Article: 1723 of alt.psychology From: Limerent Mollusk <"Zählt"@Iangefrauen.de> Newsgroups: alt.hypnosis,alt.psychology Subject: Re: Help me fall out of love Date: Sat, 12 Apr 2003 20:55:59 -0700 Organization: RDF Television: http://rdfmedia.com/ Lines: 343 Message-ID: <3E98DFCF.A7E9CAA0@rdfmedia.com> References: NNTP-Posting-Host: 9e.fc.dc.27 Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Server-Date: 13 Apr 2003 03:56:41 GMT X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.04 [en] (Win95; I) Path: news.meer.net!sea-read.news.verio.net!dfw-artgen!iad-peer.news.verio.net!news.verio.net!news.maxwell.syr.edu!newsfeed-west.nntpserver.com!hub1.meganetnews.com!nntpserver.com!newsfeed.news2me.com!newsfeed2.earthlink.net!newsfeed.earthlink.net!stamper.news.pas.earthlink.net!stamper.news.atl.earthlink.net!harp.news.atl.earthlink.net!not-for-mail Xref: archive.mv.meer.net alt.hypnosis:240 alt.psychology:1723 "John" wrote: > > > God, My life is so fucked up because of this girl. > But I blame myself. > > ---- > > - Marcus "If you love somebody set them free." (Sting) "The number one killer in the world today is not cancer or heart disease; it is repression. There is almost no disease, mental or physical, without repression. Repression is the hidden force behind illness". -- A. Janov "There is one neurosis - many manifestations - and one cure... feeling". "Feeling pain is the end of suffering". "Emotional Consciousness: How and Where We Process Feelings, The second line -- the 'affective level' or 'feeling mind' -- begins to develop at about the sixth month and continues into childhood. Over time, the infant relates to an ever-larger world than the breast and mother's cheek, establishing emotional attachments to parents, siblings, aunts and uncles, pets, coding feelings on the second-line. This is the level of feeling states, emotional memories, tears, tics, and stuttering. It can be musical, develop images, and appreciate poetry. It's also where the strange images found in children's drawings come from and, later, in the paintings of artists. The second-line connot do calculus, but it can dream and mix emotions with first-line sensation to form the guts and agony of experience. It can defend consciousness against the terror of a first-line trauma and attenuate the force of low-lying imprinted memory by converting the terror into fearful dreams with monsters trying to strangle us, or to a phobia of enclosed places. "The second-line encapsulates the sensations from the first-line. Under stress a child may develop a choking sensation. It is the first-line intruding on the second. A traumatic event such as incest which occurs at the age of four or five or six largely involves the second line, and the suffering, feeling component of Pain is stored on this level. When the second-line is in operation, the child has control of the muscles of the body wall, and with that comes the ability to be tense in those muscles to help block anxiety, which is, by and large, a first-line reaction. To be more specific, anxiety is the result of a combination of deep bodily turbulence with non-specific third-line cortical arousal. That means that specific deep Pain stimulates the cortex in a diffuse way so that the person feels all activated without knowing why. It feels bad, and we call it 'anxiety'. Once connected to real events and real scenes in the past it is no longer anxiety; it is consciously integrated deep memory.'" [...] -- Dr. Arthur Janov From: www.primaltherapy.com Repressed pain divides the self in two and each side wars with the other. One is the real self, loaded with needs and pain that are submerged; the other is the unreal self that attempts to deal with the outside world by trying to fulfill unmet needs with neurotic habits or behavior, such as obsessions or addictions. The split of the self is the essence of neurosis and neurosis can kill. Pain that is the result of needs and feelings that have gone unfulfilled in early life. Early unmet needs create what I call Primal Pain. Coming close to death at birth or feeling unloved as a child are examples of such pain. The pain goes unfelt at the time because the body is not equipped to experience it fully and deal with it. When the pain is too much, it is repressed and stored away. When enough unresolved pain has occurred, you lose access to your feelings and become neurotic. Primal Therapy is important in the field of psychology, for it means, ultimately, the end to so much suffering in human beings. Discovering a way to treat pain means there is a way to stop the misery in which so many of us are mired every day of our lives. After two decades of research , after dealing with thousands of patients with every imaginable psychological and physical affliction, we have arrived at a precise, predictable therapy that reduces the amount of time one spends in treatment and eliminates all the wasted motion. It is a therapy that has been investigated by independent scientists and the findings are consistent. Primal Therapy is able to reduce or eliminate a host of physical and psychic ailments in a relatively short period of time with lasting results. Levels of Consciousness Primal therapy is based on the assumption that very early trauma can and does reside (is imprinted) in brainstem structures in conjunction with the limbic system (the "feeling" brain). Very deep, early trauma can therefore account for a whole host of later symptoms emanating from these structures, including attention deficit disorder, aggressiveness, insomnia, sexual problems, migraine headaches, heart palpitation, high blood pressure, shortness of breath, anxiety and short attention span. According to Paul Maclean of the Laboratory of Brain Evolution in Poolesville, Maryland, human beings have a "triune brain," made of up three elements: a reptilian brain, the (primarily) brainstem structures we share with reptiles; the paleomammalian brain, or limbic system, which we have in common with other mammals; and the mammalian brain, or neocortex. Maclean has pointed out that these three brains operate like interconnected computers, each with its own special function and memory. To account for what we have seen in Primal Therapy, I have taken this concept further. My discovery that Maclean's three brains are home to three distinct levels of consciousness has become a cornerstone of Primal theory. Diagnosis, prognosis, and access to feelings rely on this concept. I agree with McAllen that these three levels of consciousness correspond to specific brain structures and are intimately interconnected, though each level has different functions. What each of these three brains does and how they interact are fundamental to understanding neurosis. * The first brain level to evolve, which I call "first-line consciousness," is the instinctive level. Largely located in the brainstem and hypothalamus, it regulates vital functions. * The limbic system is the seat of the emotional "second-line consciousness," where our feelings reside. It is mediated by the brain's limbic system and temporal lobe. * On the "third line" or cortical level, we reason and develop ideas, integrating the input from the two lower levels, providing the meaning of experience. The development of each level of consciousness mirrors the evolutionary development of our species. Just as hundreds of millions of years elapsed between the evolution of the first line and the arrival of the thinking cortex, a person's development of first-line consciousness far predates the time when his neo-cortex functions. This helps explain how we can experience trauma before we have words to describe what happened. And as I will show, it helps explain how it's possible for us to be "unconscious" of memories which affect us for a lifetime... See also Paul Maclean's Triune Brain http://www.kheper.auz.com/gaia/intelligence/MacLean.htm ~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~ And speaking of Iraq, Syria, Iran & North Korea... "If you love somebody set them free." (Sting) ____________________________________________ Love: Deep affection and warm feeling for another. Unconditional: Without conditions or limitations. Unconditional Love: Deep affection and warm feeling for another without conditions or limitations. ____________________________________________ Infatuation: Infatuate: To inspire with unreasoning love or attachment. ____________________________________________ in-fat-u-ate (tr.v.): 1.To cause to behave foolishly. 2.To inspire with foolish and unreasoning love or attachment [Lat. infatuare, infatuat-: in- (causative) + fatuus, foolish] in-fat'u-a'tion n. ____________________________________________ Ah Love! could thou and I with Fate conspire To grasp this sorry Scheme of Things entire, Would not we shatter it to bits - and then Re-mould it nearer to the Heart's Desire! (Omar Khayyam) ____________________________________________ Mature Love VS Infatuation MATURE LOVE *both are individuals apart from the other *each accepts the fact that neither is perfect *the relationship is strong in tough times as well as happy times *the love gives each person energy to devote to all aspects of life *the two people are close friends *each person continues to grow as an independent human being *there is joy in giving as well as recieving *there is honesty and trust between the two people *each feels a responsibility to the other's well being INFATUATION IS NOT LOVE *the person depends on the relation for self esteem *the person takes more from the relationship than they give *each is jealous of the others separate activities *the relationship drains the person of energy *the person is afraid that the other person will lose interest in them *the person can only think of the other person ____________________________________________ LIMERANCE Symptoms of Limerence *Limerence has certain basic components: *intrusive thinking about the object of your passionate desire (the limerent object or "LO"), who is a possible sexual partner *acute longing for reciprocation *dependency of mood on LO's actions or, more accurately, your interpretation of LO's actions with respect to the probability of reciprocation *inability to react limerently to more than one person at a time (exceptions occur when limerence is at low ebb -- early on or in the last fading) *some fleeting and transient relief from unrequited limerent passion through vivid imagination of action by LO that means reciprocation *fear of rejection and sometimes incapacitating but always unsettling shyness in LO's presence, especially in the beginning and whenever uncertainty strikes *intensification through adversity (at least, up to a point) *acute sensitivity to any act or thought or condition that can be interpreted favorably, and extraordinary ability to devise or invent reasonable explanations for why the neutrality that the disinterested observer might see is in fact a sign of hidden passion in the LO *an aching of the 'heart' (a region in the center front of the chest) when uncertainty is strong *buoyancy (a feeling of walking on air) when reciprocation seems evident *a general intensity of feeling that leaves other concerns in the background *a remarkable ability to emphasize what is truly admirable in LO and to avoid dwelling on the negative, even to respond with a compassion for the negative and render it, emotionally if not perceptually, into another positive attribute. Nonlimerence *'Nonlimerent' refers to a person who is not limerent at the time. Both the limerent and nonlimerent states tend to be sustained. The most frequently encountered patterns were limerents who had always been in love with someone or wanting love, since early age, and non-limerents who simply could not remember being any other way. But, the same person who is limerent may someday become nonlimerent ... and vice versa. *The feelings you as nonlimerent may have about another person may include sexual attraction, friendship, and affection, without the compulsive and intrusive fantasizing or the exclusivity. You may even be jealous, but the jealousy, if it occurs, is more like the jealousy you might experience if a co-worker were selected for an advancement .... *The nonlimerent person who is fond of, affectionate toward, and sexually attracted to you but who does not understand what you [a limerent] want therefore plays the game ingenuously and without artifice, because it is not a game at all. Distinction between "limerence" and "love" *'Love', in most of its meanings, involves concern for the other person's welfare and feelings. Although limerents also have such concern, nonlimerent affection and fondness have no 'objective'; they simply exist as feelings in which you are disposed toward actions to which the recipient might or might not respond. In contrast, limerence demands return. *Your feeling for LO is inordinate relative to that person's actual value in your life (apart, of course, from the value as LO) ... which is why we distinguish love from limerence, this 'love' from other loves. *Sexual jealousy and limerent jealousy are not identical. It is not so much with whom you sleep but whether you return the feelings that matter to the limerent. But the limerent exclusivity is an alien thing to the nonlimerent mind. Cessation of Limerence *Limerence for a particular LO does cease under one of the following conditions: consummation -- in which the bliss of reciprocation is either blended into a lasting love or replaced by less positive feelings; starvation -- in which even limerent sensitivity to signs of hope is useless against the onslaught of evidence that LO does not return the limerence; transformation -- in which limerence is transferred to a new LO. Although some limerents are ashamed of feeling limerent and want to stop, in many others "an aspect of limerence is the desire for limerence. Only when recovery is complete do people appear capable of rejecting limerence as one of their most urgent personal goals." Judgement of Limerence Since limerence is "an involuntary reaction", it is "as illogical to favor (or not to favor) limerence as it is to favor (or not favor) eating, elimination, or sneezing! Limerence is not the product of human decision: It is something that happens to us." ======================================