This is in no way medical advice. I'm not a medical professional that should be giving out medical advice. Seek a trusted therapist or other qualified professional that knows you for advice. I assume no liability for an individual's actions from reading this. This writing is shared for the sole purpose of proving the story of one person's success to provide hope. This should not be taken as a recommendation. Seek a trusted qualified professional to discuss this information before deciding if any of it should/could be incorporated in your treatment plan.
This writing is framed as instructions to a younger me.
To do this you don't have to trust me or anyone other than yourself. That's what makes this successful. Don't trust yourself? You don't have to do that either lol. You just have to trust one part of yourself. I'll explain more in the instructions.
The wildest thing about this is you already have all the tools. You've actually been practicing them for years to prepare yourself to do this exact thing.
I want to try to make this as simple as possible while still giving you all the instructions you need to do it right. This has been your journey all this time. This is yours to finish on your own.
Instructions:
You have to first be able to accept that you are a human like everyone else. This does/can happen with every human.
You have to accept that there is something wrong. You've been told there's something by plenty of people… that doesn't convince. You've seen it though. You've seen it sometimes when you're angry. When you are forced to look back at it… it's confusing. You may tell yourself "that's how I process"... Or "I must have misheard"… or something. That's something you can know is true. That's something you know you can see. Than do it for an anger issue.
You already are prepared. When someone talks to you, you already are ready for what they will say before they say it. You'll feel that feeling bubbling up before they say the word. The trick is you want to catch that feeling before it bubbles up.
Know the feeling. When you're mad you're mad, sad you're sad, etc. You know what your feelings are. And yes! You're feelings are valid! For this I want you to try something a little different. Think back to the feeling of being broken up with. We know that feeling well enough. The pain. Think of how you feel that feeling and where. Try to think of how that feeling first starts. Keep your feelings peeled for that. It'll be felt alongside that anger. You'll notice it first, and it's the feeling you're targeting. The "rage", "panic", "overwhelm", whatever it is known to you as.
When that feeling bubbles up during a conversation. Hold that feeling down for a brief moment. Don't try to bottle it up. Just hold it down for a brief moment.
The best descriptions I can think of are that feeling when you clench your gut (left hand side), kinda hold your breath, and you can also feel it a bit in your throat.
The feeling as if you were going to try to turn your face red. But don't put the pressure to try to turn your face red.
Essentially, the body mechanics feel very similar to when you might start to get angry and lose your top when you've misheard someone and you're holding waiting for them to clarify what they said.
It's a very similar action… or maybe the same, as what we do naturally as children when we are mad. The thing we're always told not to do.
You only have to hold this for a moment. if I could do it then I'm prone to believe anyone can.
What is done in this moment is the key. The best I can tell is it reminds/teaches the brain that this is a safe path to take.
The key is in that moment you have to think "Right or Wrong" as if you are being a judge of yourself and the other person from an outside perspective. The right or wrong being more in the sense of which one is doing the right thing. What makes this the key is you have to take a little "leap of fate" and judge without checking your gut.
This is essentially a conscience check.
This is not in any possible way saying that you don't have a conscience. We all have one. It's been thinking and checking your gut to build it for years. You always KNOW what's right or wrong to you. You may not be very judgemental but you still know what's right or wrong to you in any moment. It's a constant. That doesn't mean we have to choose that way every time. Usually we have to think about the situation and feel it out to make our choice.
This can be felt out ahead of time to get ready. You know how to hold your gut. Don't think of a conflict. Just kinda… "zone out" for the second and picture yourself and another person arguing.
Right or Wrong? You're brain wants to search for the details so it can feel out the situation… that's what you're brain is going to crave to do. It needs to resolve the problem. It does that part automatically. All you need to do is, from that view point in your mind, think "Right or Wrong".
You may already do this and often. If you do, that's great! We just have to do it in this sequence and catch the right time.
We always get angry for a reason. That's a fact. You may even find that 90+% of the time it's just simply being angry. All you have to do is this until you catch that one time when it's our trauma response hiding.
When you feel a mental orgasm, bigger than the one we get from the relief of a partner telling us they want to get back together after a fight, you know it was a success.
My Best estimate of why this works is:
In moments when that panic/overwhelm/(what you named it) (this being our "trauma response" or "shame response") our mind chooses for us to only go full emotion. It does this to get through these perceived trumas and prevent our mind from having to remember those traumatic events. But we no longer live in a world where everything is actually life or death anymore (though it sure can feel it sometimes. This would be why). When you choose to do this the brain learns/relearns that it's safe to look at everything again. And it learns this fast. This is me writing to you over a decade later… I don't regret a thing.
—--------------
I'm not the first one to figure this out by any means. Everyone can do it. Most people I think only stumble across it when they're at their lowest lows or don't really realize what they did to get there.
My best estimate is that the reason why younger individuals do better at this is because they have Parents/guardians/family that have an authoritative position to call you out, make us look at what we do and process, and then tell us to think next time… and it just kinda happens naturally.
As adults, we don't always have that family figure to call us out and hound us until we finally figure out the right way. If we do… that's usually the family member we probably feel like avoiding. We also navigate society to avoid these fights that are essential to this process. We are also always told to feel our feelings. Which I think is absolutely the right thing to do. Just… after doing this one thing… this one time. When you're on the other side you'll understand why.
I think that it likely has to be a genuine provoked response. I don't think planning practice fights are going to help. Although you will absolutely feel opposed to this… it may make sense for you to tell your circle of people to start calling you out on your **bleep**. We might not notice it… but they try to tip toe talking to us as part of their way of navigating society and preventing conflict with us.
Tips going forward:
You can't understand Love. Love is like Pi in math.
The break ups are still going to be hard. That is something you'll actually be able to process now and heal around afterwards.
You might feel before that you always feel silly because you don't know who to trust…or trust too easily. That goes away. Surround yourself with people you can trust.
Old habits die hard… open up and talk things out when you're dealing with things. It becomes a million times easier and it helps.
Some motos for the other side:
You can only expect from others what you expect of yourself.
It's not right to try to fix people. You can only fix yourself. You can help people… but people have to do things on their own and only if they want to and are ready.
Go have your forced epiphany.
—-------
When I did this, I had no idea what I had actually done at the time. I was confused about what it was, had no grasp or understanding what happened, and honestly at the time thought I did some crazy thing with my brain and that I should probably not mess around with things like that again because it could be something addictive. I had no negative after effects. I remember coming home, I don't recall if it was a week or 4 weeks later, sitting on my bed, thinking about a lie I had told and realizing how silly it felt. I realized that I had had this weight on me from lying and had not really understood why.
Over a decade later, working in trauma informed care, I finally realized what the connection was and what was going on.
Like the beginning of this says, this is in no way advice. I genuinely think that this is something that needs to be looked into further because it may be a functional way to reverse an ailment produced by a thought during trauma by having an opposite thought during "trauma". Because the reality is every outburst is due to a brains perceived trauma.
Stay strong. Have hope.
