So, there’s this fun story – this fictional (I think?) anecdote about a Russian cosmonaut. And it keeps popping into my head every so often.
Basically, the guy’s up in space when he hears this continuous, monotonous tapping noise in his cabin. The dudes on the ground can’t identify it, so he rips everything apart to seek out the source. He finds nothing. The poor bastard is sure it’s going to drive him crazy because he can’t bring an end to this auditory torture raping his brain.
When his frantic panic freak-out fails to serve his sanity, he finally closes his eyes as a last resort.
He tells his mind to fall in love with that sound.
And when he opens his eyes, a glorious orchestra has supplanted that sound.
I really like this little cinematic story. That idea – of being able to mind-over-matter our problems – reach resolutions without the aid of a sixty minute shrink session. In an individualistic society, I totally identify with the “do it yourself” Tony Robbins style techniques as a means to an end. Really, I do.
But, like, where’s that end?
And how do we know if we’re prescription-abusing our affirmations?
If I tell myself “I’m alright” and “I’m healthy” and “this corn isn’t a Monsanto meal made of mutant genes that are going to morph my own upon ingestion” does it truly make it true? That’s not a rhetorical question. Sometimes, the answer about affirmations is a resounding yes – our days are made worlds better when we dial down the douchebaggery and power on the positivity. That’s all well and good.
But, how do we discern denial from this sort of self-talk?
Like – if that cosmonaut heard the noise again on earth suddenly and didn’t know where it was coming from, how would he react? Would he hear the music right away – or suffer a neural lapse as he tried to force himself to manifest that association all over again? I mean, I’m really interested because I’ve been employing this method my whole life.
It’s absolutely inconceivable for me to say “I desire something I can’t have – but that’s alright.”
No way. I totally tell myself lies like, “No, I’m not hungry” when I just want to lose weight, or “OMG your thoughtless verbal vomit is like water off a duck’s back” when really I’m just protecting my ego (and my brain’s in a warm bath, holding a razor to its veins). To accept something unpleasant, experience the resulting genuine emotion, let it show, and then move on seems… absolutely preposterous.
I mean – are you kidding me? I’m half laughing at the thought of it alone right now.
On the one hand, when I’ve employed this method, it’s proven really effective. On the other, when that trigger resurfaces, it’s like an experiment gone wrong and all the alarms sound off in the lab. I totally short-circuit because the lie I’ve told myself about how I choose to feel, clashes with that gut reaction I can’t seem to deny, no matter how much I practice manifesting a foreign feeling I wanna feel.
So, then I have to do even more work. I go a step further, anticipate that trigger, and completely invalidate it in my mind – censoring any connection next time I notice it.
That wouldn’t be a bad step to take – if it worked.
The real result is just more layers of those laboratory alarms sounding off.
I’m already trying to feel something I don’t (that takes energy), then I’m trying to cut off my split second Pavlovian response to the trigger that makes me feel something I don’t like. And when we’re in real physical pain, this takes on a whole new meaning. And it totally throws off a very real concept that doesn’t fit our myopic Western view of the world: the mind-body connection.
I’ve said before I refuse to accept diagnoses that say “your pain is caused by ABC, so you can’t do XYZ anymore”. I stand by that. But when we completely ignore legitimate pain, we’ve got no choice but to take a samurai sword and slice a chasm between our minds and the body parts hurting us because – well – fck! That shit hurts! Ain’t nobody got time to deal with that when there are bills to pay and celebrity gems to retweet.
So we guard the hurt, it feels worse, then we feel worse. And since we already resolved not to feel it, we get super tense, disconnect from our body parts, and finally disconnect from peripheral people we probably don’t even see. Instead, we just amble around self consciously like we’re en route to our belltower residence – and feel like floating heads.
Having worked in P.T. a while, I’ve met more than a few people who corroborate this pain-narrative.
But, okay. Let’s thrown another wrench in it:
If that mind-body connection is so tightly intertwined that our pain can drive us into our minds – can it go the other way around, too?
Bear with me.
I mean… it shows physically if we lie on a polygraph test.
And that’s a pretty solid example.
So, does the same happen with the lies we tell ourselves about ourselves? Sure, some of us are just quiet about everything we feel. We avert our eyes and change the subject. But others of us totally hide ‘cause we think if we get too close to someone, they’ll detect our self-deceit as well as our congenital commitment it. Some of us tense up a little and others transform into a fidgety Mary Catherine Gallagher monster. Either way – if lying makes use tense, tension causes poor posture, and poor posture causes us pain – is it possible lies (even the helpful ones) can morph into real physical pain?
Positive self-talk and parallel coping mechanisms – yeah, dude – I’m totally into it. What I’m more into, though, is the invocation of those things into reality beyond simply saying, “I.Am.Fine.I.Am.Fine” with all the inflection and enthusiasm of a Ben Stein-Siri lovechild. If we don’t meet it halfway, then we don’t believe it. And if we don’t believe it, that duplicity cascade ensues anew.
So, is denial in any form (including affirmation) ever healthy?
Or are we merely cowards who cannot simply say: “I want the opposite of what I’m getting” right before adding, “but I can handle feeling that way without getting my way”?