Over this past week, the main topic of conversation around
the house has been around the subject of emotions of hopelessness, less than, and helplessness. These cheery topics have been raised because Ellen is working up a therapeutic process for helping her clients to overcome these emotions. That means we had to dive deep into the roots of these feelings. Where do they come from? Why do we hold on to them? What’s it all about, Alfie?
When we are tiny, we are utterly dependent upon older folks taking care of us. Invariably, they didn’t always guess right about what we were fussing about, and consequently, a need w
e were feeling was not met in a timely manner. We experienced lack. Lack does not feel good; it frightens us. Until that time, we never gave a thought to getting our needs met. We happily assumed that whatever we needed would just be there, just like while we were in the womb. Everything we needed to feel okay was always available from the magical umbilical cord. But out here in the outer world, things are not so automatic. There are bumps in the road, glitches in the delivery system. We have assumed that the world only exists to meet our needs. We can’t see any other reason for it to exist. All we know is our feelings, our needs, and therefore our importance in the bigger picture of existence.
Our brain develops these special neurons called mirror neurons that enable us to learn through imitation. This proces
s begins before 12 months of age. These mirror neurons are in several areas of the brain. Initially, they serve as a sort of “monkey see, monkey do” system in which we copy the actions of others in order to learn how to interact with our environment. For instance, our parent shakes a rattle to show us how to get the rattle to make the sounds we like. By age three, we begin to be able to anticipate the actions of others by recognizing patterns of actions. This gradually enables us to form a perception of others’ intentions behind their actions. As this ability unfolds, somewhere along the line, we start to grasp that others pursue actions that don’t have anything to do with us. We start to grasp that we are not the center of the universe, and everything is not all about us.
What do we do with that understanding? Our survival depends upon the other people in our world taking care of us. If those people are not dedicated to paying attention to just us, ho
w will we get all our needs met? This could result in massive worry and anxiety, and some children do in fact go down that path. But most children construct a useful lie to soothe that anxiety. They create the belief that they are entitled to being taken care of because they are the most important person around. This lie seems to be supported by the simple fact that the child has survived, so its needs have been addressed. Why else would others take care of the child unless he or she were ultimately most important?
This developmental story is what we came up with to understand where the roots of the helpless, hopeless, less than, e
tc… feelings come from. These nasty feelings are the children of that original anxiety about getting our needs met. Why? Because as any of you that were ever children know, the world does not treat you as the most important all the time. Our entitlement to always get our needs met does not come true 100% of the time. As our little minds get more complex, we start developing wants that at the time feel just as important as needs. And our wants get ignored all the time! Our convenient lie that our needs and wants should be met just because we exist is not working for us. Hence the feelings of hopeless and helpless. We might see others getting something that we want or need, and we start to get an understanding that life has a pecking order, that some people are more important than others, and the important ones get what they want. So if we are not getting what we want, then we must be less important. Our attempts to understand this cause us to invent all kinds of stories to explain why we are less than someone else.
This story invention game goes in all sorts of directio
ns, leading to various stances with life, like feeling the victim, being resistant, being attention-needy, being sickly, becoming invisible, and so on. These created relationships with life are all ways to compensate for that basic anxiety that hits us when we realize that other people are not concerned about our welfare first and foremost. Some folks will live their entire life playing one or more of these stories as their script for how to live life. A few really mentally agile and imaginative folks will hold on to the belief that they are center and most important and become narcissists. But deep inside, there is a dark despair that something is fundamentally wrong, and it might be us.
Some folks are up for dealing with these feelings, so they seek some form of help to overcome the darkness. This is 
why Ellen was working on a process to lift a person out of this hole. But what can be done with this sort of experience? Ellen and I know that we can explain the reality of the situation until we are blue in the face, and it does nothing at all to change the feelings. Our thoughts do not change our feelings. We can use thought to suppress our feelings or distance ourselves from feelings, but thoughts cannot change them. It took us many years to understand this. Feelings are like a continuous flow of problem and solution that stops dead if an effective solution is not created. Lies do not provide an effective solution to the actual problem. Lies only try to cover up the fact that we do not have a solution. The solution has to work in the real world such that you see and feel the desired outcome manifest.
So what is the solution to this problem? The real world is
showing us that we are in fact not the center and not most important. How are we going to get our needs met? The answer sounds absurdly simple, but it almost never occurs to the child – pay for what you want or need. This simple answer does not occur to the child because they have no idea that they can generate value at almost any age. With that value, they can buy what they need, and often what they want. How can a child generate value? They can’t go out and get a job at age 9 and pay with cold hard cash for what they want. We have to look at what fundamental economy exists between people that is usually more important than cash. What is it people generally try to buy with their cash anyway? Feelings.
Once you hook into the feeling economy, the world o
f opportunity opens up. There are three main ways you can participate in this economy: what you do, who you are, and what you feel. The simplest way is through what you do. This is the foundation of the cash economy. You trade services for goods. Imagine you’re a young kid who really wants a skateboard so you can join the skating club at school. But you don’t have any money. Ask your dad what service he would value that you could do for him that would be worth a skateboard. Maybe you could agree to mow the lawn every Saturday for 10 weeks. This is a win-win situation, and both parties get what they want.
The next challenge is figuring out who you are. Ellen
used honesty to get me into a relationship with her. She asked her higher self/holy spirit what she needed to do to get my attention. She was told to be 100% honest, not hide anything, ask for what she wanted, and be okay with the answer. She did that, and here we are 30 years later. Positive character traits, virtues, are valuable to others. Being honest, trustworthy, reliable, kind, lighthearted, sympathetic, playful, thoughtful, and so on, any or many of these can have enough value to someone else that they’ll support your needs and wants just to have you in their life.
The last one is easy for some people and really hard for others – what you feel. What I mean is, the ability to truly und
erstand and feel what others are going through. So much of the time in life, we never experience others actually feeling things from our perspective. No one sees life through our eyes. No one feels what we feel. If you can do this for someone, you can become super precious to them. You can help them feel like they are not alone in the world. You don’t have to lose yourself when you do this, but you do have to put yourself aside for a few minutes and really connect with this person on their level. In return, you will find that they want to support your needs and wants.
As you can see, value can be created no matter what your position in life is. You don’t need a high-paying job, an
d you don’t need to be any particular age. You can become valuable to others in such a way that you can take responsibility for meeting your own needs and wants. The trap of childhood is the belief that you have to get your needs met by others without your participation. This is the seductive trap implicit in the entitlement consciousness – that you should get whatever you need and want for free, just because you are you. There is an actual suppression of the self-empowerment that comes from meeting your own needs through the use of your participation skills. The net result is that you feel like you have no value because you have not learned how to create value for yourself. You spend your life waiting for your ship to come in and tell you that all your wishes and dreams will come true because you wished upon that star.
Feeling good about yourself and having value to others comes from the things you do for them. It’s those actions th
at truly matter, and they give you value if you can connect with them. Here’s the final thing to keep in mind: nothing others think of you is personal. They can’t know what’s going on inside your head. All they know is what you do and how it makes them feel. They think those actions define you, that’s who you are. This is a good thing because we might not always feel good about ourselves. But that doesn’t matter because others can’t feel how we feel about ourselves, particularly if we’re busy helping others. They’re focused on what they want, not on who we are on the inside. Their feelings about us are really just their story about what they want and are comfortable with. Their positive or negative feedback is their way of asking us to act the way they like. It’s not really about who we are on the inside.
To make this complex understanding into a simple process for Ellen, she had to construct several steps to guide the client to the time in their life when they made up the false story that they were entitled to have their needs met so that they could
access those original feelings of dread and anxiety. They have to re-feel the original problem so that she can then present the actual solution that will work. With muscle testing, she can find out what process will work best for them and help them in imagination create an engagement skill (do, be, feel) that will give that fearful child within a new course of action with which to build a new relationship with life. We won’t let go of our lies and stories until we get something better to replace them with.
Well, that was rather long-winded, but that is what our weekend was all about.
Take care,
David
Ellen
Last Thursday Ellen and I went out to my favorite restaurant, Ruth’s Chris, to celebrate my birthday. We are pretend
ingthat I have just turned 52 because that feels better than the truth. The spot on Ellen cheek is a bit of glitter that says Happy Birthday. Yes, that is my favorite dessert, Creme Brule.
