ICS If one grows up with the idea that everything is always your fault, and that you have to strive to be a good altruistic person to go to heaven one day. I guess that this can only lead to selfishness….as within this mindset there is no room for being a human being living on earth. One would get engaged in behavior to secure a heavenly “afterlife”…..and this behavior would be controlled by the Church…as they are the ones who are dictating what has to be done to be forgiven by god.
The guilt tripping is still very alive.
These going to heaven metaphors aren’t used as much, but I’d argue people are acting it out even more, because there’s less formal church influence. Instead science, policy and group social norms are a free for all, on who can play church, or speak for God.. and enforce moral norms…. Fighting from a moral high ground position, allows manipulators to assign blame to others, and guilt trip people relentlessly….
ohh… I suppose the lack of clear moral leadership by role models and strong disciplined examples…. has created a vacuum that allows anyone and everyone to play moral enforcers these days….. somehow personal character, standards and behaviors are divorced from playing enforcement role.. In a society where it’s felt that it’s teetering on the edges of spiritual bankruptcy…. that might open the doors for excessive policing of each other.
But if it is true that another persons anxious energy can be contagious…
I don’t see how I could help him to act out his energy….His energy is there for him right?
If I would own it and act it out…it would make me a thief of his energy.
…
Typing it here… It seems that he is helping me…to show me when and where my boundary is blurry and that i am not in touch with anger….although it may not be a conscious intention on his part
We might be hardwired for anxiety contagion…. if someone else around you is detecting threat, it’s quite adaptive for you to notice this and join in…. This is also another loophole for manipulation, more precisely paranoid transference where someone can flood others with their paranoia, panic, anxiety… and that prioritizes their story or delusion to overwrite other’s personal judgment…
Anger would help you notice the fuzzy boundary territory… though if someone is really good at flooding anxiety & paranoia… in a full-on emotional intensity battle.. anxiety would win…. so I’d add working with anxiety along with anger as a better strategy…
A shortcut pointer for anxiety I like is: education & exposure
But it’s a balance of education & exposure, too much of either, also leads to anxiety…
So if someone is flooding too much anxiety from excess maps, knowledge, etc…. then the counter is to increase exposure, immersion, experience…
vice versa.. if someone is flooded by too much exposure…. they’re anxious because the world is too chaotic, confusing, complex…. then helping them make sense of their situation, surroundings, problems, etc.. would ease anxiety…. or you could also throw in some anger, and label the problems, and state boundaries, that it’s their problem and not yours….
clarifying their anxiety to them and yourself….
and you could also just do it internally…. and that can lower the anxiety contagion…
