Tag: Neurosis

FIML as art

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FIML practice can be seen as a dynamic work of art engaged in by two (or more) people. FIML practice works very well in the moment and it builds on itself by providing many moments of clarity and understanding.

FIML practice creates and defines a history of self-discovery that practitioners can share and enjoy. Since this history is based on good, clear data and since input into it is entirely up to the practitioners themselves, FIML liberates the mind from conformance to received ideas, semiotics, styles, symbols, behaviors, and so forth. FIML gives us the tool we need to freely create the relationships we want to have without illusions and without social and neurotic constraints.

FIML practice can be thought of as a sort of interpersonal performance art. By doing it, we create insights and understandings in each other’s minds. FIML liberates us from the conventional and/or habitual behaviors and interpretations that have dominated and clouded our thoughts.

FIML can only be done with another person. The person you choose to do it with is already special to you. Ideally, you already love them. Do FIML with love and understanding. FIML is a tool to make art within and between your minds.

A few links that may help readers understand FIML

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Training in ‘Concrete Thinking’ Can Be Self-Help Treatment for Depression, Study Suggests

This article is about how a technique called “concrete thinking” can help people with depression. FIML does something similar, but on steroids. Partners work only with concrete data–that which has been spoken or indicated within the prior few seconds.

Anxiety/uncertainty management

This links to a Wikipedia article on uncertainty. FIML practice recognizes that human existence is replete with uncertainties we cannot remove. We can, though, remove uncertainty in our communication with our partner.

Cognitive-bias modification to help alcoholics stay sober

This article shows a way that alcoholics can learn to modify a cognitive bias that makes them more susceptible to booze than non-alcoholics. This study relates to FIML in that it shows all of us that we can manage and change how we react to stimuli. This can help with FIML practice because we need to learn to react differently to our partners when something they say causes us to feel a jangle. Rather than become emotional, we want to learn to stop the conversation and do a FIML inquiry.

I just had the links above bookmarked and thought they might be helpful. I will add more as I find them.

More random notes on FIML

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  • Neuroses (kleshas, ongoing mistaken interpersonal interpretations) have a sort of ghostly power because they contain large dramatic components. We understand them in similar ways to how we understand people. Neuroses are like ghosts in our minds or superstitions. We treat them like personality traits and invent histories for them. We give them far more power than they deserve because we do not know how to get rid of them.
  • Neuroses can be thought of as a kind of super-level of language that defines chunks of speech or that interprets speech in a dramatic way. Neuroses are automatic interpretations that define how we use and understand language.
  • Once neuroses gain a life of their own, they are difficult to eradicate through traditional methods. If we meditate on them, we often increase their power. If we do a psychological investigation into their origins, we may similarly increase their power and rarely eradicate them. If we calmly deal with them during the dynamic moment by using FIML techniques with our partner, we will unhook them (the repository of them in memory or in our autobiography) from the dynamic moment. When we unhook a neurosis, or disentangle ourselves from it, it is as if we stop feeding a ghost.
  • Our minds are very efficient. If you can show your own mind (with the help of your partner) that your neurotic interpretation is a mistake, and if you can do this several times with the same neurosis, your mind will begin to forget that neurosis. It will stop using it because it can see that that interpretation is wrong.
  • With just a few good FIML examples, most neuroses will disappear. You may still retain a tendency to interpret things in that way, but a quick FIML query will stop the avalanche of neurotic feelings that had characterized your reactions in the past.
  • If we want to grow and learn, we must be able to change.
  • Deep change usually involves changing how we understand ourselves, changing our mental autobiography.
  • Deep change usually occurs due to interactions with other people.
  • We can achieve deep, satisfying change with our partner if we do FIML practice with them.
  • FIML frees partners from static and mistaken interpretations of each other. FIML allows us to change what we have said or heard and explain why. It helps us admit mistakes and explain how they occurred. It allows us to correct wrong interpretations in our own mind and in the mind of our partner.
  • Having a partner in FIML helps us check our work. If we spend long hours in solitary contemplation, we may still have no way to be sure we have reached sound conclusions. With a partner, we will be able to contemplate ourselves in a dynamic setting that also includes contemplation of our partner. We will both grow faster if we grow together.

Random notes on FIML

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Sometimes things become clearer when we have just a bit of information, or several small bits. A single detail can sometimes make us perceive the whole in ways we had not before–we may notice connections we had not noticed or recall pertinent memories that had been submerged. I hope the following short notes will be helpful in this way.

  • When we speak to someone, we speak to what we think is in their mind. FIML practice helps us know with much greater accuracy what is in the mind of the person we are speaking to.
  • FIML helps us avoid the worry of wondering if our partner is bothered by something we said (or did) because we know that if they are, they will bring it up.
  • FIML allows far more leeway in how we speak to our partner. It allows us to speak creatively and exploratorily with our partner. We can speak tentatively without the need for strongly expressed conclusions. We can share doubt, wonder, uncertainty with our partner.
  • Our minds are dynamic processes. FIML helps us access the dynamism of our minds in the moment with our partner. We can share and communicate dynamic states without clinging to static interpretations.
  • Interpretations of what others say or of what we think they are saying are all too often static interpretations based on things that happened in the past. With FIML practice, by simply asking, we avoid making harmful or mistaken interpretations. There is no need to guess at what our partner means, and every reason not to.
  • If you wonder what your partner means but don’t ask, you will still make some sort of interpretation. If you don’t ask them because you think it might feel awkward, you are still making an interpretation and limiting your understanding of yourself and your partner.
  • Neuroses (ongoing mistaken interpretations) are fed in the moment. Conversations move quickly and are dynamic. If we withhold a FIML query from our partner, we will almost certainly feed one of our ongoing mistaken interpretations of them, we will strengthen our own neurosis and miss a chance for mutual liberation from it.
  • When we speak or listen, we all tend to be self-centered, in a neutral sense of the term. I don’t mean selfish here, but simply self-centered. When we listen, we tend to listen first of all to how our partner’s speech impacts us. Did I do something wrong? Did I do something right? Will that cost me energy or money? Does that refer to me somehow? Our fundamental self-centeredness  is based on being in a body and having a mental autobiography. There is nothing wrong with that unless we use it mistakenly as an integral part of our interpretation of what our partner is saying. If you are wondering if their comments are being directed, subtly or not, at you, just ask them. If you don’t ask, you will either come to a conclusion based on insufficient information or you will continue to wonder about what they said. In either case you will be wasting both your own energy and your partner’s. It’s always “cheaper” (more energy efficient, more truth efficient) to do a FIML query than to avoid it.
  • It’s always “cheaper” (more energy efficient, more truth efficient) to do a FIML query than to avoid it.

The Noble Eightfold Path and Functional Interpersonal Meta Linguistics (FIML): Part 5

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Right Speech: Once couples, partners, or close friends learn how to successfully do FIML practice, they will have enormous freedom of speech.

They will be able to speak to each other without fear of being misunderstood or wrongly judged. This is so because each person will know that if they say something that causes a jangle in the other, it will be brought up and resolved quickly. Who wants to be married to someone with whom we are afraid to speak our mind? Who wants to have to monitor their speech when they are at home with their partner? With successful FIML practice couples can enjoy a free-flowing, creative style of speaking whenever they are together.

Right Action: In Buddhism Right Action indicates harmless conduct or ethically sound conduct.

Just as our speech can be misunderstood and just as we may misunderstand words spoken to us, so our actions may be misinterpreted by our friends and loved ones. Misunderstandings based on actions can and should be addressed in FIML practice in a way that is similar to, but not exactly the same, as the ways we deal with speech misunderstandings.

Some of what we do is unconscious. Much of what is in our unconscious mind has been conditioned by the culture or subculture within which we were raised. It is not likely that any two people in this complex, modern world will have the same cultural responses to everything. Even two people raised in the same town will have some cultural differences. These might include family traditions (the family is a subculture), religious training, the kinds of friends they had or have, and so on. Some of these cultural influences are easily changed or adapted, but some are more stubborn. Cultural influences condition our actions.

Here is an example of a stubborn cultural difference I share with my SO. I come from a subculture that requires “multiple-offering”. This subculture uses multiple offering as a way of communicating feelings or negotiating what to do next, among other things. My SO was formed in a subculture that does “single-offerings.” In her subculture, if she wants to communicate her feelings or negotiate what to do next, she can just say it.

Put very simply, multiple-offering means when you invite someone or offer them food or something else, you usually have to do it several times. And if food or something else is being offered to you, you can’t just say, yes, give me some. You have to be a little demure or even refuse until it is offered a time or two more. Supposedly, in Kyoto, Japan, you must refuse an offer three times before accepting it. In my subculture, there is not such a specific requirement, but you do have to wobble a little and be reoffered at least once or twice in many/most cases. If you don’t, it seems cold or even rude.

In the single offering subculture within which my SO was raised, there is nothing as confusing as this. If someone offers you some food, you take it and say thanks if you want it. If you don’t want it, you say no thanks. It’s a great system, but one in which someone like me will go hungry.

Anyway, what we have noticed about these cultural differences is they are really deeply entrenched in us. I do multiple-offering quite subconsciously with great regularity in a wide variety of situations. I do it so often, my SO can even become mildly irritated with me, or at least she used to; now she understands how it looks from my point of view. On the flip side, she almost never does multiple-offering with me. You get one chance to jump at something and if you pass it up, you won’t get any. I used to feel that her system was pretty cold, but now I understand that it is very rational and direct, two qualities I admire. In her subculture, people negotiate feelings differently and probably more efficiently and effectively than in mine.

These ingrained cultural sensibilities that affect speech and behavior are actions. To be Right about these Actions, we don’t have to change them since neither system is harmful or unethical. All we have to do is understand that we each feel differently about them. Once we understand that, these culturally ingrained actions can play themselves out while we can find them amusing, even fascinating sometimes.

Some of our actions we can change, but some we cannot change easily. With FIML practice we should be able to figure out when cultural differences are causing misunderstandings and how to deal with them. What we have noticed about ours is some of them can and should change to be more ethically sound or more based on wisdom, but others of them can be left alone to be enjoyed as harmless artifacts of the conditioning (karma) we received in the past.

The Noble Eightfold Path and Functional Interpersonal Meta Linguistics (FIML): Part 4

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Right Speech: A great deal of Buddhist literature emphasizes the importance of Right Speech. In this post, I want to emphasize that for FIML practice right listening (or right hearing) is every bit as important. If we only pay attention to Right Speech, especially within an intimate relationship, we will very likely become sort of formal, wimpy, even dishonest, in what we say to each other.

When we do FIML practice we want be mindful both of what we say and what we hear.

Right Speech and right listening are based on Right View and Right Thought. The basic way that the Noble Eightfold Path is understood is that if our views are right, our thoughts will be right, and then Right Speech will follow from that. The problem with such a general statement, though, is that it does not take into account the many errors that can and do occur when people speak, gesture, make expressions, or listen to one another. A basic premise of FIML practice is that we frequently make errors when we speak and when we hear.

In this post, I am going to emphasize listening in relation to FIML practice because it is usually the listener who initiates a FIML query or discussion. And it is usually within the listener that a neurosis is stimulated.

To add a little background, in general terms, we can make a distinction between the limbic system of the human brain and the neocortex. The limbic system is associated with emotion, while the neocortex is associated with reasoning, conscious thought, and language. The day may come when neither of these two terms is considered useful by scientists, but they can serve us well enough for this discussion. When we have a limbic response, our heart rate often increases, we may experience a surge of adreniline, we will surely feel some sort of emotion rising within us.

In contrast to the limbic system, the neocortex is capable of observing our behavior objectively and without emotion. It is the neocortex that allows us to be mindful, to reflect on what we are doing or have done, and to make changes for the better. In FIML practice, we want to use our neocortex to help us quickly dissociate from our negative limbic responses. This means that the moment you hear your partner say something that causes a negative limbic response in you, you call on your neocortex to stop or slow that response while at the same time indicating to your partner that you want to begin a FIML query.

This may sound hard to do, and it can be difficult at first, but with a bit of practice both partners will get good at it. The main thing to understand is that we want to prevent our limbic repsonse from running away from us. If we call on the neocortex the moment we notice a limbic response rising in us, we will very likely succeed in halting that response and halting the customary neurotic thoughts and views that are associated with it.

Remember, in FIML practice, especially at first, we want to deal with very brief periods of time–just a few seconds. If your partner says something that causes you to have a limbic response and if you can identify that response immediately, there is not enough time for you to go into all the complaints and explanations you are used to. Your habitual neurotic thoughts, feelings, and stories will not have time within a few seconds to dominate your mind.

For example, if you hear what you think is derision in your partner’s voice and you feel an emotional jangle due to that tone of voice. Stop. Ask your partner without accusing them, without assuming anything else, what they just said. If their tone of voice was what caused a jangle in you, just ask them what were they thinking, why did they use that tone of voice. If you listen carefully to their answer and accept their explanation, you will almost always find that there was no derision at all in their mind. Maybe they were tired, maybe the subject (not you) seemed irritating, maybe you completely misheard them.

Once you succeed in doing this practice a few times with the same neurosis, you will discover that that neurosis will begin to lose its power. When you don’t feed it with yet another mistaken interpretation, it will begin to wither and die. The human mind is very efficient. If you can show it that there is a better way to think or do something and if your mind is convinced of that, it will change. So, when you show your mind through repeated FIML queries that one or more of its habitual interpretations (one or more of its neuroses) is clearly mistaken, your mind will abandon that wrong interpretation.

Communication Errors and Neurosis: Part 1

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Human communication requires us to fill in many blanks. When we speak with others, we are forced to make guesses about their intentions, choice of words, tone of voice, and more.

In most of our dealings with other people, there is not much we can do to change this. If we are in a store, we normally accept the context of being a customer buying something and expect little more from the salesperson than a pleasant demeanor and basic good manners. If we are the salesperson, we know that we have to offer those qualities and can only hope that our customers will reciprocate. If they are rude, there is little we can do.

No matter where we are, our speech and interactions with others are determined by the context. The context may be a doctor’s office, a bus stop, a hunting camp, a school, a store, or a floor of cubicles in a large corporation. When the context is public, professional, or otherwise well-defined, most of us do not have too much trouble conforming to expectations and playing our predetermined roles in a suitable manner.

When the context of our speech and behavior is more private, however, it also becomes less well-defined. Private interpersonal communications cannot rely on the public norms that support us in stores and offices. Our private lives require a different sort of communication from our public and professional lives.

During private or intimate communications, our need to make guesses about our companions’ intentions, choice of words, or tone of voice becomes both more significant and more difficult to do.

When we blindly fill in the blanks while communicating with a close companion or friend, we inevitably make mistakes. Moreover, the mistakes we make will tend to compound or snowball causing us to build up a consistent and mistaken understanding of our friend. Generally, these compounded mistakes will snowball along the same courses of mistakes we have made in the past. If we are insecure, we will tend to fill in the blanks with interpretations that confirm our insecurities.

What makes all of this even more problematical is our friend is forced to do the same thing with us. If you are insecure and start mistakenly withdrawing from them, they may start to believe you are being arrogant or cold due to their mistaken interpretation of you.

I want to emphasize that we are talking about mistakes here. In Functional Interpersonal Meta Linguistics (FIML), a neurosis is defined as an “ongoing mistaken interpretation.” Mistaken interpretations keep going on within us (and becoming neuroses) because we keep reconfirming them again and again by our mistaken interpretations of what our friends are saying to us. FIML is a method of correcting these kinds of mistakes and thereby of eliminating neuroses.

How many mistakes does it take to form a neurosis? I believe we can and often do start forming neuroses from as little as a single mistaken interpretation. Once the ball starts rolling down the hill in one direction, it will keep going in that direction.

How many mistaken interpretations do we form in a day? I believe we form many mistaken interpretations during any day that we interact with friends. Some of these mistaken interpretations will be positive and some negative. Most of them will seem normal to us or even pass by unnoticed.