Two methods for decontamination your Adult power

It was seven o’clock in the morning, a time for 'morning pages. We have adopted this practice for some time. The concept is the brainchild of Julia Cameron who later had written a book on 'the morning pages' for creativity aspirants. We wanted to measure how much morning pages helped increase creativity but didn’t get a machine to help us!

pages. We have adopted this practice for some time. The concept is the brainchild of Julia Cameron who later had written a book on 'the morning pages' for creativity aspirants. We wanted to measure how much morning pages helped increase creativity but didn't get a machine to help us!

Today, contrary to usual practice, we were not feeling enthusiastic, filled with ideas while riding on the morning pages. Some issue was occupying my mind. Today at tea time, my wife was sharing her experiences of an event she just attended in Lonavala, India. She talked about the participants of the company, working from home but for more than the stipulated hours. She pitied him for he often gets tired but continues till the other party calls the day. Like her, we didn't pity him but checked why he is so weak?

This is the usual practice. We have seen people with a similar mindset. We are usually amazed as we are aware, people are powered by numerous strengths, skills, specialities but they don’t value them leading to no growth and so, unexpected fear.

The issue is that if you as a person are so empowered by numerous attributes then to authorise you to let these gifts die of their death.

Why does the lack of attributional growth generate fear?

We were wondering why people are neither aware nor attaining to use their gifts for their betterment. We have seen that fear prevents us from practising our natural potential. So getting rid of fear is a must. For this, we should understand fear, first.

Initially, we thought that fear is caused by the difference between your normal emotion and our deemed emotion. Say if you fear your boss then it means that you expect some abnormal behaviour from him. Assuming so, you visit them but at that time, you start expecting that he will behave abnormally and so you fear when you visit.

This is not the true definition. TA says when you were socialising, your parents gave you some injections which were registered in your mind. When that parental input contradicts your thoughts then fear arises. For example, when a child, if you were told by your parents, 'you are an idiot' and it contradicts your thinking then it will create fear in you.

Suppose you are having such negative input from parents, it will not only create fear in you but also, stop you from doing anything positive and proactive for your life.

What Transactional Analysis says about fear?

You better understand the dynamics and make a move. Let's suppose your factory is located adjacent to a pond whose water is contaminated by the pollutants from the factory. Similarly, when one polluted (corrupted) part of our thinking enters into other truer parts of thinking then fear is created. In the same way, when polluted thinking merges with feeling then also it creates fear in you. In TA we call it Adult ego state contamination.

Let us get deeper into contamination. Once Eric Berne who gave the concept of Transactional Analysis (TA) said 'we are born prince and princess and the situation has made us frogs.' He meant that initially, we were very nice, good behaving and complying type of person. But in due course, thanks to our parents' repeated does & don’t and injections, we are transformed into fearing and complying with people like frogs. Seriously, these injections were so heavy that in some cases if they declared 'you are an idiot’, we accepted and acted as if we. Such things made us then a fearing 'baby' and now, a fearing 'adult’.

Interestingly, this complying was the need of the hour. Say when a child we were weak and so copied then but now, we are powerful adults and should stop complying. If so this is not a fair trend. True that things are now scripts and so not as easy as seems but NO.

The old saying goes, 'where there is a goal, there is a way'. It is possible to break your script yourself and believe we have done it. This is possible.

Fear causes threat in you and this is unhealthy and unwanted for our psychic growth. TA says the genesis of fear in you is on two grounds:

a) Contamination of thinking leading to fear (Parent contamination)

b). Contamination of feelings leads to fear. (Child contamination)

Looking into the causes, it seems that the impurity of your thinking and feelings are the main cause of your fear. It is contaminating your pure thinking and your genuine feelings resulting in Parent and Child contamination.

So you remove your impure thoughts and border out thoughts and feelings, the problem will be solved. Fear will go.

How can we decontaminate injected thinking?

For the new timers, self-therapy may be climbing Mount Everest. You apply your awareness power and you can! Believe in your powers.

Suppose when you were a child, you were often crossed by your tough and straight parent. One of their repeated comment those days was,

"you are an idiot".

You were then too weak to react, so you comply with them by following their toes and then you were 'not an idiot' to them. Maybe such an experience made your poor thinking mind agree with and copy parents. That was your perfect strategy at that time. Gradually this mindset gets into your unconscious mind making you behave like an idiot child without knowing it.

Here comes the use of your awareness power. You may need this power to observe your behaviour especially to know what fears 'you are an Idiot' have created in you. Whatever you observe, it is better you record your behaviour. You may take help from your family also. We are sure you will benefit in terms of self-knowing. This will help you plan your measures.

Let us take a hypothetical case. Suppose you are afraid of meeting your boss and people in general. When you plan to visit the boss, many negative thoughts come to mind like the boss doesn’t like you, he doesn’t want you, doesn’t care about you, always criticises you and so on. This causes fear and negative thoughts towards him and others. This is all because:

a) Your mind is loaded with an idiot’s belief and this belief surfaces out before boss and seniors

b) But your pure logical thinking says this is not true and reasons to counter the above belief.

We believe you can help to change this unwanted painful belief by applying your critical thinking. Taking a clue from the teaching of TA, we have customised some queries for you to apply to change parents injected belief as below.

a) What sort of person is an idiot and what sort of person is not so? If you fall in that category? If not then why believe so?

b)What should be the criteria for one who deserves to be declared ' an idiot' or 'non idiot’?

c) Whether those criteria are in you and so, you may be declared 'an idiot or not?

d). Is it that all those people who do not meet those criteria are 'not idiots’?’ (trying to weaken the belief)

e) How long should this 'an idiot' mindset last, or will it remain forever? (Forcing for decision)

f). Do you feel all people are equal? Does that include you?’ ( if not then why keep such decision/belief)

We are sure that your self-work on a similar line will help in reducing your problem largely.

How can we decontaminate our feelings?

We can adopt the same technique for decontaminating your feelings. Thanks to childhood conditions, the input 'You are an idiot' changed into a feeling based belief and contaminated our feelings.

Is it not the first time you heard 'an idiot’, you were furious? It was so. though you may not recall it. Maybe thereafter, you might have complied with your parents. When such events were repeated, you might have started believing that you are 'an idiot' which might have cooled the psychic pressure in you. It was at the cost of self-belief of 'is an idiot’. The outcome is that now, your total 'YOU,' believes that 'you are an idiot.

All these developments suggest that,

a). You have been given an injection and you refused but the situation made you accept it.

b). Later pressure made you accept injection emotionally fully leading to get into the unconscious mind and so integrated into the personality.

c) Given that this is the status quo, your job now is for you to use your what, when, where, why and how to type observe yourself fully and then do the needful in line with what we suggested earlier.

We do not see much sense in repeating what we talked about earlier. Instead, we will share our own experience, hoping it will benefit you.

Recently we joined a Gym and noticed we frequently avoid going to the gym for one reason or another. One morning we sat down introspecting and noticed one 'feeling-based belief' stopping to go to the gym.

It was,

'feeling the pain of exercising in the gym'.

This was possible for me to know when we logically tried to know 'not not going Gym?’.

Childlike or feeling based beliefs:

• Gym work is painful and monotonous.
• Boring.
• The old man & no craze look beautiful.

Adult like or logical thoughts-

• -Is old and a gym is needed.
• -It causes bear & tear of bad fibres and pain due to that process only; is a useless belief.
• -belly is shooting and so, is needed
• - if builds a habit, will pay in older age as in the case with Amitabh, an aged Indian hero.
• - better relax and go.
• - start from this Tuesday.

Process: how we countered our feeling-belief:

Broadly process was as follow:

a). Using the power of awareness, we tried to learn what negative thinking is stopping us from going to the gym.

b). One’s learned, we used our logic to find reason-based clues to counter this feeling-belief. This was to counter belief shopping from going to the gym.

c). Now, we allow logical thoughts to confront our bad beliefs. The moment we succeed, the bad belief will lose problem-causing value. You may need to recreate the process as such beliefs go slowly.

d). Say we tried to delete the feeling of pain by arguing 'pain is for good, for it’s when dead muscles break forever, so is good, rather, strategy be to visit and let pain be more & more etc’.

This is one example. You can do better by trying more challenging situations.