3. Reaction/Response

The next chapter of our journey is the Reaction/Response section. As I've done it, I spent most of my life doing anything not to feel. I learned early on that feelings were wrong and bad. Smart people and good people didn't need or have feelings. 

You probably know by now that nothing could be further from the truth. I don't choose to feel or not feel. My body does it without permission from my brain. My brain, like everyone's, reacts to the world around me as it observes what's going on around me. Something happens and faster than you can say "huh?", it has seen, analyzed and sent a message to my brain to pay attention. Now the oldest and therefore most experienced part of me is sometimes referred to as the lizard brain. It's the part most closely associated with survival. It is known as the amygdala in the scientific world.

The amygdala's function (one of them) is to assess risk and determine if I should run from this threat or kill it. This is survival at the primal level. It assumes that all risks are life or death. So let me ask you to consider the last time your life was threatened. If you're like me you can't recall. What that means is that I have to learn how to not react from the amygdala place. I have to slow down and think about a response to my feeling which would be more appropriate than the running/killing reaction.

But, easier said than done. After a lifetime of reacting to situations or ignoring them it's difficult to learn to slow down and think before acting. And you may share my experience of trying to tell myself to do something I've never done before and expecting I'll behave toward myself any better than I behaved for mom and dad. Commands have never worked for me before and they haven't worked for clients I've worked with either. So, what's a poor boy to do?

I've tried different things; none with any kind of results that were reliable. Here's the one thing I tried that has succeeded much of the time.

Over the last several years I've tried various ways to practice being in the present. After all, my entire life is taking place in this moment. I can either do something which contributes to my life or something that doesn't. And contribution takes on many guises. They are not all related to work. They are not all related to play. Those contributions are the elements that together are creating my life. They come in different sizes, shapes and colors. Some are hard and sturdy, some are ephemeral and some are frivolous. The objective is to create something I can enjoy and be grateful for while I struggle and while I rest and recuperate. I'm really looking for Fulfillment. And that's a topic for another day.

As I have struggled to be in the moment I realized that there is one thing necessary for the moment. That is to know my feelings: Glad, Mad Sad and Afraid. Those only happen in real time and they are always real time. They are perhaps a definition of the moment. They are always present to a greater or lesser degree and when I know where I am with all of them I am in the moment. I am also prepared to notice when one of them spikes, which may give me an opportunity to react from a more mature or developed part of my brain that the lizard locale.

The fourth part is next. See you soon.