Chapter 44: The Emotional Dimension Part 1
Pardon the cliché, but I have saved the best for last. Before we can defeat somebody physically, we must defeat them emotionally. Before we defeat someone else’s emotions we must be in command of our own. Before we can be in command of our own emotions, we must be able to know, feel, differentiate and process them, period !
Now let us reverse engineer paragraph one. By starting to take the myriad of complicated emotions and reduce them to a simple 6. It is helpful before we do this to completely understand why. The six emotions that I am about to share with you absolutely, positively, must first and foremost be understood and differentiated. So here we go… Mad, Sad, Glad, Afraid, Ashamed, Hurt. (When one is in a street fight these 6 emotions are all thrown in one “soup”. The implications of this are, the anger you could have for somebody, could be amplifying your fear, and make you debilitated and you don’t even know why. Where the fear that you have in this fight, maybe due to simple adrenaline, and one is unable to process it properly due to physiology! Or it could mean that you have “Afraid”, enmeshed with “Mad”, and you are wondering why you are unable to turn on your killer Instinct !
I could go on, giving examples of what happens when people are out of touch with their feelings, 8 hours a day for a year and never repeat myself. That is how prevalent the problem is, both in a street fight and in life itself.)
Now getting back to our 6 emotions, lets take one at a time. Mad, we can pretty much relate too. Sad, most of us understand what Sad means. Glad, simply means happy. Afraid, is another word for Fear. Ashamed, is another word for Shame, Guilt, and perhaps Embarrassment. And Hurt, which tends to be a bit ambiguous for everybody. It has to do with loss. If you lose a loved one the pain you feel would actually lean more towards hurt than sad. Now that we know what the 6 simplified emotions are, and have done a differentiation. Let us now proceed to a rudimentary readers digest version of how to process these different emotions.
First and foremost, understand this… 99 out of 100 people do not know how to feel, differentiate, or process, all they do is stuff. Once we stuff one emotion on top of another, we create this “emotional toxic Lasagna”, which resembles a Volcano that could literally blow up at any time for any reason. Now let us get back to the proper way to deal with emotions, in lue of stuffing we process ! There is a formula that we use, just like Martial Arts, just like the R.A.T.
Here goes… When you_________________________I feel________________________________________.
This formula guarantees that you are not degrading, humiliating, or exacerbating the situation, it simply guarantees that you inform someone, that when they behave a certain way, this is how you feel. Eg, “Sam, when you raise your voice at me, I feel sad.” Or, “Judy, when you laugh at me, I feel hurt”, etc, etc… The next emotion to process is sad. When something typically makes us sad, we try to take our mind off of it with distractions. May, I humbly suggest, that you meditate on what is making you sad. Sit down, breath deeply, cry if you have too, and as you breath into the sadness, this “non resisting” energy will process the sadness away.
The next emotion, is glad. Which means happy, enjoy your sh!t eating grin. The next emotion Afraid, which means fear. Shine the light on your fear and it will disappear as quickly as darkness disappears when you shine the light on it. What ever your fear, face it, confront it, and embrace it. When I started Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu, Rickson used to give me panic attacks, we would wrestle for a couple of hours straight, he would mount me in the 102 degree heat of California, and I used to panic. All I ever did was fight to get the hell off the bottom. Fight, fight, fight ! And then, eventually when he got me on the bottom, my resistance would turn to panic.
Answer… for the next 6 months, after bowing to Rickson and starting my wrestling, I simply started off by laying on my back. I embraced the position, that used to demoralize me. Indeed to this day, I prefer starting from my back. Fear is gone. The next emotion, ashamed. This is the same as shame, guilt and embarrassment. This means that you have judged your behavior, the behavior is in the past, and you have been unable to forgive yourself. Answer, just like fear, shame can not exist in the light. Whatever is in the deepest darkest bowels of your closet, bring them out, talk about them, and the light will disintegrate them. Our final emotion is Hurt. Hurt is a sadness caused from a loss. First and foremost we have to properly greave from this loss, and the second half of healthy grieving is to replace what was lost. This could include a puppy, a car, or a husband. In conclusion I realize by so rapidly changing course on the “combat “ index, and going from headbutts and elbows, to feeling feelings, might be a bit much for some of you. Indeed, I can picture a few of my New York buddies, with disgruntled looks, grabbing their crotch, simultaneously proclaiming, “Yo Vu, If I wanted Dr Phil I wooda, put on Oprah”… Forget about Oprah boys, she don’t got no ground game.
Please check the Table of Contents for links to other chapters of this Online Book.
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