Phase 2: Trouble praising myself for aha moments

[MarcusMember]

Meditation, or, rather, trying to follow directions in meditation books, has made me realize why I’ve stumbled so often with self-help and therapy: it often relies on self talk.

“The Mind Illuminated” and other meditation books/coaches tell you to “pat yourself on the back” or “congratulate yourself for noticing,” because the positive feedback trains your brain to pay attention to this sort of mental activity.

But I don’t think in words. Apparently, lots of people do. They have sentences or phrases in their heads. Unless I’m writing or talking to another person, I don’t have words in mine.

I also don’t think of myself as a person that I can talk to, congratulate, or pat on the back. That’s as alien to me as being able to see the back of my head in a mirror.
When I’m happy, I don’t feel as if I am happy; I feel like happiness. When I’m sad, I feel like sadness. Most of the time, my focus is external, so I don’t feel like anything. I’m whatever task I’m doing.

I try to follow the directions. I notice my mind has wandered, and I awkwardly force myself to think the words “Good job.” (It takes effort for me to imagine words.) It’s awkward, because I’m not used to thinking in words. But even when I do, it doesn’t feel as if I’m praising myself. It feels as if I am the one doing the praising, and I’m praising no one–as if I’m standing in an empty room, saying “Good job” to the air.

I have some sense of having praised, but I have no sense of being praised. I don’t understand how I can be both the sender and the receiver of a message.
I’ve never understood people like Bob Dole who talk about themselves in the third person. Does he actually have a model of himself in his mind as a person who he can talk about and talk to? That’s totally alien to me.

Someone reading this might be tempted to say “It’s okay if you don’t use words. Just congratulate yourself using mentalese–or whatever mental language that’s natural to you. Congratulate yourself using feelings if you want.”

But that doesn’t make sense to me, because I really have no sense, ever, of talking to myself in any language. Who is the me that is supposed to receive the messages?

Thoughts and feelings feel as if they just happen. I have never in my life praised myself–in words or any other way. I nod my head when people say “Pat yourself on the back,” but I don’t really know what they mean. I have no idea how to do that.
So much therapy seems to assume this is a natural ability: “Tell yourself that …” “Give yourself credit for …” “Say to yourself …” “Stop chastising yourself…” “Ask yourself …”

When I do something good, sometimes a happy feeling comes over me, but it never feels as if I’m telling myself “Good job!” I also never feel that I’m beating myself up or berating myself. It just feels as if a bad feeling descends on me. Or that I am the bad feeling.

I’ve never felt authorship of my thoughts. I can’t even imagine what it would feel like to feel authorship of pure thoughts.
The only time I feel authorship is when I externalize: when I talk or write. And I have to have a target who is not me. I have a trick I do when I need to write and I don’t have an audience. I write in an email app. I pretend whatever I’m writing is an email to a specific friend, and, then, before I post it anywhere, I edit out his name. If I try to write “to myself,” there’s no one to write to.

Maybe I should pretend that a friend is meditating and tell him “Good job!”

I have a relatively easy time at the meditation tasks: focus on the breath… if you notice the mind has wandered, return the focus to the breath … But the self talk is bewildering me.

[Blake BartonKeymaster]

Hi Marcus,

It sounds like you may be having some experiences of no-self. When attention moves away from the meditation object, do you feel an unpleasant sensation? If not, then you may not need the mental “pat on the back”.

If you do feel an unpleasant sensation, you can try generating a positive feeling (emotion) in your body without using any words. This can be done through an intention or by putting a small smile upon your face.

Another thing that might be useful for you to experiment with is to use the thought stream as a meditation object. For most people, thoughts manifest as either an internal image, or internal words or phrases. Emotions are usually a combination of image or talk and sensations in the body.

When you meditate on thoughts it helps to use mental noting to avoid getting lost in content. When an image arises note “seeing” silently to yourself. If talk arises (clear or vague), note “hearing”. If neither arises note “rest”, because your mind is in a restful state.

Hope this helps,
Blake – Dharma Treasure Teacher

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