The more of these that I listen to, the more that I’m becoming convinced that you’ve magically devised all of these topics to be especially relevant to people like me, with my life history. It’s very gratifying.
It gave me a chance to reflect on two aspects of your talk: the unnecessary self-wounding with “two arrows,” and, how we consciously and subconsciously (through the body and the felt experience) brace for some immediate and (what we •insist• will be) disturbing development.
The trigger phrase, “We need to talk…” is just that, for me: a foreboding sign that some imminent awfulness is about to be unleashed. This trigger was likely heavily reinforced when my spouse uttered that sentence, with a look on their face so grave, so alien, that I was immediately fearing the worst. That phrase had been the opening salvo in previous relationship endings, such that by the time it hit my marriage, it was like an air-raid siren had been initiated; still, ducking for cover wouldn’t protect us from the blast.
And, as I’d predicted, but hadn’t anticipated in the days and weeks prior, the worst *did* indeed come, moments later, as the terrible demand for divorce tumbled out of their mouth. It’s a scene that was replayed endlessly, hundreds of times, in my wounded mind, in the sorry aftermath of the split.
Now, when I hear those four words in sequence, my stomach drops, my pulse quickens, and my breathing becomes shallow, while the tendons in my neck automatically tighten. Rhetorically speaking, I wonder: isn’t that only natural, and the only outcome to be expected, after all of these years of pattern-formation around the delivery and reception of really bad news?
That’s some pretty profound programming/conditioning, and it strikes me as being almost …Indelible.
Pavlovian.
Unable to be assuaged, or even moderated.
Just how to lessen that automatic somatic terror-response remains mostly mysterious to me—even after digesting your lesson and its wonderful affirmations. Perhaps a revisit or two is in order.
Hoping that you’re quite well, good doctor... ☮️
