Adult Add: Get Chunking!
It's sneaky, and it can sneak up on you. It happens gradually, over time. It has a way of creeping into your life, day by day. And before you know it, it has taken over completely and transformed the person who once was into a shadow of the self that once existed: The person that was confident to the point of arrogance is now humble to the point of shame; The person filled with anger and rage has become lethargic in body and emotion; The person who enjoyed company and conversation now shrinks away from any interaction or social contact because they are too afraid or unwilling to have anything to do with other people.
We know what it is, don't we? We know who it is. But we are still stuck. We don't know how to get out, or how to get over it. Why can't I just leave this all behind and live a normal life again? The answer can be found in one word that you've been hearing for most of your adult life: Chunking.
The Art of Chunking
Chunking happens when you stop being able to keep up with the changing world around you or your own changing life, and then, something clicks into place. It's like when a piece of expensive glass breaks: You don't notice that the glass itself has broken until you look more closely at it. At the time, however, it's just a shattered piece of glass on the floor. When it comes to your life, and your feelings in particular, you don't notice that you are undergoing a transformation until you look more closely at yourself. Then suddenly, under a different light and with a new perspective, it all becomes crystal clear.
When you stop being able to keep up with yourself or the changes in your life and then find that something clicks into place within you (perhaps through therapy or personal growth or some other method of becoming more aware), Chunking occurs. This is what many self-help books teach: Put the pieces together in order to get them out of your head so that your life can be better and happier.
This is not bad advice. In fact, most self-help books are pretty useful and promising--they speak about the same things that many people talk about when they meet in groups or over coffee, or in relationships. The people in self-help books are just fictionalized versions of the people you meet and talk to every day.
The problem with the chunking method of getting rid of emotions is that it takes too long. It takes so long because the emotions that you have inside of you don't live totally within your world--they also have attachments to other parts of your life, things that you do and who you are as a person, places where you live and work and other things like hobbies, etc.
The problem of chunking is that it attempts to get rid of emotions by looking at them from the outside, as if you are the observer and the emotions live within you. The observer sees that there are certain emotions that are not convenient to his or her situation and decides to get rid of them, so he or she puts together a program for getting rid of these emotions.
However, the emotions that are the biggest problem for you do not live in the observer's world. So when you get rid of one emotion, another one takes its place. And when you get rid of that second emotion, a third one takes its place and so on and so forth. The only way to remove all of your emotions is to look at them from within--to realize what they are in order to make them go away.
The Reason Why You Chunk
Chunking happens because it's easier than staying in contact with your emotions. Staying in contact means that you have to be aware of your feelings, even if they are unpleasant or confusing and make no sense whatsoever. If you are aware of your feelings, you cannot behave as if there is nothing wrong with them.
In order to stay in contact with yourself, you must be able to let go of some of the things that are actually causing the problems in your life. The things that are causing a lot of the problems are:
Your fears and shame.
Your anger.
Your grief and grief-related behaviors (especially about loss).
Your depression and anxiety.
Your other negative emotions like jealousy, contempt, boredom, resentment, etc. (all negative emotions have a common origin).
Even if you were unable to change the things that are causing your problems, you could achieve a higher level of peace and happiness if you were able to change how you think about the situations in your life. But the only way to do this is to look at them from a different perspective, not from an outside observer who sees what looks good and then tells you what needs to be done.
The position that many people, especially those in therapy or self-help groups, take is that they are just like everyone else, but they have a harder time dealing with their emotions than other people. But the truth is, they are actually worse off than other people because they have developed a way of chunking their feelings that allows them to stay in contact with their emotions for only a little while. Then, when their emotions become too strong to deal with, they start chunking again and go back to where they started. Some of these people have been doing this for years and are still searching for happiness or a way to deal with their problems.
Someone who hasn't developed a method of chunking is much more able to stay in contact with themselves and thus can be more responsive to both the good things that happen and the bad things that happen (instead of just avoiding the bad things). And, of course, one of the main things that most people do not like to do is to be aware of their feelings.
Relative vs. Absolute Love
Those who are in touch with their emotions can decide if and when they want to love someone (or something). When your emotions are balanced, you can feel what you feel and then make a decision about whether or not you want to allow yourself to love something (or someone). In order to be in touch with your emotions, you have to let go of preconceived notions about things like "love" or "hating".
The emotional memory that you have of the person or thing that you love is what determines whether or not it is worth loving. This can only happen once you are in touch with and balanced with your emotions, because this way, you will be able to see the emotional memory for what it really is--not something good or bad, but just information about the situation.
You will also be able to tell whether your idea of love for that person or thing has anything to do with reality or anything outside of yourself (e.g., "I love John because he's so handsome", "I hate my mother because she was so mean", etc.).
Conclusion
Emotions are not bad things and it is not good to have no feelings, because feelings are what allow you to process information from your world. Without feelings, you might as well be dead--you would have no way to process information. However, there is nothing wrong with being a little numb or having numb periods in your life in between periods of emotional balance. In fact, if you are always in touch with yourself and your emotions your life will also be more balanced.
It takes courage to face yourself and come out of hiding and reveal yourself to the rest of the world, but that's what must happen if you want to live an honest life.
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Adult Add: Get Chunking!