How To Alchemize Frustration (Arousal Control Technique)

I had a moment (few hours) of very ungrounded frustration due to a DMV-like experience. But then I remembered a somatic technique to transform the "wound-up" feeling into something more pleasurable. You can try it next time you're frustrated to calm your mind and relax your body.

Transcript

The Ruando Podcast is an exploration of the unconscious in the game of life.

Be sure to visit ruando.

Com to get a preview chapter of my upcoming book,

Infinite Play,

And free access to my content library.

Enjoy the show!

So,

I want to share something that happened to me,

I mean,

It's been going on through the day,

A bit of a moment of ungroundness,

I'll call out my little bitchness here,

But also something I did to overcome this feeling of frustration,

Which I think most of us experience from time to time,

And cause a quick turnaround.

Here's why I'm sharing this,

Is that the frustration,

Especially for creative people,

Or people who intend to be creative in the sense of not just artistic creation,

But like actively creating your own life,

This internal experience of frustration,

Of stuckness,

Of contraction,

We even talked a little bit about victimhood here,

It's something that can happen day to day,

Especially with the inconveniences of life that can cause a real material reduction in the value in your life,

Which can lead to dissatisfaction.

Anyway,

I use a lot of big words there,

Basically we're talking about frustration.

So I won't go into the details,

Because if I go detail by detail,

I'll probably make your butts clench,

All of you listening,

Watching.

But essentially,

Something having to do with my visa here in Thailand,

And something with my new landlord.

Basically,

I spent like two hours today trying to figure out how to fill out a form on a Thai website,

And Thai,

I don't speak Thai,

The translations weren't working correctly.

It's actually something that my new landlord should do,

But she's a really old lady who doesn't even have an email address,

So this is beyond her.

And then my visa's expiring,

Same as my girlfriend,

It's basically a bunch of pressure.

After spending two hours being super frustrated on the computer,

I realized I needed to go all the way to the other side of town to the immigration office and potentially spend most of my day at the immigration office for this inconvenient thing.

As I think most of us,

Immigration is kind of like the DMV,

But it can be worse,

And the thought of it,

Especially after spending two hours on the computer trying to fill out forms where my eyes are twitching,

And it's cutting into my work day,

I'm in the middle of this passion project,

And now I feel like I'm basically losing a day of work.

Basically my butthole was real clenched.

I was very,

Very frustrated,

And kind of going into a righteous victimhood of why should this be happening,

I'm doing the right thing.

It's like a blame cycle in my head of things and circumstances and situations,

And why isn't this easy?

Why isn't this easy,

Right?

It's kind of a childish viewpoint.

That's where I was a few hours ago.

As I was getting on my bike to go downtown to the immigration office,

I did have a moment where I recognized my body's all fucked up right now.

I'm literally clenching,

My stomach is kind of in knots,

And then my mind is spinning.

I have these frustrated,

Very negative thoughts,

This very contracted thought,

Which is the opposite of abundance in my definition,

This distrust of the future,

This belief that things are not okay.

But then also on the physical level,

Trying to get away from thoughts and be as concrete and material as possible.

On the physical level,

I recognized I was doing everything wrong or everything against what I believe is the right way to be as far as controlling arousal.

So in case this is your first time seeing a video or listening to an episode of mine,

You're like,

What the hell is this guy talking about?

This is about frustration.

He's talking about semen.

Now I'm going somewhere with this.

So the reason why I speak about,

I use the term arousal control,

As opposed to say semen retention,

Which other people use,

Which in practice,

The way it's taught is kind of the same thing.

The reason why I use the term arousal control,

So to me,

It's not just about a sexual thing.

I don't really care if a guy comes or not.

It's that learning this skill teaches you how to handle high level sensations in all other settings of life.

Frustration being one.

Emotional arousal is a type of arousal control.

Being able to control your emotions and either stay grounded or contract in situations.

So my example this morning,

I was basically getting really ungrounded.

I had all these uncontrolled feelings of frustration.

My body was contracting.

My mind was contracting,

Getting negative.

I was going to this kind of righteous victimhood of like,

Oh my God,

Here I am wasting this time.

There's certain points where I wanted to punch the wall and I yelled a couple of times because I was so frustrated with his website.

Especially if you're ever in an office environment or have to deal with the DMV.

These are natural reactive emotions,

But they don't have to be that way.

So I was getting on my bike,

I was about to go down there.

I was recognizing my body's all messed up and I was all wound up and I was thinking,

Okay,

I talk about arouse control all the time.

If I can ground lust,

If I can ground that kind of arousal,

Why can't I ground this kind of arousal?

In fact,

I should.

My ego was chirping a little bit like,

Hey,

You tell people how to stay grounded all the time.

Here's your opportunity to follow your own advice.

So I got on my bike and I started doing some simple physical grounding techniques,

Focusing on my hands and feet,

Making sure I'm breathing,

Making sure I'm not contracting.

And of course,

I didn't make the feelings go away,

But it had them spread out.

That's kind of a basic tip I give guys,

Usually when we're talking about sexual arousal,

But also any type of emotional arousal that can cause ungroundedness.

And I noticed a little bit before that,

As I decided that I was going to go to the immigration,

I keep saying DMV,

But the immigration office,

Similar experience,

I already was in this victim mindset of like,

Okay,

I'm doing this thing.

It's uncomfortable.

I have to do it.

Here I am doing this very inconvenient thing.

I deserve some relief after this.

When I get home,

I'm going to eat a bunch of cookies.

I'm going to play a bunch of video games.

I'm going to ejaculate.

And actually just as another divergent thing,

I hope this is not too TMI,

But I think it's relevant.

Probably if I look back at this now with hindsight,

Probably one of the reasons that I got so extra wound up,

This is not the first time I've had to deal with the DMV thing.

I got particularly wound up.

I think it's because,

My girlfriend doesn't mind me sharing,

But I have been practicing arousal control in the bedroom.

I'll be making love a lot.

I haven't come in a while.

I'm kind of full of energy,

Which is part of the reason why I do it,

To feel jazzed up.

But I mean,

I was pretty close.

I've been very close to my capacity for being able to handle that kind of sensation,

Which bleeds into everything else.

Every emotion is fueled by sensation.

I've probably been on kind of like a hair trigger in terms of emotional reactions with things,

Which in most situations,

Not a bad thing.

I think it makes me more of a delight to be around actually.

However,

I was definitely reacting with a magnitude of emotion to this inconvenience,

Maybe more than had I just come.

I hope that's not TMI,

But whatever.

I mean,

That's the truth and this is my perspective on it.

I was definitely wound up and I was already in my mind thinking,

Okay,

I deserve relief.

And I was thinking,

Yeah,

Sugar,

Video games coming.

I'm going to drop the sensation because here I am in this kind of righteous victimhood.

But as I started practicing these basic physical techniques,

These somatic techniques that I use for other situations,

I was in my bike and I think actually driving is one of the best times to practice this.

Where like you focus on your six extremities,

Actually.

Palms of your hands,

The soles of your feet,

Your genitals and your mouth.

Talk about this in my archetype class.

These are the six points through which you interact with the world.

It's a way of tapping into your animal self,

Your animal system,

If you will.

So anyway,

I was doing this while driving.

I think driving is a great point because you're physically moving in space and you're connected to a vehicle.

So I was noticing as I was basically expanding my container and calming my physical sensations,

I was also noticing how my thoughts were changing.

It's like maybe a 15 minute drive.

By the time I got to the immigration,

I realized one,

That was kind of like a bitch set of thoughts to be like,

Okay,

I'm going to come and eat sugar.

That was a relief.

I also noticed after that,

I did have a set of thoughts where it's like,

Oh,

Instead of seeking relief,

I'm going to burn off this frustration.

I'm going to burn it off by lifting weights.

And today's actually a rest day for me.

So I wasn't planning on lifting.

It was like,

I'm going to burn off the energy that I'm sending towards this frustration just so I don't feel frustrated anymore.

Which actually,

I mean,

It's certainly better than the relief seeking behavior.

But even this,

Like this kind of motivation,

And a lot of people do this,

Right?

Like it seems like a constructive thing and it's certainly more constructive than let's say stuffing your face with sugar to numb out.

But like tiring yourself out to numb out doesn't actually change the direction of your feeling,

Right?

You might have less fuel to fuel your frustration,

But your feelings are still pointed at frustration.

I was like,

Well,

I don't want to do that either.

So as I became a little more and more grounded,

I was recognizing that I can just feel the sensation and if I expand enough around it,

It doesn't actually feel bad anymore and it can just be.

And by,

By,

And so here's where maybe,

Maybe my,

Sorry,

My,

My,

My neighbor is making a lot of sound.

He might be competing with my sound actually.

Because they have to the DMV,

The immigration,

I was kind of prepared to sit there for five hours and I was like,

No matter what,

I'm going to just keep expanding around this feeling,

Right?

I'm going to keep doing this because I can't control whether it's going to be five hours or not.

But I do actually have full control over whether or not I am wound up for five hours and frustrated and thinking these relief thoughts or these angry thoughts or these contracted thoughts,

Or I'm feeling good in my body and sitting because I mean,

What do you do when you meditate?

You just sit and do nothing anyway.

I can do that at a DMV.

I can do that at immigration.

But then I showed up to immigration and perhaps because I was in such a good mood,

Everyone was so helpful with me,

Which is not always the case as you know,

With any,

You know,

Bureaucratic office.

People just pointed me to the right things.

The forums happened to have English translations on it and the whole thing took like 15 minutes.

And here's where I did have a bit of a mystical thought of like,

Yeah,

It did manifest a better situation.

I'm not saying that necessarily,

But certainly had I showed up to the immigration with either the contracted thoughts of I'm going to suffer through this and then give myself relief afterwards,

Or I'm going to suffer through this and then burn off the suffering by like punishing myself in the gym.

Both of those mindsets and both of those physical feelings would have led to a miserable experience at the immigration,

Even if everything else was the same,

Even if everyone is just as friendly and the whole process still only took 20 minutes,

It would have been a hell of a 20 minutes.

I would have been so wound up and by the time I left,

My butthole would have been like,

I mean,

I would have been super clamped,

Right?

As opposed to by the time I left,

I kind of felt pretty good.

And it was kind of nice to get out of the house because I was going to be inside all day writing anyway.

That was my original plan.

It was kind of a delight to interact with all the people that interacted with and everything moved smoothly.

So did I manifest anything?

I did change.

I did manifest a different reality for my afternoon.

And the thing that is important,

The thing that matters,

The reason why I care to share any of this with you is that it was a pretty quick turnaround of,

I mean,

I know this is a kind of a mystical word,

But alchemizing the experience,

Right?

I had an opportunity to either be super wound up and contracted and frustrated the whole day,

Or through using some pretty basic arousal control techniques,

Focusing on the body,

I was able to expand around it and the whole experience became more pleasurable.

And I certainly,

And I'm,

You know,

Obviously this thing happened to me today.

So like,

I'm not,

It's not like I live in a Zen state where I'm always doing this.

I actually got super wound up.

I look back at a few hours ago and I can see how immature my line of thought was.

I'm kind of back into a man,

More mature man mode now that I look back on the past of a few hours ago.

But,

You know,

This is stuff that can happen at any point.

And if you just look at this practice or like the series of events,

There's no reason why,

Not that I wish a worse thing to happen,

A worse convenience or anything,

But like the reaction to it is what actually affects your reality.

It's not the actual thing.

Everyone has a,

In a convenience.

It's the reason why I think my mindset earlier today is so mature.

It's like,

As if I'm,

As if there was some reason why I should not have to deal with inconveniences.

People are dealing with way more inconvenient things all the time.

And this is probably true for everything that you're going to experience.

All the frustrations you're going to experience today,

Or you've been experiencing this week or this month or going to experience in the next quarter or whatever,

Like people have experienced way worse things and there is a way to go through it in a pleasurable way.

So anyway,

I don't mean to keep repeating myself or keep rattling off cliches.

So I'll leave it at that.

Your emotional experience is a choice and it's something that you can be tweaked through the body.

And essentially this is a,

This is a way to alchemize your experience and make it more expansive and abundant and pleasurable as opposed to contracted and frustrated and tight budded because you don't want to go through life tight budded.

It doesn't matter how much money you have or the quality of everything you got.

If you're tight budded,

You're not a budded.

Anyway,

Hope you enjoy this.

My secret project that I mentioned is not really that secret.

It's on the history of masculinity.

It's something I'm very excited for.

It's actually,

I haven't been this excited about anything a long time.

I generally like my work.

I'm just super jazzed about this.

I haven't announced it anywhere yet.

It might not come out for a bit.

We're still in production,

But if you want to be updated on that,

I'm probably going to release it.

Not probably,

I am going to release it first to my list so you can join my list.

I also get a bunch of other freebies and cool things and you know,

You get first a notification on pretty much everything I put out.

Put in your email and one of the opt-in forms and I will be sure to share that with you.

Alright,

Goodbye.

Reviews

Stumbled on this podcast. The old, when the student is ready trope is truth. This was relevant and helpful