Seriously considering if some of the stuff that comes up is noise is one thing.
Another is to realise that even if it is a genuine desire/feeling/thought, that's all it is. Wanting to kill your cat is not wrong. Actually harming your cat is, but just having the thought isn't. There's a reason we don't have thought crimes and the reason is that we cannot control our thoughts and feelings.
Sure, there's nothing wrong with thoughts/feelings/etc., but I (and other folks, but I can only speak for me with authority :-) ) sometimes have some of the craziest crap come up in my brain. (You should have seen the example I came up with before settling on whacking someone over the head with a banana.)
So, recognizing that a thought/feeling/etc. is okay is important, but so is recognizing that it might not even be a thought, so much as a bit of noise that one's brain came up with. Or, if you want to put a meaning on it, the meaning might be that it's something meaningful (good *or* bad). That I would be horrified to do something to hurt my cat Chibi could be what prompted the dream.
Mix that horror with questions about his relatively minor medical issues (whether or not to spend a good chunk of money for exploratory surgery that might not find anything, and if it finds something, it might be unfixable), and the realization that, as an older kitty, sooner or later, I might have to ponder whether he can have a happy cat's life any more, and it's easy to see where the dream came from.
That's a better example than you might think, as well, because he can be a real attention hog, and mew, mew, mew me to death when I just need some peace and quiet. It would be possible to say "see, subconsciously, I see him as a terrible burden and hate him for that!" if I wanted to go deep into Freud's view of the subconscious.
If, instead, I can accept that, you know, maybe it's just noise, it's easier (for me) to blow it off as nothing important, nothing to worry about.
To think of it as a thought, a feeling, to think of it as being meaningful, is more upsetting than to just blow it off with "my brain comes up with some crazy-ass noise sometimes."
But at the same time, you're right... none of this is to say that you shouldn't be willing to admit that you do have mixed feelings about something/someone. It's *okay* to have occasional nasty thoughts/feelings, and they can be worthy of investigation. But it's also possible to just have nasty thoughts/feelings that pop into your head without any reality to them.
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timeasmymeasure
no subject
Date: 2008-02-27 06:22 pm (UTC)Another is to realise that even if it is a genuine desire/feeling/thought, that's all it is. Wanting to kill your cat is not wrong. Actually harming your cat is, but just having the thought isn't. There's a reason we don't have thought crimes and the reason is that we cannot control our thoughts and feelings.
Sure, there's nothing wrong with thoughts/feelings/etc., but I (and other folks, but I can only speak for me with authority :-) ) sometimes have some of the craziest crap come up in my brain. (You should have seen the example I came up with before settling on whacking someone over the head with a banana.)
So, recognizing that a thought/feeling/etc. is okay is important, but so is recognizing that it might not even be a thought, so much as a bit of noise that one's brain came up with. Or, if you want to put a meaning on it, the meaning might be that it's something meaningful (good *or* bad). That I would be horrified to do something to hurt my cat Chibi could be what prompted the dream.
Mix that horror with questions about his relatively minor medical issues (whether or not to spend a good chunk of money for exploratory surgery that might not find anything, and if it finds something, it might be unfixable), and the realization that, as an older kitty, sooner or later, I might have to ponder whether he can have a happy cat's life any more, and it's easy to see where the dream came from.
That's a better example than you might think, as well, because he can be a real attention hog, and mew, mew, mew me to death when I just need some peace and quiet. It would be possible to say "see, subconsciously, I see him as a terrible burden and hate him for that!" if I wanted to go deep into Freud's view of the subconscious.
If, instead, I can accept that, you know, maybe it's just noise, it's easier (for me) to blow it off as nothing important, nothing to worry about.
To think of it as a thought, a feeling, to think of it as being meaningful, is more upsetting than to just blow it off with "my brain comes up with some crazy-ass noise sometimes."
But at the same time, you're right... none of this is to say that you shouldn't be willing to admit that you do have mixed feelings about something/someone. It's *okay* to have occasional nasty thoughts/feelings, and they can be worthy of investigation. But it's also possible to just have nasty thoughts/feelings that pop into your head without any reality to them.