what's the unexpected gift in your emotional struggles?

Note: This essay was written informally with little regard to the conventions of grammatically correct English as a playful experiment of expression. Also, clearly it was written by a human.

Let me know, I’m curious - whether you still receive my message, even with the unpolished tone?

What If Your Frustration Is the Key to Your Breakthrough?

ever got caught in the cycle of frustration, fighting against capitalism, and unmet creative desires?

do you ever notice yourself in a really dark place, psychologically?

where you're just MAD at the world and everything in it including yourself, really frustrated, about the way things are with capitalism and oppression and exploitation and how the world is going to shit and also at the same time beating yourself up about how you have a hard time functioning and being productive and being a ~good exploitable worker bee~ and getting mad at that too.

questioning how you thought you wanted to be creative, because even that doesn't seem to be fun or interesting right now. and getting mad at that too!

yeah, it's tough.

and there's no immediate answer, and the world kinda really sucks when you're in that place... but can I offer you a perspective?

that maybe there's some deeper need inside you that is not being met, and that unmet need is causing you to feel more susceptible to all the terrible depressing stuff going on around you.

the double-edged sword of privilege and unmet needs

(okay yes, it is a privilege and something to be grateful for to be able to turn off the social media and things going on in the world and just focus on cultivating your own peaceful pocket of space even when people are being bombed, in active war zones, etc... but the fact that people who are suffering exist, doesn't negate your own pain. and sometimes it's hard to be grateful for a privilege when you have direly unmet needs that you're potentially not even aware of, and that's real.)

discovering Gabor Maté’s Scattered Minds at the right time

lately I've been making my way through Gabor Maté's Scattered Minds again, in a synchronously timed manner.

You see, the past week or so, I've been going through an absolute shitstorm of seemingly unexplainable frustration, anger, and resentment that has been very difficult to be with. understandably, I've been irritable, grouchy, and grumpy.

and while my tendency is to criticize myself for not being more pleasant (what is wrong with me that I can't keep it together without being such a b tch?), this time around I gave myself more space to accept that I was going through a tough time, even if I didn't understand completely what this was about.

Then I rediscovered Scattered Minds which I had read partway and put down awhile ago.

how early experiences with caregivers shape unconscious beliefs.

Apparently, even a cursory lack of eye contact from a distracted parent who is overworked and stressed, can trigger deep shame to be planted in the sensitive child.

The child doesn't understand yet that the parent is under-resourced themselves, and is only able to make sense of the lack of attention by internalizing it: there must be something wrong with me that mom isn't paying attention to me.

It is this developmental stage where the human child has not yet opened their eyes to the fact that everyone else has their own challenges going on, and the caregiver being inattentive, or even harsh, does not reflect the child's lack of worthiness of care and attention and love.

the physiological limitations of a child’s developing perspective

Physiologically, in the brain, the child is not capable of understanding that. And since the child is dependent on the caregiver for survival, there's no other option but to come away with an unconscious understanding that there's something wrong with me, I'm not good enough, I can't do anything right.

add in all of us living in a capitalist imperialist system that operates on exploiting our labor and our primate needs for security and certainty, mixing in generational trauma from the ancestors have been the victims of exploitation AND the ancestors who have been doing the exploiting, and parents being limited humans who are just figuring things out (not omniscient perfect authorities who are always right, as they are perceived by children) ...

many children don't get what they need and grow up with some form of limiting belief about how it's their fault.

what was MINDBLOWING to me that I learned in the book was that not getting these needs met, causes the child to get STUCK in this developmental stage where they are not able to open to a broader perspective.

man, sooooo many years I'd beat myself up for not being able to 'be the bigger person,' why am I being so stubborn, why can't I think of anyone else but myself first,

when it was literally not my fault. lol

my child self was never given the opportunity to naturally mature out of a first-person-only perspective, then further criticized, rejected, and ostracized for not being able to "see the other person's point of view" or "Be the bigger person" or "be mature" when it was physiologically IMPOSSIBLE for me to be able to do so !!!

the transformative power of leaning into emotional contraction

long story short, I discovered underneath the frustration and grouchiness and ANGER I was (honestly, reluctantly) sitting with, was a hurting younger version of me who was in a lot of pain.

soon after I understood what was happening and fully leaned into the contraction, and spent some much needed quality time with my younger self, the next day I felt invigorated.

joyful!

renewed with a passion for life. excited to do creative things. like life had breathed itself back into my body again.

all of which had felt so far away when I was unaware of what my inner child needed and just knew that something was wrong.

self-criticism vs. self-compassion during tough emotional states

so the next time you're inexplicably angry, frustrated, sad, depressed, resentful, or all of the above and more - instead of being hard on yourself,

I invite you to look under the hood and see if there's something you need that you're not getting. The next time you’re overwhelmed, ask yourself what’s missing. ask yourself, what do I need right now?

(ofc, this is easier to facilitate if you have an ongoing mindfulness or introspective practice. :)

over the years I've developed some tools to navigate these tense moments safely on my own, that I'm hoping to eventually be able to offer you as teachings.

Your feedback matters!

this practice of internal alchemy, or transforming difficult emotional experiences into creative juice, has been so empowering for me and it's one of the things I want to share with the world.

it's an ongoing process of figuring that out, and it would be really beneficial to me if you want to share how you received this message. by email, or however else you know how to reach me.

see you in two weeks xx