Coping with Raw Experience

There is a lot of suffering in life.
But the only suffering that can be avoided
is the suffering that results from trying to avoid suffering.

- R. D. Laing

Your future is bound to contain difficult and stressful events, and, generally, there is nothing you can do to protect yourself from the suffering that results from the things that happen. However, some suffering is caused by your emotional reactions to the things that happen. But how can you do anything other than react emotionally when bad things happen?

Strong emotional reactions distort state-dependent phenomena and drain the cognitive resources required for effective problem solving. The goal of this section is to learn how to keep your head during crisis rather than to continue to lose it to a pathogenic state change such as anger, anxiety, or demoralization.

Exercising will in an unpredictable and often cruel world is not for sissies. The ability to follow your path of greatest advantage rather than yield in the direction of least resistance comes at a price. You will have to do what it takes to develop the procedural skills and mental faculties to rise above the automatic reactions of the creature you inhabit. Animals, and children have no choice but to follow the path of resistance. Your challenge is to develop the skills and faculties that enable you to cope with situations that previously would have provoked self-sabotaging emotional reactions. 

The four paths described below have been developed over the centuries by some remarkable individuals who, like you, had to cope with the events that happened. If you are not currently in the midst of a crisis, take advantage of this opportunity to enhance the foundational skills and faculties that will enable you to cope with the crises you are bound to encounter. 

Sadly, the luxury of time and energy to invest in developing emotion-focused coping skills may not be available to you now. Even though there are many competitors for these dear resources during this critical chapter, your challenge demands that you dedicate some of them to strengthening the mental faculties and developing the coping skills required to act mindfully during the high-risk situations that populate your future. This is truly a heroic challenge!  

Compared with professional athletes who receive plenty of training and preparation for their performance and plenty of glory for their achievements, you will have to perform heroically with much less external support. The demands of your challenge are great, yet they appear to be trivial. Have respect for this challenge. The creature you inhabit is bound to react emotionally during crises, and this course may be the only emotion-focused training you will receive during your lifetime.

Heroic Paths

Four distinct but related approaches to preparing the puppy for encounters with crisis are outlined below. Subsequent pages of this section focus on particular paths. I recommend a two-stage process of exploring these paths: First use the Rational Processing System to appreciate the path at an intellectual level; second, allow and encourage the Experiential Processing System to accept the invitations to explore and manipulate the subjective phenomena.

  1. The first path involves understanding the distinction between process and outcome. Ironically, attachment to outcomes makes a good outcome less likely, because it distracts attention from good performance and increases emotionality.
    • The Serenity Prayer offers this guidance: Grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.Here is the wisdom:
      • You do control your behaviors and attitudes, but you need the motivation, courage, and skill to exercise this control.
      • You do not control most everything else, including the past, what other people think and do, and the outcomes of your efforts. Allowing your emotions to depend on things you do not control drains you of power.  For more on this topic please visit: Attachment.

  2. A second path involves exploring the distinction between subjective experience and objectively reality. Children believe that there is no difference between the two. To a Psychologist, subjective reality is a creation of our nervous system. One's experience is composed of temporary mental events that are influenced by many things including one's current emotional state: You experience a different subjective reality when you are furious than when you are glowing with love, even though objective reality is the same. The realization that your appraisals, motivations, emotional reactions, while seemingly valid at the moment are biased by your current trance is called : Meta-Cognitive Awareness. For more on this topic please visit:  Awareness.

  3. A third path involves awakening from the autonomous mind set of achieving goals and evaluating how you are doing. An alternative mind set involves simply being and accepting what is without trying to change it or evaluate it. Awakening involves an appreciation of the distinction between Doing Mode and Being Mode. When in Doing Mode you are trying to accomplish something, so you have to continually evaluate how things are going so you can make adjustments when necessary. When in Being Mode you are not trying to accomplish anything. There is no point to evaluating anything or making any adjustments; instead, you are noticing your experience and accepting whatever it is at the moment. There is a time for Doing and a time for Being. However, for most of us Doing Mode has become autonomous and requires some conscious effort to awaken from. For more on this topic please visit Awakening.

  4. The fourth path is more active than the other three, and involves appreciating the distinction between objective and subjective reality. Hypnotic methods, including self-hypnosis can be quite powerful. Even poorly trained stage hypnotists can get some subjects to do remarkable things; often in just a few minutes. Self-hypnosis is a direct method for the Rational Processing System to influence the Experiential Processing System. For more on this topic please visit: Intentional Intentional Trance Formation.

Suffering is all around, and the desire to escape it is universal. If you depend upon an external agent to free you from suffering, you will become dependent upon that agent whether it is food, alcohol, a treatment program, or medication. Each of these paths ahead offers a perspective and methodology that can free you from dependence on an external agent.

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