There are days when it feels like everything is against you. You missed your alarm; You’ve unintentionally burnt your breakfast; You’re stuck in traffic; Your boss piles up more work on you when all you want is a break; And you come home, after wading through this treacherous forest of a day; Ready to blow at the smallest of sparks; And someone does exactly that. Your wife, husband, daughter, son, somebody. You express unimaginable rage, and suddenly, you reflect. You don’t understand why you screamed. But then, your mind gives you solace. It tells you,’It’s their fault. They always do this; They deserve it; 100% ’ or ‘ You’re always like this; You never change; You’re going to die alone at this rate. You need therapy’. And you’re stuck in this loop of blame games until you forget yourself in food, Netflix, drinks or sleep. All good, until this same situation repeats, over and over and over again. One time it was uncontrollable anger, another time, you bought something online, something that seemed so worthy at that point. But looking back after your credit card bill, begs the question of ‘Why?’‘Why would I buy this?’ It's the same case with extreme nervousness, fright or even excitement. Were there days where you were so excited to do something, like trying out a new food item, going to a party, and everything passed by in a blur, and you don’t remember the details of your experience? We’ve undeniably faced many such situations where, after our action or reaction, we feel we were not in the right mind then; that we were not in control of those actions / reactions.
Why is that the case? What is control?
Control is not forcing yourself to avoid something; it is not keeping yourself in another prison; to prevent yourself from experiencing life; Control is having the ability to choose; to choose between options; to understand your choice and make peace with it then and there. It is not wrong to lose yourself. As long as it was your choice and not a result of compulsion.
You might think it is impossible; that free will is an illusion; that faraway planets have more control over the one tub ice cream you ate today; that such huge emotions cannot be kept track of. The issue is because we focus on the war’s outcome and miss the smaller battles that built up to it. Every emotion is psycho-somatic; meaning it lies in both the mind and the body. And you can deal with one small emotion. Your frustration about your burnt tea? It shows up in the body; when unnoticed, it stays there. And when your next set of frustrations come up, they don't add up; rather they cross multiply.
Every emotion has a physical presence in the body, a mental presence in your mind, with either an image or a memory, and almost always, a story. And when these emotions cross multiply, one cannot distinguish which is which, rather there is only one huge pile of discomfort which screams for your attention. You need to solve it now! Either by screaming your lungs out, eating whatever you're craving, buying whatever you want and so on and so forth.
The mental presence is hard to work with since it is intangible. It is very easy to miss. But the physical counterpart is something we can work with. Doing this is very easy. Constant awareness of something in the body. Anything. You can be aware of your feet on the ground, your breath, your lower jaw, your eyes; When you are constantly in touch with your body, you train a skill called interoception. The body shows signs of the emotion, the reaction to the inputs to your senses, even before your mind gives you the templated reaction to enact. With interoception you catch this emotion, as a tightness of a muscle or a feeling of spaciousness or heat or cold, and when you’ve observed it, you’re at the point of choice. You can choose to listen to the story it tells you, and decide to believe it or not.
Interoception is a mental muscle that needs to be trained. And it is very easy to do so. Every skill training requires time, attention and patience. And the rewards are huge. When you are able to deal with emotions one at a time, there is no situation big enough that you cannot ha
ndle.