Big Feelings Are Like Beads in a Bowl | 2124

S04E24

Moments of psychic intensity generate what we can think of as ‘Big Feelings’. That we then carry around with us as unprocessed loops that keep us awake at night.

NOTE: This is my first *real* video episode. As a result it came up 30 secs short.

Show Notes: https://www.thejaymo.net/2021/06/19/301-2124-big-feelings-are-like-beads-in-a-bowl/

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Permanently moved is a personal podcast 301 seconds in length, written and recorded by @thejaymo


Well, the first proper ‘video episode’. It was an interesting exercise.

Totally fucked it thinking I’d need less script if I was speaking slower for a video.
But actually it didn’t matter at all. So for the first time in 4 years the episode came in short – at just over 4.5 mins. Usually it’s way too long and needs cutting down.

I don’t actually care. Next week needs another Episode, which presents a fresh chance fuck up in some other new and different way.

Please do send comments, thoughts, opinions via the contact form, or how ever you usually contact me. I mean.. Is producing a video episode even worth all the bother?

Big Feelings Are Like Beads in a Bowl

In 2019 I made an Episode on Depression. About how poorly served we are by the English language when it comes to communicating our interior states. We often lack exact words to articulate what we are feeling. 

Whats the word for when you feel like you are disappearing?

One solution may be to poetically suggest a concept by placing words in relation to each other.

Despite it being a big part of my life. I realised recently, that I don’t talk about meditation as much as I thought.

The main reason being that meditation is ultimately a personal, and boring subject. 

It’s sitting on a chair day after day and dealing with your own shit in silence. I COULD talk about it more but why bother?

Anyways.

In Episode 20-02 – Crying Whilst Meditating. I described how your body processes old buried emotions that you had no idea you’d been carrying around.

To day I want to briefy talk about the importance of being able to recognise and name specific feelings you are experiencing.

As one of the things that meditating on old truma reveals, is all the smaller emotions you experienced at the same time as part of the big one.  Like sorting through beads on a tray or untying a complex knot. 

Moments of psychic intensity generate what we can think of as ‘Big Feelings’. That we then carry around with us as unprocessed loops that keep us awake at night.

Let’s take a time when you were angry as an example.

In the first:

The anger was  somatically experienced. The tensing of muscles, a clenching of the jaw. An increase in the rate of breathing, a rise in blood pressure. Maybe your red went face. 

Your attention narrowed, and you were mentally ‘locked on target’. It lasted 5 or 10 minutes max.

It is the narrowing of attention during emotional intensity that creates the psychic baggage that you carry around with you. 

I should note. That this narrowing of attention could be anything from an argument with a partner, to someone cutting in front of you in a line.

When you meditate with the technique I was taught on  (for example) a time when you have been angry. What slowly is revealed are all the other emotions that occurred at the same time. The beads in the bowl.

Like the elements of an exploding star – as you pick the experience apart – you find the other emotions in the experience’s orbit. There’s: Ire, annoyance, maybe there’s disgust, anxiousness, regret, maybe a little fright.

Eventually that big emotion. That psychic wound you have been carrying around for half your life is unpacked and recontextualised. 

The unpacking is done by sitting on a chair, by yourself in silence and re-experiencing the original emotional moemnt.

This isn’t some unhealthy dwelling on the past. A quiet seething. As its time bound and limited to the time that you are sitting. When you are done meditating, you set it aside and get on with the rest of your day.

If you do keep coming back to it, you should probably consider getting a therapist. Because despite what the app says, all meditation is dangerous. 

Anyways, what happends month by month, is that the time your mind likes to remind of in the middle of the night – wasn’t all anger. Maybe it was made up of frustration, depression and a little resentment too. All these were lost in the initial explosion of adrenaline. Eventually as you more fully understand the memory it becomes too complex for the mind to pick up and throw at you just before sleep.

I’m not going to explain how you actually do any of this, as I said, it’s really rather boring.

The main thing is type of meditation on old trauma allows you to do is to more fully understand emotions when you come across them in your daily life. You become better equipped to understand what you are feeling and experiencing. 

For example: Imagine being on zoom. Someone says something that elicits an emotion in you. A slight leadening of the fingertips and a tingle that runs from the throat across the chest and down into your pelvis.

These sorts of things happen to you a million times a day, but usually we don’t pay attention to them. Usually too caught up with formualting our response.

If you can decern the experience of small emotions clearly. You can pick out that touch of annoyance, and the dash of irritation. And note them on the DnD character sheet of life and move on.

I’m not claiming that meditation stops you from experiencing emotions. In fact it’s the exact opposite. The more you do the more you become aware of the things you are feeling. Knowing exactly what kind of anxiety you are experiencing doesn’t stop it from grabbing you by the throat in the soy sauce aisle in Sainsbury’s.

But it does give you a better understanding of the you that is doing the experiencing.

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6 responses to “Big Feelings Are Like Beads in a Bowl | 2124”

  1. […] The hard part was naming the feeling I was feeling. When have I felt like this before? What was the name of the feeling I had felt? I described this process back in Episode 21-24 Big Feelings Are Like Beads in a Bowl. […]

  2. […] first proper episode I made was about meditation. The content of the episode is ok, but the video element left a lot to be desired. This is how the […]

  3. […] when done correctly, is like wiping condensation off a pane of glass. For the briefest of moments you catch some detail […]

  4. […] could name all this noise mental clutter.  All the thoughts, the emotions, and distractions that arise in the mind. Noise interferes […]

  5. […] watching on Youtube right now, why not like and subscribe? The first proper video episode was 21-24 Big Feelings Are Like Beads in a Bowl. I re-watched it recently to see how far things have come between June of 2021 and January of 2022. […]

  6. […] Big Feelings Are Like Beads in a Bowl […]

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