Category: Philosophy

Anticipating Restriction

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Anticipating the lean back
Photography by Nate Dale – New Adventure Production

You know the feeling when you wait for the person in front of you on an airplane to lean back and restrict you even further in to the the tight small seat?

You know that feeling, right? Wishing and hoping they won’t but at the same time realizing that they are perfectly right do so. Should I lean back too? Let the seat backs cascade down the aisle? This anticipation of discomfort to come is not the best feeling. (For a fuller account of airplane discomfort you can read, Inflight Therapy: For those traveling far and within on amazon kindle.)

For now the question is simple, how do you brace for impact, for being leaned into, for constriction, for discomfort?

As Thanksgiving travel and associated anxiety approaches in a few months, what are your strategies for coping? Music, breathing exercises, reading, meditating? Anticipating and thinking of coping skills ahead of time can reduce our anxiety response. Accepting and addressing the discomfort to come helps ironically ease it. Just recognizing discomfort without a related alleviation attempt, I imagine would increase anxiety. So, it might be worth taking the time to think ahead to this moment and find your empowered coping strategy. Resist the lean, at least emotionally 🙂

Wishing you ease,

Hungryphil

Take your emotional temperature

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Just like a fever indicates a medical concern, anxiety indicates an emotional concern. What is your anxiety telling you?

Anxiety indicates that a conflict is ensuing, and so long as there is conflict a positive solution is within the realm of possibility. In this respect anxiety has been likened to the prognostic value of fever: it is a sign of struggle within the personality and an indication, speaking in psychopathological terms, that serious disintegration has not yet occurred (Yaskin).

May Ph.D., Rollo. The Meaning Of Anxiety . Hauraki Publishing. Kindle Edition.

As a sign of struggle normal anxiety focuses us on the present conflict by exposing the emotional temperature. Anxiety surrounding an exam, public speaking, presentation, meeting new people etc. simply points to caring. This is important to me, anxiety reminds us. It need to overwhelm the event in a negative, fearful and blinding light. Just as a fever tells us to rest, cover and care, a rise in anxiety does the same. Of course, in a hospital a fever is treated differently, and with alarm. This medical and emotional history maybe the difference between neurotic anxiety and normal anxiety.

To be sure, neurotic anxiety is the result of unfortunate learning in the respect that the individual was forced to deal with threatening situations at a period—usually in early childhood—when he was incapable of coping directly or constructively with such experiences. In this respect, neurotic anxiety is the result of the failure to cope with the previous anxiety situations in one’s experiences. But normal anxiety is not the result of unfortunate learning; it arises rather from a realistic appraisal of one’s situation of danger. To the extent that a person can succeed in constructively meeting the normal day-to-day anxiety experiences as they arise, he avoids the repression and retrenchment which make for later neurotic anxiety.

May Ph.D., Rollo. The Meaning Of Anxiety . Hauraki Publishing. Kindle Edition.

In order to confront anxiety, we need to recognize the rise in our emotional temperature. This is why mindfulness can help ease anxiety. We practice looking inward and measuring the emotional temperature of the moment. How can we avoid repression and retrenchment unless we recognize that we are simply appraising an experience? How can I succeed in constructively meeting day-to-day anxiety unless I mindfully engage it? Self-aware ease requires courage to confront discomfort and most importantly consistent practice.

What experiences raise your emotional temperature? How do you treat it?

Wishing you meaningful anxiety,

Hungryphil

Rest, retreat, remove anxiety?
Photography by Nate Dale – New Adventure Production

Existential Love

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A few blog posts ago I talked about whose fault is loneliness. Feeling lonely often corresponds to feeling unloved. I’d like to consider the dynamics of loneliness and love a bit longer. How do you relate love and loneliness in your life?

The following quote from Irvin Yalom might help clarify what we search for in others, and loneliness as those needs, unfulfilled.

Growth-motivated and deficiency-motivated individuals have different types of interpersonal relations. The growth-motivated person is less dependent, less beholden to others, less needful of others’ praise and affection, less anxious for honors, prestige, and rewards. He or she does not require continual interpersonal need gratification and, in fact, may at times feel hampered by others and prefer periods of privacy. Consequently the growth-motivated individual does not relate to others as sources of supply but is able to view them as complex, unique, whole beings. The deficiency-motivated individual, on the other hand, relates to others from the point of view of usefulness. Those aspects of the other that are not related to the perceiver’s needs are either overlooked altogether or regarded as an irritant or a threat.

Irvin D. Yalom. Existential Psychotherapy (Kindle Locations 5185-5189). Kindle Edition.

It is ironic that independent and growth motivated individuals who are able to sustain themselves on their own make the most supportive partners. You are my partner because I admire and respect your existence, independent of me. I don’t need you to fulfill me, rather, I will work to support and witness your existence. I love you in that I offer my attention and energy in service of your existence. This attitude isn’t self-sacrificing per se. It simply resists self-aggrandizing. Your needs are as important as my needs. Reciprocity takes effort. That is the work of love. Many simply concede to lives of loneliness, maybe because the work of love seems out of reach and overwhelming. To honestly answer, why am I lonely? what am I searching for? what do I need? takes courage. Can I accept and receive the answer without judgment? Unless I take responsibility for my own attitudes about love and loneliness, I cannot mature.

“Infantile love follows the principle ‘I love because I am loved.’ Mature love follows the principle: ‘I am loved because I love.’ Immature love says, ‘I love you because I need you.’ Mature love says, ‘I need you because I love you.’ Fromm’s point that love is an active, not a passive, process has extraordinary ordinary importance for the clinician. Patients complain of loneliness, of being unloved and unlovable, but the productive work is always to be done in the opposite realm: their inability to love. Love is a positive act, not a passive affect; it is giving, not receiving-a “standing in” not a “falling for.”

Irvin D. Yalom. Existential Psychotherapy (Kindle Locations 5213-5217). Kindle Edition.

Do you feel immature, mature, in-between in love?

May you be deeply engaged in the work of love,

Hungryphil

Are you enjoying your privacy or are you lonely?
Photography by Nate Dale – New Adventure Production

Self-Aware Ease

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It is not surprising that I’m drawn to Existentialist Psychotherapy in the lineage of Rollo May, Irvin Yalom, Vicktor Frankl practicing the philosophies of Kierkagaard, Nietzsche, Heidegger, Sartre, Husserl and others. The basic premise as Irvin Yalom explains below is the humble defense of the ancient belief that self-awareness leads to a meaningful fulfilling life even if the process of self-discovery is painful:

Wisdom does not lead to madness, nor denial to sanity: the confrontation with the givens of existence is painful but ultimately healing. Good therapeutic work is always coupled with reality testing and the search for personal enlightenment; the therapist who decides that certain aspects of reality and truth are to be eschewed is on treacherous ground.

Irvin D. Yalom. Existential Psychotherapy (Kindle Locations 190-192). Kindle Edition.

In working and volunteering at different contexts such as hospice, domestic violence shelter, food pantries, community health, grief and loss counseling, my role and mission is simple: To invite self-aware ease in myself and in others with me. Sometimes that means asking gentle guiding questions, sometimes breathing, sometimes guiding meditations, sometimes just sitting in silence and making space for self-inquiry.

Self-inquiry is painful, as Plato describes in the Republic, the released prisoner is blinded and stumbling, heading out of the cave. The turning towards truth or meaning is daunting and frightening. The journey inward can only be sustained by moments of ease. Self-awareness rests on self-care. This is the balance I’m trying to learn and practice. Each person sitting with me teaches me a different version.

The existential position emphasizes a different kind of basic conflict: neither a conflict with suppressed instinctual strivings nor one with internalized significant adults, but instead a conflict that flows from the individual’s confrontation with the givens of existence. And I mean by “givens” of existence certain ultimate concerns, certain intrinsic properties ties that are a part, and an inescapable part, of the human being’s existence in the world.

Irvin D. Yalom. Existential Psychotherapy (Kindle Locations 107-109). Kindle Edition.

I hope to practice the humility of the Existentialist perspective: I can never know your experience, your suffering, your confrontation with life, however, I can guide you to map your internal valleys and mountains, joys and sorrows, to know yourself . I am able to do so because I walk with self-aware ease despite the sufferings of my own life. This of course leads to concerns of therapeutic transference. That exploration will have to wait for another post.

Whether you are a counselor, therapist, teacher, creative, what is your mission? Why is it your mission? How do you confront the givens of existence: death, isolation, freedom or meaninglessness?

Bring self-aware ease. Seems so simple, yet it is a life’s work. Mine.

Wishing you self-aware ease,

Hungryphil

Photography by Nate Dale – New Adventure Productions

Things That Cannot Die by Paige Riehl

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A spoon in a cup of tea.
Letters in yellow envelopes,
the way a hand pushed lines
into the soft paper.
Morning laughter.
A white shirt draped
over her chair.
An open window. The air.
Call of one blackbird.
Silence of another.
November. Summer.
My love for you, I say.
My love for you infinity
times a million, my son says.
Sounds of piano notes
as they rest in treetops.
The road from here to there.
Grief, that floating, lost swan.

“Things That Cannot Die” by Paige Riehl from Suspension. © Terrapin Books, 2018. From Writer’s Almanac Podcast, August 13, 2019

This is not exactly a food poem although “a spoon in a cup of tea” is referenced. It does speak to the immortal intimacy of love and loss. Small things and endless things.

May you be surrounded by things that cannot die like laughter and love,

Hungryphil

Food Poem – Death Again by Jim Harrison

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Let’s not get romantic or dismal about death.
Indeed it’s our most unique act along with birth.
We must think of it as cooking breakfast,
it’s that ordinary. Break two eggs into a bowl
or break a bowl into two eggs. Slip into a coffin
after the fluids have been drained, or better yet,
slide into the fire. Of course it’s a little hard
to accept your last kiss, your last drink,
your last meal about which the condemned
can be quite particular as if there could be
a cheeseburger sent by God. A few lovers
sweep by the inner eye, but it’s mostly a placid
lake at dawn, mist rising, a solitary loon
call, and staring into the still, opaque water.
We’ll know as children again all that we are
destined to know, that the water is cold
and deep, and the sun penetrates only so far.

Jim Harrison, “Death Again” from Jim Harrison: The Essential Poems. from the Writer’s Almanac Podcast, August 14th, 2019

Whose fault is loneliness?

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How often do we feel in ourselves or notice in others the pangs of isolation and loneliness? We feel misunderstood, judged, rejected and diminished by others, and so we begin to self-isolate. In reading Irvin Yalom’s Existential Psychotherapy I came across a shift in perspective. What if I am responsible for my loneliness? What if, I am the one misunderstanding, judging, rejecting and diminishing others and myself? Do I have proof of perceived judgement or am I simply assuming it and using the assumption to push people away? In isolating myself and blaming others, am I fulfilling my own prophesy of the being too special or too unique?

What does loneliness feel like for you? Consider this quote from Existential Psychotherapist, Irvin Yalom:

Love problems are not situation-specific. Love is not a specific encounter but an attitude. A problem of not-being-loved is more often than not a problem of not loving.

May you send and receive love in equal measure,

Hungryphil

Photography by Nate Dale – New Adventure Production

Empowered Filter

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“OOO holds no grudge against the socio-political interpretation or effectiveness of art, but simply insists that not all of the elements of the context of an artwork are relevant to that work, and that an artwork either admits or forbids its surroundings to enter through a fairly rigorous process of selection.”

Harman, Graham. Object-Oriented Ontology (Pelican Books) (p. 102). Penguin Books Ltd. Kindle Edition.

The above is a quote by Object Oriented Ontology philosopher Graham Harman. It makes me wonder how would an artwork “admit or forbid its surroundings to enter”? Suppose I am a human object aspiring to be an artwork, how I relate or negate my context, how I compound or distance myself from other objects would reshape me as a sensual object. Right?

Me as an object among other objects am not just a “person in environment” as social work teaches us, but enmeshed, compounded, yet distinct. Depending on how I admit or reject my context, other things, other objects shifts my status as a quadruple object, a sensual object and a composition of sensual qualities. Maybe at the moment of filtering there is freedom? Maybe as an object I can change? I can recreate my compound object existence? What is my own process of “rigorous selection”? Can I think through this quote about artwork in the context of counseling?

To what extent do you consider yourself a product of your context?

When you introduce yourself, what elements of your context are relevant ? Where you grew up, went to school, what you do, your parents, your family, children, your race or religion………

Just a wondering. I need to sit with this for a while.

Photography by: Nate Dale – New Adventure Productions

(Travel)-Guide Post

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My dear fellow readers, writers, yogis, therapists, eaters and travelers,

I want to share this first with you. I’m nervous and you have already patiently and generously read about my loves and losses. Thank you for being my sounding board and inspiration.

Suspecting that I’m not alone in my travel anxieties and discomforts, I wrote a journal while traveling last winter. It took me this summer to edit and format it. I’m still finding edits to make! It is imperfect and well-meaning, like me. Maybe you’ll find it entertaining, maybe helpful? Please share your travel stories in the comments below if you’d like. How do you endure a long flight? Maybe we can write the next edition together?

Inflight Therapy: In support of those traveling far and within.

Find it at: https://www.amazon.com/Inflight-Therapy-support-traveling-Philosopher-ebook/dp/B07WG98T5G/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=banu&qid=1565714004&s=digital-text&sr=1-1

With rooted and blossoming gratitude,

Hungryphil

Photography by Nate Dale – New Adventure Productions

Cherophobia – Am I afraid of happiness?

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The symptoms of cherophobia or fear of happiness can often be confused with depression. While depression is a persistent feeling of anhedonia (inability to feel pleasure), cherophobia is an active avoidance of things that might bring joy.

Cherophobia can be culturally prescribed. For example, I remember growing up with the Bengali (or was it a family saying?) proverb “Joto Hashi, toto kanna”… roughly translated, however much you laugh, you will cry. I was in my mid-thirties before I recognized this attitude to be a life sentence of suffering fueled by judgement and anger.

According to this article, here are the symptoms of Cherophobia:

  • Anxiety when you’re invited to a social gathering.
  • Passing on opportunities that could lead to positive life changes due to the fear something bad will happen.
  • Refusing to participate in “fun” activities.
  • Thinking being happy will mean something bad will happen.
  • Thinking happiness makes you a bad or worse person.
  • Believing that showing happiness is bad for you or your friends or family.
  • Thinking that trying to be happy is a waste of time and effort.

I’m still a bit averse to what others might consider fun but I don’t actively avoid or judge joy anymore. Allowing myself to feel joy without guilt, whether sleeping in, laughing uncontrollably, dancing or dressing up has ushered in a sense of deep gratitude, instead of a sense of false superiority based on sadness. I can enjoy a dazzling sunset knowing that night will follow.

It is a misconception to think sad events that happen to us give our lives meaning and depth. Rather, it is what we do and how we overcome sadness that gives our lives meaning. Meaning is always an active construction, never simply given.

You may be asking, how can I be happy if my loved one is suffering. Out of empathy and respect, shouldn’t I also be unhappy and suffering? In a healthy and loving relationship, one would never expect another to suffer on their behalf. If I were suffering, I would want my children, husband, friends to keep finding joy instead of reflect my pain. Would’nt you?

You may be saying, happiness is stupid. Refer to the symptoms.

You may be saying, why am I always sad? Maybe you are surrounded by sad people and out of emotional loyalty decided to be sad too .

You may be saying, I don’t believe in happiness. I believe in contentment. Maybe you are allowing yourself culturally permissible doses of happiness.

If you are sad and depressed, ask yourself:

Do I want to feel happy but don’t know how, or do I want to feel sad and holier-than-thou?

Either answer can be right. For you.

Self-awareness and self-acceptance can be so liberating and yes, even joyful. The choice to look inward and ask these difficult questions is yours alone.

Wishing you joy, happiness, peace, contentment, rejoicing “chero”

Hungryphil