Stockholm Syndrome

Body Awareness, Cont.

Long-term, primordial stresses (from my last post) are harmful party crashers, and often they don’t want to leave.  Maharishi shared an example (not his exact words): say a dirty, torn, worn-out couch is in the middle of our clean and beautiful living room. It doesn’t belong there; it restricts what we can do in the room. But…if it’s been there a long, long time we might have become attached to it. We know it’s not good, but it’s become a part of the room’s identity.

How to deal with this? Go straight from that whimsical image/feeling in the mind and into the body. Feel the stress and get it out: it’s holding us back and needs to dissolve.  

I’ve fallen into that trap—letting capricious emotions prolong old stresses. They are seductive. When I was a child in a bad mood, mom or dad would tickle or tease me to cheer me up. But no: I’m grumpy and that’s that. And how tempting it’s been sometimes to wrap my identity around being a victim or a loser: “It’s their fault; I’ve wasted my life.”

Dangerous, John! Do not wallow. Swim to solid ground.

I wrote a poem about this:

STOCKHOME SYNDROME

Sometimes I find myself singing
the woe is me, woe is me blues
Sometimes I find my head sinking;
My worth and my morals accuse.

Something’s perversely alluring
about crying: it’s hopeless, you lose.
Something seductive, woe’s aching
that kills my cheerful true muse.

Frightening, this self-worth hypnotic:
“That’s me; I’m melting down.”
Dangerous, this numbing narcotic:
“I wallow, I sink, I drown.”

Time is my enemy’s ally;
must not entertain its story.
Can’t buy the self-pity it’s selling:
“I’m a chronic melancholic.”

My unchallenged scarecrows spook overwrought issues;
No more will I run away from my stresses.
Fearless, I’ll face them and calmly undress them;
No more they’ll make mountains from crybaby crumbs.

From my book, Finding Out: johncowhig.com

~ John