10 Emotions -- 10 Action Signals!
Uncomfortable-- Mildly Embarassed, Distressed, Uneasy, Boredom, Impatience,
Fear-- Concern, Worry, Apprehension, Anxiety, Terrified
Hurt-- Sense of Loss
Anger -- Mildly Irritated, Livid, Resentful, Angry, Enraged
Frustration -- Held Back or Hindered in Pursuit of Something
Disappointment -- Sad, Defeated as result of something that didn’t work out well
Guilt -- Regret
Inadequacy -- Feel “Less than” or “Unworthy”
Overloaded -- Overwhelmed, Hopeless, Depressed, More than you can possibly deal with
Lonely -- Alone, Apart from, or Separate From something
Quick Recap: I went surfing for 2 hours. MASSIVE fun. Was an hour late to dinner with my parents at Arigato Sushi. When I arrived they were incensed. I agreed it was humiliating for anyone to wait that long. But it was the two of them, not ONE person, so it wasn’t too problematic. (besides the next day I was 40 minutes late (but called) and they had no problem with it). My mom ended up getting extremely enraged, upset, and hurt. I meanwhile tried to figure out what had caused this? One VERY hypothetical and bizarre theory is that my surfing put me in a GREAT fun and aligned state, which brought out the residual emotions that have been dormant between my parents for so long. This goes back to difficulty in sharing some things with some parents. I’m convinced they’re having serious communication problems between each other and use me as the glue for their relationship. Here are the details.
I feel disturbed about the Arigato thing. Because I think I wanted to handle it differently. I wanted mom to recognize her emotions, clarify where HER anger was coming from. She had a LOT of it. I’m 87% sure that most of it was ALL directed towards Tom, but she projected her feelings of ill-communication toward me. That was very strange how she felt what I often feel. My mom said to dad and I “You guys are ganging up on me!”. Have the dinner conversation, my mom looked like a bulldog -- so utterly enraged, but quiet. When she spoke, I dont’ really know what she was trying to do...sound cutting or derisive? No Idea, I think she was interested in blaming me for the emotions she was feelling. Then she burst into tears, but pushed it back down. And then left to find the car. Things that irked me were I said to mom during dinner, “you look hurt”. Which was true, she kind of nodded to me that that was true, and the same when I observed that “you look aggravated”. Then I asked something like “how did you feel during the conversation”? and my dad turned to mom and said the exact same thing “how did you feel during the conversation?” Is there an echo in here? He did that a bout 2-3 times. That irked me because: 1)It conveyed a lack of authenticity on tom’s part. If he’s just repeating questions he thinks were good, said by me, how genuine can his intentions be in truly finding out how mom feels. 2)I kind of wanted to address how mom was feeling because she looked SERIOUSLY upset and she looked open to that, but my father, Tom (I’ve experienced this) has a way of asking questions that cause you to rationalize emotions instead of feel them. That’s okay for productivity and my dad is a MASTER of go-go-go and always getting thigns done, but sometimes for your healthy and emotional safety, you just MUST actually FEEL the emotion, so you can hear the signal it’s telling you (and then take appropriate actions). Emotions are like indicators of what needs to change for yoru soul, your life, your sense of peace, happiness, and joy. When you deny yourself from experiencing and heeding an emotion’s signal, you deprive yourself of such an invaluable beacon and bearing of ‘what to do”! Then after mom, in a heat of upset and rage and hurt, left the table, dad kind of laughed and joked that she wouldn’t be able to find the car. I love my dad for being able to joke and make a laugh out of almost any situation, but I was also a bit shocked. Dad said something about how “he just says things and gets them off his chest, while mom allows them to build up”. I affirmed that James (my bro) does teh “just saying thigns” method, while I occasionally do the “build up” method, but am trying to be more authentic and congruent. I asked, shouldn’t we go after her to see if she’s okay? He sai,d “she’ll be fine” and I said “It’s hard to know what to do when someone is hurt and upset. Do they need to walk and cool off, do they need a hug? Do they need someone to talk with?” So I end up running out of the restaurant, and immediately run into a runner who’s like “Wanna race?” I go “Sure!” and he says “You look fast. Anyone who comes out of Arigato running has a leg up on the comepitition!” I ran around the block, but couldn’t find mom and went back to dinner. Dad and I talked about how it was more complex than it looked. I remarked, “Oh good, I think I was making it even MORE complex. I was like What is going on? What made mom so upset? Was it just me being late? Do mom and dad have marital problems?” and my dad laughed at that one. What does that mean?!! That they do? children, of all people, pick up on these things, especially adult-children like me. There are just SOOOOO many eggshells (like fields and fields of eggshells) when talking to both parents about something highly emotional or volatile (when one is upset) because I think they have so many things to communicate about that they’ve suppressed, that they frequently get angry about something and then misdirect that onto me. Again, my solution to all this is to just convey and FEEL massive gratitude toward them both because they deserve that and much much more!
the reason why I am making such a big deal of this Arigato scene is that I feel like it was
A rupture of the can of worms between my mom and my dad themselves and I could have been more encouraging and therapeutically catalyzing catharsis.
Afterwards, I felt it was “bad” to surf. The next day, I woke up, felt AWFUL, hungover, hadn’t showered, hadn’t run, felt terribly disgusting, and then spent 5 hours with my parents doing hte lease final thigns on the apartment before going for a run and during the run this woman flagged me over to her car (Lucette) and said these 4 heinous accusations of an old geezer, I think of as a “step grandfather” (Jim Bogges), so immediately after teh run, I jumped in the car (after telling my parents that I’d be late) and visited jim to see if he was addicted to methadone, sleeping with the house cleaning women, attacking Lucette’s clients, and that he and I were lovers. Of course, all those 4 things lucette said were absolutely spurious and not true, but it was a “quite a drama”!!! The point is that Friday was day of service, doing things for other people nonstop and that night my parents were extremely giving and relenting about being late. Thursday was me surfing for 2.5 hours HAVING A BLAST, doing things for myself. I feel incredibly frustrated that when I seem to do things for myself and feel absolutely INCREDIBLY, people around me tend to get upset and act infuriated (atleast my parents do). I think a good rule of thumb is parents are great, I have TREMENDOUS gratitude for their financial and intellectual and leadership generositiy and they’re brilliant, adorable, great people, bu they aren’t friends. I have to pick a peer group that actually is enjoyable when I treat myself with nourishment (like surfing! this #2 Concept is BIG. Other people being upset scares me because I’m so focused on making sure other people are having fun and feeling happy, so when I feel REALLY happy (like after surfing that one time), I felt obliated to try to sort out my parents problems in this gordian knot impossible quagmire where they’re opposed to admitting they want anything sorted out in the first place! What do you think about that? Why do you think when I feel FANTASTIC (I had done the hollywood scene yesterday, I had surfed all of thursday, I was on top of the WORLD of FUN!) people sometimes (atleast parents do) get enraged. Do you think me being so full of life and happy causes them to identify with their true emotions? More importantly, how can I continue feeling HAPPY and FREE and GREAT about myself when other people seem to lash out at me? How can I NEVER feel guilty about feeling happy? Do you think my parents could intentionally try to subdue and smash down my happiness by creating confusing drama when they recognize me being happy? Something is VERY Fishy with that whole genuine happiness thing. I don’t know what it is exactly, but I trust that I’ll evolve to a state where i experience consistent truly galvanizing and guilt-free happiness on a regular basis!
