We’ve named everything now. Almost word for most of the feelings and emotions. Hardening. Avoidance. Emotional regulation. Staying in or out. The vocabulary is rich and glamours. The actual part of doing remains as hard as it ever was. All these terms looks similar like a solution for a particular kind of situation. i.e dealing with grief. Be it any kind. There is a follow up question as how do you come of it.
Most people reach out for one of two ways. Stay and harden or leave the place. Both sounds like a perfect answer. Yet, it hides the layers of flaw.
%Hardening: It is more of bracing. Building a shell so less gets through. Even in agriculture, right after tissue culture, the plants left for hardening. So that it gets adapted to the environment. In real life, we put the Buddha’s clam face on for bracing. But the image is wrong. Buddha didn’t harden. He turned inward and towards the difficult things until it loosened its grip. Hardening doesn’t solve but it can hold a lid over a it by a brutal force.
Leave has the opposite. There are lot of quotes on remove the distraction or stay out of the triggers. It may work well on the situation but it does nothing to the internal world. It always travels within one self and not in geographical senses. If a small trigger still sets off, then feeling was never finished.
So the real question carries two context here
- Do you stay in the situation or leave it? If it is based on the circumstance or geography, then leave or change accordingly.
- If it is concerned with emotions, accepting is the deal. Facing a feeling benefits in the long run rather than avoiding it and letting it grow.
Avoidance is not as same as steadiness or openness. The former says I don’t care while the latter part says I care yet not knocked over. The numb version looks wise but doesn’t help in the long run. Attaining the steadiness across all walks of life isn’t easy or can’t be forced with words. Trying to be clam while the whole larva churning inside is just hardening again. It starts with a gap of stimulus and response and until the muscle can hold the big things. Listening to the body works over the mind. When the waves are bigger, staying open or openness in a flood might be a trap. Sanity is staying at the edge of the wave and not drawing under it.
This Hardening, avoidance and steadiness might look the same but there is thread of level of difference. Hardening is like building an armor/tool to feel less. Steadiness or staying in build the capacity to hold. The avoidance and steadiness might look the same on the external but it is opposite at the core.
- Hardening – Feel less
- Avoidance – Feel less now and more later
- Staying in – Feel fully now and less later.
Staying steady is not about being robotic to emotions. Sometimes, it better to be shaken (more of a human nature). But it just helps not to be thrown around by everything.
Do these words really matter? I don’t know. Maybe in the introspection or in the analysis, it does help. In the end, the everyone has different definitions of these terms including the word insanity.
Cheers!
Check out the previous post: Space for Women
If you like what you see and wish to support my work, then
Share your thoughts/suggestion at the comment section or mail at
randomwhyss[@]gmail[dot]com
Don’t miss out! Get notified about new blog posts straight to your inbox !
(No spam, pinky promise!)
Enter your mail to receive updates
One thought on “Curse of Terminologies”