Transference: Catch the Feeling

I’ve known feelings are contagious since I was at least a teenager. My mood affects others, and the closer someone is to me, the more they are affected. And vice versa. This has caused a funny issue lately. I’ve appeared moody to others recently, and this is because I am partly shifted out of victim mode and partly still stuck in it. Sadness, anger, fear and other “negative” emotions appear within me unchecked, as they used to, but now there comes a point where I make a conscious choice whether to continue the emotion or let it go. When I sink deep into the emotion and stop the story around it, inevitably the energy of the feeling dissipates and disappears. This leaves me in peace and with calm and easy joy.

To others, this just looks like perpetual PMS. The issue this creates is that my nearest and dearest are on this ebb and flow with me, unbeknownst to them. I feel like a puppet master. I stomp around in crankyville and eventually, my husband is reacting in that same energy space and if given enough time, so are my children. I move out of crankyness, and they’re still stuck in it. Some more time in my joyful energy and they move out of it with me. And the cycle goes on.

Years ago I read a book by David Snarch called Passionate Marriage and I hold much respect for his important work. In it he discusses differentiation. He says it is a key to a successful relationship, to be able to be in your partner’s space and not take on his/her moods. It sounds logical, which these days automatically causes me to squint with suspicion because logic relies on the mind, and the mind is subject to boundaries.

On closer inspection it begs the question, if transference is unnatural then why does it come so naturally? If energy is not meant to jump from one particle, atom, organism to the next then it wouldn’t. But it does. At the same time, that does not mean it is meant to be, just that it doesn’t automatically mean it isn’t meant to be. And those were a lot of double negatives right there.

I am half of the happiest highly functioning relationship I’ve ever known in real life (I’ve seen some amazing relationships in movies, I must admit), and we have transference and very little differentiation. Is it a part of the magic, or part of the imperfection? Can’t be sure. I do know that if I am sad, it’s nicer when those I love are not quick with a joke and instead seem mournful and concerned.

I think we are most comfortable when others mirror us. It helps solidify our reality, allows us to perpetuate our story which perpetuates our emotions. However, I am not sure it is necessary to actually feel the emotion the other person is feeling, but to approach it from a place of compassion. Compassion for me often meant searching my soul files for experiences that matched what the person was feeling so I could catch their wavelength. Now, I see that it does not necessarily mean suffering with, but is an awareness of their suffering.

The Substancelessness of Emotion

I was “having a moment”, uh, you know… cranky, irritated and pissy. I could give you the reasons why but really, what pisses me off might turn you on, and that’s the illusory fact of emotion – emotion relies on a story to stay alive. My story of woe may be your story of a day in paradise so the triggers are irrelevant. I was frowning and crashing pans around while getting the potatoes out of the oven; I thundered through dinner and then sat in a pile of self indulgent pissyness outside while my son had his post dinner toddlerish frolic. This small window of not-much-to-do gave me time to inquire.

I’m shitty, I’m irritated and it’s XYZ’s fault, if only they’d blah blah blah. I chose that moment to STOP the thoughts, the self talk, and dive, head first, into the emotion, into the chaos of it.

The thoughts were actually keeping me distant from the emotion, that was my first whammy. No one told me to expect that. I’m on my own, I realised. I’m discovering this for myself.

Without the thoughts about why I was pissy, I had no choice but to BE pissy, to truly sit and experience pissy. Not act it out. Not repress it. Not express it. Just experience it.

From early childhood until the age of 35 I didn’t feel or express anger very much.  I had it bottled into me by parents, out of love and concern, who did not like to see anger or sadness in their children. It hurts to see your children hurting, and the unchecked feedback is to stop them, not realising that they aren’t stopping the emotion, just the expression of it.  If only it was as easy as “hey, stop being angry”, then we’d all be free!  We kid ourselves with our children, thinking that when we make them stop crying or yelling we’ve healed them.  HA!  Mass cultural self delusion.

The birth of my children had lessons for me, my son’s appearance brought with it lessons in rage.  Woah boy, and wasn’t that fun.  Rage is different to anger, I found, but with the same foundation.  That’s the price you pay for a lifetime of suppressed anger.

I felt fear of anger, I felt I would lose control and maybe even hurt someone… so the fear kept me from really feeling it and instead “acting” it, as we all do. And I am gooooood. I have a great huffy face, and have perfected the door slam.

I chose to know this feeling for once. At first, I felt like I was sinking into it, and I literally felt it physically, moving upwards from my stomach, lurching, so I sank deeper into it, I was ready, “C’mon!” I said, “let’s DO this, mother fUCKer!” and I’m sitting there and this feeling is shaking along and…

… holy bananas, I had to FORCE myself to stay irritated.

Without the thoughts about the people who were “causing” my irritation, without any of the thoughts around it, the irritation DID NOT EXIST.

The emotion required the thoughts to exist. As I grappled with this I fumbled around looking for the pissyness, I conjured mental images to trigger it again but it was too late, my mind had been shifted slightly off kilter.

Wind affects the tree, but wind is not the tree; when the wind stops, the tree goes on.

I started laughing. I couldn’t help it. Like a lunatic I’m sitting there giggling away at the simplicity, the nearness, and at the pureness of emptiness; I was empty of fabricated emotion and this left only joy. A kind of joy, and I long for a decent English word to describe it. My son toddled over and giggled and put his head in my lap, needing no explanation. Adults in the vicinity, not so much; but how can I tell them? WHAT can I tell them? And I started laughing again.