When was the last time you wanted to punch someone in the face?
It was almost 3 years ago for me, sometime in 2020 as Covid-19 took the world by storm.
I remember walking around the streets of a quaint little town in the Southern Highlands of NSW, 3 hours from Sydney, thinking about all the horrible things I wanted to do to this couple I’d been working with.
Actually, punching them in the face was the least of my fantasies 🤣
I wanted to tear them apart limb by limb and feed them to a pack of rabid dogs on crack cocaine who haven’t eaten in a week.
But alas, I did nothing of the sort.
This couple had executed a surprisingly sneaky manipulative game on me… and it took me months to realise what had happened. It was all very shadowy. Tricky. Hard to detect… like a lot of manipulative games.
It felt very similar to stories I’d heard about cult brainwashing. Break down your confidence until you’re a shell of the person you used to me… then insert a new operating system or program that “enslaves” you to the ideology and community of the cult.
That’s how I saw it anyway…
…but I sometimes wonder what they thought about the whole thing.
When I confronted them, they acted like they’d done nothing wrong. It was as if they were oblivious to the problems with their behaviour.
Did they really think it was ok to play those games? Were they simply unaware? Immature? Naive?
Or were they simply playing dumb? Did they know exactly what they were doing but refused to admit it because that would get in the way of their games?
Given that we’re no longer in touch, I don’t know if I’ll ever know why they did it… or what their actual perspective is.
However, I have my hunches.
3 years after I wanted to tear them apart, I tend to think it’s a mix of both intention and lack of awareness. They know what they’re doing – manipulating, gaslighting, etc – but they lack the awareness or maturity to see why it’s destructive and toxic.
That’s just my hunch though. Who knows if it’s actually true?
You know what is true though?
What saved me from those people (and manipulative people ever since) was learning to get into my body 💪
Learning how to feel my biological impulses. Learning what safety feels like and then cultivating it in a much deeper way. Getting in touch with my aggression and anger (instead of telling myself “I’m just not an angry person”).
The mind is a fantastic tool but it’s also dangerous. I can use my mind to rationalise bad behaviour from other people which makes me vulnerable and puts me in danger.
But the body? The body figures things out a lot faster than the mind and it can’t rationalise things away – only the mind does that.
Loads of times since getting into the nervous system work I’ve picked up on tiny little cues that I can’t trust someone – LONG before the mind realises what’s happening.
It’s pretty damn cool to discover the wisdom that comes from the body 😍
Anyway, if you’d like to connect with your body and nervous system so you can discover the profound wisdom it has to offer you, join me inside Rageheart here:
https://www.rageheart.co/go/
If you’re already a member and feeling the impulse to get some body-based wisdom from yourself, hit the “Sign In” link on that page and get rolling…
Cheers,
John Wood