Posted by Larry Hoover on August 26, 2004, at 9:46:54
In reply to A question please? For any/every one, posted by Dinah on August 23, 2004, at 18:39:52
> I'm still processing, but I have a preliminary question.
>
> Does being fake require more energy? It's as easy as falling off a log for me. It's keeping access to my emotions open that is enormously difficult. Give me something to read, or a piece of work to concentrate on, and those emotions are gone and not to be seen again unless I really work at it.
>
> Is the usual experience the other way round?Every way I try to give an answer to that question, I end up thinking about so many different factors that make my answer valid or not.....
The ability to move off into the realm of superficiality is not necessarily overtly an effort. In fact, I think it can be just like a habit, something you just tend to do, having learned it as a coping strategy some time in the past. The cost of doing so still exists....the cost in losing the true self....but it's like dissociation, to move away from feeling because the self is vulnerable.
I've heard it said that such people, those who live in the superficial, are human doings, not human beings.
When people habitually smoke tobacco, they're well aware of the cost of doing so, but it's easier to do it than to try and stop. It seems like a contradiction, but it's not. The cost, in "health units" this time, increases and remains at that increased level, the longer the "easier" path is taken.
So, what I'm trying to suggest is that the effort (in terms of cost, and the work required to undo the cost) is really not evident until one begins the journey back towards self-care. Before that, denial is the blinding force. You can't see the cost, because you don't want to look there.
Once you start to see what the true cost is, you can't unlook at it. You're on the path towards the center, and you can't go back to denial (OK, you can, but I think sanity itself goes away with that diversion). Since you can't go back, it might make sense to move along that path, as you're able.
Lar
poster:Larry Hoover
thread:380351
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/psycho/20040821/msgs/382505.html