Self-Perception and Avoidance
“I know that was bad for me. But that was, after all, yesterday!”. When people know about something, but it has no emotional relevance, it is a massive avoidance strategy in terms of giving past experiences an appropriate meaning. In that case one uses the self-perception process in such a way that one splits off the emotional experiencing. People then ‘remember’ that they have experienced something terrible the day before, but they no longer have an ‘emotional’ relationship to it. It is just as if they, themselves, had not been there, and, therefore, as if it were not permitted for it to still play a role with others.
Apart from this rather well-developed avoidance phenomenon, one must also name all those forms of dealing with oneself that chronically hinder one’s own feeling: always being in a rush or doing too much (hamster wheel) never allowing tranquillity and peace to arrive (permanent activity, even during one’s leisure time), always ensuring stimuli (consumption of media, computer games), devaluing feelings (“You and your feelings!”) and having to function (“I cannot afford to have feelings!”).