Clearing Emotions Follow Up

Stress

Reviewing my memories, hashing through them, re-feeling the memories and their emotions, and breathing them away is slow and time consuming (I spend, on average about an hour a day on this activity). It is great. I feel less stress in my daily life. I am less 'uptight' about meeting any difficult people that I might encounter in my daily life. In the past, when I did relatively mindless chores like cleaning, I used to compulsively think about stressful situations. I even used to debate with people in my imagination and that also caused me even more stress. I have almost completely ceased this internal debating, without even intending to.

I also find a lot of my interactions are less confrontational. Plus, in the past I used to look at people or their actions in a much more judgemental way. Even after just 3 months, I have found this habit to be waning, too. I no longer feel 'uptight' when I see people doing what I consider to be stupid things.

Insights to self

One day, as I was practising, I suddenly had an insight into myself regarding the situation I was reviewing. I realized what a complete jerk I was. I didn't feel bad about it. It was pretty objective. At the time I felt pretty self righteous about the situation but looking back I saw that I had been a complete jerk. On other occasions I began to see what my motivations were even though they were not apparent to me at the time. Sadly enough, my motivations were not always as lofty as I had convinced myself. It's not a good thing to advertise to the world, but it is definitely a good thing to be aware of.

Insights to others In the same vein, when I reviewed som of these situations, I could see more clearly what was moving other people. Certain behaviours became less of a mystery to me. I have always felt other people's behaviours were a little mysterious (why would they do such a thing? Sometimes it was very difficult to understand) but after dropping the emotional baggage I had, it was like the clouds lifted and I could see clearly.

flashbacks

The most interesting development are the mini flashbacks that I get. Sounds, sights or odours seem to trigger an instant flashback to another time and place. The flashbacks are minuscule but really intense, almost as if I am re-experiencing them. A very small number of the flashbacks, however, are jarring, as I have no context to put them in. They don't seem related to any other memories, I have no sense of when or where they happened but an overwhelming certainty that they are from my past. These flashbacks have a compelling nature; I wish I could go deeper into them and hash them out but they are gone as quickly as they come. These mystery memories leave me with compelling desire to hunt them down and find them and identify them.