The Self Wobble
FAQ About the Self Wobble
What is a SELF wobble?
Examples of a SELF wobble include having feelings like shame, disappointment, insecurity, or envy. Maybe one of these feelings gives you particular angst, almost as if you were allergic to that feeling (many people are that way around their own anger, for example.) Ambivalence, indecision, defensiveness – all these emotional experiences have to do with your experience of being you.
What does a self wobble look like?
Self wobbles are hard to identify because the way we think is very reflexive, and we don’t challenge it. In other words, we may feel anxious, and then come up with a reason for it. Or we may feel dread, and then locate the reason. This is also true of shame, or agitation. We always find a reason outside ourselves. But sometimes, the feelings themselves are simply ghosts from past experiences. Maybe you’ve been friends with shame, anxiousness, despair or unhappiness of a certain kind, for a long time. And it’s hidden from consciousness.
When you discover that actually, your feelings and attitudes towards your feelings come from something inside of you as well as outside of you, you become conscious.
What do I so with my self wobble?
Whatever your SELF wobble, the point is not to help you become more effective, more accepting or less agitated. You’re good a trying to be better, and you’ve been doing that for a long time, especially with your self wobble.
Now, you’re going to do something different. You’re going to investigate, get curious and start wondering about this wobble. Why do you have to feel overwhelmed by these feelings? How are they affecting you? Where do they come from?
How will it help to stud my self wobble?
Studying your wobble, instead of always trying to become a better person, makes it possible to discover that you can change your story about how to make life better. You’ll have more options! Emotions are designed to inform and energize us, no matter what they are. Yes, even anger, envy, frustration and disappointment inform us. When we are not in good relationship with our information systems, it’s typically because our minds need to hide something from us.
When we discover what’s hidden, our relationship to ourselves becomes so much less punitive and depriving. We can finally comfort and direct ourselves effectively. We can like ourseslves more, even when we’re at our worst! By creating fascination and wonder about why you are thinking and feeling things about yourself is an exciting place to start.
Your Self wobbles gives you a way of examining and investigating your relationship to yourself. It’s about what you think about yourself. Like for example: do you feel ashamed, angry, frustrated or confused when you are angry? Or do you get depressed, hopeless or feel crazy if you’re disappointed? When you study your relationship to your Self, you are studying your attitudes, thoughts and feelings towards your own thoughts. This is a great wobble to investigate.
How do I study my self wobble?
You can investigate your self wobble by paying close attention to your own challenging emotions, and then challenging them. Challenging your emotions means putting them to the test by asking “why” at every turn. “Why?” are you feeling shame or frustration? “Why” do you have to keep feeling it?
Our self wobble are reflexive. We don’t even realize that maybe, our attitudes towards ourselves should be examined. Knowing you have a self wobble means taking a step back and starting to have a good hard look.
In a nutshell: your SELF wobble lets us know that any good, usable pathways that you could follow to deliver you to your unseen mind, have to do with what is happening inside your relationship to YOU.
Why is my “wobble” showing up as SELF?
Some experiences of emotion that get pushed out of consciousness (like anger or disappointment) keep us from being able to see things clearly. Then, if we are aroused to anger or disappointment, for example, we may have a lot of anxiety or depression instead of feeling informed and guided by the difficult information we are gathering.
Our attitudes about ourselves, when there are hidden parts of our mind, are hazy. We feel unsure. We operate without the needed acceptance of negative feelings that are necessary for us to feel integrated, healthy and sure of ourselves. We shoulder the burden for problems when we shouldn’t have to.
When you feel shame, hidden anger or discomfort with a feeling (we’re not talking about an occasional or short-term reaction, but reactions that are chronic or frequently recurring) you have an excellent wobble to follow. Maybe getting angry is difficult for you, maybe feeling disappointed is difficult, maybe feeling “right” causes you trouble – in short, you have an opportunity, when you are uneasy with an emotion, to discover what your hidden mind does with the unpleasant situations and stimulations. Once you discover what your mind is hiding, it makes it easier for you to endure and even better manage the difficult feelings. Of course, not all negative and painful feelings you have about yourself are necessarily “wobbles” that could lead you to your unseen mind. You may not be showing signs of having things hidden from consciousness when you have appropriate reactions to being treated sub-optimally. But you may be surprised to discover, when you follow a true wobble, that you can make valuable discoveries and realization to help you feel more comfortable inside of your own skin. True and rock-solid self-love are always made possible when we know what our mind is doing; when we can bring the hidden thoughts and feelings to light.