Reading...Tue, 25 Apr 1995 02:55:53
alt.mindcontrol
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Being Upset IS Your Mind Being Controlled.No responses
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                WHAT YOU SHOULD KNOW ABOUT BEING UPSET

   Most of us have felt the sting of the cruelty of others, whether in
our families, our friendships, or our businesses. Often cruelty leaves
us shocked and incapable of rising above the moment. We feel "cut off
at the knees," insulted, humiliated, and degraded. Where do
unreasonable people get their power to upset and control us? From the
way we respond to their cruelty.

   Indeed, your health and well-being are in real danger from people,
even members of your own family, who chip away, harp, nag, and
aggravate the life out of you, until you feel like giving up on life.

   You cannot fight unreasonable people with anger and resentment,
because they know how to use your out-of-control emotions against you,
driving you up the wall with fear and guilt, and intimidating you into
submission.

   Take heart. There is not a single problem that you cannot solve if
you will learn to be patient.

   It is said that we are the sum total of our experiences.
Unfortunately, many of us are burdened by our past: our bad decisions,
our gilts, our self-destructive escapes. Unless we learn to respond
properly to each new stress in the present, we simply build upon the
troublesome past. And without emotional self-control, the conditioning
of the past continues to come through our current experiences to
become our future.

   Practicing patience is essential to retaining your own identity in
a pressure-filled world. The wrong emotional reaction to various
pressures is making more and more people sick and depressed, driving
them ever deeper into conflict with themselves. In trying to solve
pressure-caused conflicts, many people turn to consciousness-reducing
drink, tobacco, and drugs--legal and illegal.

   Compulsively reacting to people and things represents a subtle form
of slavery to a variety of pressure sources. As the relentless
pressures that people apply (sometimes in the name of God and good)
cause you to react, your angry reaction throws you out of control so
that you can no longer live your own life, and you end up feeling
confused and depressed.

   Most of your family, business, and even sexual problems arise
directly from your failing to respond in a right way to what is wrong
in the people around you. Sadly, this all too often results in you
taking out the resulting frustrations on your loved ones. Conflict
with yourself translates into conflict with others.

   Most of the things that are wrong with your life, your marriage,
your health, and your children can be resolved by discovering how to
truly control your emotions--without unbearable suppression.

   One good emotional upset can ruin your whole day. And being
chronically angry or upset can literally turn your life upside down.
Even though you may be technically correct in what you say or do, if
you do it resentfully, your emotions can betray you. You begin to
doubt yourself, which causes conflict, depression, and paralyzing
fear.

   Emotion destroys your objectivity, and in failing to see clearly,
you make terrible errors of judgment. The results of bad judgment lead
to a fear of making decisions, so that you may begin to look too much
to others for guidance. And you know how upsetting it can be if they
happen to be wrong or take advantage of you.

   To avoid all these unpleasant repercussions, you must learn how to
be patient with selfish and thoughtless people. You must learn to
remain poised and calm under pressure; otherwise, what is wrong in
them shows up in you and makes you look like the bad guy. Then,
everyone is so fascinated with your emotional overreaction that they
fail to see what they did wrong to provoke that reaction--and that in
turn becomes another unjust, upsetting, frustrating, and scary
experience for you.

   Cruel, unthinking people feed off the way you respond to their
needling; they walk away self-righteous and satisfied, leaving you
frustrated, confused, and depressed. They get their power from your
overreaction, while your resentment often makes you feel and look like
the guilty one.

   "Successful" domineering (unprincipled) people drain you and make
your life wretched; they can always be sure of confusing and
controlling you through your oversensitivity to their pressure.

   This same dehumanizing pressure, when used to motivate people to
achieve and study hard, often succeeds, but at the expense of the
victim's true happiness and self-confidence. Programmed by pressure
and cruelty, that person may conform and become a "success," or he may
rebel and become a "failure." But either way, he ends up in conflict
with himself and others.

   Today, home and school pressures are alienating millions of young
people, creating monster rebels and delinquents, driving many to
drugs, crime, and suicide.

   Your out-of-control emotions condition you to respond more and more
as an animal, and less as a real person, until everything you think,
feel, do, and say in that emotionally charged state of mind brings
with it more conflict, fear, and despair. Overreaction to stress can,
and often does, lead to the appearance of physical symptoms, as well
as opportunistic diseases from being run down.

   You must learn to cope with pressures. If you can do that, if you
can put the emphasis where it belongs, on standing up for your
principles with calm patience and self-control, you can stave off
disaster.

   The way we react to pressure is the cause of most of our suffering.
Indeed, upsetting us is the primary technique manipulative people use
to motivate us. Perhaps you have your own private dictator currently
aggravating the life out of you. Therefore, learn to be patient before
it is too late.

   Through the shock of emotional upset, especially resentment, a
compelling or morbid suggestion can be planted in your subconscious
mind. And even if your reaction causes you to struggle against the
suggestion, you may still find yourself obliged to give in to ease the
pain that your emotional resistance causes. Your life becomes a weary
struggle against subliminal suggestions, much like driving your car
with the brakes on.

   Giving in to pressure-mongers, who then praise us for our
conformity, is a common but unhealthy people-pleasing syndrome that we
often mistake for love and loyalty. It takes place between husband and
wife, between mother and child, and even between churches and their
parishioners.

   It is very hard to say "no" to pushy, irritating people. They seem
to know all the right buttons to push. You tend to favor people who
apply pressure: your boss, your wife, or even your kids. And when you
finally reach the breaking point, you may rebel against study, work,
even family. The result can be a retreat into some form of self-
destructive escape, or else a debilitating disease or nervous
breakdown.

   It all boils down to this: Overreaction to stress is your weakness,
your Achilles' heel. All heartless, power-hungry, unprincipled people
instinctively possess the know-how to make your emotions work for
them, and they have no qualms about casting you aside after you are
used and broken.

   The world is dominated by tyrants, teasers, and psychopaths. Some
of them get to you through cruelty, while others manipulate you with a
holier-than-thou, irritating "kindness." They might use both methods
to confuse you, being mean one moment and "kind" the next. Their bold,
unprincipled manner upsets you, and because being upset is the wrong
way to deal with others, you feel guilty. That guilt, making you feel
wrong, can make the intimidator seem right in your eyes.

   Then, suddenly changing roles and becoming "nice," the intimidator
can intensify your guilt feelings and your sense of being wrong,
making you doubt yourself even more. In that manner you are made to
believe that they were right all along. And so you learn to go along
with their wishes; you find yourself doing things you would never have
done in your right mind, and that upsets you all over again. This
vicious cycle, with a built in upset factor, repeats itself endlessly,
until you feel like killing them or yourself.

   Human beings are not meant to be externally motivated like animals,
but because of a little understood ego-weakness, we are. That is why
we all have paralyzing conflicts, anxieties, and fears; that is the
basis of all our problems. Until you discover the secret of turning
yourself on from what you realize is right deep down in your heart,
you will always be an externalized human being, compelled to act
against your own better judgment, hurting people you love, and doing
things for which you are sorry later.

   Instead of reacting with upset, what if you could learn to look
injustice straight in the eye, without flinching--patiently, calmly,
and with endless endurance? Surely then you would not have the
problems of repressing or expressing resentment. You would be in
control. This, then, is the basis for a truly enlightened stress-
reduction program: learning the secret of self control through
patience.

   I know what you want. You want relief from your nervous tension and
guilt feelings. You want solutions to your family problems and sex
problems. You want to stop smoking, drinking, and overeating; you want
happiness. But you will never find what you are seeking until you
discover the hidden root cause of your trouble, which is that you
allow people to upset you.

   Emotional self-control is the key you are seeking. Your very life
depends on your responding in a right way to what is wrong around you,
so that it cannot get inside and rip you apart.

   Your main line of defense is to stay calm and patient. Seeing you
unmoved, the motivator's tactics backfire on him; he or she becomes
upset, loses power, and panics. The game is over. So learn to put up
an invisible, impenetrable force shield of calm patience around you.
It will allow the good to come through, but will stop the ugly world
from getting in and growing up inside you to control your destiny.

Roy Masters
P.O. Box 1009
Grants Pass, Oregon 97526
(503)597-4360

Editor's Note:

   Roy Masters is an internationally recognized stress expert that
teaches a simple concentration-observation exercise that shows how to
remain calm and patient even in the face of extreme stress and
cruelty.