Obligatory Preamble: Blog posts are NOT a substitute
for therapy. If you need therapy, please find a competent counselor and get
therapy. A couple of times over the years, I’ve had the unfortunate experience
of receiving emails from a few readers who apparently were trying to use
BW-centric blogs as a substitute for therapy (and were very resistant and
deeply resentful of my suggestion that they get counseling). No, just NO to anybody trying to use blogs as
a substitute for counseling.
This post is only intended for those readers who are
already functioning pretty well in life. If you’re not functioning reasonably well,
then you should get professional help with that. There’s no shame in getting
therapy when you need it. That’s what it’s there for. I’ll add that everybody
who needs therapy should take advantage of clinical services while they’re
still available. In an age of global economic decline, professional therapeutic
services are not going to be around forever.
Furthermore, retreating into religious fanaticism (a favorite
tactic for many African-American women) is usually not helpful when it comes to
long-term functioning. Religious zeal can carry people over a “hump” and
through an immediate crisis, but religious fanaticism tends to entrench a very low
level of overall functioning among African-American religious zealots.
I’ll say it the blunt way: AA versions of religious
zeal (no matter which monotheistic religion - Islam, Christianity, or Judaism) can
be useful for numbing emotional pain, but they lead to most AA believers
leading ineffective, LOW-impact, LOW-success lives. I’m just calling it as I
see it. It doesn't have to be this way. But it usually is. Because in the absence of a major intervention (such as authentic BWE-type consciousness-raising), AAs take our mass cultural dysfunctions into everything we do.
Every life has its share of “rainy days.” One of the
inevitable features of middle-age is dealing with the illness and death of one’s
elders. Grief is just one of those things that everybody is forced to deal with
(and learn to work through) at some point during their lives. Grief is one
thing.
An unhelpful or outright negative pattern
of emotional impact is something else. I felt as if the repeated family
issues and dynamics associated with multiple older relatives’ infirmity and
passing were creating unwelcome emotional echoes in my own life. I would compare
the sensation to looking up and suddenly realizing that you had been absentmindedly
tapping your foot to the beat of a song playing in the background. A song you dislike
that happens to be on heavy rotation on the radio. ‘Nuff said about that.
Anyhoo, I’m always on the lookout for tips,
techniques and what I call “emotional technology” that can help
self-actualizing AABW. Today’s featured piece of emotional technology is the
technique called revision.
“Dwelling on past irritations or hurts perpetuates them and creates a vicious circle that serves to confirm these negative emotions. The circle can be broken by starting now to revise anything that you no longer wish to sustain in your world. By revising the past, you rid yourself of any effect it may have on your future. Revision is truly the key, which can be used to unlock the doors that have kept you trapped in a particular state. Be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind.” – Neville Goddard
I’ll note for the record that I strongly dislike
most of the New Age material that I encounter. For a variety of reasons. Furthermore,
I typically HATE anything that calls itself “occult.” {shudder} Yes, I’m one of those religious
believer Black folks that has an aversion to that type of stuff.
Be that as it may, I can take what’s useful from an
information source (a mental technique for taking the sting out of negative
memories and experiences) and leave the rest of it all the way ALONE. So,
keeping this in mind, here are links to a couple of articles and a related podcast about
revision:
About Mr Twenty Twenty (the guest featured on the
podcast listed above)—I’ll note that this is a WM who has been through and survived some heavy duty mess—being held hostage during a prison riot when he
was a correctional officer.
One of the many things I tend to dislike about the
middle-class White folks preaching New Age stuff is that you can tell they’ve
never had any serious problems. So they’ve never had to put their professed beliefs to the test of helping them prevail over a REAL crisis. Airy-fairy stuff is insufficient for thriving despite the future that's coming down the pike. I'm only interested in techniques that have helped people THRIVE (not just survive) and prevail over extremely challenging circumstances.
In the past I've warned AABW to get ready for the various things I've predicted. Bit by bit, these various things I've predicted have started to happen. Be that as it may, none of this has to affect you—that is, as long as you've disconnected from Blackistan and have attached yourself to healthier people and environments in the outer world.
Ladies, Get Ready to Thrive!
