I think it’s important to first point out that none of us is just one composition of feeling. We are a melting pot of ALL the feelings.
Like a melting pot, when all of the various ingredients (feelings) are getting combined in relatively the same ways… you’ll get relatively the same taste—which becomes what we might consider: feeling like ourself.
When one or more ingredients start to get added disproportionally to the pot, it’ll modify the taste. As is the case when one or more feelings get disproportionately added to our inner state.
The trick then, becomes identifying and reducing the ingredients that are “undesireably” affecting the pot while finding ways to increase the desired ones so as to get the pot back to “normal.”
For example, when cooking, it’s obvious when too much salt has been added to a recipe. A simple solution, is to (1) stop adding more salt and (2) add more of the other ingredients to dilute the power of the salt.
In life, when we feel a rise in an unfamiliar/ uncomfortable feeling, we start by identifying what it is. Once we’ve identified it and can name it, we trace the origin of the feeling to it’s root cause. Then we (1) stop allowing whatever’s causing it to make it worse and (2) add more of the other ingredients that lead to the more desired feelings we’re after.
And soon thereafter (maybe not right away, but soon), you’ll start to slowly feel more like your normal “recipe-d” self.
P.s. I also published: 37 Robert A. Johnson Quotes from Inner Work To Convince You Dreams Aren’t Arbitrary.