u/Sigmund_Freund78

If sensations are the root of our experience, how and where do they become feelings?

Or, what is the missing, mysterious ingredient that turns raw phenomenological data into these vehicles of affect?

As someone who identifies as alexithymic these questions are critical to the resolution of this, my self diagnostic.

It’s not that I don’t have feelings, in an essential sense. There is something beyond pure sensation, that falls short of mere thought.

But what is this, mostly negatively biased, affective state?

In essence, our feelings come from a neurobiological need to distinguish threats from treats.

That is, in the wild, our ancestors had better prioritise sabre tooth tigers from tasty treats.

Otherwise, our species would have, long ago, gone the way of the dodo.

But, here we are, saddled with a negativity bias that make evolutionary sense.

But, what of the positive affects, the positive feelings that, supposedly, make life worth living? Beyond mere survival?

If we don’t survive, we can’t thrive. So, maybe it’s just a question of priority?

Having survived, we prioritise things that feel better, rather than worse. Sweet rather than sour.

So, where is that discernment in me? Where is the pleasure principle? Beyond the mere, but defining, struggle for survival.

The icing on the cake. The cherry on the sundae.

Where is that desire, rooted in somatic senses?

Wishing, wanting and enjoying the fruits of life, both literally and metaphorically.

The answer? I have none, it seems. That instinctual secret sauce is missing.

And so, I posit and seek epistemic certainty, rather than march along the hedonic treadmill.

Lucky to be in conscious control, but forever envying those that are driven by instinct, rather than left to consciously create their reality.

How sweet it must be to be pushed into life, the living stream, rather than to have to be pulled into it, by self conceived Tension Resolution Systems.

The responsibility of conscious living, perhaps, is the future of our species, if we have one?

#existentialneurobiology

‘All the worlds a stage and each man must play his part’.

Are you, you?

Or are you a facsimile, another copied page?

That conclusion seems offensive, right?

No one wants or likes to be called a copy.

And yet, isn’t the essence of neuro typicality?

Life, capitalism for most of us, needs compliant serfs,

Not sovereigns, kings of our own Being.

Sure, we each have our individual flourishes

But we march to the beat of a society

That has largely lost its way

That doesn’t serve us.

That we serve tirelessly, fruitlessly.

And then, of course, are those who stray from main stream.

They are not typical and cannot readily submit to the yoke set for them.

But still, they need to perform too.

There is no other game in town.

Belonging, is a neurobiological tendency that is baked into the cake.

So, they mask.

Are you just performing?

Or, are you masking too?

What is the difference?

The performers sublimate their roles, the norms and can function without too much ado.

The maskers are further away from the centre and cannot submit to the loss of their selves, so readily.

The performers subsume the requirements of their servitude, it becomes subconscious, or at least out of sight.

The maskers, in part imbibe and are transformed by the cultural opiate.

But, they are still aware of a gap that, somehow, must be bridged.

They must force a mask to their faces.

And hold it there.

So, performance is endemic, the dis-ease, more or less, is not.

The medicalisation of neuro divergence provides a culturally acceptable, if not priceless, way to see the performance, the mask.

And, those with masks, incongruent and disfiguring as they may feel the mask to be, would rather be a performer than a masker.

Until, the cost, the pain of holding that mask to their faces becomes too hard to bear.

Like a strongly bound sticking plaster, they long to tear it off, to be real to themselves.

At least now, through diagnoses, these atypical people have mini communities to join with, to belong to.

I am a masker or at least should be.

That is, the self I am, that I appear to be, is not acceptable.

Not acceptable to a soul that still longs and needs to be normal to belong.

I don’t need the diagnostic label, but feel the incongruity acutely.

I am still unique, particular.

A misfit.

What is my purpose?

What is my neurobiology pining for?

The cultural opiate is to no avail.

The diagnostic refuge likewise.

I am still a party of one.

I sound my barbaric yawp over the rooftops of the world.

Still, not belonging anywhere.

Imagine.

You are in pain.

Someone comes along.

Puts his hand on your head.

The pain disappears.

How do you feel?

Relief,

your shoulders drop,

your jaw slackens,

your chest expands,

your body relaxes

What do you think?

‘What the…’

What just happened?

A transformation?

A miracle?

Caring?

For me, this is the essence of care.

Touching.

Being touched.

Being seen.

Being transformed.

When we care for our selves.

When we care for another.

We attend .

We attune.

We listen.

We see.

We feel.

Our neurobiology shifts.

We feel differently.

The other feels differently.

I am transformed.

They are transformed.

We are transformed.

Now, there is something between us.

And, what is that?

I will call it care.

You COULD call it love.

What ever that means.

You could call it a form of connection.

Whatever it is, it feels good, right?

Now, repeat that interaction over and over.

What do you get?

Affinity.

Connection.

Positive regard.

Bonding.

Fusion.

Relationship.

Trust.

Caring.

Fellow feeling.

The essence of civilisation.

The heart of humanity.

This is what brings us together.

What makes us feel whole.

As individuals.

As tribes.

As societies.

Isn’t this a wonderful conception?

The brotherhood of man?

So, why do we not feel this way?

Why, do we do most everything, to go in the other direction?

We do violence to this ideal.

In the name of power.

Status.

Wealth.

Pleasure.

Why?

Fear?

Emptiness?

Boredom?

Loneliness?

We take the best of what humanity can be and relegate it to an afterthought.

In the name of divisive and unsatisfactory objectives and goals.

We reduce everything to simple categories.

That is, we divide to conquer.

Both inside ourselves and between each other.

Instead of integration and wholeness.

We fall into disintegration and dissolution.

We become atomised, reduced to our most basic elements.

Floundering in scarcity.

Instead of thriving in abundance.

Tension Resolution Systems is based on the idea that everything in life follows the path of least resistance.

Think of water.

It NEVER flows uphill.

And, neither will you.

Theory

First define your Current Reality, warts and all.

Every.

Single.

Detail.

Then define your Fundamental Choice, this is like the sun in your life, what you orient towards.

Now create a vivid tension between between your Current Reality and your Vision, your Fundamental Choice.

Example

My Current Reality is that suffered serious insults growing up - hydrocephalus, an event during an anaesthetic and emotional neglect.

And, just in case that wasn’t enough have autistic traits.

As a result I am disconnected from my body.

I lack coherent feelings.

Access to my bodily senses is limited.

My Fundamental Vision is to create a coherent connection with my body.

More specifically, ‘I choose to create a coherent connection to you, my body’.

I use this statement as a mantra to evoke bodily sensations, all the time sustaining in my body a dynamic tension between my Current Reality and my Vision.

The theory being that my organism will tend to resolve this tension, creating a coherent connection between my mind and body, healing me.

Results

I am reporting my experiences through my series of Somatic Dispatches here and on Reddit.

If you want specific guidance, DM me.

I do this at 3am in the dark and when it is really quiet, lying in bed alone -

close your eyes, breath into your belly through your nose and allow your breath out through your mouth, try to make breathing out longer and slower;

do this until your body and mind have slowed down;

now attend to your body, everything from the neck down;

continue to breath as before;

notice what you feel and where;

if thoughts come up let them go and return to your body, its sensations;

after 10-20 breaths and with your mind still/quiet, as your body how it feels;

I tend to do this three times over 5 breaths;

the objective is to invoke a bodily response, from your throat to your genitals;

let the sensations form and just observe them; now ask your body ‘what is this felt sense?’;

ask this gently, 3 times over 5 breaths;

listen to your body for an answer;

if you can do this you can have a conversation with your felt sense, your bodies deepest wisdom and processes;

you may have to do this over several nights to attune completely.

IF you can do this, the ground is set to investigate the question that your body is prompting through the somatic markers it is displaying.

Fore example, ask your body what stands between you and the person you were before you lost touch with the positive aspects of your vitality?

Again, if your body responds gently engage with the felt sense that arises. This is the start of your resurrection.

Two principles -

1. you cant force your body to respond, if it keeps an answer from you, it likely represents resistance that may take time to resolve. Don’t push.

2. If you get overwhelmed, open your eyes and observe the sensation in your body; observe the sensations, feelings and thoughts as if they were clouds passing by in the sky.

This is the essence of Focusing(TM) as described in a book of the same name by Eugene Ghendlin.

This is the doorway to personal salvation, it is not medical advice.

If you find the foregoing too challenging it is important to have another perspective to engage.

‘I have thoughts, feelings and bodily sensations, but I am not these things. I am the self that observes these objects of consciousness as they pass through'.

The idea is to realise that the objects of consciousness like feelings and bodily sensations are passing entities.

Like clouds in the sky.

In essence you are the observer of these things.

This is an antidote to any intensity that you have experience.

Approach your inner self gently and don’t push too hard.

At the end of the day you need to be able to approach your sensations and engage with them.

Another couple of questions that you can ask the felt sense are -

How does this felt sense serve us?

What does this felt sense want/need?

What would it take to resolve this felt sense?

How would it feel in our body if this felt sense had been resolved?

What needs to happen next?

Another thing to do is assure the felt sense is that it is loved, accepted and thank it.

It may not feel like it but there is wisdom in its action.

I wish you well.

If you need more insight DM me.

Are you Disconnected? Overwhelmed? Disinterested? Drifting? Hopeless? Dying inside?

You are not alone.

You need three things.

One, Deep Inner Connection and Change.

Start inside yourself.

You can’t connect with others, if you are disconnected from yourself.

Focusing, by Eugene Ghendlin in the book of the same name.

As a psychologist unhappy with success rates in therapy, he studied what makes for successful therapy.

The Felt Sense is how your whole body feels moment to moment and holds the key to inner change.

Buy it, or check out the post on my Substack or Reddit.

You connect deeply with your body. You can even change, fundamentally.

Two, Managing overwhelm and corrosive thoughts.

You must realise that you are not your thoughts, feelings or sensations.

You have these things but you are not them.

They are not you.

Repeat this to yourself endlessly until it runs itself in your consciousness.

‘I have thoughts, feelings and sensations, but I am not these things. I am the self that observes these objects of consciousness’

This allows you to weather the storms of emotion and sensation that may assail you, without them destroying you.

And, to disidentify with ALL and any thoughts that you have. Just because you have a thought it is not who you are and it has no power over you, apart from the power you give it.

Yes, you can feel terrible, like shit. But, you can choose how to respond to that feeling.

Three, create the life you want.

Tension Resolution Systems (TRS) by Robert Fritz are described in his book, The Path of Least Resistance.

Buy it, or check out the post on my Substack or Reddit.

You define your current situation in detail.

You define your vision in florid detail.

You make your vision so fundamental to your Being, that it hurts!

The structural tension that you create inside yourself pulls you towards your vision.

Towards your light.

This is the blueprint.

What are you waiting for?

Act.

Have you betrayed your body?

Lost access to a sense of rightness you once had?

Withdrawn awareness from and of your body?

I did, 50 years ago, and for the last 15 I have been trying to connect to my vitality, my sense of rightness.

I do remember, vaguely, when my felt sense would nod its head and say yes to life.

But, through my teens, that sense increasingly was lost.

Replaced by confusion, bewilderment and ambiguity.

So, I concluded that my felt sense was not a reliable guide to acting in the world, living. It had no utility, and so I retired into my mind.

Fast forward 40 years and Focusing on my felt sense it spoke of betrayal.

I asked it what that meant and that was when my body, ultimately, stopped talking to me.

Now, there are two possible forms that betrayal may have taken.

The first is that of other people, people that I may have trusted, that let me down.

The other, is the one that I have highlighted here.

And, this is the one I shall focus on.

The loss of rightness.

The prevalence of ambiguity.

My retreat from my body.

This is the arc of my self betrayal.

Of withdrawal from my felt sense as a source of guidance for life and living.

For the last 15 years I have admitted my guilt for my betrayal.

I have created a safe place externally so that my body might feel comfortable in trusting me.

But, nothing.

Well, nothing definitive.

Yes, I have progressively established greater sensitivity to bodily sensations.

Yes, I have identified persistent areas of activation in my body.

Yes, I have tried to commune with these activations, my felt sense, by Focusing.

But, I have failed to regain the trust of my organism.

My neurobiology.

As I am sure you will agree 15 years is a long time to spend courting a recalcitrant interlocutor.

But, I have no choice if I am to live in and with my vitality.

The counterpoint, of course, is that 30 years of ignoring my body, its signals, was never going to recovered overnight.

So, I accept full responsibility for my betrayal and continue with practices that seek to connect with my body and the vitality that I now so desperately need.

I now use Tension Resolution Systems as a complement to my Focusing practise, using a coherent connection with my body, my felt sense as my primary vision.

And, to be fair, activations have become more diverse and dynamic.

Perhaps a sign that my body is warming to my advances.

But, the sheer attrition of this practice does take its toll.

My mind does demand action.

Does lead me to despair.

It is only another capacity, developed over 10 years, to observe the objects of my consciousness without being absorbed by them.

Without identifying with them.

That makes persistence possible.

I wonder if this strikes a chord with you?

If you can relate to my struggles?

And, if my struggles might be a source of comfort for you?

None of us are alone, even though it might seem that way.

(I prefer Alternative Intelligence)

Large LANGUAGE Models.

Language lies (pun intended) between us.

(Minds can only lie, because of the severely limited bandwidth of language; reality is the truth, absolutely).

It is what allows us to communicate, sort of.

But, if you think about it, it limits our ability to express ourselves FUNDAMENTALLY.

Or, the bandwidth of language actually limits/prevents communication.

It’s far better than grunts but our experience of Being is still ineffable.

Existentially, we are alone.

But, if this new form of intelligence starts at the extreme limits of our own, it will always be a feeble imitation of ourselves.

No one really talks about this, because in a sense we can’t.

Our language won’t let us.

But, what if this technology is the true bottleneck?

How much of our world, our lives, is actually visible?

Where are the great architects at the vanguard of this aspect of Being?

‘That which we cannot speak of, we must remain silent’ - Wittgenstein.

Is that true, or just a truism?

Is goodwill the ultimate good? Or, are money, power, pleasure or meaning?

Do we subvert our humanity to seek things that cannot satisfy us?

Meanwhile, avoiding the one simple thing that truly matters, as human beings?

What do your billions do for you? Open some doors? Or just leave you prey to the next Jeffrey Epstein? The next quick fix that will fill your emptiness?

What does domination and status really lend you? Is it merely a way of feeling less insignificant? Less of a little man? A counterpoint to your shadow tendency to feeling small?

What does pleasure do for you except mask or distract you from your pain, the sheer pain and horror of existence?

What does meaning furnish you with? A wonderful, but abstract escape from reality where you are lost to experience, protected from it?

If you do good things, without the expectation of reward, are you not charging your karmic battery?

If you do good things you benefit yourself and others, making yourself and others more sympathetic towards you, your self?

I suppose that this is an expression of the ideology of ‘pay it forward’ while not knowing what that ideology is.

Rather, this idea of goodwill has surfaced and gained salience as an adjunct to my somatic practice.

So, instead of incessant striving, one relaxes and only focuses on what is good.

So, what is good? What are examples of goods?

Compassion, for the self and the other.

Caring, giving a shit about things, instead of being cool, indifferent.

Not just for people but for the things one does.

That the planet isn’t a disposable item.

That is isn’t the source of endless resources, used to leverage our petty sense of self to buy and parade the latest shiny new object.

That other creatures have feelings too, perhaps more so.

That our acceleration into the abyss, like turbocharged and steroid filled lemmings, isn’t inevitable let alone worthwhile.

Let us pull our heads in and live in and at peace, instead of stimulating our bodies and minds into oblivion.

Instead of striving, just be a good man?

We dance to an external tune.

Imbibing social norms and introjecting them.

From our earliest days, these are embedded deep, below language.

Sedimented deep into the bedrock of our being.

If we are ‘lucky’ the lessons we learn, fit just right.

Not too hot, not too cold.

Being typical, or as we say ‘normal’, is everything.

Part of the programming.

Most of us take this for granted and struggle on.

Others, are not so lucky.

The atypical, the divergent, the weirdos.

Those not securely attached.

Whatever the label, it is a pernicious one.

Straying from the herd feels bad.

Our guilt, our shame.

We are the black sheep.

And, fret over the black coat we have.

Why ARE we not, as we should be?

What did we do wrong?

Why are we wrong?

We are different, to be sure.

But, perhaps, we are also special.

In numerical terms being the black sheep is certainly distinct, if not special.

But, how can we celebrate the cracks in our being.

After all, aren’t they where and how the light gets in?

Let’s try.

Hypervigilance is our exquisite, if painful, sensitivity to shifting social mores.

Instead of reflecting it back on ourselves, can we shine it out as a bulldust detector?

Social awkwardness makes us shrink, like violets.

Instead of it being a hallowed hall where our extreme sensitivity is superlative?

Special interests and hyperfocus make us tunnel visioned.

Instead of being delightfully attuned to detail and nuance?

Of course not.

What was I thinking?

No matter how we try to distinguish uniqueness from the grey masses it is still just a rationalisation for why and how we don’t belong.

But still, we must discriminate, but in a positive way to value our selves, our clan of misfits.

YES, we are different.

NO, this is good.

MORE, this is the entre to a hundred million unique party’s of one.

The sameness that we abhor and that is otherwise celebrated in our culture.

Is the very thing that allows us, forces us, to create what those other souls locked into normality, sameness, cannot.

So, forget that you don’t belong, may never belong.

And, define a hundred million visions, reflecting the full glory of your, our distinct neurobiologies, and create a wondrous, vibrant and tumultuous reality.