Supress Symptoms Vs. Curing Cause

[Falk]

1.MY SITUATION

I meditated a lot the last month and became more aware of my thoughts. Good thing so far. Now i noticed that so and so often i start to drift of in my mind in a modus i now call the "defender/agressor" mode. Meaning i replay situations where i feel attacked by something someone said and i attack that person back, having an internal conversation with myself claiming superiority but acctualy beeing pathetic/ extremely unsecure.

Examples (all scenarios happen in my mind only):

+i find myself telling my dad he´s an idiot for saying such and such

+explaining to a friend why his view on life is wrong 

+showing some acquaintance that what he said about me is wrong and actually he´s an idiot ...

2.MY QUESTION:

SO! now i started to do the following: whenever i catch myself doing it again, i count it, label it "1", "2" and so on and then stop it. When i started it, i counted to 12 on that day , lately i only go to 3 or 4 maximum if at all... 

But the question i have is this: Am i only supressing the symptom by this technique??

Or should i go deeper and look for the reasons i do this in the first place? For example i noticed that i usually do it when i feel like im beeing deminished by critique (pride), or after i compared myself to other people and now feel small (envy) or just for some reason i don´t realy understand i start to get feeling of "i hate that person". Or should i actually tell that person that i hate him or her? I guess that would be the worst solution right?! Given the fact that it mostly is about me i feel.

I started to read about shadow work and it seems this could be something that can help me to understand the roots of those things? Do you have any ideas how can i productivly intergrate and heal those places in my that produce hate and envy?? 

Or do i hate people because i just don´t realy love myself and my life? That would also be an easy explanation, what can i do about it? Massive fucking action, internaly and externaly?

THX!!

 

 

[Azrael]

24 minutes ago, Falk said:

Or should i go deeper and look for the reasons i do this in the first place?

In my own opinion and foremost my own experience, I'd clearly say: No. I suffered from this kind of behavior a lot for I'd say 3-5 years and I completely cured it. Didn't stop it completely, but turned it into something better.

But before I go into what I did, I just wanna mention this: You still suffer from the illusion that there are two of you in your head. Your evil shit-shatting mind and your very noble, well-intentioned other half that tries to get rid of his annoying little brother. Realize that. Meditate on that. That's the root.

Also, notice that you will never get completely rid of a over-stimulated mind that talks and re-talks certain situations. It's way to good prep-work for your mind to do that in certain cases, and that's okay. Just yesterday I was surprised by a little job review via phone and after that little but very serious talk my mind shattered all kind of elaborations and what not to itself. That's okay. It needs to prep for the real ride here. 

But maybe as you read my answer right now, you get the idea of how to cure that: You wanna be okay with your mind doing that. Don't try to get away from it with counting. Won't help. You are not in charge of deciding that thoughts come up. Give it up. What you can do and what I did to successfully come over this kind of neurotic behavior is just to smile innerly and let it happen.

Give it all your attention and jut lay back and be astonished by this amazing talk you have with yourself. Even fire it up with some provocative opinions. Why does this work? Ask yourself, how long do your sincerely talk to somebody who doesn't take you seriously.

This at first is maybe a little counter-intuitive because you normally try the exact opposite - to get away. But you can't. That's the point. You are not in charge. Get this in your head, that's really important. And then just do nothing and enjoy the ride. It will chose to go away on its own because it notices itself that it seems not to be that important - because no one is resisting it.

So, I hope that helps. For me, that freed me a lot.

Cheers,

[Falk]

 What you said fits very well in an appraoch i was thinking about... the "whatever you resist, persits" thing ...so i will just try to watch it and allow it next time and be aware of it ..thx! @Arik