Meditation really is a brain training exercise that is so useful for life, but can be difficult to understand the process. I guess without brain training, the mind is kind of on autopilot mode. I have always assumed that anxiety, fear, anger, and general helplessness are part of my nature. Mean people make me anxious. Unfairness and injustice make me angry. Recently I have realized that external situations are not what make me helpless and angry. It is a habit of mine to react this way to most unfamiliar and/or uncomfortable situations. It is a form of learned helplessness.
I grew up observing my mother solving every issue at home. My dad is a hardworking man. However, he only feels responsible for bringing home the pay check and nothing else. He is what you would today diagnose as autistic: he has trouble expressing his feelings and opinions; he cannot have a conversation with you if he is not interested in the topic, which includes politics, some history/geography, and not much else. He has near photographic memory. He does not participate in decision making processes at home. My mom, being a housewife much less educated than my dad, has to make all the major decisions, such as buying and selling our home, raising children, etc. She learned to put on this very tough, confident, brave, authoritarian front while she made these decisions without much prior knowledge or understanding of the world. She did this to hide her anxiety and low self-esteem.
While this behaviour helped her survive her anxiety, it also gave me a lot of anxiety. Since her husband never participated the decision making process, of course there is no place for her child to get a say in the decisions that she made, even though I really wanted a say in which schools I should go to, interior decorations in our home, which extra-curricular activities I should participate in, etc. I felt my opinions didn't matter, no matter how much I complained. In fact, I got into this pattern of always acting out, complaining I didn't want to do the activities my mother had arranged, be it ballet, or tennis, or go to the schools my mother had picked. My mother would just shout me down, not allowing her authority as a mother to be questioned. In the end, I would grumpily attend these activities, full of resentment. My mother would triumph that her authority was maintained, strongly believing that it was all for my good, and that I would thank her when I grew up.
My habit of resentment never stopped. I resented everything. Whatever didn't go my way, I would blame my mother. As a child, my mother always forced me to do things her way. She also never got me to stop resenting her. We would just shout at each other. So when I became an adult, when a teacher or a boss wanted me to do something I didn't want to do, I would bite the bullet and do it while secretly resenting them. A better alternative would be to express my thoughts and perhaps offer an alternative solution. But because I have had zero practice at this growing, I didn't even realize that this was a possibility until much later in life, but still now, I am not good at this.
It didn't help that in academia, professors get next to zero training in people management. To be honest, all of my bosses sucked at management. They are more reasonable than my mother, but they needed their students and staff to be good communicators and good at gently pushing back and offering solutions, which can be quite difficult for me to do, since I have always worked on complex topics using bleeding-edge technologies, where knowledge about the topic/issues can be lacking. I often felt tongue-tied, which my bosses would interpret as I knew nothing, when I was merely being overly cautious.
Recently I had to deal with a salesperson who made me feel helpless and that I did something wrong. But since this is not a boss-employee relationship, I realized that this is just my default way of feeling when I am in an uncomfortable situation with another human being. I have had neither training nor practice taking charge of a situation among a group of people.
What does meditation have to do with any of this? Well, without meditation, I link my anxiety and meekness directly to the situation. With meditation, where I sit daily to observe ongoing thought patterns, breathing patterns and feelings in the body, I am able to put some space between me and these habitual patterns. These patterns are not fundamentally who I am. They are just habits.
I have always wished I could have better training from my mother or from school. Now that I am old enough, I realize most people, including my mother, are mostly in self-preservation mode, despite their claims that they want to do what's good for me or for everyone. I have to train myself to get mentally stronger and to reprogram my brain. Recognizing the habitual thinking patterns is a first step towards making changes.
I grew up observing my mother solving every issue at home. My dad is a hardworking man. However, he only feels responsible for bringing home the pay check and nothing else. He is what you would today diagnose as autistic: he has trouble expressing his feelings and opinions; he cannot have a conversation with you if he is not interested in the topic, which includes politics, some history/geography, and not much else. He has near photographic memory. He does not participate in decision making processes at home. My mom, being a housewife much less educated than my dad, has to make all the major decisions, such as buying and selling our home, raising children, etc. She learned to put on this very tough, confident, brave, authoritarian front while she made these decisions without much prior knowledge or understanding of the world. She did this to hide her anxiety and low self-esteem.
While this behaviour helped her survive her anxiety, it also gave me a lot of anxiety. Since her husband never participated the decision making process, of course there is no place for her child to get a say in the decisions that she made, even though I really wanted a say in which schools I should go to, interior decorations in our home, which extra-curricular activities I should participate in, etc. I felt my opinions didn't matter, no matter how much I complained. In fact, I got into this pattern of always acting out, complaining I didn't want to do the activities my mother had arranged, be it ballet, or tennis, or go to the schools my mother had picked. My mother would just shout me down, not allowing her authority as a mother to be questioned. In the end, I would grumpily attend these activities, full of resentment. My mother would triumph that her authority was maintained, strongly believing that it was all for my good, and that I would thank her when I grew up.
My habit of resentment never stopped. I resented everything. Whatever didn't go my way, I would blame my mother. As a child, my mother always forced me to do things her way. She also never got me to stop resenting her. We would just shout at each other. So when I became an adult, when a teacher or a boss wanted me to do something I didn't want to do, I would bite the bullet and do it while secretly resenting them. A better alternative would be to express my thoughts and perhaps offer an alternative solution. But because I have had zero practice at this growing, I didn't even realize that this was a possibility until much later in life, but still now, I am not good at this.
It didn't help that in academia, professors get next to zero training in people management. To be honest, all of my bosses sucked at management. They are more reasonable than my mother, but they needed their students and staff to be good communicators and good at gently pushing back and offering solutions, which can be quite difficult for me to do, since I have always worked on complex topics using bleeding-edge technologies, where knowledge about the topic/issues can be lacking. I often felt tongue-tied, which my bosses would interpret as I knew nothing, when I was merely being overly cautious.
Recently I had to deal with a salesperson who made me feel helpless and that I did something wrong. But since this is not a boss-employee relationship, I realized that this is just my default way of feeling when I am in an uncomfortable situation with another human being. I have had neither training nor practice taking charge of a situation among a group of people.
What does meditation have to do with any of this? Well, without meditation, I link my anxiety and meekness directly to the situation. With meditation, where I sit daily to observe ongoing thought patterns, breathing patterns and feelings in the body, I am able to put some space between me and these habitual patterns. These patterns are not fundamentally who I am. They are just habits.
I have always wished I could have better training from my mother or from school. Now that I am old enough, I realize most people, including my mother, are mostly in self-preservation mode, despite their claims that they want to do what's good for me or for everyone. I have to train myself to get mentally stronger and to reprogram my brain. Recognizing the habitual thinking patterns is a first step towards making changes.
