In touch with your feelings

It sure is fine and dandy to be in touch of your feelings. It is great to express them,not suppress them.

But do you know if they are your true emotions or just a script (reactive behaviour pattern, or demons as they used to call them) sitting in you and jerking you around. You think that you are so in love and can't live without this person, but in fact it is that whimpering little boy or girl in you that your Dad did not hug enough when you were small so now you are looking for just anyone who will satisfy that craving, fill in that void inside you. You pick on on those clues - that you are not even consciously aware of - choose you victim and pounce down on them.

You sure be better off not giving voice to that trapped negative emotion, because it is not you and it won't be you speaking if you let it speak and, in all likelihood, it won't be saying anything nice! So keep a lid on it and work it out on your own. Don't bring this voice to your nice relationship meal!

Relationship is like a meal

'What we look for in a relationship?' a friend asked me today.

For me it starts at the other end: not what you are looking for in a relationship but what you have to bring to the table and share with the other one.

It's like a meal: you share nice stuff, not your waste. You also need to find someone who will like what you have to share. You also would not like someone who brings their waste to the table. It's perfectly alright to want to have nice things for your meal, right?

It should not be the other diner's responsibility to gut, scale and cook your fish - bring a nicely seared medium tuna steak! Cook your own contribution well, don't assume cooking the other's offering as your responsibility, although you may want to help if you see they are struggling.

You also may want to make sure that what you bring does not cause allergies or indigestion in the other. That's what we call caring.

You don't need to bring the same stuff, we all are different. One can bring the starter, the main and the cheese, the other - the soup, the wine and the dessert. What matters is that you have a complete meal that both find satisfying.

When both parties understand these ground rules, it makes for a perfect relationship. I would think this all is but wishful thinking if I didn't know a couple who are exactly like that: Dusko and Mack, I'm talking about you guys, you're such a beautiful couple inside out! In the last two years, they have treated me to dozens of wonderful meals and now I know the meaning of that.

Games we play in relationships: narcissist and co-dependent

There is a very old Russian joke: What is a perfect couple? - A sadist and a masochist.

How very true: they must be inseparable, both fulfilling each other's needs. On the flipside, it is a very destructive relationship, akin to that of a dealer and a drug addict. They are stuck in pressing each other's pleasure buttons: the need to abuse and the need to be abused (remember that Eurythmics song?), the need for money and the need for drugs.

There are millions of couples around us like that, maybe even us - not as dramatic as the sadomasochist couple but very similar in essence. We all tend to take account only of our actions and emotions without examining the cause of them, be on the effect side, like my favourite coach Phillippa Mole says.

A very common pattern is a relationships where one party is narcissistic and the other is co-dependent. The latter wants to be loved for all wrong reasons: for example because they were emotionally rejected by a parent and now they try to re-create that relationship and make good for what happened in the past but this time around with someone else. There is an element of thriving on rejection in that, because all too often, what the co-dependent is striving to recreate is that very unhealthy relationship with their parent(s). Despite aspiring for love, the codependent subliminally (because all this happens as all parties involved are jerked around like marionettes by their unrealised behaviour patterns and urges) does everything to be rejected once again. In other words,s/he falls into the same script, because it was never brought up to the conscious mind and analysed for what it is.

In terms of transactional analysis, the co-dependent's script is "I'm not okay, you're okay". No surprise then, that the complementary party to this would have the "I'm okay, you're not okay" script, which is that narcissistic person who thrives on rejecting love and emotion. The underlying cause of that can be a previous trauma (emotional rejection) or an inherited pattern from an "I'm okay, you're not okay" parent who was perceived to be in the winner's position.

I have seen people for whom this (the narcissist script) was a self-defence mechanism against low self-esteem - they would project their insecurities on others, thus justifying their self-worth. Although they may appear to be riding the high horse, in fact, they are perpetuating a loser's script.

Deep inside, a narcissist would crave love but on the outside s/he would find pleasure in denying it to the other, just like someone before did it to them. That often leads to a "bad cop/good cop in one ball" script, where the narcissist alternates attracting and rejecting the co-dependent. That, in its turn, attracts the co-dependent because it fulfils their both urges: for love and for rejection. First s/he get a hope of love and then s/he gets the huge emotional kick of rejection. That scenario keeps both parties interminably busy with pressing each other's "pleasure buttons" (and pleasure is not joy!).

It is a very detrimental pattern because the energies here are wasted on re-confirming the neuropaths of deriving pleasure from negative stimuli: neediness, trauma, rejection, and emotional deprivation. Both parties thwart each other's emotional and all other kind of development because essentially they are busy recreating negative scenarios from the past over and over again.

How do you break from that? It is hard to see beyond the surface of what we do and are when we are embroiled in the very midst of a eddy of emotional bonds. Like I said before, we tend to look at the surface of things and events without trying to see what they mean. When you see that something in your relationship does not work, especially if it repeats time after time again, sit down and ask yourself why, or even better have someone else do it for you, a good therapist, for example - so keep asking yourself why until you get to the bottom of things.

Eric Berne's Games People Play can provide a good insight into how it all works. Also have a look at the Obssesive Love Wheel and see how much you can relate to it.

So is there a hope? Sure there is: a healthy relationship is like a good shared meal and is realistically attainable.

What is happiness?

There is that (very beautiful) Russian lady Professor at Stanford University who is conducting this well-funded research on what happiness is. Hm, how very Russian, indeed! She has been all over TV in the States and, in her opinion, or so I gathered, happiness boils down to these:

• gratitude
• contentment
• the ability to step outside yourself for others' sake
• humility

How very true. However in her research, I see no separation between joy and pleasure, which are very different. Pleasure is a sensation, fleeting as its nature behoves it. Joy is a more sustainable state of mind and is the gate to happiness.

Wisdom and humility

We all are on our own quests, different for every one. It is impossible to make decisions or dispense advice to others as per to what direction they should go in life or how they should improve themselves, or what they should think or do. God operates in mysterious ways and it is not up to a mere mortal to know what the other person's goal and meaning in life is.

Unless, someone comes and asks you for a piece of advice or help. You can then share whatever wisdom you have acquired for yourself, and that will be just your contribution to that person's making their own informed decision. Our own experience really matters just to ourselves. Hence the eternal problem of parents and children, when the latter won't listen to what the former say, because really we all need to gain on our own that empirical knowledge, which is true wisdom, as opposed to intellectual knowledge, which is just acquired wisdom, that we may agree with because it sounds logical but can never internalise because we have never actually experienced it.

See, humility is an indispensable part of wisdom, without humility wisdom is but spiritual arrogance.

Material and spiritual planes: are they in conflict?

Funny, someone told me just that the other day that I really sound like a monk who lives in the mountains on a different plane of existence. To which I replied that I may embrace lofty views and spiritual pursuits but I still enjoy my tailored pants, swish shoes, fancy dinners, nice travels and of course, some cock.

Those two planes of existence do not conflict with each other at all. Au contraire, they just influence each other in a very profound way and they are not separate, they exist in the same time and place, like the material surface and the spiritual depth of events, things, people and their actions. They both are important, they can't exist with one another, but just on their own they are quite meaningless too. Embracing both gives you true wisdom.

When you just see the material, you miss out on the meaning of what you see, because the meaning of things and events is never on the surface. But if you only see the meaning but never embrace the material, you end up with spiritual arrogance, that denies the beauty and enjoy of God's creation. Both extremities are detrimental.

Optimists and pessimists

It's funny: people who bitch the most about life are those who are most afraid of death, while those who love and enjoy life, don't really mind leaving this world when the time comes.

Pity and compassion

Pity is a very destructive emotion. Everything done out of pity eventually destroys both sides.

Compassion has nothing to do with pity. Despite the origin of the word: con-passion (felling together, felling for), it is only true when clear of emotional involvement. The latter knocks you off your peace of mind and bogs you down in the other person's misery. Compassion is an understanding of the other person's plight that, in its turn, triggers the will to help them. Empathy is this case would be detrimental.