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A Modest Proposal Uncommon thinking
about common experiences March 11, 2004 Why am I the way I am? – A three part series Part 3 – Curing the scars of emotional wounds Although I heal emotional wounds (part 2 of this series), why do I continue to react to the stimulus-response reflexes or triggers that were created by the wounds? Even after successfully healing, I still get triggered by situations that are related to the healed wound. Doesn’t seem fair, does it? Here I went and did all of this work to heal, and yet, I feel as if I didn’t really heal. This happens a lot for many people, not just me. So many folks assume that the healing process (whatever it was) did not “take,” so they repeat the process (or a different one) again and again but with the same recurrences of unharmonious emotions, angst, and fear. What’s up? The reason that the healing appears to not have worked is rooted in another aspect of learning theory. It is also a phenomenon that a lot of healing processes do not take into account thus it seems that the process did not work when it really did. When I figured this out, I knew that my healing was successful, AND that there was another step that was needed beyond healing the wound. I call it “curing.” In part 2 (How to Heal Emotional Wounds), I compared the emotional healing process to the physical healing process associated with an injury resulting in a physical wound. Now, please consider that when a physical wound heals, it often leaves a scar. Sometimes the scar fades over time but sometimes the scar is there for life unless it is removed. Healed emotional wounds have scars as well. That is where learning theory comes back into the picture. I think that one of the best ways of understanding who we are as humans is to use the concept that we have four “bodies:” physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual. When a wound is created in the spiritual body via any one (or combination) of the other three bodies, a corresponding trigger is created in the mental body (mind or ego). In a successful healing process, the spiritual body is repaired, yet the trigger still exists in the mental body (and possibly the physical body as well). There is a scar remaining in the spiritual body that when touched, triggers a stimulus-response reflex in my mental body, and I “feel” like the wound was never healed. When I was child I was often emotionally wounded by being criticized, so I developed a stimulus-response reflex to criticism by becoming defensive when criticized. I healed this wound some time ago; however, I found myself still becoming defensive when criticized. Had I not healed? I guess not. So I repeated the healing process except that when I relived the events that caused the wound in the first place, there was nothing there. I had released the emotions with love, accepted what happened as a way station along my path, forgiven the people involved, and was grateful for the experience. In short, I took all of the “right” actions, yet why was I defensive when criticized? The criticism trigger in my mental body was alive and well. I finally learned that healing at the spiritual level does not result in the elimination of the reflex! The two, although related, are not connected. The reflex will blindly continue to be triggered when the appropriate stimulus occurs – in my case becoming defensive (response) when criticized (stimulus). Wow – this was quite a revelation. This phenomenon was first recognized was in the early 20th century when Russian scientist and Nobel laureate Ivan Pavlov experimented with feeding dogs accompanied by a ringing bell. The dogs developed a stimulus-response reflex of salivating when they heard the dinner bell. Pavlov then rang the bell without feeding the dogs, and they salivated anyway. One would think that they would soon stop salivating when no free lunch appeared, but Pavlov discovered that long after he stopped providing chow when the bell rang, the dogs continued to salivate when the bell rang. OK, you might say that humans are not dogs and that we have free will and choice. Yes, we do, BUT free will and choice operate at the conscious, mental level; the stimulus-response reflexes operate at the unconscious, mental level, so in that regard we are in the same pot or feeding bowl as Pavlov’s famous dogs. I thought this all seemed a bit unfair when I understood that the “scars” of healed emotional wounds were still triggering the old feelings that I had prior to healing. What had I gained by doing the healing work? It seemed futile… What I accomplished through the healing process was the removal of the cause of my defensiveness when criticized. Now, I had the basis for eventually rescripting the reflex. It would take work, and it was not only possible but very rewarding in its accomplishment. What I needed to do to “cure” the scar was to work at the mental level where the reflex was alive and well. My spiritual body was OK; it was my pesky mental body that still needed work. How do I cure the scar so that the reflex disappears? I “LAF” at it! LAF is an acronym for “Love, Accept, Forgive.” Before expanding LAF, there is a habit that I had to learn to make LAFing possible. It is simply having the awareness that the stimulus-response reflex was triggered. It may sound simple but doing so can be a bit more challenging than it might seem. If I do not develop the awareness that an old button was pushed, then I will be enveloped in the old emotions triggered by being criticized or whatever. I will not have the presence of mind to use LAF or any other technique to dampen the reflex. Awareness is enabled by vigilance. To be vigilant I do whatever is required. I was told to make “vigilance” a kind of mantra, to repeat it over and over every day until my mind does indeed become vigilant. Another common technique is to post the word “vigilance” on a mirror that I look at everyday; still another is to use the word as part of a computer password. If I expose the word to myself in enough different ways, then I will become vigilant. Once I am vigilant to the possibility that old reflexes will be present, then when one does pop up, I can invoke awareness and start LAFing. Love is a matter of being non-judgmental about myself for having gotten triggered – love is about realizing that I am healed of the wound. Acceptance is simply allowing that the event and the trigger constitute something that simply happened and has no “meaning” – acceptance is letting go of the triggering event. Forgiveness is the recognition that I have not been wronged by whoever pulled my trigger or pressed my button – forgiveness is not placing blame on anyone. LAF covers all of the bases: me through love, the triggering event through acceptance, and the person pulling the trigger through forgiveness. It takes many repetitions of LAF to cure the scar. As in most worthwhile endeavors in life, persistence is the key. Remember vigilance enables awareness, and awareness sets up LAF. It is that simple, albeit not necessarily easy. My modest proposal to you is: start LAFing or some other practice more to your liking that will cure the scars left by healing emotional wounds. This concludes the series on “Why Am I the Way That I Am?” I learned a lot in writing these three articles, and I thank you for being a subscriber to Modest Proposals. If you wish to read the first two articles, they can be found in the Modest Proposals archives; look under the listings for the year 2004. Below is a chapter from my book, A Tao Of God, that speaks more to the reflexes that remain after emotional healing takes place. Ron
McCray
From A Tao Of God Chapter 19 – Reflexes and responses It would be wonderful to say that once I release fear and judgment around an event in my past I am finished with them for good. Alas, it is not so. My spiritual body may be cleansed of the unharmonious emotion, but it remains in my mental body in the form of offensive and defensive strategies and tactics. This
is not a joyful condition. Strategies and tactics for protecting myself
and earning conditional love are my mental creations. They are learned
and thus are governed by the laws of learning. The laws of learning
are powerful and inflexible: New learning only occurs in the presence of awareness. It is inevitable that my mental body/ego will initiate an old reflex, even though I have illuminated the darkness in my spiritual body. I will experience fear fiction. I will judge. What is different? The difference lies in the illumination of my spiritual body accomplished through venting the emotion associated with the fear fiction. There is no longer the foundation for fear and judgment. I only need to have awareness to stop the fear-judgment chain reaction. Pavlov’s famous dogs continued to salivate when the dinner bell rang, even though food was absent. I begin to initiate the fear-judgment reflex, then my awareness kicks in and I realize that I do not have to “salivate.” I can understand that the acceptance I experienced by quickly releasing the fear fiction is far more fulfilling than the unharmonious emotion that is the result of the fear-judgment reflex. What does this take to bring about? Practice, practice, practice, with attention on awareness, will bring about my new learning over time. In the interim, especially when I “fail” to have awareness until powerfully in the grip of fear, I accept my “shortcomings,” and I do not abuse myself for not invoking awareness earlier. It took me years to develop these reflexes; they are not going to be replaced overnight. My experience… As of the completion of this book in the year of 2003, I retain many of my fear-based reflexes. Perhaps one of the strongest is to want to defend myself when I am criticized. The reflex is to verbally attack the person who has “insulted” me, to lash out to divert the insulter from knowing for sure that I am unworthy. Often when the criticism is made, the emotions flash across the screen of my consciousness, and I want to reply in kind. Mostly now, the aware, awakened me heads off the tongue-lashing, and I can lovingly accept what was said, who said it, and myself. When I do this, harmony inevitably results. I repeatedly release old fear-judgment based chain reactions until they are no longer reflexes. ∞
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