marriages and five children, the only one left for my mother is my sister, playing these games together, doing what’s needed to get what’s wanted. I can’t articulate the money part; it’s a big, but not the main, factor.

I don’t feel upset by all this on a daily basis now. I have thoughts that pass by and I think something along the lines that it would have been so beautiful to have figured out the balances… to have been valued and loved enough to have included as someone worthy of having their voice and stories heard, their real presence around, etc. I wonder about my niece and nephews, wonder if my sister or mother ever wonder about my kids, who they knew and pretended to love for decades. I wonder if I should feel badly for my kids not having the kind of family around them others have, or whether they are fortunate not to be entangled.

Again, as with my in-laws, I chose reality, and it didn’t go well for me.

But then again, it did. Eggshells are scarce, my health is a lot better, and so many things about who I am being are more okay.

I think the dream is saying that these patterns are still there, although I don’t feel them, and that they are working themselves out on their own. As long as I don’t suppress them, I think they’ll gently move their way through, allowing me to relax even places I don’t experience as tense and knotted. This will further help my health, further allow my energies to flow where they are welcomed and needed.

When these kinds of knots let go, one thing I’ve found happens is that I can see farther into what occurred and/or is occurring. I can see back into choices I made to counter one type of longing with another, one type of belief system or influence with either its opposite or complimentary. I am not a mastermind, as evidenced by the way these schemes didn’t work out ultimately, but when I think about what I was saying to my family by my choices, because I couldn’t be honest with my words, there was a lot of rejection of their ways. I was always finding ways to opt-out of their thinking, without expressly saying so. I was always introducing ‘other’ ways to see and do things. I raised my kids differently, without corporal punishment, etc.

This was actually my way of staying in their lives.

Is this why I was so dressed up? Was that how they saw me, coming in as a fancy outsider? I usually downplayed things so as not to trigger those accusations, back then, but I guess here I am myself, playful and “high volume” whether they give permission or not.

The wonderful thing is that the more these underground tensions release, the wider the sky seems to be, too. These are gentle shifts and explorations, not bothersome. When I woke this morning I said aloud, “Why still these dreams?” It felt like I was bored by them, rather than hurt by them.

I’m just not finding this carousel particularly interesting anymore.

Found this sweet image searching google when at the end of writing this post the phrase “big hair don’t care” popped into mind.

How fun! 🙂
The Absurdist

August 1st, 2022

Various components of the absurd are discussed in the academic literature and different theorists frequently concentrate their definition and research on different components. On the practical level, the conflict underlying the absurd is characterized by the individual’s struggle to find meaning in a meaningless world. The theoretical component, on the other hand, emphasizes more the epistemic inability of reason to penetrate and understand reality. Traditionally, the conflict is characterized as a collision between an internal component, belonging to human nature, and an external component, belonging to the nature of the world. However, some later theorists have suggested that both components may be internal: the capacity to see through the arbitrariness of any ultimate purpose, on the one hand, and the incapacity to stop caring about such purposes, on the other hand. Certain accounts also involve a metacognitive component by holding that an awareness of the conflict is necessary for the absurd to arise. [Wikipedia]

Absurdist is the way I’ve been describing myself these days, because when pressed to give an answer for anything, especially anything that could be called a belief, that answer usually has a lot of space around it, and a dozen or more qualifiers. I’m way more full of possibilities for what could be wrong in what I’m saying or ways I might fail to be right–way more loopholes than formulas.

Since everything is but an illusion,
Perfect in being what it is,
Having nothing to do with good or bad,
Acceptance or rejection,
One might as well burst out laughing!
-Longchenpa

For instance it is often tricky to talk about my spirituality with anyone not so inclined, because well, I’m rather devout, while not having beliefs per se, while also totally and entirely buying in! Do I believe in deities? Well no, except yes absolutely, just not as separate beings; I don’t believe in beings at all for that matter, and am entirely committed to them. There’s just so much like this, and I’m so aware of what it must sound like and seem, which means there’s almost always an irreverent mischief beneath the surface.

W.H. Auden captured so much when he wrote “We are here on earth to help others; what on earth the others are here for, I don’t know.”
Psychological Doomscrolling

July 27th, 2022

I may be toward the end of this stint in therapy. It’s a little hard to tell because, when doesn’t one need to feel heard? When doesn’t one need to hear themselves more clearly? But, I also don’t want to always be examining tendencies and unraveling patterns. There are times to just cut through.

I was lightly startled awake a few weeks ago, when a conversation with my son turned nostalgic and he said, “Mom, I’m sorry but you’re talking to me like your therapist.” Which may sound mean, but isn’t in our context actually, because he knows I like to catch myself. It was a gentle nudge, a loving “Look and see.”

There’s still such a strong tendency in me, to believe that if I can just draw out a clear enough map to how we got ‘here’, it would be possible to make a convincing case for fixing <insert issue>, re-writing the script. Especially, I want to own my own part of things, as though if sufficiently aware and remorseful, the previous possible timeline I’d envisioned many moons ago would be available again. It seems a relic of childhood experience, where a child makes their parent feel better and then is allowed to go to the party, or have the thing. As an adult, however, I’m not willing to be bought in this way. I want to be truthful, and I want others to be truthful, just as my son was in this instance.

Rather than feeling slighted or dismissed by him, I felt thankful. In that moment I recognized a false idea I’d been carrying around, that my grown kids still need me to re-explain where things went awry between their parents. Each is going to have different interpretations, and when they ask, I’ll be happy to attempt to answer. I just don’t need to keep figuring it out. Figuring out can largely go on without me because it isn’t as though their dad is asking those questions or having these discussions with us. It isn’t as though I need to write a book about family dynamics, etc.

Would I love to be able to articulate my “side of things” once and for all? Who wouldn’t! But is that what’s happening in therapy? Not really. And actually I’m always learning, so my impression of what have helped or could have been different, is always being revised. The big things are pretty obvious, and although their effects can still pop up, catch me off guard, recovery is usually swift. As a friend would say, I do bounce!

Therapy is my eye in the storm, but the storm is rather predictable now. I have more supplies and a steadier plan. My therapist is a lovely woman I can imagine being a good friend with outside of the therapy context, who often shows acceptance I couldn’t find from either the family I was born into, or the one I married into, and who takes my side. She also catches me mid self-condemnation and exaggeration–psychological doomscrolling–to ask “But is that true?” “Is that really your fault?” “Could you have foreseen that?”

Does it help to doomscroll? What good can come of this?

The first therapist I went to see, in about 1994, ended one session asking me to consider why I think everything is my fault. I dismissed her question out of hand because I reasoned, “What good does it do to see the situation as someone else’s fault?” I couldn’t change or convince anyone, also didn’t want to … didn’t want to manipulate the way I’d been manipulated. But her question stayed with me, and would come up at the oddest times until I had to pay attention. She was right that I leaned that way and was willing to absorb blame just to have peace. She was right that I found it hard to trust others to do the work of self-reflection as well. My current therapist is also right that the tendency has remained, even with so much more space around it.

That being so, it might be time for a more surgical strategy.

Category: Resources

Image: Patch of Heaven Sanctuary, Miami Florida