INTRODUCING EMOTIONAL
CLARITY
Emotional reactivity comes in six flavors!
- For BUTTONS click HERE.
- For HOOKS click HERE.
- For TRIGGERS click HERE.
- For TRAUMAS click HERE.
- For VOICES click HERE.
- For PHYSICAL IMBALANCES click HERE.
We are saying that it is possible for you to IMMEDIATELY detect which kind of Reactivity you (or anyone else!) is having and to respond usefully.
Once you understand how these 6 SOURCES OF REACTIVITY cause the upsets in your life (or in other people's lives), the way to take back your energy and attention from Reactivity becomes obvious and helpful.
Learning to choose healing and transformation instead of indulging in Reactivity can create an astonishing difference in the quality of your life and relationships.
1. BUTTONS
In Possibility Management we use the term 'Box' to refer to your automatic psychological defense strategy that stands as a giant filter between your Being and the world . Your Box determines everything you can perceive and everything you can express.
Buttons are designed into the surface of your Box as survival strategy reaction patterns. At first they were probably useful for your survival. But now you can make more effective and intelligent decisions about how to handle possible threats.
Buttons are automatic reactions. They get pushed - even unintentionally - by another Box that has a different shape than your Box (different rules, habits, assumptions, expectations, decisions, etc.)
When you are with people who irritate you, your Buttons get pushed.
Anybody can push your Buttons.
Watch the Gremlins of children push the Buttons on their parents' Boxes over and over, just for entertainment.
The way to notice that your reactivity is coming from one of your Buttons being pushed is to use non-judgemental Self Observation. You split off a piece of your attention to notice what you are noticing, and also to notice what you are noticing with.
Sooner or later you will find the Button by recognizing the repeated emotional reactivity in the same circumstances. When you notice it, write it down immediately in your Beep! Book. Each Button you find and deactivate is key to a treasure chest of a more wonderful life.
STRATEGY: The way to deactivate a Button is to redesign that part of your Box. Redesigning your Box can take place through any number of authentic adulthood initiatory processes, but all of them have one element in common: your Box will go through a Liquid State while its shape is reordering.If there is no Liquid State, there is no change.
You are designed to redesign your Box and change its purpose from Defensive to Expansive ever since you were 18 years old, but each time it can feel like the 'Death and Resurrection Show'.
Box redesign processes are provided in Possibility Labs and during Possibility Coaching, Possibility Mediation, Possibility Psychology, and Memetic Engineering Processes.
2. HOOKS
Hooks are darts of insult or implication sent by one Gremlin to another Gremlin as a stimulus to initiate an emotional reaction that starts a Gremlin Feeding Frenzy.
Your best tool and ally for detecting Hooks being sent at you is your own Gremlin. You can give him (or her...) the job of watching out for Hooks being sent at you and keeping you Unhookable.
No one can become Unhookable for you.
More interestingly, no one can stop you from becoming Unhookable.
A Hook is detectable by its purpose. Every thought, word, and deed is accompanied by a purpose, even if that purpose is unconscious. You can easily detect the purpose of each action as it is made using your Purpose Sniffer.
The primary procedure for vanishing Hooks is to to keep your Center, use your Sword Of Clarity to stay in contact while letting the Hook slide by, and holding up your Disk Of Nothing so the Hook does not go into your Box or Gremlin but rather vanishes into the void.
The other primary way is to keep your Gremlin on a short leash, put him on a conscious Gremlin Food diet program which includes giving him radically responsible jobs to do for you that your Box is too afraid to do, and do not let him send out any Hooks at other Gremlins...
3. TRIGGERS
A 'Trigger Phrase' is something you say to yourself that opens the front door to your all night café so any hungry entity who happens to be wandering by can come in and devour the life energy out of your Being. Typical Trigger Phrases can be something like: "No one sees me." Or, "They get rewarded and I do not." Or, "I am excluded again." Or, "What I offer is not good enough." Etc...
After you say the Trigger Phrase to yourself and the entities are sucking out your life energy you feel depressed, tired, weak, and completely uninspired. You do not feel much like seeing anybody at all. You would rather be left alone in your bed for a long time.
This listless, lifeless, loveless condition may last for a few days up to a few weeks, until the entities get full and drift away in a stupor. That is when you suddenly wake up. Within an hour or so you get your energy back and you wonder, "Hmmm... What was that? Oh, well. It probably won't happen again..." And it does not happen again, until you say another Trigger Phrase to yourself.
Feeding entities with your precious life energy is a common survival strategy that works by disempowering yourself. When you are weak and confused, you do not pose a challenge to anyone. You are no longer dangerous, so they do not have to kill you, and, Voila! You are safe.
Staying weak and confused could have been helpful in your childhood, but after 18 years old this strategy is destroying your life.
The way out is to become a Trigger Hunter. Complete instructions for becoming a Trigger Hunter are given in S.P.A.R.K.135 and on the Trigger Hunter website.
No one can become a Trigger Hunter for you.
More interestingly, no one can stop you from becoming a Trigger Hunter.
The game can change from being the hunted to being the Hunter... your choice.
4. EMOTIONAL TRAUMAS
The concept of being 'retraumatized' can only make sense if you use the Old Thoughtmap of Feelings where there are three negative, bad, or dangerous feelings (anger, sadness, and fear) and only one 'good' feeling: joy.
The mind has the capacity to 'understand' concepts that have no relationship to reality. (You might want to inspect your memetic structure for these.)
You have incompletely experienced and unexpressed emotions from all the things that happened to you in our past while living in a feelings-phobic mind-centered culture. These Emotional Wounds are valuable gateways for an Emotional Healing Process that brings new parts of your Being to life.
You can leave behind the identity of being a 'wounded person' through participating in authentic adulthood initiatory processes and Emotional Healing Processes such as those delivered in Possibility Labs, Possibility Coaching, Possibility Mediation, Possibility Psychology, Memetic Engineering, and 3 Phase Healing.
If you experience physical symptoms that are not fully healed through physical doctors (MDs), energetic healers, or psychologists, perhaps it is time to heal the emotional elements of your condition. Then you might want to explore what is possible through the Feelings Practitioners.
5. VOICES
It is true that Buttons, Hooks, Triggers, and Traumas usually include a verbal component that you could call 'voices in your head'. However, each kind of voice comes with its own characteristic telltale signs that indicate which sort of Reactivity the Voices originate in. In addition, there is a kind of pervasive background Reactivity originating in Voices alone.
First let's describe how voices might accompany the other forms of Reactivity:
Buttons
Hooks
Triggers
Traumas
The additional Voices that we are referring to hear are not your own voice. They are voices from external authority figures that were dominant during the time you were assembling the components of your childhood survival strategy (your Box). For you Box to function properly, it had to take into account the existence of these authoritative voices in your environment. The easiest and most common way to do this is to incorporate these external voices into your Box and make their presence normal. You build these voices into your Box design, similarly to the way you built your Buttons into your Box design. Then, as long as you hear these voices in your environment, your survival strategy functions. Eventually your circumstances change. You move away from parents, caretakers, and schoolteachers and the external sources of these voices fade away. Not to worry! Your Box takes over and keeps repeating the Voices to you to assure you that your defense strategy can still function and you continue to survive. These are the Voices we are talking about. Your Box conjures them up out of the Parent Ego State of your past and the Voices praise you or blame you, as was normal then. But the actual sources of these voice are long gone, your circumstances have changed, and you have learned other ways to take care of yourself more consciously so that you are actually able to live and need not remain in mere survival.
But how do you get rid of these pesky Voices? They are like little vampire bats - ghosts in the machine - fluttering around your head trying to get you to believe in them so they can bite into your neck, suck out a bit of your life energy, and diminish your power so you survive.
The way to get rid of them is with your Voice Blaster.
Your Voice Blaster is a handy tool that has been at the back of your Toolbelt ever since your were born.
Why haven't you used it before? Because no one ever told you it was there waiting for you.
But we are telling you about it now.
Now is the time.
From now on, for the rest of your life, whenever one of these Voices comes fluttering around you, you can draw out your Voice Blaster, aim it, pull the trigger, and put your Voice Blaster back in its holster, before you even touch your Voice Blaster. You are that fast. The Voice Blaster never misses its mark, and never runs out of blast power. From now on, the only conversation you ever need to have with a Voice is, "Blam! Pang! Zappo!"
For additional information and Experiments for using your Voice Blaster, please visit the Voice Blaster website.
6. PHYSICAL
IMBALANCES
When your Physical Body experiences certain imbalances such as low blood sugar (hunger), weird hormonal combinations during your period, protein deficiency, lack of water, not enough sleep, stresses from over exertion, jet lag, lack of exercise, illness, or accident, etc., you may experience emotional reactivity.
Less visible forces can also cause Physical Body imbalances such as your horoscope (both Western and Chinese), the season of the year, culture shift - as in traveling suddenly from one culture to another, the phase of the moon, your biorhythms, change of seasons, change in atmospheric pressure, temperature or humidity, change of diet, allergens in the air, etc.
The clue that you might be experiencing Physical Imbalance Reactivity is that the reactivity comes on sideways, that is, from no apparent stimulus. The reactivity appears more gradually than with Buttons, Hooks, Triggers, Traumas, or Voices, but not always.
Some people when they get hungry, for example, turn from civilized geniuses into raving monsters within a few seconds. Is this you?
If none of the other Emotional Reactivity sources seem to make sense, assume the source is Physical Imbalance, then stop everything else until you have taken better care of your physical self.
More often than most people notice, physical symptoms do not change even after treatments from:
- Intellectual healers (psychiatrists, psychologists, psychotherapists)
- Physical doctors (Medical Doctors, allopathic medicine)
- Energetic healers (aura healers, chakra healers, meridian healers, energy healers)
- Archetypal healers (spiritual healers, light healers, )
Failure to heal can occur when the root cause is not addressed, for example, when the wound or imbalance exists in the Emotional Body. What is required then are Emotional body healers. These are the Feelings Practitioners.
Incomplete emotions, suppressed emotions, mixed emotions, or emotions stored where they should not be can all cause serious physical imbalances if untreated.
Emotional Body healing processes and certification in the emotional body healing arts are available through Feelings Practitioner programs.
NOTE: To understand more about Ego States please pop over to http://egostate.mystrikingly.com.
In short, during your daily life, you shift obliviously between your 6 Ego States. If you do not navigate consciously to serve Bright Principles then your unconscious nature prevails and you serve Shadow Principles.
You are designed to become aware of what you are up to and why.
Not gaining conscious Choice about which Ego State you are feeding has dire consequences.
These distinctions may help you take back your life:
- PARENT EGO STATE Reactivity includes judgement, blame, control, ridicule, praise, manipulation, false authority, domination
- CHILD EGO STATE Reactivity includes panic, neediness, complaining, powerlessness, victimhood, adaptiveness, irresponsibility
- GREMLIN EGO STATE Reactivity includes revenge, deception, betrayal, being right, intrigue, gossip, superiority, competition, greed, lying
- DEMON EGO STATE Reactivity includes withholding, depression, hopelessness, listlessness, raging, going berserk, tiredness
- ADULT EGO STATE Capable interaction emerges in a Centered, Bubbled, Grounded, Presence with a Minimized NOW, a Conscious Will, and a Conscious Purpose. Your Adult Ego State is the only useful Doorway to your Archetypal Ego State where Archetypal 5-Body Intimacies are possible.
- ARCHETYPAL EGO STATE Human beings are designed to directly interact with the archetypal forces of the Universe on a moment-to-moment basis. We can use archetypal forces to journey with others in archetypal spaces, and to creatively collaborate to help each other deliver the services of our Archetypal Lineages in our projects and in our daily lives.
REACTIVITY EXPERIMENTS
Living in the distinction between
Proactive Presence and Reactive Emotionality
requires actual practice, above and beyond mere understanding.
It can help you to know that:
No one can practice for you.
More interestingly, no one can stop you from practicing.
Since the outcome of each practice effort is unknown, each practice session is an Experiment.
Becoming a 'Proactive Presence Experimenter' may require you to Shift Identity.
Become a Proactive Presence Experimenter
Matrix Code: REACTIVI.01
If you are not an Experimenter in relation to Reactivity, then you have no Gap between being Reactive and any other possible way of being.
If you have no Gap then you are like a piece of driftwood in the ocean, thrown helplessly about by the waves, rather than a catamaran sailboat able to skim across the waves in any direction you please because you have added a rudder and a keel onto your shape, and you have practiced handling the ropes that control the set of your sails. Without those changes, a catamaran is just a piece of driftwood! You can make these structural changes in yourself through Experimenting.
NOTE: Using a capital 'E' in the term 'Experimenter' means
- a 'Conscious Experimenter', that is, being the kind of Experimenter who is at risk of changing-shape during your Experiment (as the young Wizard in the logo to the right was changed by his Experiment), in comparison to
- a stereotype image of a 'Scientist' who dutifully documents data and then compares his results to his hypothesis and... thinks about things...
This Experiment is: for three times each day, all week long, whenever you see your reflection in a mirror, a store window, etc., you stop and look straight in your own eyes for 60 seconds and shift identity by saying out loud (yes, out loud), "Hello Reactivity Experimenter! Hey! I see an amazing Reactivity Experimenter there! Look world! Here is a new Reactivity Experimenter! My Reactivity Experimenting begins NOW. And NOW. And NOW... Even looking in my eyes and saying this stuff to myself is being a Reactivity Experiment!" etc.
You will can be sure you are successfully doing this Experiment of Shifting Identities when you will feel a little GAP open up between your two identities! The Gap is a space of no identity between your 'Box-identified / Box-defending IDENTITY', and your 'I am a Reactivity Experimenter with Nonlinear Possibility' IDENTITY. Both are identities. Neither is right or wrong, good or bad. What you get by shifting identity is access to the Gap between the two identities. This Gap is wildly useful.
(If you do not experience an Energetic Gap opening up inside of you between the two identities, IN WHICH THERE IS NO IDENTITY, then you are merely thinking about shifting identity but you are not actually shifting identity to Reactivity Experimenter...)
See how long (in seconds, in minutes, maybe even in hours) you can keep the Gap open when you are identified as, "I am a Reactivity Experimenter with a Gap," rather than being identified only as, "I am the Reactivity. There are no other options. The Reactivity is the only reality."
This is such a very important beginning.
You can do this. You can make and hold this Gap in identity for yourself.
No one can do this for you.
No one can stop you from doing this.
An entirely new (and more interesting...) world awaits you when you can create and hold a Gap In Identity - as well as your new identity as a Reactivity Experimenter - as a new Split Attention quality of awareness in your ongoing daily life.
Become Reactive On Purpose
Matrix Code: REACTIVI.02
Dedicate one or more of your online-or-offline Team meetings (for example, your Study Group, S.P.A.R.K. Experiment Circle, Research Team, Possibility Team, Whole Permaculture Team, Rage Club, Fear Club, 3 Cell, Safe Circle, Riftwalker Team, Edgeworker Team, Growness Team, Trainer Path Team, Whole Permaculture Team, New Refugees Circle, Village Seeds Circle, Earth Guardians Circle, Village Weavers Circle, Evolutionaries Circle, Gameworld Builders Circle, Possibility Coaches Circle, Possibility Mediators Circle, Possibility Psychologists Circle, Memetic Engineers Circle, etc. ) to doing the following Experiment in order to gain more practical awareness about Reactivity:
- Study together the 6 SOURCES OF REACTIVITY explained above to make sure everyone understands the mechanisms at work. Take all the time you need to discuss these ideas and to thoroughly answer everyone's questions so that no one is unclear.
- Spend 15 minutes in silence and ask each person to list the 6 SOURCES OF REACTIVITY in their Beep! Book with space between them, and then next to each write these three things: 1. An incident when they were personally Reactive in that way, 2. The name of the person involved in their Reactivity, 3. A name they could call the identity that takes them over during that kind of Reactivity.
- Divide yourselves up into Teams of 3 people. One person as the the Possibilitator, one person is the Client, and the third person is the Coach who coaches the Possibilitator during the Experiment.
- Spread out in the room to sit in chairs, with the Possibilitator sitting directly across (but not touching) the Client, and the Coach sitting to the side of the Possibilitator to better coach them.
- The Coach asks the Possibilitator to choose one of 6 forms of Reactivity that is most common or most troublesome in their life, and then to ask the Client to Role Play the person with whom the Possibilitator is reactive. Possibilitator gives the Client a few hints about the character's behavior they are to Role Play. (HINT: It may even be possible that the person they are to Role Play has already died.)
- The Possibilitator gives the Coach their Beep! Book for the Coach to make notes in for the Possibilitator during the Experiment.
- Then for 8-12 minutes, the Client plays their role as realistically as possible, and the Possibilitator unleashes their Reactivity as realistically as possible. The Purpose of playing out this interaction consciously is for the Possibilitator to discover and experience in their 5 Bodies the Purposes being fulfilled by their Reactivity.
- The Coach keeps prompting the Possibilitator to identify and say out loud the various purposes behind each part of their Reactivity so the Coach can write them down. (HINT: Such purposes might be, for example, to survive, to win, to avoid being caught, to be a 'good boy' or 'nice girl', to successfully hide personality traits from others, to not feel, to get revenge, to fail in their life to prove to the world that their parents were incompetent, and so on.) Write as many details about the Purpose as possible.
- After the time is up, come to a stop, move to the next chair, take on the new role (make sure the Client spins around and exits the role they were just Role Playing), and begin the Experiment again in your new positions.
- Continue for the third round.
- Come back to the big circle. Spaceholder creates a space where Team members can share about what they discovered about themselves.
The force of new awareness is Transformational.
Practice Having Unfair Conversations
Matrix Code: REACTIVI.03
We define a 'FAIR CONVERSATION' to be when both you and your conversation partner are grounded in the Adult Ego State.
In a Fair Conversation you have your Parts collected, your Survival Strategies made optional, and your available resources available in a Centered, Grounded, Bubbled, small NOW Present to contribute. You have your Attention, your Conscious Will, your Nonlinear imagination, your Unreasonability, your 7 Core Skills, your 13 Tools, your Conscious Gremlin, your Bright Principles, your Archetypal Lineage. Then you creatively collaborate in a Winning Happening game, often by Negotiating 5 Body Intimacy Journeys.
We define an 'UNFAIR CONVERSATION' to be when one of the conversation partners is NOT in the Adult Ego State.
Where are they if they are not in the Adult Ego State? They have so many channels to choose from!
- Zombie (unaware of the values of the gameworld they play in, e.g. police, military, government, corporation, school, etc.)
- Low Drama (victim, persecutor, rescuer).
- Parent Ego State (rules, beliefs, dogma).
- Child Ego State.
- Gremlin Ego State.
- Demon Ego State.
- Story World.
- Being Adaptive.
- Survival Strategy.
- Being identified with one of their Box's Parts.
What do you do in an Unfair Conversation? You have many options. All of them are unfair.Why should you make the effort to remain in the Adult Ego State when the other person does not? The answer is simple and incontrovertible: BECAUSE YOU CAN.Does this mean that the other person CANNOT? Not necessarily. The deduction (true until proven wrong) is that if the other person could feel the pain of not being in the Adult Ego State with you, they would automatically do whatever it takes to do so. Since they are not making the effort, they cannot.Again, what can you do to navigate the Unfair Conversation? It seems from many perspectives to be insane.We define an 'INSANE CONVERSATION' to be when neither conversation partner is grounded in the Adult Ego State. This circumstance can only manifest as Low Drama Armageddon, a Gremlin feeding frenzy... in other words, a war.
If you are ever in any kind of emotional, energetic, intellectual, or physical war, this is what is going on.
What can you do then? Take the space into breakdown.
How can you do that? The answer to this is Wizard technology, but I will tell you anyway, just in case you are a Wizard and you need to know:
- Use your Red Cloth.
- Use your Disk Of Nothing.
- Have a Do-Over.
- Take yourself into breakdown (a Liquid State).
- Pull The Rug Out. Enter the Nothingness together.
- Do a 3 hour Rage Club.
- Apply a Crack In Certainty Process.
- Have a Metaconversation.
- Agree with the Zombie perspective.
- Create a Vacuum Learning Space.
- Do the Phoenix Process.
- Go vertically up the Space elevator with your Jakobs Ladder.
- Appreciate their qualities of Being.
- Beg them to speak to you in Radical Honesty.
- Do the Poop On The Table process with them.
- Go Nonlinear into a different Story World.
- Shift the Context of the conversation.
- Look at what you are each looking with.
- Etc.
This Experiment is to get in groups of 3 (for example at your online-or-offline Possibility Team), one person is the 'Possibilitator' who stays in connection and stays in the Unfair position of remaining in the Adult Ego State, one person is the 'Client' who realistically goes into Reactivity (Possibilitator chooses if they want Low Intensity Reactivity, Medium Intensity Reactivity, or High Intensity Reactivity from the Client), and one person is the Coach who Holds Space for this Experiment and coaches the Possibilitator as you go along. Do this Experiment 3 times (15-20 minutes each time) so that each person gets to play in each of the 3 roles.
Detect The Sensations Of Reactivity
Matrix Code: REACTIVI.04
Immediately identify and name it out loud by saying "This is a Low Drama," in the instant any situation enters the domain of Low Drama. Use your Low Drama Detector (Rrrrrrrrrr! Rrrrrrrr!) to publicly identify Low Dramas:
- In yourself.
- In the Space.
- In any interaction.
- In any avoidance of interaction.
- In the Context of the Gameworld.
If the distinctions of Radical Responsibility, Low Drama/High Drama, Gremlin, Emotions/Feelings, the Map of Reactivity, evolution of consciousness, etc. are not solidly established in the Context of the Gameworld, then it is a Gremlin Gameworld.
What are YOU doing there? Take it into breakdown.
Use Your Sword Of Clarity: Set Adult Context
Matrix Code: REACTIVI.05
If is not an Adult or Archetypal conversation, then it is a Reactivity conversation.
Then no Fair conversation possible.
The only conversation to have in a Reactivity Space is these 3 Questions. We suggest you memorize them:
- Which 'I' is speaking? (Is it Adult? Your Box? Your Gremlin? Your Mother (or Father)? Your Society Thoughtware? Your Religion's Thoughtware? Etc.)
- Are you experiencing a Feeling or an Emotion? (If it is Reactivity is is an Emotion, a precious gateway to an Emotional Healing Process.)
- By when and with whom will you do this Emotional Healing Process to regain your access to Adulthood and Presence? (Clear time and date for the Process.)
Remember, your Sword Of Clarity has two edges.These 3 QUESTIONS apply to YOU first and foremost!
Go Possibility Couchsurfing
Matrix Code: REACTIVI.06
After being in Expand The Box training, register yourself at http://possibilitycouchsurfing.mystrikingly.com and plan your next journey so that you can visit several Possibility Managers from different cities, states, countries and cultures. Before you begin your travels, explain to your host that you are doing Experiment REACTIVI.05 from StartOver.xyz and that your intention is to avoid ALL Reactivity from Buttons, Hooks, Triggers, Traumas, Voices, or Imbalances while you are visiting with them. Make a Pirate Agreement with them to help each other do whatever it takes so you fulfill your intention. Write down your Self Observations in your Beep! Book.
Practice Exchanging Emotional Healing Processes With Your Team
Matrix Code: REACTIVI.07
One of the most amazing possibilities of regularly participating in online-or-offline Team meetings (such as Study Group, S.P.A.R.K. Experiment Circle, Research Team, Possibility Team, Whole Permaculture Team, Rage Club, Fear Club, 3 Cell, Safe Circle, Riftwalker Team, Edgeworker Team, Growness Team, Trainer Path Team, Whole Permaculture Team, New Refugees Circle, Village Seeds Circle, Earth Guardians Circle, Village Weavers Circle, Evolutionaries Circle, Gameworld Builders Circle, Possibility Coaches Circle, Possibility Mediators Circle, Possibility Psychologists Circle, Memetic Engineers Circle, Mage Training Circle, etc. ) is for a period of from 2 to 4 weeks, arrange with a small sub-Team of 4 or 5 co-members that WHENEVER an emotion arises, you immediately call up 2 of them so they can Navigate the appropriate Emotional Healing Process for you.
What helps both you and them be more skilled and prepared to benefit from Emotional Healing Process includes:
- 4 Feelings.
- 4 Emotions.
- Inner Navigating.
- Holding Space.
- Navigating Space.
- Learning about your 5 Bodies.
- Owing your Gremlin.
- Completion Loops.
- Golden Keys.
- Taking possession and practicing using your 13 Tools.
- Etc. (meaning, many of the StartOver.xyz resources help).
Nothing will substitute for your own healing and personal development. No one can do it for you. No one can stop you from doing it. Yes... it involves doing something different.
