Be Your Shitty Self: An Honest Approach to a More Peaceful Life by Van Buren Mark

Author:Van Buren, Mark
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Publisher: Bryce Cullen Publishing
Published: 2013-09-11T16:00:00+00:00

Your reactions to the world around you have been habituated over years of chasing pleasure and escaping pain. Growing up, you most likely wanted to feel good and fit in. You wanted to be loved. These yearnings for love and acceptance are natural, and because of them your mind has created ways of being in the world, or better put, habits that have kept you safe and secure growing up in an imperfect and groundless world. Whether you had an abusive parent, experienced a major trauma, or even simply had an older sibling who you thought was “better” than you, your environment has molded your behavior. In fact, there’s a good chance that you identify deeply with the ways you’ve learned to be. Reacting over and over again in the same way to the people, places, and things in your life has become a very strong habit. Sometimes these ways of being become outdated and outgrown, yet the habitual power, or shenpa, they carry is still so strong that they become a burden in your life; and as with any habit or addiction, an extinction burst should most definitely be expected. An extinction burst is a term used in applied behavior analysis and is literally a burst of activity that occurs when a habituated behavior is in the process of extinction.

To clarify, every behavior has a reward, and when the reward is no longer available, the natural response, before the behavior becomes extinct, is to try harder and harder to get it. Imagine a lab rat that received a pellet of food every time it pressed a lever in its cage. If no food was given one day when the rat hit the lever, the rat wouldn’t just press it once and give up; rather, it would keep pressing the button over and over again in hope of obtaining the pellet of food. This burst of the behavior is an example of an extinction burst. If the rat were never fed again via the lever, it would eventually learn to not even bother pressing it, but not without a few last frantic attempts to get its reward.

So why the hell am I talking about extinction bursts, lab rats, and food pellets? You may be wondering what this all has to do with shenpa. Well, as you work with yourself, you may find old habits and behaviors falling away, and with the letting go of these you may experience extinction bursts. Being mindful of your thoughts and emotions and how you relate to them may become overwhelming at first. You may feel like these practices are making you worse at times—more thoughts, more emotions, and more intensity. The reality is you are just becoming aware of what has already been there, and on top of this, extinction bursts may make it seem as though you are falling apart or going stark raving mad.

Let’s say you reach for a drink every time you become anxious, and you begin noticing this as you practice mindfulness and meditation.

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