Managing Psychological Energy - A Thermometer Check

Managing Psychological Energy – A Thermometer Check

Today I would like to talk about managing psychological energy. I picture psychological energy as being measured by something like a thermometer with a spirit level that has a line towards the top and a line towards the bottom. The line towards the bottom is black, and the line towards the top is red.  When I’m doing something that gives me a great buzz, like teaching, I notice that I move towards the top. I become more and more energized, and I really start buzzing in response to what I am doing. The only problem is that when I go above the red line, although I’m still energized, there are now added unconscious energies running the show. These unconscious energies are things like needing approval from the group that I am teaching, wanting to be seen, hoping to be recognized for how great, wise, or spiritual I am. It is almost as though the unconscious little boy/teenager/father/ mother approval complexes start to kick in. This is what takes me above the red line. So even though the context is still the same and I’m doing something that I love and have a passion for, something has changed in the energy – there is a wildness and unconsciousness that wasn’t there before I hit the red line. Sometimes I call this going past ourselves or going past the energy – that’s the phrase that I use for it. It basically feels like the energy is taking over and that I’m no longer centred or present in it. When I’m really buzzing, it feels like a high – like being elated or a little bit ecstatic. What happens then, of course, is that after the group has finished, there is a let-down, as there is with every group or client that I have. However, If the energy has spiked above the red line, when it drops, it doesn’t just drop somewhere to the middle on the spirit level, it drops all the way down to the black line, and sometimes it even drops below it. When this happens, I feel exhausted, burnt out, grumpy, negative and very tired. I don’t want to talk to anyone or see anyone. I just want to be alone in order to restore and somehow reconnect with myself. This is very similar to a bi-polar movement, where there is a constant swing between the red and black lines and no middle ground. When the energy drops below the black line, psychologically it almost takes me back to an earlier stage in myself, a stage when I wasn’t receiving the affirmation, love, understanding or approval that I’m looking for even now, without being aware of it, when I spike above the red line at the top of the cycle. When I hit that deeper psychology within myself, I don’t just experience being tired as I normally would if I were above the black line after a long day of working, teaching or retreat. There is an added element to the tiredness or the grumpiness or the sense of depletion. That added element shows me that the pendulum has swung from spiking above the red line to dropping down to the other extreme below the black line. 

My goal in presenting this image is to bring clarity and awareness to the process that happens to me in my working life. I am always seeking to find the middle point in my awareness – the point where the spirit level doesn’t spike above the red line or drop below the black line. Sometimes I refer to this as managing my psychological energy in my work so that the old wiring in my psychology doesn’t affect my current performance.

If we wanted to put a label on it, we could call the area below the black line the pain body or the Saboteur. It’s that sense that we’re not good enough, that we’re not going to succeed, that we’re failures and that we don’t deserve to succeed. These are the old interjections of the younger person in our psyches who was brought up to believe these things in one way or another. In my own case, wherever I may have picked up this psychology, whether it was from my parents or in school or college, I unconsciously incorporated it into my sense of self and believed it. There is a part of me that is still alive within my psyche that believes that I am going to fail and that is ashamed of my past failures – a part that never felt good enough. The result was that I internalized these things – they became what Carl Jung would call an internal complex. It is this internal complex that sometimes comes alive in me in my work, when I’m teaching or presenting to a group, and I then start to spike above the red line. You could almost say that the Saboteur sets the bar too high because it wants me to fail. So no matter how good a session I give or how much I try, I always feel that it wasn’t enough, that there were people there that weren’t getting it or that didn’t approve of what I was saying. That in turn supports my sense of not being good enough and represents my mother complex the co-dependent pleasing part of my self. So the next day when I drop below the black line, my ego threshold drops and the unconscious complexes come up – you could almost say they possess me to some degree. I beat myself up, telling myself that I gave that workshop but that I could have done better, or that some people didn’t understand it and that I had therefore failed in some way or it was mediocre.

This is a classic complex that has been written about for years, and it makes sense to me. I think that the thermometer with the spirit level with the red line on top and the black line on the bottom is a really helpful image to keep in your psychological toolbox. You can take it out during the day, stand next to it and take a measure of where your energy is at any given time. You may not have the same psychological underpinnings as I‘ve just described, but if you find that you spike above the red line and then rebound below the black line, you are experiencing a similar process. Bringing that to your awareness and using it as a measuring stick, you can then stop yourself from spiking and then regressing. When I am presenting or working, I have learned to be aware of when those unconscious energies begin to come into play, and I don’t allow myself to get carried away by them. Then, when my energy drops after the session or the next day, it doesn’t quite drop below the black line, or even if it does, I become aware of it – and awareness is the key. I then say to myself that I just need some time that day to restore my energies. I find that the more I bring that measuring stick with me in my pocket to work, the more I am able to find a middle ground where I don’t go past myself in my presentations or my work. I am not triggered by my audience or the people I work with, and I therefore don’t have to suffer the extreme of dropping below the black line and again feeling that old pain within me of not measuring up. Instead, I find that I have a greater sense of balance and centredness and that I am able to extend myself to others without losing touch with my own core.