Managing copious emotions

[Ollie]

On discovering that I have a dormant, or atrophied lower emotional centre, thanks to the mirror of this Forum, I set up an intent of a course of action to awaken my lower emotional centre. I am now approaching a point of possible awakening, hence, I am seeking guidance, or techniques, from members of the forum for managing copious emotions: what Martha Stout calls 'effect toleration'; constructive ways to live with powerful emotions.

This advice is sought, particularly, from people who have awakened their own dormant or atrophied lower emotional centre, or from people who have active lower emotional centres who are aware of, or have facilitated, such ways of managing and living with powerful emotions.

Your help in this matter is appreciated.

 

[Laura]

Maybe it will help if you will share the process in some more detail? What, exactly, have you done and what "symptoms" do you have that make you think you are on the verge of an awakening?

 

[spyraal]

Hello Trevrizent,

In my opinion, different things apply to our different levels of being as we grow and learn. In that sense, i cannot tell what advice could be useful for your situation just from the feedback you provide.
Maybe it would be more helpful for you (as well as the rest of us in order to help in any way) if you try to elaborate a little more on this. ;) So based on your own words, i would like to ask you:

a) why do you think your emotional center is atrophied (or give link to that mirroring thread!)
b) what actions did you take to awaken it
c) what makes you feel like it is awakening now

Thank you
:)

 

[PepperFritz]

Hi Trevrizent:

I hardly consider myself an "expert" in this area, and can only pass on the techniques that have "worked" for me in this area over the years, FWIW.

I began to intensely "work on" my own emotions long before I formally undertook "the Work". At the time I was very immersed in the "Seth" material, and found much of value there to help me. Seth spoke of people being afraid, almost "phobic" of their emotions, resulting in one's emotions getting "stuck". He described emotions as being naturally "fluid", and emphasized that if allowed to run their course unimpeded, they have a very clear beginning, middle, and end, and will naturally "dissipate". The problem comes when that cycle is impeded by the fears and/or beliefs of the person experiencing the emotion, by the person's low tolerance of emotional pain, what psychologists would call "affect intolerance". As I came to understand it, the keys to letting an emotion fully cycle and ultimately dissipate are:

• Adopt a neutral, non-judgmental attitude to the emotion, seeing it as the equivalent of a physical pain or sensation. In other words, do not view the emotion as "negative" or "positive", or yourself as "bad", "pitiful", or "out of control" for experiencing the emotion.
  
• Recognize that the emotion is NOT YOU, merely an energy that is moving and expressing itself THROUGH you. Try not to identify with it, try let a part of you impassively observe it even as you are fully feeling it.
  
• Concentrate on fully FEELING the emotion, all the while recognizing that you will NOT get "stuck" in the emotion, nor will you DIE or be physically harmed by it.

A technique that I regularly used at the beginning of my work in this area, when I felt the most overwhelmed and frightened by the emotions I was releasing from my body, was to adopt a physical posture that would really allow the emotion to MOVE THROUGH my body, and really allow me to FEEL IT. For me it was one of two positions: either lying spread-eagled on the floor (face up or down), or in the same position against a flat wall. For some reason this really helped me to FEEL and/or visualize the emotion moving throughout my entire body, peak in intensity, then exit my body into the ether.

An analogy that worked for me was that of the athlete who seeks to increase his physical endurance, so that he can perform at a higher level. He disciplines himself to feel the physical pain of taxing his muscles, knowing that the pain will decrease over time as his muscles grow stronger. In the same way, I came to view the pain of fully experiencing my emotions as "temporary", and would remind myself that over time my "tolerance" ("affect tolerance") of emotional pain would increase, with the result that each emotional "cycle" would gradually become "shorter" and more efficient, as my emotional "muscles" became stronger.

But the most important thing I got from the Seth material, and my experiences in this area, was the absolute necessity of recognizing that your emotions are not YOU, cannot harm you, and will eventually dissipate if allowed to fully "cycle"; and that to impose any kind of "value judgment" on them, can only impede that cycle.

Dunno if this makes any sense to you, in terms of what you are experiencing. Take it for what it's worth.

 

[Joe]

I had the same question. Can you describe your powerful emotions?

 

[Ollie]

In reply to your questions, the following extracts are from a much longer post that I am preparing on awakening the lower emotional centre, both theory and practice. My research on managing copious emotions, both from the Forum and the wider web has yielded very little. Hence the reason for the post. Extracts:

This post is to share, what may well be a ‘common’ problem for other male readers, specifically, ways to awaken the emotional centre: to put all the information together, to help others, or not, in the face of consciously choosing to face their own ‘suffering’. Although, for the people involved the ‘suffering’ may be oblivious to them, they may not even aware of the signs presented. Certainly, I was unaware of the problem; as far as I was concerned everything was ‘normal’.

Thanks to the ‘mirror’ of the Forum, on the first topic I posted to (Physical issues reading GNOSIS) after my introduction post, I discovered that my emotional centre needed awakening, rather than as I initially thought, developing. Thanks to anart, for a few ideas, ‘fwiw’, who suggested shocks and suffering to stir up the emotions; and recapitulating on one’s past life and past traumas /events that created programs to stir up the emotional centre from its slumber. Recapitulation I have done on and off for the last 17 years in the form of recovering the positive learnings from limiting decisions, beliefs, or buffers etc, as the trapped emotions were released. As and when I became aware of the limiting decisions, I worked on them. I knew from before that doing this work on limiting decisions or buffers I could not recall emotions. Also, for a long time now I have known that I had to do something with my Reptilian brain’s flight and fight response, and that I needed to get outside of myself to do this, however, I was unaware of the root cause of the problem that needed addressing. Now, I could not recall an event in the past that would switch off my emotional centre. Shortly before joining the Forum I had done an inventory (recapitulate) of possible events in all areas of my life, to no avail.

Then, by chance, I read a post of Laura’s and realized that the root cause was the likely early childhood trauma of circumcision! I recall my mother telling me, when I was an adult, that the family doctor had recommended it shortly after birth, for ‘health reasons’. Wow, where do I start to address this?
...

Recapping Laura’s post,

[…] As I wrote in The Wave:

Quote
[...]
I went back in my thinking to the whole Jehovah-I AM deal; the Moses story and all that; and went over the details as they are presented in the Bible for clues. And I came up against that most interesting demand of that crafty Lizard, Jehovah/Yahweh: circumcision - on the 8th day, no less.

What better way to ensure a deep, subconscious, distrust of women - not to mention an overwhelming terror at the very mention of the pain and suffering that might ensue from breaking the monotheistic covenant - than whacking a guy's pee-pee when he is interested only in being warm, cozy, and filling his tummy with warm, sweet milk from mother?!

Whoah! Talk about your basic abyssal cunning there!

The first stage, or circuit, is the oral-passive-receptive, and is imprinted by what is perceived to be the mother or first mothering object. It can be conditioned by nourishment or threat, and is mostly concerned with bodily security. Trauma during this phase can cause an unconsciously motivated mechanical retreat from anything threatening to physical safety.
[…]
The first "circuit" is concerned with what is safe and what is not safe. In our society, money is one of the primary items that is intimately tied to survival and biological security. Money represents survival.

When I was young money was never an issue, on leaving home I always had enough to live on, I got into debt at one stage and got myself out of it, unemployed at one time for a short period cash was short but I got through it (thanks to a roof over my head at my parents). So, this one is a tricky call, for yes or no - undecided. Safety has never, to my conscious knowledge, been a problem. But, my Chief Feature reveals a lot of fears, including fear of: failure, moving forward/new situations, consequences, putting into action decisions made, discovery, as well as fear itself. So, on reflection, yes I agree with the statement.

In addition to that, people who have been traumatized during the imprinting phase of the first circuit tend to view other people in an abstract way. It is "us and them."

I’d never thought of it in that way, and on reflection, yes, I do.

They also tend to be very easily threatened by disapproval of any sort because disapproval suggests the idea of extinction or loss of food supply.

No? Throughout my career I have often challenged decisions at work and am usually cast to one side as a result (of my ability to SEE through people). Once I was told to be more serious at work, and it cost me several pay increases under that director. If I am easily threatened, then I have learnt to cover it up at a deep level and not let it show as a coping mechanism. Eliciting my Chief Feature did reveal a lot of fears, including fear of: recognition, not being good enough/inadequate. So, again on reflection, yes I agree with the statement.

And, finally, those who have been negatively imprinted at this stage tend to have a chronic muscular armoring that prevents proper, relaxed breathing; they are "up tight."

I am aware that my body is ‘tense’ rather than what I would call ‘up tight’. I’ve worked on my breathing moving from the chest to habitually breath abdominally, although it tends to be ‘shallow’.

One of the main characteristics of people who are heavily controlled by this circuit, or are "stuck" in this "oral phases," is that when they sense danger of any sort, whether actual or conceptual, all mental activity comes to a halt.

This I do not relate to at all. Actual: I stop (language as a pointer!) and rationalize a situation, looking for options. Conceptual: an inner ‘I” will usually offer something either positive or negative. Regarding an earlier statement on the first stage, ‘unconsciously motivated retreat from anything threatening to physical danger’, when mountain walking I do consider where I am going, and have competing inner ‘I’s telling me to either stop and pack up, or to keep going; to do what I fear. I do not take unnecessary chances.

Such people are chronically anxious and dependent - mostly on religion.

Yes to the first, although I thought that I had just inherited this from my mother! I’ve always thought of myself as independent; indeed (language again) feedback to determine my Chief Feature (procrastination) suggests self-reliant, a loner, self-contained (shy) and stubborn (hidden, own way, invisible). Fears that were revealed in determining my Chief Feature included: Fear itself, fear of: failure, moving forward/new situations, losing /missing out, immensity of task before me, success, responsibility, recognition, recognition (not good enough/inadequate), discovery, consequences, and putting into action decisions made. Dependent on religion – no – at an early age, through attending Sunday School and the need to make a decision on confirmation or not, I rejected it on the basis of the duplicitous behaviour of church members on a Sunday compared with the rest of the week.

They are not able to really understand what other people are feeling or what can happen in the future in regard to relationships, given a certain present situation. They only understand what is happening "now," and they can only feel what THEY feel. They cannot accurately grasp what others feel because they relate to others only as sensory objects.

This statement explains a lot!!! Although I’d never really thought that I related to others only as sensory objects, certainly empathy was/is only intellectual for me.

And, how many men are circumcised? A LOT, I can tell you. And, besides the Jews, for years, the AMA advocated and urged circumcision of American babies for "hygienic" reasons. Hmmm...

As a side note, trauma or failure to bond at this oral phase tends to also lead to weight issues - either overweight or underweight.

This has never been a problem for me.

The expression of healthy growth through this phase is the ability to retain the state of consciousness of the "natural child" who feels safe in the world no matter what they encounter. [...]

A quick check on the web re: psychological trauma and PTSD symptoms revealed the following:

emotional detachment, dissociation, emotionally flat, preoccupied, distant, memory problems – yes to all of these, subjectively and externally verified, - emotionally numb, trouble feeling affectionate, overwhelming psychological defenses – yes to all of these as well.

...

In addition to Laura’s text above, looking at web material on circumcision revealed the following:

Many men who were circumcised as neonates consider it a nonissue because they cannot remember anything about it. […] it is clear that the memory is there. Since the event occurred at a very early preverbal level, it is most often experienced as a body or somatic memory rather than as a more familiar verbal memory. …
[…]
[…] his mind went blank (“cortical shock”) – typical of what happens when experiencing this level of traumatic response). As an adult, […] maintaining a somatic state of hypervigilence and tension. …

Later-Life Symptoms of Circumcision
Other men with whom I have worked have also made causal connections between present-day problems – such as a sense of defeat, shyness, anger, or fear – and their neonatal circumcision experiences. I have developed a list of symptoms and behaviors that appear to have been caused or significantly conditioned by these neonatal experiences. Since these symptoms and behaviors can result from other traumatic experiences as well, this list should not be used as a diagnostic checklist to identify circumcision trauma; however, they may suggest its presence. These symptoms include
• a sense of personal powerlessness
• fear of being overpowered and victimized by others
• lack of trust in others and life
• […]
• guardedness in relationships
• reluctance to be in relationships with women
• defensiveness
• […]
• difficulties in establishing intimate relationships
• emotional numbing
• […]
• decreased ability to communicate
• feeling of not being understood

Discussion
[…]
[…] in her model of human responses to trauma, Pomeroy (1994) brings together what we know about trauma is, how it happens, and what our psychic responses to traumatic events. She describes three inborn levels of defense for dealing with a threatening experience: 1) relational resources, consisting of boundaries and safe, trustworthy individual and communal connections; 2) fight, flight, and freeze defenses from the brain’s limbic system; and 3) shock defenses, also from the limbic system, but without emotional control (pp. 90-93). She points out that when an overwhelming threat alarm is signaled by the emotional brain, the emotional brain’s defenses take over. The emotional brain depends responds at the level of fight-flight-freeze (active defenses) or shock defenses (passive reflexes) (p. 92).

In the case of circumcision, relational resources are unavailable to the neonate. The next level of fight-flight-freeze also does not serve him since he is easily trapped and overpowered by those performing the procedure. All he has left, therefore is the level of shock defense, which consists of central nervous system flooding by terror, rage, and finally numbing, paralysis, and dissociation; this his last chance to control the high level of central nervous system activation, which might otherwise result in death. …

Note in the above, the statement that when ‘… an overwhelming threat alarm is signaled by the emotional brain, the emotional brain’s defenses take over. The emotional brain depends responds at the level of fight-flight-freeze (active defenses) or shock defenses (passive reflexes) (p. 92).

In the case of circumcision, ... The next level of fight-flight-freeze also does not serve him since he is easily trapped and overpowered by those performing the procedure. All he has left, therefore is the level of shock defense, which consists of central nervous system flooding by terror, rage, and finally numbing, paralysis, and dissociation; …’ The inborn level of defense goes straight into passive reflexes – i.e., application of the SHOCK DOCTRINE in the limbic system.

Resuming the quote,

[…]
For a neonate undergoing circumcision, perhaps it would be accurate to say that his “decision” is primarily somatic and derives from defensive patterning of his shock experience. Because of its content and context, circumcision sets in place an automatic central nervous system and generalized somatic reaction to interpersonal experience from that point on. Some males experience continuing vigilance, some a readiness to fight, flee, or freeze; and other will jump to rage, terror, or disconnection. It is helpful to note that, in considering the levels of defense, whenever the two earlier levels ) relational and fight or flight) are experienced by the mind as ineffective, the mind tends not to use them later. This means that a mind patterned in this way jumps right to terror, rage and/or dissociation when confronted with situations that are interpreted as threatening, even though the rational mind or cortex these situations may not be significant. In other words, when an event occurs in a man’s life that resembles any aspect of the original circumcision experience, the chances are that the extreme form of panic, rage, violence, or dissociation might are much more likely – just as they are in any other posttraumatic stress situation.

...

I regard hypnosis with caution, maybe even a little skepticism, and also with gratitude, and at certain moments, something that approaches awe. The use of trance can speed the progress of a therapy, because it enhances recall, and I studied hypnotic techniques initially for that reason. People in their thirties, forties, fifties, and older for whom the reality of extreme trauma is twenty, thirty, forty or more years in the past, are often impatient, and rightly so, with the lingering, life-depleting effects of ancient events. To often, they are close to despair, to viewing their lives as aborted attempts, as hopeless mismatches. And so, if I believe that a person is ready to deal with the past, has sufficient internal and external resources to face the extremely unsettling material that may be uncovered, I will suggest hypnosis as a part – and only a part – of our work together. Vital nonhypnotic treatment components include providing a safe holding environment (make certain that therapy as a whole constitutes a caring “safe place”) cognitive restructuring (the therapeutic reexamination of long-standing belief systems), and effect toleration (teaching constructive ways to live with powerful emotions).

When using hypnosis, I remain severely cautioned, and repeatedly warn my patients, that the memories we may call forth were originally dissociated from consciousness for a very good and life-preserving reason, and for this we must retain the utmost respect. Proceed with great care. I have no magic wand, and ethical hypnotherapy is much more than mere theater.

...

Second, the practical steps (DOing) to awakening of the emotional centre. Please note that this is just the approach that I took, there may well be other approaches to take to resolve this problem.

Mouravieff offers one approach to awaken the emotional centre,
’ … for lack of anything else better he will be forced to work empirically.
However, we can give him a valuable hint: human nature has an aptitude for being trained, and this can be profitably used to awaken the torpid emotional centre. With subtle and highly refined reasoning, the man 3 must in every circumstance imagine the reaction of the man 2 who is obedient to the will of his emotional centre. And he must by conscious effort react in the same way when not driven by emotion. It is a game. … But if he takes the game seriously and makes it a permanent methodical exercise for all occasions, he will succeed in liberating his emotional centre from its state of torpor.’

However, I felt (intellectually!) that something more dramatic was needed to address the early infant traumatic event of circumcision, at a time when I probably couldn’t even articulate verbally. I was looking for an internal shock rather than external shock.

Eighteen years ago I trained in NLP, Ericksonian hypnosis, and Time Line Therapy, all to Masters level, so I reasoned that hypnosis would be the most appropriate way to revisit the trauma; to get to the locked-up emotions, and memories; likely to be many dispersed, each isolated, traumatic, and spread around my body. I needed a hypnotherapist with experience of dealing with trauma, or PTSD, preferably local to me. The search was on. I had to take the risk of awakening what might be ‘unspeakable horror that waits to consume me alive’ (Martha Stout), and yet the chance of awakening my emotional centre. First I had to overcome my CF – procrastination – initially satisfied by reading the four recommended psychological books, reading Stout again with a different emphasis. Also, I started to work on reducing Adrenal Fatigue using supplements (thanks to the Adrenal Fatigue, Symptoms – affects 10’s of millions post). But to do it, to make the appointment!!! That was the big leap, as well as overcoming my Chief Feature; I needed both conscious and unconscious agreement before I went ahead, knowing the likely discomfort that might lie ahead.

I drew up a short-list of four possible hypnotherapists. One was a clinical hypnotherapist with four years of experience, another was into NLP and Life coaching, curative hypnosis, it all sounded a little too ‘New Age’ for me, another was both a psychotherapist and hypnotherapist that stated that he specialized in trauma, and the last one did hypnotherapy, NLP, Time Line Therapy, and breakthrough therapy, and a host of other things that sounded ‘New Age’. Instinct, or was it familiarity, initially pushed me towards the level of most experience, or should I go with the one that specialized in trauma?

Also, I was aware that Time Line Therapy would be faster, in terms of completion, compared with pure hypnosis where I might have to go through a year of allowing old memories to come up. Coincidently, this was the therapist with the most years of experience. After a break, I got that conscious and unconscious agreement, a few weeks later I made the initial consultative appointment. That was the easy part, fortunately the appointment was only a few days away – that was helpful.

It was even sooner than I thought, I arrived a week early! However, I was fitted in and had an exploratory session. I have had five sessions to date, gathering resources, doing some Parts negotiation and integration along with the hypnotherapy.

The question of managing copious emotions, from nothing or muted to actual emotions, in life, and after releasing the dissociated emotions has arisen with my hypnotherapist. I was looking for something more specific from Forum members.

edited to add additional quote

 

[Ollie]

Thank you PepperFritz for your reply. by coincidence, I have just finished reading The Afterdeath Journal of an American Philosopher by Jane Roberts. I have not read any of the Seth books, I am currently reading Bringers of the Dawn. I have taken note of your recommendations for future use, the increase in tolerance level is par of the strtegy, both during hypnosis and in life afterwards. All of my reading and current C material point to the importance of dealing effectively with emotions.

 

[RyanX]

I would say that I too exhibit a lot of the traits described here related to traumatization at the imprinting phase. I wonder now if the trauma due to circumcision is part of that?

It's interesting you mention this and your thoughts about using hypnosis to bring this repressed emotion to light.

About four years ago I decided to try hypnotherapy, but it was entirely in the New Age sense. I wanted to uncover "past lives" or whatever I thought they were at the time. It turned out something interesting happened on the very first session. The hypnotist, an older lady, was progressively leading me backwards through the years of my life. We would kind of stop at a certain point and I would look around and find myself back in grade school or back as a toddler and so forth. I remember she asked me to stop at the moment when I first opened my eyes to the world. I suddenly had this powerful emotion come over me. It was a feeling of dread and despair and the most primal fear! It's hard for me to even think about it at this point. The hypnotist asked me what I was feeling and I said something like, "Mommy... why... why did you let this happen?" I said this all the while sobbing. Unfortunately, I never explored this trapped emotion and just went deeper beyond my birth and so forth.

Looking back and knowing what I know now, I really wish I would have explored this feeling further and come to some understanding of it. It probably effects me more than anything in a so-called "past life" would be. After reading your post, I wonder if this was perhaps trauma from circumcision? I know of no other trauma from my real early childhood that could have brought about this feeling, but that doesn't mean there isn't something else there too.

Thanks for this post, I might have to consider going back and exploring this repressed feeling further.

Ryan

 

[Ollie]

RyanX
Thank you. as you have found the extracts useful and the commentary, I've now included the rest of the post that I had prepared, although it only deals with the intellectual, theory side There are some comments as it goes along. I'm still working on the practical side.

Continuing from the end of the quote from John Rhinehart, the post continues in the following manner.

First then, from my intellectual centre of gravity, the theory behind a dormant, or atrophied, emotional centre: primarily based on Mouravieff, Gurdjieff, and Martha Stout.

Starting with Martha Stout, writing on trauma, dissociation and then ways to associate memories using hypnosis amongst other components of therapy.

[…] traumatic events that occurred in the long-ago past, that ended in the long-ago past, and that, in actuality, threaten us with no present danger whatsoever. How does this happen? How do childhood and adolescent terrors that should have been over years ago manage to live on and manage to live on and make us crazy, and alienated from ourselves, in the present?

The answer, paradoxically, lies in a perfectly normal function of the mind known as dissociation, which is the universal reaction to extreme fear or pain. In traumatic situations, dissociation mercifully allows us to disconnect emotional content – the feeling part of our “selves” – from our conscious awareness. Disconnected from our feelings in this way, we stand a better chance of surviving the ordeal, of doing what we have to do, of getting through a critical moment in which our emotions would only be in the way. Dissociation causes a person to view an ongoing traumatic event almost as if she were a spectator, and this separation of emotion from thought and action, the spectator’s perspective, may well prevent her from being utterly overwhelmed on the spot.
[…]
Dissociation during trauma is extremely adaptive; it is a survival function. The problem comes later – for long after the ordeal is over, the tendency to be disconnected from our selves may remain. Our old terrors train us to be dissociative, to feel safe by taking little psychological vacations from reality when it is to frightening or painful.
[…]
Unsurprisingly, survivors of extreme psychological trauma have extreme dissociative reactions, and listening to my trauma patients has allowed me to understand not only dissociation itself, but also the ways in which people may overcome the numbing and unwanted outcomes of dissociative experience. Listening to my patients, I have come to believe in the possibility, for all of us, of staying in touch with reality, of becoming truly sane. If these people can learn to remain present with the reality of their memories, if they can make a commitment to live their lives consciously and meaningfully, so can we.

For the mental universe of the extreme trauma survivor is so full of violence and violation, natural demons and unnatural acts, that one wonders – I wonder every day – how such people find the courage to decide to go on living. It is a place where trusting someone is not an option, and where the genius of one’s own imagination becomes an inescapable stalker. In such a landscape, whenever the inhabitant becomes so bone-weary that she lets down her guard a little, another memory cabinet door swings open to reveal precisely the thing she cannot endure. The thing is different for each person, but always hovers at the outside limit of terror. Letting down her guard is at once what she most actively desires and what she most vigilantly avoids. It is a universe of far and exhaustion – especially exhaustion – and people will try almost anything, however irrational, to make it stop.

[…] The person who suffers from a severe trauma disorder must decide between surviving in a barely sublethal misery of numbness and frustration, and taking a chance that may well bring her a better life, but that feels like stupidity issuing an open invitation to the unspeakable horror that waits to consume her alive. And in the manner of the true hero, she must choose to take the risk.

For trauma changes the brain as well. Like the outdated fuse box, the psychologically traumatized brain houses inscrutable eccentricities that cause it to overact – or more precisely, misreact – to the current realities of life. These neurological misreactions become established because trauma has a profound effect upon the secretion of stress-responsive neurohormones such as norepinephrine, and thus an effect upon various areas of the brain involved in memory, particularly the amygdala and the hippocampus.

The amygdala receives sensory information from the five senses, via the thalamus, attaches emotional significance to the input, and then passes along this emotional “evaluation” to the hippocampus. In accordance with the amygdala’s “evaluation” of importance, the hippocampus is activated to a greater or lesser degree, and functions to organize the new input, and to integrate it with already existing information about similar sensory events. Under a normal range of conditions, this system works efficiently to consolidate memories according to their emotional priority. However, at the extreme upper end of hormonal stimulation, as in traumatic situations, a breakdown occurs. Overwhelming emotional significance registered by the amygdala actually leads to a decrease in hippocampal activation, such that some of the traumatic input is not usefully organized by the hippocampus, or integrated with other memories. The result is that portions of traumatic memory are stored not as parts of a unified whole, but as isolated sensory images and bodily sensations that are not localized in time or even in situation, or integrated with other events.

To make matter still more complex, exposure to trauma may temporarily shut down Broca’s area, the region of the left hemisphere of the brain that translates experience into language, that means by which we most often relate our experience to others, and even to ourselves.

A growing body of research indicates that in these ways the brain lays down traumatic memories differently from the way it records regular memories. Regular memories are formed through adequate hippocampus and cortical input, are integrated as comprehensive wholes, and through language. In contrast, traumatic memories include chaotic fragments that are sealed off from modulation by subsequent experiences. Such memory sequences are wordless, placeless, and eternal, and long after the original trauma has receded into the past, the brain’s record of it may consist only of isolated and thoroughly anonymous bits of emotion, image, and sensation that ring through the individual like a broken alarm.

[…] we do not understand much of daily life is effectively spent in the past, in reaction to the darkest hours we have known, nor do we comprehend how swampy and vitality-sucking some of our memories really are. Deepening the mire of our divided awareness, in the course of a lifetime such “protective” mental reactions acquire tremendous habit strength. These over-exercised muscles can take us away even when traumatic memory fragments have not been evoked. Sometimes dissociation can occur when we are simply confused or frustrated or nervous, whether we recognize our absences or not.

[…] On account of our neurological wiring, confronting past trauma requires one to reendure all of their terrors mentally, in their original intensity, to feel as if the worst nightmare has come true and the horrors have returned. All the brain’s authoritative warnings against staying present for the memories and painful emotions, all the faulty fuses, have to be deliberately ignored, and in certain cases of extreme, or chronic past trauma, this process is nothing short of heroic.

[…] I asked her some general, factual question about her childhood.

[…] An only child, […] she vaguely remembered […]

[…] She remembered that she had a friend […] but she could not remember […] last name, or where […] had gone after […] school […] about her teachers, and she could not remember […]

[…] she could not remember a single holiday or a single birthday. […]

I can relate to most of this as well. Continuing from where Martha Stout left off.

Insufficient memory in the context of an adequate intellect, […] is the next observation. […] that causes me to be suspicious about a patient’s past.

[…] I’m wondering about early traumatic experiences in your life. Even when someone’s cognitive memory is perfectly good, as yours is, a trauma can disrupt the memory in emotional ways.

[…] She agreed to be hypnotized; she began to remember her dreams; […]

[…] Julia’s self could go “somewhere else,” could be psychologically absent.

Simply put, Julia did not remember her childhood because she was not present for it.

All human beings have the capacity to dissociate psychologically though most of us are unaware of this, […] In fact dissociative experiences happen to everyone, and most of these events are quite ordinary.

Consider a perfectly ordinary person as he walks into a perfectly ordinary movie theater to see a popular movie. He is awake, alert and oriented to his surroundings. […]

Then the lights in the theater are lowered and the movie starts. And within twenty-five minutes, he has utterly lost his grasp on reality. Not only is he no longer worried about work, he no longer realizes he has a job. If one could read his thoughts, one would discover that he no longer believed he was sitting in a theater, though in reality he is. […]
[…]
This perfectly ordinary man is dissociated from reality. Effectively he is in a trance. We might label his perceptions psychotic, except for the fact that when the movie is over, he will return to his usual mental status almost instantly. […] All that really happened is that, for a little while, he took the part of him that worries about work problems and other “real” things, and separated it from the imaginative part of himself so that the imaginative part could have dominance. He dissociated one part of his consciousness from another part.
[…]
As a result of a daydream, this mental compartmentalization is called distraction. As a result of an involving movie, it is often called escape. As a result of trauma, physical or psychological, it is called a dissociated state. When a hypnotist induced dissociation, by monotony, distraction, relaxation or any number of other methods, the temporary result is called a hypnotic state, or a trance. The psychological patterns, dissociative state, and trance are virtually identical, regardless of method. The differences among them seem to result not so much from how consciousness gets divided as from how often and how long one is forced to keep it divided.

Another recognizable example of how consciousness can be split into pieces has to do with the perception of physical pain. […]

[…] She is distracted. In the process […] she bashes her leg soundly against the corner of a low shelf. Yet the woman is not seemingly aware that she has injured herself. […]

In this case, a person was distracted, and the part of her consciousness that would normally have perceived pain was split apart from, and subjugated to, the part of her consciousness that was goal-related. She was not there for the direct experience of her pain. She was somewhere else […]. And because she was not there, she does not remember the accident.

The direct experience of physical pain can be split off in cases of more serious injury as well. […]

Agony that is psychological can be dissociated, too. […] She stopped being there. Certainly, some parts of her consciousness must have been there right along. […] But the part of herself that she thinks of her self was not there; it was split off, put aside, and therefore in some sense protected. And because her self had not been there her self could not remember what had happened to her during much of her childhood.

What does it feel like, not being able to remember whole chapters of one’s life? […]

“It doesn’t feel like anything,” she answered. “I never really thought about it. I guess I just assumed, sort of tacitly assumed, that everyone’s memory was like mine, that is to say, kind of blank before the age of […]

“[…] every now and then I’d hear people talking about […] or some other thing about a little girl’s birthday, and I’d wonder how they knew that. But I guess I just figured their memory was especially good, or perhaps they’d heard their parents talk about it so much that it seemed like a memory.

“The memories I did have […] so vague […] Certainly, there was nothing like a continuous thread of memory that linked one part of my life to another.

I can relate to these comments about childhood. Now, continuing with quotes from Martha Stout.

Because children dissociate readily even in ordinary circumstances, when they encounter traumatic situations, they easily split their unconscious into pieces, often for extended periods of time. The self is put aside and hidden. Of course, this reaction is functional for the traumatized child, a dissociative state, far from being dysfunctional or crazy, may in fact be lifesaving. And thanks be to the normal human mind that it provides the means.

This coping strategy becomes dysfunctional only later, after the child is grown and away from the original trauma. When the original trauma is no longer an ongoing fact of life, prolonged dissociative reactions are no longer necessary. But through the years of intensive use, the self-protective strategy has developed a hair trigger. The adult whom the child has become now experiences dissociative reactions to levels of stress that probably would not cause another person to associate.
[…]

Now let us visit the mind of […] child, three-year-old Amy, who has just had surgery.

[…] After she was born, when the doctor said she had a cleft palate, they vowed to make the impending medical procedure as comfortable and nontraumatic as possible. […] It is now two in the morning on the day after Amy has had an operation to […] She is waking fully for the first time since the surgery, […] But it is pitch-dark in the room, and Amy does not know where she is. Groggily, the last thing she remembers is going with her parents to a scary hospital, and getting a shot. She wonders whether she is now somewhere at home in her bed. She starts to lift her head, but when she does, her neck hurts – a lot. She puts her arms out, and they hit hard, cold things close to hr on both sides. Frightened, she jerks her arms back, and lied still. […]
[…]
[…] And then the real pain starts. Quite unknown to Amy, her analgesic medication is running out. […] The pain starts to swell up in her […] so much that she cannot stand it. What is happening? Why does her […] hurt so bad? […] The room is dark, she cannot see. And she is alone.
[…]
The pain gets stronger, and Amy wonders whether she is dying; […] just more pain. By now it hurts so much that she can hardly breathe. She crawls inside her head and watches the pain. It is a bright light, and gets bigger and brighter when she looks. Again a minute or two, Amy’s body seems to disappear, and the only thing left is the light.
[…]
She will never tell them about her fifty minutes of terror; […] has no words for this. And her mother and father will never coax her to tell them, because from their perspective, nothing happened.

[…]

[…] hypnosis is being used by many therapists in their work with individuals traumatized in various ways. It can be used to provide a “safe place” in which to recall past events, and even to discuss and reframe them, such that they are more tolerable, less secret and toxic to the survivor.

I regard hypnosis with caution, maybe even a little skepticism, and also with gratitude, and at certain moments, something that approaches awe. The use of trance can speed the progress of a therapy, because it enhances recall, and I studied hypnotic techniques initially for that reason. People in their thirties, forties, fifties, and older for whom the reality of extreme trauma is twenty, thirty, forty or more years in the past, are often impatient, and rightly so, with the lingering, life-depleting effects of ancient events. To often, they are close to despair, to viewing their lives as aborted attempts, as hopeless mismatches. And so, if I believe that a person is ready to deal with the past, has sufficient internal and external resources to face the extremely unsettling material that may be uncovered, I will suggest hypnosis as a part – and only a part – of our work together. Vital nonhypnotic treatment components include providing a safe holding environment (make certain that therapy as a whole constitutes a caring “safe place”) cognitive restructuring (the therapeutic reexamination of long-standing belief systems), and effect toleration (teaching constructive ways to live with powerful emotions).

When using hypnosis, I remain severely cautioned, and repeatedly warn my patients, that the memories we may call forth were originally dissociated from consciousness for a very good and life-preserving reason, and for this we must retain the utmost respect. Proceed with great care. I have no magic wand, and ethical hypnotherapy is much more than mere theater.

Regarding brain activity itself, cognitive neuroscientists inform us that neuropeptides and neurotransmitters released during stress often affect memory function, acting upon amygdala, the hippocampus, and other brain regions involved in memory – chronic childhood abuse may result in long-term modulations in these neurochemicals. Brain imaging studies indicate that childhood abuse is associated with long-term changes in declarative memory (sometimes called “explicit memory”), in the same pattern found in persons diagnosed with combat-related post-traumatic stress disorder.
[…]
[…] “dissociative disorders” are correlated with childhood trauma, and second, that the treatment of traumatic memories is crucial to the recovery of persons with debilitating dissociative reactions. If we are to provide lasting relief for people whose dissociative behaviour has crippled them, then we must deal with the slippery, political, explosive entity of memory. […]

[…]the self-aware function we refer to as “consciousness” operates in all circumstances as a neurological tool – a mental sentry – admitting and organizing relatively tiny amounts of information from our minds and from the outside world. This mental sentry allows us to function in our day-to-day loves, and not be overwhelmed with input. From moment to moment, “consciousness” does not apprehend the whole of the mind, anymore than it apprehends the whole of the world.

[…] dissociated behaviour […] which is sometimes invisible to them. […]

Once in therapy, Matthew would begin to feel scarry things, feelings, sensations, and images that had for years been hidden away in the dissociated closet of his mind. In the beginning he would not know what to make of them. He would be confused and frightened – much more confused and frightened than before he began, when all this was safely tucked away – and he might start to think that he really was crazy. After all, therapy is supposed to make a person feel better, and he would not be feeling better; he would be feeling much worse, at least at first.

The idea is not to produce a detailed feature film of one’s personal history, but rather to allow the brain to recognize some of what happened in the past, and to label it properly – though this may at first be frightening and painful – such that the mind no longer hides from the present as if the foggy, wordless, dissociated past was still going on.

The goal, put simply, is to enable oneself to live substantially in the present. The task is life-affirming, and also a kind and generous thing to do for the people one loves.

By their nature, traumatic circumstances for a young, helpless human often end when that person ceases to be young and helpless, when he grows to adulthood. However, dissociative identities do not shut down in the adult; in fact, they may become more insistent, and when trauma is no longer ongoing, but dissociative identities are still controlling behaviour, only then does calling dissociative identity disorder a “disorder” start to make sense.

[…] The pervasive impression that no one really knew anything about him came instead from his unwavering emotional detachment, seemingly from everything, including most particularly his own past. He never revealed his heart, and one could have known his complete autobiography, in great detail, and still Nathan the human being would have been unknown. The man, with all his stories, was an attractive enigma, an emotionally blank screen.

[…] He never reassumed his own defining internal life, but rather seemed to have divested his feelings in some such more permanent fashion. I believe that some colleagues and friends may have mistaken this for strength, may even have envied it, as perfect self-containment or invulnerability on Nathan’s part rather than recognizing this characteristic as a lifelong emotional compartmentalization that dangerously exceeded his ability to direct it.

[…] someone who may already be suffering from trauma-related alexithymia (loss of ability to recognize specific emotions as one’s own, that would otherwise serve as judicious guides for responding to other people). The alexithymic individual cannot identify his own feelings, or convey them in words. […]

In many ways, close study of dissociative behaviour supports an old truth, that we cannot simultaneously protect ourselves and experience life fully. Those two desires preclude each other proportionately. To the extent that we try to protect ourselves, we cannot truly live; and to the extent that we truly live, we cannot place our highest value upon protecting ourselves. This lesson is not new, but it is interesting that the theme reiterates itself right down to our neurological blueprints.

[…] Psychologically an orphan, […] wary of other people, Garrett has few “friends” […] but no one, as yet, who is genuinely close to him, no one who shares his most private thoughts, or his heart. […]

A nurtured, non-tumultuous life tends to promote in a human creature the relatively serene hormonal and neurological environment in which traumatic memory may be reclaimed. And this is the task at hand. Recovery involves the reprocessing of fragmented primitive memories into integrated conscious memories, and the reduction of outdated dissociative reactions. It requires hard, precarious, frightening memory work – a mosaic of activities, sometimes including hypnosis, […]

As you go along, keep a daily journal of your reactions, your thoughts, and your feelings.

In my practice, I often use hypnosis as an avenue to the consolidation of memory. […] Progress made by an individual under hypnosis does not conform to the traditional notion of purging or “catharsis”; there is no instant elimination of harmful unconscious material simply because it is expressed consciously. […]

[…] trance facilitates a progressive re-forming of memory on a deeper level than is ordinarily possible, gradual two-steps-forward-one-step-back reworking that must occur in combination with other sources of information and support. As one component of treatment, hypnosis by a sensitive practitioner is productive and intriguing. However, it is by no means a sufficient or even a necessary approach to recover.

Another excellent approach, again neither necessary nor sufficient – but definitely helpful – is the faithful practice of some form of meditation. […]

[…] The purpose of consolidating memories, and of making them verbal, is not to figure out who was at fault. “Fault” […] has no place in the healing process, […] Rather, the advantage of having regular memories is in knowing, explicitly and as objectively as possible, what has happened in one’s life.

The true remedies are making a safe place, not hiding from memories, and not blaming. Also, at first, simply learning to recognize dissociative behaviour in oneself and in others, at least some of the time, may be counted as a part of the cure, By definition, increased self-observation exercises the observing ego, the part of the self that will be able to view dissociation as a currently unnecessary limit upon one’s freedom.

Dissociation, by analogy, and moving on to Mouravieff and the exaggerated development of the motor and intellectual centre in man 3, to the detriment of the emotional centre, which is either degenerated or lethargic or even paralyzed. This quote is interspersed with quotes on the emotional centre, and on the wrong working of the centres

[…] the esoteric significance of the Chimera […]

The Chimera is an animal of higher type; with its lion’s head and the body of a goat, […] If it was a living being, […] it would have motor and emotional centres. It does actually have two centres in the psyche, but these are the motor and the intellectual. This can only have an unreal existence, chimeric in the true meaning f the word, as no bi-centred being exists in Nature other than those with motor and emotional centres.
…
The symbolism of the Chimera […] will help us better understand the condition of exterior man, who is dominated by the provisional ‘I’ of the incomplete Personality as well as by the times in which he spends his life, that is to say, (in which we spend) our lives.

One might say that the whole modern system of public education – primary, secondary and higher – is orientated almost exclusively towards the growth and development of the intellectual centre. […]

Alongside the exaggerated development of the motor and intellectual centres, the emotional centre […] looks like a poor relation […] little concern for its development. […] left to its own fate, a man’s emotional centre degenerates even further with age […] This state goes unnoticed.

[…] Due to education and training, oriented in our civilization towards the intensive training of the negative part of the motor centre and towards an intellectual culture, […] the activity of the emotional centre is forced even further into the background, to fall into a sleep bordering on lethargy.

[…] man is dynamic in these two domains [motor and intellectual], yet reveals weakness and a striking passivity on the emotional plane.
[…]
[…] Let us observe that generally even if the positive part of the emotional centre is in an almost uninterrupted state of lethargy, if not actually paralysed, its negative part acts frequently.

This section is specifically about the emotional centre, and its composition.

In the emotional center, at first glance, the division is quite simple and obvious. If we take pleasant emotions such joy, sympathy, affection, self-confidence, as belonging to the positive part, and unpleasant emotions such as boredom, irritation, jealousy, envy, fear, as belonging to the negative part, things will look very simple, but in reality they are much more complicated.

To begin with, in the emotional center there is no natural negative part. The greater part of negative emotions are artificial; they do not belong to the emotional center proper and are based on instinctive emotions which are quite unrelated to them but which are transformed by imagination and identification. […] External events and inner realizations produced inner reflexes which produced sensations; and these are interpreted as emotions. […]

Positive emotions are emotions which cannot become negative. But all our pleasant emotions such as joy, affection, self-confidence, can, at any moment, turn into boredom, irritation, envy, fear, and so on. […]

Even a purely intellectual emotion – the desire for knowledge – or an aesthetic emotion – that is, a feeling of beauty or harmony – if it becomes mixed with identification, immediately unites with emotions of a negative kind such as self-pride, vanity, selfishness, conceit, and so on.

So, we can say without any possibility of mistake that we have no positive emotions. At the same time, in actual fact, we have no negative emotions which exist without imagination and identification. Of course it cannot be denied that besides the many and varied kinds of physical suffering which belong to the instinctive center, man has many kinds of mental suffering which belong to the emotional center. He has many sorrows, griefs, fears, apprehensions, and so on which cannot be avoided and are closely connected with man’s life as illness, pain, and death. But these mental sufferings are very different from negative emotions which are based on imagination and identification.
[…]
[…] we are in a very strange position in relation to our emotional center. It has no positive part, and no negative part. Most of its negative functions are invented; and there are many people who have never in their lives experienced any real emotions, so completely is their time occupied with imaginary emotions.

So we cannot say that our emotional center is divided into two parts, positive and negative. We can only say that we have pleasant emotions and unpleasant emotions, and that all of them which are not negative at a given moment can turn into negative emotions under the slightest provocation or even without any provocation.

This is the true picture of our emotional life, and if we look sincerely at ourselves we must realize that so long as we cultivate and admire in ourselves all these poisonous emotions we cannot expect to be able to develop unity, consciousness, or will. […]
[…]
Now we must return to the study of centers […]

Besides the division into two parts, positive and negative, each of the [lower] centers is divided into three parts. These parts correspond to the definition of the centers themselves. The first part is “mechanical,” including moving and instinctive principles, or one of them predominating, the second is “emotional,” and the third is “intellectual.” […]

Each of these six parts is in turn subdivided into three parts: mechanical, emotional, and intellectual. […]
[…]
Let us take the emotional center. I will not speak at present about negative emotions. We will take only the division of the center into three parts: mechanical, emotional, and intellectual.

The mechanical part consists of the cheapest kind of ready-made humor and a rough sense of the comical, love of excitement, love of spectacular shows, love of pageantry, sentimentally, love of being in a crowd and part of a crowd; attraction to crowd emotions of all kinds and complete disappearance in lower half-animal emotions: cruelty, selfishness, cowardice, envy, jealousy, and so on.

The emotional part may be very different in different people. It may include in itself a sense of humor or a sense of the comical as well as religious emotion, aesthetic emotion, moral emotion, and, in this case, it may lead to the awakening of conscience. But with identification it may be something quite different, it may be very ironical, sarcastic, derisive, cruel, obstinate, wicked, and jealous – only in a less primitive way than the mechanical part.

The intellectual part of the emotional center (with the help of the intellectual parts of the moving and instinctive centers) includes in itself the power of artistic creation. In those cases where the intellectual parts of the moving and instinctive centers which are necessary for the manifestation of the creative faculty are not sufficiently educated or do not correspond to it in their development, it may manifest itself in dreams. This explains the beautiful and artistic dreams of otherwise quite unartistic people.

The intellectual part of the emotional center is also the chief seat of the magnetic center. I mean that if the magnetic center exists only in the intellectual center or in the emotional part of the emotional center, it cannot be strong enough to be effective and is always liable to make mistakes or fail. But the intellectual part of the emotional center, when it is fully developed and works with its full power, is a way to higher centers.

Diagram 2. Emotional Center.

[This shows a circle, the Positive part is a semi-circle, upper to the Negative part. In the Positive part, the Moving part of the Moving part are the Mechanical expression of the emotions; in the Emotional part of the Moving part are All emotions relating to one’s own likes and dislikes, Personal emotions; in the Intellectual part of the Moving part are the Results of small desires, little daily “wills”; in the Emotional part of the Positive part of the Emotional centre are Religious emotions, aesthetic emotions, moral emotions, may lead to Conscience; and in the Intellectual part of the Positive part are Artistic creation (Chief seat of Magnetic Center).]

[…] In the outer division of the negative part of the emotional center are the small negative “I’s” [irritation, impatience, disappointment, hurt, small worries, boredom, small envies, indignation, dissatisfaction, embarrassment] that can come at any time of the day, We can work on these at the time. Here are small irritations which can be worked on each day.

In the middle division of the negative part of the centrer are self-emotions. These are emotions which have become habitual, like self-pity, resentment, regret, melancholy, [and apathy, suspicion, sulkiness, rage, habitual worry, dislike, guilt] nostalgia, which is a kind of self-pity. These negative emotions have been with us for such a long time that you can’t work on them directly or at the time. They have to be worked on indirectly – through the mind – by metanoia. For example, with regret, you have to see that it is a negative emotion, and cancel it. So also with self-pity. It takes time. It can be done by thinking differently about it. […] Self-pity is due to a feeling of being owed. […] you will see that you have what is needed or what you have attracted. […] The deeper negative emotions, in the inner part of the center, are a different matter. People should know their own deeper negative emotions. Someone may have resentment, envy, or jealousy [or hatred, malice, fear, depression, sense of meaninglessness, despair, violence]. You should try to name it.

Getting back to man 3, chimeric being.

[…] In such a being (Chimera), the intellectual centre is generally well developed. Although this phenomenon is positive in itself, yet the result is that the intellectual centre weighs heavily on the remainder of the Personality. This imbalance is exaggerated still further by the fact, […], that the positive part of the emotional centre – the most precious organ in the whole organism of man’s psyche – is semi-paralyzed. From then on the negative part, left to itself, is deprived of all possibility of fulfilling its useful or constructive role of supporting the other in its work. It only comes into movement to allow man to express his negative emotions, so he does so over and over again in spite of their destructive effects.

Let us note once again that this state of man’s emotional centre is analogous to that of wild animals, in which the positive part of this centre generally remains unawakened. In cultured man it falls into lethargy because it is neglected. The difference is that an animal cannot awaken it except by ceasing to be an animal, where a man can do this at any time by conscious efforts made in appropriate exercise.
[…] in the majority of cultured men of our times the positive part of the emotional centre is practically paralyzed after the highly intensive development of an intellectual culture: feelings easily give away to calculation.

As for the motor centre […] works at full capacity. Responsible for the natural instinctive and motor functions that ensure that life of the organism and the movements of the body, it has always been the object of special training: military, sporting, artistic, etc. But in addition, because of the state of lethargy of the positive part of the emotional centre in contemporary man, for good or ill the motor centre also replaces it in its functions. The motor centre replaces the positive tenderness of affection, which the dormant emotional centre is incapable of providing, by the passionate tenderness of sensations dominated by a spirit of possession. In this domain too, the life of man’s psyche is then lowered to the level of that of an animal.

In the case we examined above, however, because the positive part of the emotional centre is practically paralyzed, the negative part cannot exercise its positive role. The only thing left to it is to make the centre vibrate with negative activity in the form of negative emotions. But the negative emotions of the composite nature take coarse forms, ruled by sensations and passions that belong to the motor centre. This allows us to constate yet again that in their unbalanced or chimeric aspect of the human Personality the emotional centre must be considered as an almost negligible quantity. […]

When the emotional centre is deprived of its normal functions, the number of links between centres is reduced from twelve to four. The eight chords which correspond to the finest and most suitable components of human morality are eliminated. This is due to the changes that occur in the structure of both the intellectual and motor centres; changes that lead to the impoverishment of both as the emotional sectors of these two centres practically disappear, due to the disappearance of their source since the emotional centre is in a state of lethargy. Because of this, the intellectual as well as the motor centre is left with only four active sectors instead of six.

Psychologically, this means that, having reached this state of disequilibrium in his Personality, man is from then on governed only by the intellectual and instinctive-motor considerations. This human type – the chimeric – is often found among the cultured classes of our time. It can produce people of great intellectual ability, but since intelligence is agnostic by nature and they are not oriented by the compass of the emotional centre, such people become amoral. For them, everything is permissible except what is forbidden: or rather, what is not punishable.

Wrong working of the centres.

”[…] each center has its own memory, its own associations, its own thinking. As a matter of fact each center consists of three parts: the thinking, the emotional, and the moving. […] In each center we know only one part. […]

“At the same time as we watch the work of the centers we shall observe, side by side with their right working, their wrong working, that is, the working of one center for another: the attempts of the thinking center to feel or to pretend that it feels, the attempts of the emotional center to think, the attempts of the moving center to think and feel. As has been said already, one center working for another is useful in certain cases, for it preserves the continuity of mental activity. But in becoming habitual it becomes at the same time harmful, since it begins to interfere with right working by enabling each center to shirk its own direct duties and to do, not what it ought to be doing, but what it likes best at the moment. In a normal healthy man each center does its own work, that is, the work for which it was specially destined and which it can best perform. These are situations in life which the thinking center alone can deal with and can find a way out of it. If at this moment the emotional center begins to work instead, it will make a muddle of everything and the result of its interference will be most unsatisfactory. In an unbalanced kind of man the substitution of one center for another goes on almost continually and this precisely what ‘being unbalanced’ or ‘neurotic’ means. Each center strives to do the work of another center for which it is not fitted. The emotional center working for the thinking center brings unnecessary nervousness, feverishness, and hurry into situations where, on the contrary, calm judgment and deliberation are essential. The thinking center working for the emotional center brings deliberation into situations which require quick decisions and makes a man incapable of distinguishing the peculiarities and the fine points of the position. Thought is to slow. It works out a certain plan of action and continues to follow it even though the circumstances have changed and quite a different course of action is necessary. Besides, in some cases the interference of the thinking center gives rise to entirely wrong reactions, because the thinking center is simply incapable of understanding the shades and distinctions of many events. Events that are quite different for the moving center and for the emotional center appear to be alike to it. Its decisions are much too general and do not correspond to the decisions which the emotional center would have made. This becomes perfectly clear if we imagine the interference of thought, that is, of the theoretical mind, in the domain of feeling, or of sensation, or of movement; in all three cases the interference of the mind leads to wholly undesirable results. The mind cannot understand shades of feeling. We shall see this clearly if we imagine a man reasoning about the emotions of another. He is not feeling anything himself so the feelings of another do not exist for him. […] In exactly the same way the mind cannot appreciate sensations. For it they are dead. […]

“’Imagination, is one of their principal sources of the wrong work of centers. Each center has its own form of imagination and daydreaming, but as a rule both the moving and emotional centers make use of the thinking center which very readily places itself at their disposal for this purpose, because daydreaming corresponds to its own inclinations. Daydreaming is absolutely the opposite of ‘useful’ mental activity. ‘Useful’ in this case means activity directed towards a definite aim and undertaken for the sake of obtaining a definite result. Daydreaming does not pursue any aim, dos not strive after any result. The motive for daydreaming lies in the emotional or in the moving center. The inclination to daydream is due partly to the laziness of the thinking center, that is, its attempts to avoid the efforts connected with work directed towards a definite aim and going in a definite direction, and partly to the tendency of the emotional and the moving centers to repeat to themselves, to keep alive or to recreate experiences, both pleasant and unpleasant, that have been previously lived through or ‘imagined.’ Daydreaming of disagreeable, morbid things is very characteristic of the unbalanced state of the human machine. […]
[…]
“In the sphere of the emotions it is very useful to try to struggle with the habit of giving immediate expression to all one’s unpleasant emotions. Most people find it very difficult to refrain from expressing their feelings about bad weather. It is still more difficult for people not to express unpleasant emotions when they feel that something or someone is violating what they may conceive to be order or justice.

“Besides being a very good method for self-observation, the struggle against expressing unpleasant emotions has at the same time another significance. It is one of the few directions in which a man can change himself or his habits without creating other undesirable habits. Therefore self-observation and self-study must, from the first, be accompanied by the struggle against the expression of unpleasant emotions.
[…]
The second thing was the demand “not to express unpleasant emotions.” I at once felt something big behind this. And the future showed that I was right, for the study of emotions and the work on emotions became the basis of the unpleasant development of the whole system. […]

“The emotional center can work with ‘hydrogen’ 12. In reality, however, it seldom works with this fine ‘hydrogen.’ And in the minority of cases its work differs little in intensity and speed from the work of the moving center or instinctive center.
[…]
“If the emotional center were to work with hydrogen 12, its work would be connected with the work of the higher emotional center. In those cases where the work of the emotional center reaches the intensity and speed of existence which is given by hydrogen 12, a temporary connection with the higher emotional center takes place and man experiences new emotions, new impressions hitherto entirely unknown to him, for the description of which he has neither words nor expressions. But in ordinary conditions the difference between the speed of our usual emotions and the speed of the higher emotional center is so great that no connection can take place and we fail to hear within us the voices which are speaking and calling us from the higher emotional center.
[…]
“Moreover, as has been already said, lower centers work in a wrong way, for very often, instead of their proper functions, one of another of them takes upon itself the work of the other centers. This considerably reduces the speed of the general work of the machine and makes acceleration of the centers very difficult. Thus in order to regulate and accelerate the work of the lower centers, the primary object must consist of freeing each center from work foreign and unnatural to it, and in bringing it back to its own work which it can do better than any other center.

“A great deal of energy is also spent on work which is completely unnecessary and harmful in every respect, such as on the activity of unpleasant emotions, on the expression of unpleasant sensations, on worry, on restlessness, on haste, and on a whole series of automatic actions which are completely useless. […] First of all there is the constantly moving flow of thoughts in the mind, which we can neither stop, nor control, and which takes up an enormous amount of energy. Secondly there is the quite unnecessary constant tension of the muscles of our organism. The muscles are tense even when we are doing nothing as soon as we start to do even a small and insignificant piece of work, a whole system of muscles necessary for the hardest and most strenuous work is immediately set in motion. […] But the chief point is that we spend muscular energy and continually and at all times, even when we are doing nothing. When we walk the muscles of the shoulders and arms are tensed unnecessarily; when we sit the muscles of our legs, neck, back, and stomach are tensed in an unnecessary way. We even sleep with the muscles of our arms, of our legs, of our face, of the whole of our body tensed, and we do not realize that we spend much more energy on this continual readiness for work we shall never do than on all the real, useful work we do during our life.

Resuming with man 3, chimeric being, with a dormant emotional centre.

[…]
[…] the case of the unbalanced we described in the [above]: that of the cultured man in our times, man 3, who has received extensive intellectual training (formation), and is successfully exercising an intellectual profession. […]

[…] highly developed intellectual centre is deformed in such a way that the hyperthrophied pure intellectual and intellectual-motor sectors, have almost entirely smothered the emotional sectors, […] this smothering often goes so far that […] These sectors are in a lethargic state like that of their source; if they are non-existent in practical terms they are at least always inoperative.

In the motor centre of the human type we are studying, the smothering of the emotional sectors has a different character. Although the functioning of those sectors is almost nonexistent – just as in the intellectual centre, and again due to the lethargic state of the emotional centre – because of the principle of Equilibrium there appears little by little a kind of tumour of the psyche. This tumour of hypersensitivity builds up over the positive part of the motor centre; […] it covers the higher semicircle of the motor centre.

This tumour, which is formed and kept working by the sexual energy and is connected to these sectors of the positive part of the motor centre, possesses its own tripartite structure in which the proportions (of the centre of the Personality as a whole) are involved: the emotional part of the tumour is much more developed than the intellectual and motor parts. […]

Let us remember that in the organism of this type of human psyche, this cap-tumour stands in for the emotional centre. It does this as best it can, substituting sensations impregnated with unsurped sexual energy for the true feelings: this carnal tenderness replaces noble tenderness of the heart. A man like this, whose hypertrophied intellectual centre outweighs his Personality as a whole, only takes into account his own reasons so that, to use the language of the tradition, he never stops crucifying Christ.

Sexual energy, SI-12, is not of the same nature as pure feelings of SOL-12, although it possesses the same fineness. The latter (energy) is missing in a man of this type. That is why he falls under the domination of the former. As long as this situation prevails, such a man proves incapable of opposing an effective resistance to this domination, and as the positive part of his emotional centre is lethargic, man has no reason to resist, and indeed does not resist the calls of sex that result from this condition of his centres. Conversely, in moments of relaxation, with the tacit agreement of the ‘I’ of the Personality, which desires a change of impressions, the ‘I’ of the body dictates its will to man instead of the real ‘I’.

The position of man 3 in ambience 3 does not give him the same advantages from the esoteric point of view. […] he does not have the same aptitude for balancing his Personality. He has to begin by developing an emotional centre which is partially or entirely dormant. So he first has to awaken it. This awakening is naturally more difficult for the man 3 in ambience 3. […]

Now, to move on to the means of the awakening of the lower emotional centre, and resuming from where Mouravieff left off.

If a man 3 feels the need for emotional development, for lack of anything better he will be forced to work empirically.

However, we can give him a valuable hint: human nature has an aptitude for being trained, and this can be profitably used to awaken the torpid emotional centre. With subtle and highly refined reasoning, the man 3 must in every circumstance imagine the reaction of the man 2 who is obedient to the call of his emotional centre. And he must by conscious effort react in the same way when not driven by emotion. It is a game. He will make mistakes and stumble many times, especially at the beginning. But if he takes the game seriously and makes it a permanent methodical exercise for all occasions, he will succeed in liberating his emotional centre from its state of stupor. He will then notice its spontaneous reactions and this first success will encourage him to continue his work. He must tirelessly persevere in this exercise of awakening until the emotional centre is completely aroused and quite ready for development.

The man 3 can find that this condition is an advantage. Except for negative emotions, his emotional centre is not greatly sullied, as it is so often asleep. If afterwards during the course of these awakening exercises he takes care that this centre does not become stained by all sorts of considerations and, above all, is not used for false aims, the man can become like a little child whose emotional centre is awake although underdeveloped and is neither deformed nor tarnished.
[…]
We have said that every negative emotion is composite. Pure negative emotion does not exist. But this mixture can only be produced and endure if it is stirred up by some passion. It is like water which dissolves certain salts only when brought to a high temperature. The negative emotion is born of a violent fit of passion, when one can be overcome by hate, jealousy, anger etc. by reversal of the mechanism of the psyche we described n the case of the harmonious love game, the negative emotion usurps the energy S)-12 of the sexual centre, that is the energy of carnal love, in order to manifest itself. The more violent the negative emotion expressed or suffered, the greater the quantity of energy SI-12 utilized. As in the negative case, this energy spreads over the whole of the motor centre and in the same way, penetrates the motor sectors of the intellectual and emotional centres by impregnating them. As long as the vibration from the motor centre, or from man’s animal instinct, continues, the motor sectors of the two other centres vibrate negatively: a state of profound confluence is the result. Here we are dealing with an essential point: the mechanization of the negative emotions can only function in this state of deep confluence. Driven by a shock or passion, man loses his inner peace and falls immediately into the state of confluence that forms the birth and development of negative emotions.

Generally, after a certain time, the negative emotion progressively loses its energy and is finally extinguished without conscious effort. We must add that once he has fallen into a state of confluence, man can get rid of the negative emotion only by exhausting the energies that it has brought to the surface. And the commotion that results does not disappear immediately. Negative emotions disturb the whole organism of the psyche, upset the Personality, and cause considerable loss of the finest and most precious energies which will be dragged into the movement. Man then needs time to rebuild reserves of fine energies.

A diametrically opposite effect is produced if at the moment when negative emotions arise in him, the subject remains calm and does not mechanically fall into a state of confluence.

Let us study the case of negative emotion that arise in us. Although irritation may build up over weeks, months or sometimes years, its explosion is always instantaneous. In other words, the negative emotion erupts and takes dynamic form in a very short time; in one or two seconds it rises in someone and overflows, putting them in a state of profound mechanical confluence. Finally it will be exteriorized in words or action.

Here we are brought back to the Doctrine of the Present. If, by persistent introspection, the subject manages to observe the rise of the negative emotion in himself immediately after its birth, that is, while the limits of the slot in his individual Present have not been crossed in the passing of time, it is possible for him to disassociate the components of this emotion. Introspective observation brightens our inner being just like a street lamp, and the negative emotions can only be formed and begin to act in inner darkness which characterizes the state of confluence. The light projected by constatation within the limits of the Present disassociates the negative emotions, and the passions which give rise to them then fall back into latent state.

But constatation has another effect that is of primary importance: the immediate dissociation of the components which constitute the negative emotion liberates the energy SI-12 which the passions had drawn into the motor centre; a result of constatation is that this is automatically concentrated in the emotional centre which it then sets in motion. We know that normal the intensive work of this centre is carried out with the aid of the fine energy of the 12th degree. A victory over negative emotion brings an inflow of joy into the lower emotional centre. This joy is an expression of the abundance of the energy SI-12 released by constatation. This latter makes the lower emotional centre vibrate at the rapid rhythm that is normal to it, and this enables the establishment of instantaneous contact with the higher emotional centre and triggers the release of a current of energy SOL-12 from the latter. This indicated that, correctly practiced through introspection and effective within the limits of the individual Present, constatation enables man to win a total victory. The inflow of higher joy that is the current of energy SOL-12 liberates can then transmute the energy of SI-12 freed from the mixture with SOL-12 by induction. The duration of contact between the lower and higher emotional centres established by this can be prolonged.

It is obvious that this possibility only exists for the disciple who, after having crossed the first Threshold, perseveres in climbing the Staircase, when he possesses a magnetic centre in formation. Each victory over a negative emotion accelerates the formation of this centre. […]

[…] emphasizes the two following parts:
- without the appearance of the negative emotion, the energy SI-12 is not drawn in by the motor centre. It remains in the sexual centre to be used for the latter’s needs;
- without a victory over this very same emotion, man cannot feel the joy that is provided by a current of energy SOL-12 coming from the higher emotional centre; and without this current, the energy SI-12 cannot be transmuted into Sol-12 as it is first drawn in by the appearance of the negative emotion, then liberated by introspective constatation within the limits of the individual Present. The more violent the negative emotion, the greater the quality of energy SI-12 drawn in, which can be transmuted into SOL-12 in case of victory.
[…]
We have just studied the negative emotions which are born in us. But as he advances up the Staircase, the neophyte will find the times when he feels a negative emotion arising in him becomes more and more rare. The energy SI-12 then remains asleep in the sexual centre, since the absence of passions no longer calls it towards the lower centres where it may be used.

It is at this point of evolution that the neophyte will find the obvious utility of those who are hostile to him. As long as he is on the Staircase it is in insults, hate, jealousy, treachery, and the contempt of other men that the faithful finds the elements necessary for him to awaken his emotional centre. By dominating the mechanical reactions that the reproaches and attacks of others may produce in him, someone who struggles between the two Thresholds separates and rejects the elements which are parasites on the fine energy mobilized by the negative emotions. We repeat: it is this energy which, having become available, allows the establishment of a contact with the higher emotional centre and accelerates the growth and development of the magnetic centre. The faithful finds in this struggle the source of energy that is indispensible to him in order to progress.

He will then understand that he can and must love his enemies and bless those who curse him.

Then there is this:

And the very thing that I want people to realize is that we ARE programmed, and one of the biggest controls on our lives and minds and our very fate is our own emotions! As the Cassiopaeans have remarked:

...Vibrational frequency level involves nature of being and emotion, not intelligence.

And then at a later session:

Q: (L) So, you are saying that the path to illumination is knowledge and not love?
A: That is correct.
Q: (L) Is it also correct that emotion can be used to mislead, that is emotions that are twisted and generated strictly from the flesh or false programming?
A: Emotion that limits is an impediment to progress. Emotion is also necessary to make progress in 3rd density. It is natural. When you begin to separate limiting emotions based on assumptions from emotions that open one to unlimited possibilities, that means you are preparing for the next density.
Q: (L) What about Love?
A: What about it?
Q: (L) There are many teachings that are promulgated that Love is the key, the answer. They say that illumination and knowledge and what-not can all be achieved through love.
A: The problem is not the term "love," the problem is the interpretation of the term. Those on third density have a tendency to confuse the issue horribly. After all, they confuse many things as love. When the actual definition of love as you know it is not correct either. It is not necessarily a feeling that one has that can also be interpreted as an emotion, but rather, as we have told you before, the essence of light which is knowledge is love, and this has been corrupted when it is said that love leads to illumination. Love is Light is Knowledge. Love makes no sense when common definitions are used as they are in your environment. To love you must know. And to know is to have light. And to have light is to love. And to have knowledge is to love.

Notice particularly the remark: Emotion that limits is an impediment to progress. Emotion is also necessary to make progress in 3rd density. It is natural. When you begin to separate limiting emotions based on assumptions from emotions that open one to unlimited possibilities, that means you are preparing for the next density.

Now, I have underlined the

 

[Ollie]

To complete the last paragraph of the above post that got truncated, it is repeated in full.

Now, I have underlined the remark about the natural necessity of emotion for progress so that those who will tend not to see it won't be able to miss it. Nobody is saying that emotions are bad or that we should not have them. They are NATURAL and NECESSARY. (Just to repeat it again.)

 

[Psalehesost]

I am another person in emotional sleep. As a child, I'm not quite sure whether I was man 2 or man 3, but throughout my adolescence, it is clear that I gradually became much like Mouravieff described above.

Mouravieff is the one of the main Fourth Way-related sources (Gurdjieff, Ouspensky, Mouravieff, Castaneda - in terms of being inspired by the first two) of whose recommended books I've yet to read any, and the above quotes were quite useful, that I've quoted below being especially relevant:

[...] The motor centre replaces the positive tenderness of affection, which the dormant emotional centre is incapable of providing, by the passionate tenderness of sensations dominated by a spirit of possession. In this domain too, the life of man’s psyche is then lowered to the level of that of an animal.

[...]

In the motor centre of the human type we are studying, the smothering of the emotional sectors has a different character. Although the functioning of those sectors is almost nonexistent – just as in the intellectual centre, and again due to the lethargic state of the emotional centre – because of the principle of Equilibrium there appears little by little a kind of tumour of the psyche. This tumour of hypersensitivity builds up over the positive part of the motor centre; […] it covers the higher semicircle of the motor centre.

This tumour, which is formed and kept working by the sexual energy and is connected to these sectors of the positive part of the motor centre, possesses its own tripartite structure in which the proportions (of the centre of the Personality as a whole) are involved: the emotional part of the tumour is much more developed than the intellectual and motor parts. […]

Let us remember that in the organism of this type of human psyche, this cap-tumour stands in for the emotional centre. It does this as best it can, substituting sensations impregnated with unsurped sexual energy for the true feelings: this carnal tenderness replaces noble tenderness of the heart. A man like this, whose hypertrophied intellectual centre outweighs his Personality as a whole, only takes into account his own reasons so that, to use the language of the tradition, he never stops crucifying Christ.

I'm quite sure the development didn't go all the way, to what Mouravieff describes as resulting in someone completely amoral. But I became increasingly irritable and oversensitive [edit: to annoyances] and this gradually developed the particular "flavor" described by Mouravieff, and my emotions also became increasingly coarse and base - blocking understanding and appreciation for purer feelings - and weaker, all along.

Since I fell into emotional inertness, the only thing I regularly experienced was tiny puffs of irritation and irritated behavior and thinking, along with worry, doubt, indecision, lots of tension and general neuroticism (including a former issue I have previously written about which is less relevant in this context).

There seems to me to be a particular problem stemming from emotional sleep - limited "mid-level perspective". I wrote of this in what didn't become a complete post, and will retype the relevant bit below:

One thing I have known for quite some time is that I am quite lacking in mid-level perspective. In life and in other things, I have the theoretical perspective of the really "big picture" (in life: abstract idea of future, direction, possibilities), as well as the concrete perspective regarding small, minute details (in life: when and how to go about doing a specific task immediately in front of me), but I am quite deficient in the "middle", which in life amounts to how to invest time and effort with a look to the nearer future (including what to do now and what to do later).

I simply do not have a good grasp on such issues. So things simply end up however they end up - which most of the time turns out OK in the end, but is far from optimal.

I can't be sure, but one thought is that this might be connected to my emotional sleep. Thinking about this a little bit further, it seems that the low-level perspective has its foundation in intuition and instinct - with some input from the thinking and emotional levels to augment and correct it - and that the higher-level perspective has its foundations in abstract thought, along with emotional functions to to give depth of understanding, and instinct and intuition to link it to the concrete. So it would make sense for the mid-level perspective to have its foundation in-between these levels, ie. in the emotional level, based on a "feel" for what the perspective concerns (in life: for the overall situation in question), with detail and concrete suggestion added by intuition and instinct and final evaluation being done by thought.

That is, unless the above is nonsense. [..]

The reason [edit: apart from wanting general input/discussion as/if applicable to the above] I write this post now is that I've had some initial, limited success in breaking through this emotional sleep, stemming from the reading of the first parts of "The Narcissistic Family", which for me became the last book of the "big four" psychology books recommended here, now finally acquired (became available recently where I get most of my books). The authors generalize expressions of narcissism and their family dynamics into the comprehensive concept in the title. Thinking of the psychological dynamics described (as far as I have read - remains to be seen if and if so how it all applies to the family I grew up in) I have been emotionally realizing how for me (further generalizing the concept for a bit) the school environments through my childhood and adolescence have been "narcissistic systems" having to some extent similar influence on me. I have also been touched a bit more deeply by some things written of, and came to actually feel a bit of anger, which led to a process of realizing to a small degree emotionally the situation in the world with psychopaths and ways in which we are all damaged.

The point is - when I felt a bit of anger over my past, and the anger mildly burned in my chest and down through to my back - some dissociative mental activity instantly dissappeared, not to return! One layer of the onion of emotional blocking removed, I think. So I very much recommend this reading and emotional realization leading to a feeling some of the anger of the past to others as well.

EDIT: (retype after edit lost, changing computer after laptop fan failure) This also made for some cleansing, I should add! Also, leading up to this point is one and a half years of "work" gradually (among other things) reversing this negative development mentioned in first half of post to a large extent - not sure if I could've been doing what I'm now at had I still had so poisoned and ponerized a perspective.