If you instantly think of someone else’s feelings at the time of stress, the emotions you felt at that moment will not be properly organized in your memory.
Emotions that are not properly processed will come back repeatedly, fresh as they were when you felt them during stress.
People who think they are properly feeling stress at the time of stress but instantly think about the feelings of others besides themselves and cannot properly organize their stress feelings into memories are called “codependent types”. If you do a stress stimulus test, you can easily tell if you are a codependent type because stress hormones rise repeatedly even after a long time has passed since the stress stimulus.
You can check whether you are a codependent type or not by imagining a stressful situation without having to go through such a tedious process.
Imagine a scene like this in your mind.
I am walking down the street and there are people walking around me who I don’t know at all.
When I am walking like everyone else, I don’t notice a slight bump in the road, and I trip and stumble.
Questions:
Question 1: “What did you feel at this moment?”
Question 2: “What do you feel 30 minutes after this event?”
Question 3: “How do you think you feel when you go to sleep on the day of this event?”
For those who can properly feel stress stimuli, question 1: “Wow! That was close!” is converted to “I feel like I’m going to fall on the road, but I didn’t” because stress hormones are properly activated in stressful situations and they are able to appropriately deal with dangerous situations. Even if the instruction says, “You will trip and fall,” the stress hormone reacts appropriately and it is processed as if it is no big deal if you fall.
If you could imagine in question 1 that you fell and embarrassed yourself in front of everyone, you may be a “codependent” type. You would instantly imagine how everyone would feel when they saw you fall down. People around you would come up to you and ask, “Are you okay?” and you feel extra embarrassed, then you are still thinking about the feelings of those around you at a time of stress.
If you thought, “I fell down and an embarrassing thought came to mind” in question 2, you are remembering the stress emotion repeatedly without properly processing it as a memory.
Those who thought, “I have difficulty sleeping because embarrassing scenes from the past come to mind” in question 3, are also repeatedly reminded of stress feelings because they are not properly organized in their memory.
Once this codependent type of person feels stressed in a stressful situation, the stress hormone rises repeatedly, so the peripheral immune cells become active due to inflammation and the cognitive function is reduced, so they repeatedly make mistakes.
This leads to a state of “if you have a bad day, the bad day will continue over and over again” (all written in narrative).
It is also from the psychological scars that we think about other people’s feelings other than our own during this time of stress. The psychological trauma is the “annoying child” who, at birth, was thought by his parents to be “if only this child didn’t exist”. The parents’ marital problems make them think, “If only I didn’t have this child”. For a child, to be thought of that way by an adult parent is worth being killed.
Such fear of death becomes latent inflammation, which activates peripheral immune cells and causes cognitive decline, making it impossible for the child to properly recognize his or her own senses with loss of perception (this is also written in the narrative).
The child’s caregiver gets irritated and almost kills the “annoying child” in a situation where the child is asserting himself, so inflammation occurs in the assertive situation and cognitive function is impaired. And it becomes difficult for the child to recognize the sense of self that is the basis of self-assertion because of the reduced cognitive function.
But for the child, the latent inflammation and reduced cognitive function will be necessary for survival. Because if they know their senses clearly and continue to assert themselves, the possibility of a life-threatening situation will increase due to the caregiver’s desire to kill the “annoying child”.
In a sense, for the codependent type, the latent inflammation of the “annoying child” becomes a life-saving presence. This is an important being who was able to survive by suppressing self-assertion because chronic inflammation causes peripheral immune cells to become active and cognitive functions to decline, making it impossible to properly recognize one’s own senses.
There is nothing wrong with being a codependent type; they are sometimes valued in companies and other places because they are able to care more about the people around them than their own feelings.
No matter what they do, they have low self-esteem because they are centered on other people’s feelings and their memories are not properly organized, so they “don’t feel like they have accomplished anything on their own”. They are prone to imposter syndrome because even if they accomplish something, they “don’t have a sense of having done anything themselves” since they are unable to accurately recognize their own sensations due to cognitive decline and their memories are not properly organized. But because they have low self-esteem, they are humble in the eyes of others, and furthermore, because they have imposter syndrome, they can be hardworking.
Because they can be humble and hardworking, they can be pure of heart. But the more one stays a pure-hearted person, the more easily one’s heart is wounded, and the inflammation of the wounded heart causes cognitive decline, making it increasingly difficult to recognize one’s own sense of self.
Codependent types can play a very important role in society.
But if you want to live for yourself and not for others, when you feel “I can’t feel my senses,” try to realize that “my autoimmunity is out of control”.
“I can’t feel my senses” is actually a very stressful thing.
Because it’s stress, your immune system is going haywire due to inflammation and attacking the “annoying child,” so you blame yourself, “Why can’t I feel my senses properly!”
In childhood, if you asserted yourself, you would be in danger, so your immune system attacked the “annoying child,” causing you to lose your sense of self so that you couldn’t feel your own senses.
When you can’t feel your senses, try to realize that your autoimmunity is just out of control.
Just by noticing, the runaway autoimmunity quiets down. When the autoimmune outburst is quieted, you stop thinking about other people’s feelings during times of stress.
When you instantly stop thinking about other people’s feelings, you feel comfortable moving with your own feelings. A world of freedom, where you don’t have to care about anyone else, naturally unfolds before you. Then, the stress hormones will work properly during stress and you will be able to win your own freedom.
Just by noticing that your “autoimmunity is out of control” when you feel like you can’t feel your senses, you will quietly change the world around you.