Post No.: 0820
Fluffystealthkitten says:
‘Past’ and ‘future’ aren’t aspects of the real world – there’s only really now… then now… then now… From our own experiences of reality anyway – there’s only one slice of time that’s real at any single moment, and that’s now. The concepts of ‘past’ and ‘future’ are entities of our minds.
So be mindfully present – answer do you have a problem right now? Are you still stuck in that broken elevator or are you out now? Are you in the dentist’s chair right now or is the appointment tomorrow?
It’s advantageous to be able to learn from histories and anticipate forecasts but this ability is double-edged because thinking of the past or future can make us feel bad now. This is one reason why happy-go-lucky people are the most cheerful people, and make the fewest enemies for not holding unnecessary grudges or presuming the worst in strangers.
They can, however, be too trusting of others I suppose. And we should learn from past mistakes and prepare for the future. Anticipations protect us – it’s a bit too late to only start worrying once you’re falling from a flippin’ enormous height or after having been attacked by a blood-starved beast(!)
Yet a past event is over and an imagined fear for the future hasn’t happened yet and may never happen. You may have been a victim in the past but your story today should not be one of a victim but a survivor.
Mindfulness is more than just about focusing on the present instead of the history that cannot be changed or dreads that might never materialise – it’s also about practising how to accept anxious thoughts and feelings without judgement. Post No.: 0676 elaborated on how mindfulness can help cultivate acceptance. This is linked to resilience and a better mental well-being. Perfection isn’t pertinent. You’re only human. Tenacity is what matters. We all fail, periodically, but resilience is about getting back on the saddle every time.
The stories we tell about our past are actually present moment reconstructions (e.g. ‘I’m like this because that thing happened to me when young’). Our past does shape our present self – we are the product of our experiences – but if we have troubling memories then we do possess the power to consciously take authorship of the stories we tell ourselves today, no matter how traumatic our histories. Taking authorship of our own narratives is vital for our mental health. A present trigger brings us mentally back to a past experience but we must remember that now is not then. We’ve learnt lessons from the past that were adaptive at the time but may be maladaptive now, like assuming the worst in others because important people have let us down as a child. One of the goals of cognitive behavioural therapy is to help us to stop telling ourselves old unhelpful stories today and to rewrite them. Stories are things that can be rewritten.
The past has been and gone and cannot be changed. Yet if it refuses to let you go, then realise that it’s only because of the narrative it left you with – not because the past is still happening. Someone in front of you right now may be triggering something that reminds you of what, say, an abusive ex said or did, but understand that they’re not your ex and they’re not responsible for your sensitivity to those words or actions (unless their words or actions are themselves inherently immoral or illegal). Your exes, bullies, parents, teachers, etc. all had their own reasons for being the way they were too (e.g. their own bullies or parenting) so understanding this may help too.
We might also believe we must be rich before we can be loved, or we must sacrifice our own happiness to make others feel better. We can start to tell ourselves ‘oh, I’ll always be awkward in social situations’ or ‘I’ll never have a fulfilling relationship’. Such beliefs then start to define us and become self-fulfilling. Such stories don’t just originate from us but can be passed down from or influenced by our parents, our culture, religion and other sources too. Nonetheless, these become our own narratives, and we can rewrite them.
With awareness from a more detached or self-distanced vantage point, you can break the vicious cycle. You can start by consciously being aware of when you’re about to feel triggered. Check in with your current feelings. Identify them – this alone can place some distance between you and them, and centre you and the control of your emotions within you. You can take a mental step back and tell your nagging voice to be silenced. Thank your unconscious for trying to protect you but then manually take the reins on your own thoughts and feelings, and quietly smile at how oversensitive it can be. The more you practise this, the more this new measured response will become your automatic response. It’s difficult at first to break an old mental pattern or habit of thought but it gets easier after enough repetition.
You might find it beneficial to – in your mind’s eye – remember or anticipate happy events with a first-person perspective (and with bright colour, high detail, clear sound, and a large panoramic or close-up view) and remember unhappy ones with a third-person perspective like when seeing yourself through CCTV footage (and with greyscale colour, fuzzy detail, muffled sound, and a small or distant picture). You can also do this when visualising desirable versus undesirable future selves or events.
It also helps to learn to love fate – as in the way things have turned out, and as in deciding to be content with reality, in life, as it is right now. We can try to improve our lot or seek social change but otherwise understand that we’re only really in control of our own thoughts and actions. It may help to simply accept that your relationship with someone in particular is thorny, but that you’re trying to make it less so. Try your best, but if things don’t work out then it was, from your perspective, impossible.
You can still choose to respond well even to events that are less than ideal. So if people are rude towards you, you don’t have to respond in kind – they’re not the master of your thoughts or actions. If you had their history and felt their current pressures and circumstances, you’d likely act the same way. You might feel justified to react in kind but you can choose to let go of that idea. Tie your well-being to your own actions – not to those of others. We do need to protect ourselves from harm – to not be picked on – in which case we should act. But others don’t have to ‘get to us’ or ‘get inside our heads’.
Humans are social creatures so this is understandably difficult even if the idea is simple. But that’s okay because you shouldn’t expect perfection from yourself any more than from others. You shouldn’t even be too harsh regarding your own thoughts and actions, never mind those of others. If you’ve tried your best then that should be good enough for you.
You might not be able to change an inconsiderate person’s behaviours but you can change your own future expectations of, or interactions with, them. You can perhaps avoid them and/or choose to forgive them (which is good for your own well-being, especially if the other person is no longer alive). To blame others for you holding a grudge against them, for your own vengeful ruminations, is to fail to recognise that these thoughts are only one choice you could choose – for the other choices you could instead choose include forgiveness or trying to empathise with their background or point of view that led to their attitudes or behaviours.
Now a question is – are we being harmed if we’re ignorant of the harm? For example, if your partner cheated on you for a year but you were totally oblivious to it – were you being harmed? Another example is if others believed in the gossip and lies that were being told behind your back without your awareness – were you being harmed?
Well yes if your reputation was besmirched during this time as those who knew about it laughed behind your back. It’s like a crime is still harmful even if it’s not caught. And the longer it’s not discovered, the more pain will be felt once it is discovered too. Yet it could alternatively be argued that how you respond to the discovery is under your own control, and you don’t have to take it badly – difficult and unusual though that might be. Our experience is subjective. Whereas if your lungs were being exposed to asbestos for years but you only received a mesothelioma diagnosis later and so it was objectively harming you even though you didn’t know it at the time – our reputations aren’t us but are stories sustained in the minds of others. Our reputations are separate to us hence why people can be said to believe in their own bull****! So what matters to us is our subjective attitude towards a situation – not the objective facts or anything in other people’s minds.
We biasedly find it easier to notice and tell others to let go of something, that they’re ‘making a mountain out of a furry molehill’, ‘crying over spilled milk’ or they’re being too harsh on themselves – so we need to apply this to our own thought patterns, in a gentle way.
At other times, we’re more critical of others, like after sending a friend a message, interpreting their silence or non-engagement as a sign they no longer like us, then playing a story in our own minds of them having read the message but then deliberately deciding to ghost us. This is despite there probably being many times when we’ve not promptly replied to others, not noticed a message or simply forgot to reply, without harbouring any ill feelings towards the senders before.
We don’t have to take silence personally. We can end up needlessly ruminating on nothing. Or if we react on our assumptions, we can make things worse, even if we were correct.
So much aggro or frustration can be avoided if we just didn’t devise stories in our own minds that upset us, like assumptions that someone now despises us after we had just committed a small faux pas in pronouncing their name wrong, or acting defensively after someone pulled an unexpected facial expression in our direction, or conjuring stories that they’re ‘always’ like this or they ‘never’ do that.
Is something a petty point? Others don’t have to agree with us and we can just get on with our lives. It’s often not worth the breath even if you win an argument. There might be no problem unless we react to make a kerfuffle out of it. We concoct stories about ‘they’re feeling x, because they’re a y person, and so they’re going to do z to us’. Sometimes you get two people mistakenly thinking ‘I thought you…’ to each other, after having argued over essentially nothing(!) So we should ignore and deescalate. Recognise that it might not be personal. Or admit to it if it’s something we’re accountable for – if we’ve made mistakes then apologise, make things right, forgive ourselves, then move on. Understand that their reaction is understandable if we were in their shoes. Everyone could be blameless because there was no right or wrong. It was no one’s fault. There could be innocent explanations so don’t read into things or jump to conclusions. Talk about things or laugh the situation off.
Meow. Stoic lyricists and novelists would probably create the most undramatic songs and books entitled ‘I Forgave Her, Then Moved On With My Life’ or ‘Ah No Worries, He Prolly Didn’t Mean It’ – but this is all about your happiness!
Comment on this post by replying to this tweet:
