I will resume posting new chapters from Flawed Genius on September 7, 2025.
This is an everyman's update of Scott Peck's "The Road Less Traveled." Peck's book, published in 1978, is widely considered a masterpiece. It explores how we confront and solve problems.
Chapter Thirty-Five
ACTIONS AND FEELINGS
One Creates The Other
I fell in love when I was seventeen. Life became golden. My feelings were new and wondrous. Six months later, we broke up, and I was devastated and angry.
Most of us experience love and heartache. How we handle these emotions, as well as our other feelings, can have a noticeable effect on our lives.
For years, I hungered for the closeness I had with my high school sweetheart. Over the next thirty years, I fell deeply in love with four more women. Each time brought an incredible high, then complications.
Going through more experiences, I repeated my patterns. Gradually, over the years, I learned a few things. Jumping into relationships created problems, for one. Almost all of my intimacies began suddenly.
By working with kind, skilled counselors and sitting quietly contemplating a feeling, thought, or action, I realized that I run from pain. I have run to women, alcohol, drugs, sex, work...whatever helped me feel better in the moment. Afterward, I felt worse about myself, which became something else to run from.
For many years, I did not see the repercussions from my dashes to supposed freedoms. When I began to see the effects of my causes, I often ignored them. No matter how illusory the freedom was, I had grown used to escaping into it. These destructive habits changed what I was feeling for a short time, but gradually, I dug a deeper and deeper hole for myself.
In San Francisco, when I fell ill again, I saw a reputable physician whose house I had been repairing. He examined me and ran blood tests, but found no abnormalities. He told me to see a psychiatrist.
I had learned little meaningful from doctors for several years, but no one had been this blunt. I had a feeling that my body was struggling with something physical, but I took this man's advice.
I was fortunate to find a therapist with whom I could work comfortably. Christine was clear about what I was doing to myself. I listened to her, but resisted accepting a connection between my emotions and my physical health. I did, though, see the benefit of talking with her.
Christine was an expert at helping me find solutions. She occasionally presented a viewpoint with the right timing for my headstrong personality. Had she told me what she thought I should do, our therapeutic relationship would have been stunted.
I worked with Christine for four years. During this period, I spent time in the hospital, in a crisis center, a welfare SRO hotel, a halfway house, and co-op housing for people trying to rebuild their lives.
I had clung to my destructive patterns for years, making this process harder. Given warnings to change and opportunities to stop my downward spiral, I mostly ignored them. I'm grateful I finally listened.
During the first two years of working with Christine and other counselors in my residential environments, I made a conscious effort to better care for myself. I ate better, dressed warmly, stayed out of bars, stopped chasing women, and tried to stay with the surging discomfort I felt in my solar plexus. This is where I store pain and anxiety in my physical body. From this constant discomfort, I sought escape.
Underneath my fear of pain was fear. Holding on to it gave it power over me. After this realization, I spent a month confused because I had presumed, now that I was aware of what I was doing, I should be able to stop it. I could not.
Gradually, I realized life was more complicated than simply changing railways. The momentum of the train I wanted to leave was still with me: Karma worked off slowly.
After two years of doing everything I could to help myself moment to moment, I experienced a good feeling bubbling up inside. This sense of well being was the first I could remember and took me by surprise. I was trying to survive. I did not realize a reward was coming.
This experience of feeling spontaneously good brought into focus a principle I had been reading about and Christine had mentioned casually: "We create our feelings by the actions and thoughts we choose." The subtitle is, “Letting emotions dictate our actions can lead to a downward spiral.”
When this principle sank in, I felt lifetimes lighter. No longer chained to my emotions, I could change how I felt, change it for the better.
Life did not turn golden. I slugged through my destructive patterns for years, as I slowly shed them.
My life has become freer and lighter, as I have learned to love myself, step by step. Sometimes I regress. At other times, I have been able to forgive making an unwise choice.
However, we glide or stumble along our path, our experiences can be smoother with the awareness that we create our feelings by what we choose.
#
To read my previous posts, sign up for a Substack account (if you haven’t already). It’s free and only requires your email (no cc). Unsubscribe at any time with one click.
To learn about my other books, click the link below to my author's website.