Emotional Alchemy by Tara Bennett-Goleman

Author:Tara Bennett-Goleman [Bennett-Goleman, Tara]
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Publisher: Ebury Publishing
Published: 2010-09-30T04:00:00+00:00

Catching the Subtle Signs • In changing our automatic schema responses, mindfulness acts as the crucial radar, alerting us to the fact that a schema has been stirred. That opens the crucial window that lets us change how we act.

This subtle mindfulness was at work for Lauren, one of my clients, whose deprivation schema was double-edged: on the one hand, she was extremely thoughtful and kind, attuned to when other people were in need of a caring gesture. That thoughtfulness reflected the positive qualities of the deprivation schema. But when this propensity is out of balance, it can become a maladaptive overeagerness to care.

She said, “I’m well aware of my boundary issues and how I can too easily drop something that I need to attend to, to meet the demands and pressing wishes of others. So I’d been planning to set aside a day with my business partner—we design Web pages—to go over my files on a major project for which we were facing a deadline. We chose to meet on a Sunday so we wouldn’t be disturbed by business calls.

“A few days earlier I had told a friend that my partner and I would consult with her about her Web page design ideas. She had heard that a merger meant her division at a software company was about to be phased out, and she was feeling some desperation, trying to generate extra income from a project of her own.

“Then, the night before the meeting I’d planned with my business partner, I got an e-mail from my friend saying she would like to have a working lunch with us—she was leaving town the following day and felt and urgency to meet before her trip. My reaction to the e-mail was that I wanted to be supportive of her, but I was trying to protect this day to focus on my project. So I sent her an e-mail message saying, “Can we leave it open for now about the lunch? My partner just returned from a long trip, and we’re feeling pressured by our own deadline. But we might be able to get through our work to meet with you, too.”

Lauren said, “As I sent that e-mail I had some feelings of guilt. Somehow I felt I had to apologize for not immediately making time for her, for having my own priorities and needs. And I felt a building annoyance at having to rush through my own work so I could get to hers.”

For Lauren, those background feelings and thoughts were a subtle clue that her own emotional deprivation and subjugation schemas were active. That clue was confirmed later that night, when she found herself wide awake at 3:00 A.M. “I found myself lying there thinking over and over about that e-mail. Something just did not feel right. I detected a quiet resentment tinging my thoughts about the possibility of my friend calling up to have lunch, right in the middle of our working time. I was puzzled: Why wasn’t I

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