{"id":15496,"date":"2024-03-17T00:27:34","date_gmt":"2024-03-16T16:27:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.visakanv.com\/blog\/?p=15496"},"modified":"2025-01-14T00:14:20","modified_gmt":"2025-01-13T16:14:20","slug":"emotional-knottedness","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.visakanv.com\/blog\/emotional-knottedness\/","title":{"rendered":"emotional knottedness"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<figure class=\"wp-block-embed is-type-rich is-provider-twitter wp-block-embed-twitter\"><div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" data-width=\"550\" data-dnt=\"true\"><p lang=\"en\" dir=\"ltr\">in my experience static rest doesn\u2019t help much when dealing with muscular knottedness, you gotta get into the knot somehow or do something dynamic<br><br>same is also true for emotional knottedness, which can look and feel like tiredness. but rest somehow doesn\u2019t bring relief<\/p>&mdash; Visakan Veerasamy (@visakanv) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/visakanv\/status\/1597343208228331521?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">November 28, 2022<\/a><\/blockquote><script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script>\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>you&#8217;re unlikely to be less tired tomorrow if your tiredness is actually emotional knottedness, which requires dynamic action rather than rest<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>sometimes what you need is &#8220;strength training&#8221;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>;;; <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>via (<a href=\"https:\/\/www.visakanv.com\/archives\/2023\/04\/15\/junkyard-of-vague-intentions\/\">archives\/junkyard-of-vague-intentions<\/a>) &#8220;knottedness \/\/ It\u2019s probably true that I might\u2019ve benefited from a break, but I didn\u2019t want to do that, either. Ideas about emotional knottedness come to mind. When you have a knot in a muscle, simply resting doesn\u2019t bring relief. You have to get into the knot somehow. You need to do something dynamic to release the tension. Lying in bed all day can actually make it worse. Similarly, I believe that emotional knottedness, or creative knottedness, often needs some kind of dynamic solution. I needed to write my way out. And I think I\u2019m halfway through that process right now.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I just did a search for \u201cemotional knottedness\u201d on my twitter, and a click here and there and I found myself back in 2021, when I was knotted about Introspect, the book I was working on at the time. And here the startling insight is that facing the truth of the matter is something that provides relief.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>There are many different things that I want to do, and it can be tricksy to tease apart what are the things that arise from my body, my heart, my emotional felt sense, and what are the things that my conscious thinky-talky authoritarian mind has imposed top-down. But navigating by surprise and delight seems to be the correct approach.&#8221;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u2731 <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>snippet from a draft about being overwhelmed by my own writing:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Elsewhere I\u2019ve written that tiredness is sometimes actually \u2018emotional knottedness\u2019. Rest doesn\u2019t do much for knotted muscles: you have to move them, knead them, really get into the knots and work them out. I believe that emotional knots are similar. The pain or discomfort may diminish slightly with time, but it may also get worse if you\u2019re not actively doing something about it. I\u2019ve definitely had this play out with some emotional issues in the past, and I suspect I\u2019m in the middle of one now. It\u2019s about my relationship with my body of work. My situation is hilariously recursive: I have written multiple drafts about it (the situation), and these drafts are themselves sprawling and chaotic, which leads to more knottedness. A part of me fantasizes that I could slice the knot in one fell swoop, as Alexander was said to have done in Gordium. But I suspect that if I am to learn something from the stories of Alexander that applies to my situation, it would not be the slicing of a Gordian knot, but rather it would be akin to the taming of his stallion, Bucephalus. <a href=\"https:\/\/andreaskluth.org\/2011\/09\/29\/genius-through-observation-alexander-bucephalus\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">As the story goes<\/a>, all the men who tried to tame Bucephalus with force failed. The ever observant Alexander noticed that the horse wasn\u2019t angry, but was actually frightened of its own shadow. And so he took the horse by its bridle, turned it to face the sun such their shadows were behind them, and as Plutarch put it, \u201ccurbed him without either striking or spurring him\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>There\u2019s something profound here about the power of observation, properly diagnosing the problem. If my problem is persisting and my attempts to solve it are not making any progress, there\u2019s a good chance that I\u2019m misdiagnosing the problem.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>tbc<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>you&#8217;re unlikely to be less tired tomorrow if your tiredness is actually emotional knottedness, which requires dynamic action rather than rest sometimes what you need is &#8220;strength training&#8221; ;;; via (archives\/junkyard-of-vague-intentions) &#8220;knottedness \/\/ It\u2019s probably true that I might\u2019ve benefited from a break, but I didn\u2019t want to do that, either. Ideas about emotional knottedness [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[1371],"class_list":["post-15496","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-unsorted","tag-copes"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.2 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>emotional knottedness - @visakanv&#039;s blog<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.visakanv.com\/blog\/emotional-knottedness\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"emotional knottedness - @visakanv&#039;s blog\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"you&#8217;re unlikely to be less tired tomorrow if your tiredness is actually emotional knottedness, which requires dynamic action rather than rest sometimes what you need is &#8220;strength training&#8221; ;;; via (archives\/junkyard-of-vague-intentions) &#8220;knottedness \/\/ It\u2019s probably true that I might\u2019ve benefited from a break, but I didn\u2019t want to do that, either. 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