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welcome! to emotional feelings, too!
after looking things over here at emotional feelings,
too, try out "the layer down under," (part of
the emotional feelings network of sites) & read a special "i just gotta say it" column concerning porn addiction by clicking here! Be sure to scroll down towards the bottom of the right hand column to find it!
Visiting the homepage is a great idea as it offers the complete concept of the emotional feelings network of sites!
You can also read this month's "I've just gotta say it!"
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How this site works best for you!
You'll
notice that there are many underlined link words in each article below. The reason for this is that you have reached not only, "emotional
feelings, too," but the emotional feelings network of sites. There are many sites
included within the network that'll be visited by clicking on these underlined link words.
If you can't find what you came
here looking for, visit the homepage for the emotional feelings network of sites by clicking above & read the options on
the homepage for the networks index of sites. Try to be specific when looking for an emotion or feeling word & click on the site you need!
It's very simple & very
interesting to follow your way thru the layers of your buried or stuffed emotions & feelings that have accumulated throughout the years!
when you've reached this point, or this website, you know you're making
progress!!!! this part gets difficult because now is the time to look within & become emotionally honest with yourself!!!
Best of luck & if you're
still stuck, send me an e-mail anytime, by clicking here & I'll be glad to send you an immediate personal response!
Sincerely,
Kathleen
   Why Bother With Developing a Natural Sense of Curiosity
Now?
kathleen howe
As you may have noticed
at the beginning of every page within the network included within the first few paragraphs a few thoughts concerning "developing
a natural sense of curiosity." I can imagine that most people read that sentence and let
it go in and out of their minds just like most things go; such as the number of blue cars they saw while driving to work that
day. It's forgotten as soon as it's recorded in the memory banks. When our brain is at rest while we sleep and it goes into
its natural house cleaning mode, it looks throughout all the files that were formed during the day.
I'm stating that every piece of information you take in during
your day and night gets assigned a folder in the memory warehouse of your mind. Great! Understand?
Reading the comment about curiosity
wasn't the main reason you visited this site and while you felt it important to "skim" through the information at the beginning
of the page, you were perhaps, "anxious" to get to the meat of your topic! This information would most likely receive a larger
folder in your filing system. The information you searched for will be repeated through your thoughts more than once throughout
your day and night. So when the brain does its house cleaning at night, any information that wasn't ordered up as a repetitive
thought - most generally received the "delete" stamp and the info in the folder gets dumped with the trash.
The file remains just in case you start thinking about everything
on that page again. If you visit the site again, and the information concerning developing a natural
sense of curiosity jumps out at you and you take a few moments to reflect upon how curious
you think you are - your brain is finding that folder that already exists and begins dumping the additional info into it.
This time, while you're sleeping, your brain will keep the info because the topic was recalled again instead of totally forgotten.
That's a brief description about how your memory works. In
my own self examination and reflection when I stumbled upon feeling curious there wasn't
even a folder made yet. There is something about being raised in a stifled atmosphere that doesn't
encourage curiosity. For some reason you are withdrawn and stagnant when you're told that everything
is "fine" and there's no reason to think otherwise.
When the continual flow of universal statements continue to
be repeated and repeated throughout a persons' childhood, those remarks become beliefs within an individual's belief system.
Remarks like:
This was how I was raised. Things were ritualistic and expected to flow without hesitation or interruption. If there were to be the tiniest sense of curiosity
concerning something and one were to be brave enough to ask a question; the end result was always the same. "You don't need to concern yourself about that."
It was ended. You were stifled. Most
things were information pertaining to adults that I didn't need to know for many years. After awhile; when you're thwarted with the same response - you cease to question. You just do what
you're told and you don't feel anything, you don't want to leave the "norm" and you're much safer
avoiding any conflict with a parent. Just do as you're told and you will live a fine and long life.
Imagine my sense of dismay
when at the age of thirteen I received a phone call from my friend across the street who had a whole slew of cats. Her mommy
cat was going to have her kittens in the closet and she wanted to invite me to watch the cat having her kittens. I didn't
have a second thought about wanting to participate, but I did need to know when the doctor was getting there to deliver the kittens so I would be on time for the whole procedure - you know,
"the operation!"
That's right. Eighth grade and I didn't know about how babies were born,
about getting your period, about sex, birth control or anything that touched upon becoming a woman. My entire eighth grade
class soon knew that I was beyond stupid. I was the laughing stock of our class and the teacher pulled me aside to ask me
if I had seen the school's "film on becoming a woman."
I had to shake my head, "no" again so embarrassed that I wanted to puke all over myself, and I was hustled off for a private viewing with the school nurse. Yep, that was me.
No wonder I got pregnant at 16. I never once thought about birth control. That part wasn't on the movie I had seen. I was having sex, believing that sex was love, which was something I had been very hungry for. I didn't know if my parents actually loved me or not. I had been trying to get them to ask me why I wasn't behaving like myself, but they never did.
And so as they said in the 70's ... and so the beat goes on! I never asked
many questions. I was just agreeable. Whatever he wanted to do I was happy to do. My boyfriend was great, I was great, and I just went on without asking any questions. When I got pregnant, I didn't
even ask any questions about what an abortion was, about how it happened or why I had to have it. My mother simply told me,
"I will not let you ruin your life with a child."
That remark stifled any thoughts I might have had anyway. It cut like a knife. Now I knew I had been correct in my thinking. My mother had never wanted to be a mother and had never wanted to have me. I was devastated. My life continued to fall apart and I stayed on tract with not asking any questions. I just followed whoever I was "with."
Thankfully I only had one boyfriend throughout high school.
When I got married I never asked any questions of the guy. I didn't know
anything about him except that we had named our dogs the same name and we both liked onions. He was a golf pro, my grandfather
played tons of golf as well as my mother; we seemed perfect for each other. He liked my cooking, I was glad he did. When his
old girlfriend showed up one day I didn't ask her any questions either.
I won't get into the ups and downs of living life with no natural sense
of curiosity. I believed what I read and questioned nothing. I believed that if I breathed a certain way, childbirth would be painless. I couldn't have been further from the truth!
When my second husband gave me a diamond engagement ring, I just naturally
believed it to be a "real diamond." It wasn't. It was glass.
Time and time again, when someone told me something I believed them. Over and over again I was setting myself up for disaster. I never looked at it this way before. So when I was setting
up the page for "curiosity" I began to reflect upon
the fact that a natural sense of curiosity might very well be a self protection factor that
is very important for us to have. I was never taught to be self protective, as I can assure you would believe me when I tell you that my second husband ended up marrying my best friend who lived next door to me.
Most of my life I had spent letting people hurt me. "Hi my name is Kathleen. You can hurt me anyway you prefer. If you like calling people names, I won't ask you why you are calling me stupid and boring." "Oh, by the way, if you need someone to punch in the face today, be my guest because I'll still be your friend or your wife." I lived like that for fifty
years. I had seen all kinds of domestic violence and no one had told me anything about why it was allowed to happen. It just continued.
I even went so far as to invite people to hurt me, like my best girlfriend. My first husband, before we were married wanted to have sex with her. He asked as so many men
ask, "Could we have a threesome?" So without asking any questions, I called my girlfriend and asked her to come over for a
threesome. I was humiliated. I couldn't go through with it. I left the dark bedroom as no one even noticed, I walked three stories down to the car parked
on the street. I could still hear the music coming from our third floor bedroom. My blouse half unbuttoned and my skirt on
backwards, no shoes, I got into the car to drive around sobbing slowly, not knowing what I felt, I was afraid to ask myself.
This friend of mine had already slept, uninvited with my previous boyfriend with whom I had been engaged to.
I was too afraid to say anything for fear that the next recipient of the kicking, hitting, name calling, intimidation, humiliation or other physical punishment would be me! Think about how many times you just told your new boyfriend about all of your insecurities in past relationships. Remember telling him about what hurt you the most? Well you will remember when he does the same thing to hurt you. And you'll never question as to why he did it.
So now... I'm recovering. The first thing I had to do was to study about
mental illness. After studying about mental illnesses for awhile, there was a common thread in almost every article I read.
"Family history" was a very common symptom of mental illness. I had known that some of the people on my mother's side of the
family had something mentally wrong with them, but I didn't know anything about it except that my one aunt might have had
a "personality disorder."
I knew that my grandmother told me she took, "nerve pills." I didn't know
what they were for. But the more I studied the more I realized that what I had overheard people talking about was DID, personality
disorder and my grandmother had social and generalized anxiety. She had on-going depression and many phobias. She probably
would have been diagnosed with Post traumatic stress disorder as I have been. She too, experienced domestic violence in her
marriage and I don't know about when she was a child.
A child! She married my grandfather when she was only fifteen years old!
I can imagine what she went through because I fell victim to naivety as well. I was never educated about my family's history
with mental illness because of the stigma mental illness carried. No one ever admitted to having a mentally ill family member!
NO! It just wasn't allowed.
Teach your children to have a very acute sense of curiosity. Teach yourself first or with them if you - yourself aren't adept at asking questions. Just think about your child being prepared to face a possible "stranger" situation. Wouldn't you want your child to be asking questions
immediately instead of being afraid to ask questions? Wouldn't you want your child to be instantly questioning things about people hanging around your home who
were out of the ordinary?
The more I've pondered the curiosity
issue, the more I've convinced myself that it is one of the most important self protective factors to develop. In every topic, we need to be educated and aware of what is involved within that environment. Our safety depends upon it. Be self protective. Begin to think of how you can be more self protective. Ask questions naturally. Practice asking questions by sitting back and writing down possible questions about just anything
you can think of while you're relaxing with some personal time.
Think about what you want your kids to ask others before they make decisions about being friends with someone. There are
just too many possibilities concerning curiosity! Just ask me if you need more info!
The following information was found at the Character
Encyclopedia.com, but unfortunately the link is no longer active. It is still listed however at the bottom of the page, just
in case they re-activate it.
types of curiosity
Loving Curiosity
- Has an attitude of genuine interest in the other person
- Doesn't
assume, but instead asks questions
- Seeks clarification
- Seeks new knowledge
- Has benign intentions
- Delights in learning
- Invites the other to feel
special, important, understood
- Opens up the relationship, helps the other to flourish
The Lover - The Healer
Hostile Curiosity
- Is interested to the extent
that new information will provide some kind of leverage
- Asks questions to confirm
assumptions
- seeks clarification for the purposes of entrapment
- seeks
new knowledge for the purposes of tripping up the other person
- Has
intentions to overpower, control, or demean the other
- Learns
only as much as is deemed necessary
- Invites
the other to feel cornered, trapped, accused
- Closes the relationship down,
overpowers the other
The Prosecuting Attorney:The Manipulator
On Curiosity...
Questions to ponder . . .
- What
were your experiences of curiosity in your own family ?
- Who else
in your life has had an impact on your attitude of curiosity ?
- In what
contexts have you learned or turned to curiosity ?
- What
effects might curiosity have on your relationships ?
- What
effects does curiosity have on your learning ?
- Under
what circumstances do you feel least like being curious?
- Under
what circumstances does curiosity seem necessary ?
excerpt:
The importance of curiosity - the antidote to depression
If knowledge is valuable & our curiosity keeps us growing, then anything that
threatens that curiosity, this most valuable of our abilities, is very dangerous to us.
In her book, Black
Sun, Julia Kristeva says that depression is an absence of interest.
In this sense,
Adam Phillips suggests that depression is a self-cure for the terrors of aliveness, of being alive to one's losses & therefore to one's desires.
"The desolate
apathy of depression is less painful than the meanings it attempts to blank off. The possibility
of meaning, the release of curiosity, is what the depression
works to deny."
(Adam Phillips, On Flirtation, p. 83).
Recovering from
the dead stare, the unarticulated numbness of depression requires accepting an invitation to curiosity, curiosity
not only about our losses, but curiosity about what our losses
have taught us.
These lessons need to be articulated, to be given a voice, to be put in a story which is then speculated about, elaborated on & its plot
expanded across time.
Thru conversation
with others, not just in our own heads, this story slowly becomes our story & we come to realize that we're the hero of
that story.
We're no longer
just a character in our parent's or someone else's story, but the main character in our own story, a story with not only a
past & a present, but a future as well.
Curiosity
Interest in learning, especially
about people or things beyond one's immediate concerns. From the Latin cura, care or concern. We also get "cure" from cura. The curious care for knowledge, they care for a question. The answer is a sort of cure for the thirst for knowledge.
Curiosity has its own reason for existing.
One cannot help but be in awe when contemplating the mysteries of eternity, of
life, of the marvelous structure of reality…[& we should try] to comprehend a little of this
mystery every day.
Never lose a holy curiosity.
Albert Einstein
Although sometimes confused with nosiness, curiousity is a highly
positive element that indicates the presence & actually fosters the development, of numerous other positive elements, including awareness, creativity & desire.
It's also a key indicator of happiness because it reflects a general appreciation for the world & life.
Curiosity is often the unseen driving
force behind much success because it provides the spark which, thru creativity, launches
one into a course that ultimately leads to change & produces results.
Though curiosity suggests discontent, because one who's curious is rarely satisfied, it's the first tool in the treatment of that discontent. Curiosity therefore, is almost without equal in helping to foster a well-rounded
& self-satisfied character.
The first passion & the last of great & generous minds.
Samuel Johnson
Curiosity: The Fuel of Development
By Bruce Duncan Perry, M.D., Ph.D.
"Whas’at? Whas’at?"
A question from a 3 year-old boy asked of his mother over & over as they
walked thru the zoo.
Children are such curious creatures. They explore, question & wonder & by doing so, learn.
From the moment of birth,
likely even before, humans are drawn to new things. When we're curious about something new,
we want to explore it.
And while exploring we discover.
By turning the light switch on & off over & over again, the toddler is learning about cause
& effect. By pouring water into a dozen different shaped containers & on the floor & over clothes, the
4 year-old is learning pre-concepts of mass & volume.
A child discovers the sweetness
of chocolate, the bitterness of lemon, the heat of the radiator & the cold of ice.
The Cycle of Learning
If a child stays curious, he'll continue to explore & discover. The 5 year-old finds tadpoles in a tiny pool of mud on the
playground. This discovery gives him pleasure. When he experiences the joy of discovery, he'll want to repeat his exploration of the pond. [Pleasure
leads to repetition.]
Each day, he &
his classmates return. The tadpoles grow legs. [Repetition leads to mastery.] The children
learn that tadpoles become frogs, a concrete example of a complex biological process. Mastery, in this case, understanding that tadpoles become frogs, leads to confidence.
Confidence increases a willingness to act on curiosity, to explore, discover & learn. "Can
we bring tadpoles into the class? How do other baby animals grow up? Why don’t dog babies lose their tails?"
This positive cycle of learning is fueled by curiosity & the pleasure that comes from discovery &
mastery.
Shared
Discovery
What is most pleasurable about discovery & mastery is sharing
it with someone else. ("Teacher, come look! Tadpoles!") We're social creatures. The most
positive reinforcement, the greatest reward & the greatest pleasure, comes from the adoring & admiring gaze, comments & support from someone we love & respect.
The teacher smiles,
claps & comments, " You're great! Look at all these tadpoles! You're our science expert!" This rewarding approval causes a surge of pleasure & pride that can sustain the child thru new challenges & frustrations.
Approval can generalize & help build confidence & self-esteem. So later in the day, when this boy is struggling with the introduction of simple math concepts, rather than eroding his
esteem by thinking, "I’m stupid, I don’t understand," he can think, "I don’t get this, but I’m the one who knows about tadpoles."
Constrained
Curiosity
For
too many children, curiosity fades. Curiosity dimmed is
a future denied. Our potential, emotional, social & cognitive is expressed thru the quantity & quality of our experiences.
And the less curious child will make fewer new friends, join fewer social groups, read fewer books & take
fewer hikes. The less curious child is harder to teach because he's harder to inspire, enthuse & motivate.
There are 3 common ways adults
constrain or even crush the enthusiastic exploration of the curious child:
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