It’s easy to see how too much alcohol leads to feeling sick after having given up paying attention to the amount of alcohol one is taking in. Somewhere along the way, the ability to know and remember the consequences is pushed away. Most certainly it happened when the ability to sense oneself and awareness of one’s state disappeared. It’s independent from being drunk. It’s the ability to be present in the here and now that disappeared.

A similar dynamic occurs in everyday situations when a sense of overwhelm, and anxiety sets in. Feeling overwhelmed easily triggers some anxiety which in turn makes it difficult to remain present to oneself. It requires training to be able to observe anxiety instead of being subject to it. The latter means that the sense of self and awareness of one’s state will be reduced.

It’s a moment in time when our ability to think deals with our sense of confusion.

There is nothing wrong with this. It always happens when something unexpected or unknown appears. It is part of our learning process.

However, when one isn’t ready yet to step into the learning process resistance appears. It will often happen if the current experience comes along with a reminder of a previous experience. The overwhelm then is partly due to a memory or a known feeling popping up. It acts as if it was there to protect us from something and has become a habitual reaction. That we have started to discount some parts of our experience has moved out of our awareness.

Resistance has taken over. Thinking transforms itself into an effort to restore our sense of safety or comfort and make everything else go away. When this happens, one becomes focused on one’s discomfort and loses contact with the here and now.

It makes it difficult for us to see enough of one’s experience in the here and now to describe it. What appears instead are usually judgments of the situation, others, and oneself. Sometimes it’s even difficult to recognize them as judgments or a story one tells oneself.

Reaching that ability to describe one’s here-and-now experience requires practice and often external support.

And in this, both dynamics above are the same. Looking back at the situation and reflecting on the experience loosens the grip of habitual judgments.