Persej said:(parallel) How can I process or work with the emotions that I feel are underneath, but which sort of get stored under a certain layer in daily life, and so never get processed?
(L) Never get expressed or processed? Because they're not being expressed, or they have never been expressed in any way? How can you deal with the emotions that block you, or something like that?
A: Keep in mind that you have dealt with things the same way for so long that there are very deep tracks in the brain. At the same time, there are circuits that have been little or never used. This must change!!! Super efforts are needed or you will deteriorate rapidly!
Q: (parallel) Can I ask about these tracks, and how to work with them? Jump out of them? What ways I can...
(Perceval) When they say, "very deep tracks", does that mean anything to you?
(parallel) I just think of habits.
(Perceval) Like what?
(parallel) Maybe disregarding when I get like a signal when I sit alone. I think, "Okay, you should really sit down and have a think about this," and it disappears. It's just dissociation.
(Perceval) Losing a thought or idea...
(L) That's one thing that Martha Stout talks about. When you dissociate, it becomes habitual. That may be what they're talking about...
A: Yes.
Q: (L) What they're talking about is the habitual dissociation. Paying close and careful attention to what's outside, and responding to it, is what you've almost never used.
A: You live your life from inside a bubble.
Q: (Pierre) A bubble that is between you and interacting with reality.
A: Entropy awaits if you do not take advantage of the present opportunities.
(L) You have all this emotion going on...
(Ark) Do you talk to yourself in your mind?
(parallel) It takes over, yes.
(Ark) Does it happen often? When you start talking, I mean...
(parallel) No, it's not conversations. I bring up a point, and then that I guess I need to think about it. It's not very deep especially not these days when I'm working physically a lot.
(L) Is there anything else that you can give parallel right now, or should we come back to this topic at another time?
A: Let him think, work, network, and see later.
I'll wait for some more info, but that sounds very much like my problem. :/
I have similar issues as well. The part about deep tracks reminds me very much of a book I recently read called Primal Leadership. The book itself was sort of a sequel to Emotional Intelligence, but focuses on leadership skills and what is required to become successful at it and develop a strong team. So it's not necessarily written for dealing with dissociation but I think a lot of the principles laid out in it can be transferred over. The book often talks about ingrained habits and patterns of behaviour that are mainly emotional in nature that often sabotage peoples ability to grow and learn from their mistakes. Here are a few excerpts.
Emotional intelligence, as we saw in chapters 2 and 3, involves circuitry that runs between the brain's executive centers in the prefrontal lobes and the brain's limbic system, which governs feelings, impulses, and drives. Skills based in the limbic areas, research shows, are best learned through motivation, extended practice and feedback. Compare that kind of learning with what goes on in the neocortex, which governs analytical and technical ability. The neocortex grasps concepts quickly, placing them within an expanding network of associations and comprehension. This part of the brain, for instance, can figure out from reading a book how to use a computer program, or the basics of making a sales call. When learning technical or analytical skills, the neocortex operates with magnificent efficiency.
The problem is that most training programs for enhancing emotional intelligence abilities, such as leadership, target the neocortex rather than the limbic brain. Thus, learning is limited and sometimes can even have a negative impact. Under a microscope, the limbic areas – the emotional brain – have a more primitive organization of brain cells than do those in the neocortex, the thinking brain. The design of the neocortex makes it a highly efficient learning machine, expanding our understanding by linking new ideas or facts to an extensive cognitive network. This associative mode or learning takes place with extraordinary rapidity: the thinking brain can comprehend something after a single hearing or reading.
The limbic brain, on the other hand, is a much slower learner – particularly when the challenge is to relearn deeply ingrained habits. This difference matters immensely when trying to improve leadership skills: at their most basic level, those skills come down to habits learned early in life. If those habits are no longer sufficient, or hold a person back, learning takes longer. Reeducating the emotional brain for leadership learning, therefore, requires a different model from what works for the thinking brain: It needs lots of practice and repetition. (And Super Efforts!)
If the right model is used, training can actually alter the brain centers that regulate negative and positive emotions – the links between the amygdala and the prefrontal lobes. For example, researchers at the University of Wisconsin taught “mindfulness” to R & D scientists at a biotech firm who were complaining about the stressful pace of their jobs. Mindfulness is a skill that helps people keenly focus on the present moment and drop distracting thoughts (such as worries) rather than getting lost in them, thus producing a calming effect. After just eight weeks, the R & D people reported noticeably less stress, and they felt more creative and enthusiastic about their work. But most remarkably, their brains had shifted toward less activity in the right prefrontal areas (which generate distressing emotions) and move in the left – the brains center for upbeat, optimistic feelings.
These finding – and many more like them – belie the popular belief that starting early in adulthood, neural connections inevitably atrophy and cannot be replaced (and the corollary belief that as adults, it's too late to change our fundamental personal skills.) Neurological research has shown quite the opposite. Human brains can create new neural tissue as well as new neural connections and pathways throughout adulthood.
.... To begin – or sustain – real development in emotional intelligence, you must first engage that power of your ideal self. (Or putting this another way, as Gurdjieff said: A constant inner-striving for self-perfection) There's a simple reason: Changing habits is hard work. One only need think back to one's successes or failures with New Year's resolutions to find ample evidence of this. Whenever people try to change habits of how they think and act, they must reverse decades of learning that resides in heavily traveled, highly reinforced neural circuitry, built up over years of repeating that habit. That's why making lasting changes requires a strong commitment to a future vision of oneself – especially during stressful times or amid growing responsibilities.
In fact, the very act of contemplating change can fill people with worries about perceived obstacles. Sometimes after people have experienced that initial feeling of excitement about their ideal futures, they immediately lose it again, frustrated because they aren't already living that dream today. That's when remembering the brain's role in feelings can help. As discussed in chapter 2, it's the activation of the left prefrontal cortex that gives us a motivating hope, by letting us imagine how great we'll feel the day we reach the goal of our ideal. That's what spurs us on, despite obstacles.
The Mindful Prefrontal Cortex
As we saw with Juan Trebino, crafting an agenda of specific goals converts life into a learning lab. Spending time with his daughter's soccer team, at a crisis center, and with colleagues from work all became opportunities for Trebino to work on his emotional intelligence. The goals helped him to monitor himself to see how well he was doing; they reminded him to pay attention.
Since the habits we was trying to overcome had become automatic – routines that had taken hold over time, without his realizing it – bringing them into awareness was a crucial step toward changing them. As he paid more attention, the situations that arose – whether listening to a colleague, coaching soccer, or taking on the phone to someone who was distaught – all became cues that stimulated him to break old habits and try new responses instead.
This cueing for habit change is neural as well as perceptual. Researchers at the University of Pittsburgh and Carnegie Milton University have shown that as people mentally prepare for a task, they activate the prefrontal cortex – that part of the brain that performs executive functions and moves them into action. Without preparation, the prefrontal cortex does not activate in advance. Thus, the greater the prior activation, the better a person does at the task.
Such mental rehearsal becomes particularly important when we're trying to overcome old leadership habits and replace them with a better way of doing things. As one of the neuroscientists in this study found, the prefrontal cortex becomes particularly active when a person has to prepare to overcome a habitual response. The aroused prefrontal cortex marks the brain's focus on what's about to happen. Without that arousal, a person will act out old, undesirable routines... It takes commitment and constant reminders to stay focused on undoing these habits. (Shocks are necessary to achieve that desired level of arousal in order to initiate changes)
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In the self-directed learning process, we draw on others every step of the way – from articulating and refining our ideal self and comparing it with the reality, to the final assessment that affirms our progress. Our relationships offer us the very context in which we understand our progress and realize the usefulness of what we're learning.
