I finally found a way of watching feelings which seems to reduce rather than increase their intensity.  But after a short break the feeling comes back just as strongly.

How long do you have to watch it in a detached way before it loses its power and doesn't arise again?  There must be some sort of guide for how this works.  Thanks.

Yes. It is called the development of equanimity. The reason it loses its power is because you identify with the feeling and make it your own. Stop that!

Yes Ian, your perfectly right. Ahhhhhh! But what he is saying is how long do you have accept feelings before you accept them! Just being silly... Back to - being with feelings...

This is the true guide: It never happens. Not until you heard its message.
Bombard it with equanimity as long as you want, it doesn't make a difference.
If you want to work within a Buddhist framework (I guess it's not important to you), these things called reflection and Brahmaviharas may get you there, but not necessarily. IMO The Buddha's teaching is incomplete here. You're looking for the process that Eugene Gendlin calls 'Focusing'. Have fun.

Edit: why watch them in a detached way? You could watch them with Equanimity, but as well with compassion?

Thanks all.

I'm interested in getting rid of persistent negative feelings.

Will Gendlin's focussing do that?  How do I do it?

Eugene Gendlin beautifully explains the general mechanism that allows all kinds of stuck situations (and that includes persistent negative feelings) to move on. ('Getting rid' is the wrong mindset to start with, because it doesn't work.)
Read his book "Focusing" to get an overview for a start. It's not easy to actually do, but I found that it often appears naturally in Metta, and more rarely Vipassana, practice, so those may also help. (pdf can be found via the search engine that Droll linked to. Possibly the book is in your local library.)

Jack Kornfield has also a passage about it, describing the same process with different names, in "A Path of Heart". Equally so, Tara Brach in her "Radical Acceptance" book.

As I see it, there are lots of places to get the practice from (though no one described it as elegant as Eugene Gendlin), but somehow the Buddhists missed it. Possibly because it occurs naturally during Brahmavihara practice. Or because they're dumb Jhana Junkie-monks for whom it is not important. Some tibetan folks seem to have figured it out though, too.

Edit: Oh, and of course it is not wrong to develop equanimity to basically everything, just as Ian suggests. This may also start the Focusing process, but maybe it doesn't, and also that is possibly a much more difficult way to do it.

Thanks mate.

I'm going to use these instructions.  Please let me know if they're not ok.

http://www.cefocusing.com/freedownloads/2b1bCompleteFocusingInstructions.pdf

This looks like a good start. It seems incomplete though, Gendlin's original 6 steps aren't even mentioned (if I skimmed it correctly).
Just try it, and see what happens. This takes a lot of experimentation.

If you like Focusing, which gets you to discover what's behind your stress, you can add some existentialism to test if your actions are aligned with your greater purposes:

• I am working “with _____”
• “In/at ______”
• “In-order-to”
• Aimed “towards-_______”
• “For-the-sake-of-_______”

I am typing on this keyboard.
At the Dharmaoverground.
In-order-to learn better ways to relieve stress.
Aimed towards a permanent relief of stress.
For-the-sake-of-____________(Whatever YOUR higher purpose is.) - This is just an example

This test here can point you to your recurring needs. Some people find certain needs satisfied, but others less often satisfied:

http://dilogr.com/app1/s/b961a460a6f4585?design=pages-1200-640

Thanks Rich.

Hi CCC,

The problem is, as long as you want it to go away, it won't. If you apply mindfulness both to the feeling and the wanting when they arise, eventually they will both go away.

That has not been my experience at all.  I have often and LONG wanted various feelings to go away, fear, anger, envy, etc and over time, they have.  Just wanting is not enough though, gotta find the tactics that will lead you past/through them so that they get depowered.   (not saying every molecule of every bad feeling has been gotten rid of by me, but a lot of specific ones and the ones that are left are much weaker)

How long did it take?  I am not sure when I started but maybe like 3 or 4 years of consistant daily observation and effort (not every second of the day but whenever i could remember to do it).  The rest of my life before that was mostly me getting to the point of realizing what I needed to do.  Then the more recent years have been me actually doing it.  I was actually amazed at how much crap I had to shovel though, the more layers I went through the more I found underneath and a lot of things had deep roots and kept coming up in different forms.  There were times when I wondered if I would ever get to the bottom but I think I am getting there lately, I am so much less turbulent these days.  It could well be that others will have a less deep pile of stuff to deal with than I did but on the flip side, I was fairly dedicated in my efforts  ;-P
-Eva

Hi Eva,

Did you apply mindfulness to the wanting every time it arose over those three years?

What happens to me in a small way is like this. When a coin drops out of my pocket or I drop something small on the floor, as long as I want to find it and fratically search, I won't find it. When I give up the wanting to find it, it usually appears.

[quote=
svmonk]Hi Eva,

Did you apply mindfulness to the wanting every time it arose over those three years?

What happens to me in a small way is like this. When a coin drops out of my pocket or I drop something small on the floor, as long as I want to find it and fratically search, I won't find it. When I give up the wanting to find it, it usually appears.
Well it went like this, my goal was to not feel bad feelings any more and become a generally better person.  At first I thought I could just 'get rid of' the bad thoughts but they do tend to sneak back later once attention wavers.  This effort did get me to be pretty good at observing mood and mood control though, kind of like jhana practice.  I learned how I could alter moods by remembering intensely a different mood.  So like if i felt anxious, I learned how to get quickly to a better type of mood.  I noticed that I could never go directly though, I had to always blast through a few other moods even if it was only for a minute or so and always including going through sadness, which I thought was pretty strange since at that time I did not know about the jhanas.  But it worked so I kept with it. 

I don't' think it was super long before I figured it might stick better if I got to understand the bad moods and their origins better so I put more emphasis on that, kind of like your basic psychology methods here, cognitive behavioral thought work, etc.  What am I thinking?  How reasonable is it?  That kind of stuff.  Mostly a ton of observation and thinking about it, plus some rewriting of negative attitudes and daydreams.  So I guess lingistically, we'd need to define what we mean by 'wanting to get rid of,' yes I wanted to no longer feel that bad stuff but I did not take the attitude that I could just banish it with a wave of the hand.  I thought of it more like stuff that had to get worked out and fixed. 

So I would say that my overarching goal has long and consistantly been to not feel bad stuff anymore, typical desires of many I would suspect, but the way I worked on it was not in a hysterical emotional desire type of way, more like a methodical plodding type of way, self observation, contemplation, and sometimes subtle intervention using cognitive behavior type techniques.   Also I have deveoped a belief that the way to get through pain is to confront and deal with it directly instead of running, once dealt with properly, then it's depowered after that, in the future it will no longer sting.   

So probably I am not really in dispute with you on this, just a matter of further explanation now that I think about it.  Yes, I do agree that when I want something specific TOO intensely, like too much of my emotional balance is riding on it, that does not seem to work.  It works much better if my attitude is more like 'It would be nice if such and such but if it doesn't, I can handle that too'  But if there is emotional fear in there, that seems to throw a wrench in things.  A little bit of want is ok but in moderation.  An overarching desire is still to not feel bad feelings though.  :-)
-Eva

Hi Eva,

Right, we are in agreement. Cognitive-behavioural techniques involve a form of mindfulness, learning how to approach strong emotions with objective curiousity.

I like your short version explanation better.  If someone asks again, maybe I'll just cut and paste that instead.  ;-P  It's good you made me think about it more though.  It was kind of a continuously evolving system at the time, had to think about it a bit to explain. 
-Eva

Hey,

So, I'm going to challenge the whole premise of this thread.  Watching feelings is actually the exact opposite of what to do to make them less strong and eventually stop arising.  Watching a feeling gives it justification - it reinforces the thought that is causing the feeling.  It's better to simply drop the whole thing, stop thinking about it or worrying about it.  Make it unimportant.  Feelings are always centered on a thought.  As long as you take the feeling seriously, you're taking the thought seriously - even if you aren't completely aware what the thought is.  The core desire in any negative feeling is to fix a problem - that's why the feeling exists.  It's like an alarm going off telling you to take something seriously.  The only way to disable the alarm is to make the problem go away.  You can do this in a short term way by taking some action to solve whatever problem you percieve, or you can do it in a long term way by removing the concept of the problem from you mind.  In order to remove the concept, you need to downgrade the seriousness of the problem until it no longer seems like a problem.  The most effectve way to do that is to stop trying to fix the problem completely.  Decide it isn't a problem and turn your mind to other things.  This has to be done repeatedly until the trigger is disabled.

An aid to this is to work within the framework of the problem and reframe it.  Like, positive thinking and thinking pointed towards solutions.  This is a good middle step to resolve the imediate emotional urgency.  Like, if you're worried about something you have to do the next day, you can replace your apocalyptic thoughts (imagining yourself failing) with positive and constructive thoughts (imagining yourself doing well).  This will lessen the immediate emotional impact because the problem seems solvable - the future threat seems less important and you don't feel an urgent need to prepare for it.  Once it is no longer an obsessive and intrusive thought loop, it should be dropoed as soon as possible. It helps to distract the mind - do something you find interesting or entertaining.  If the thought comes up again, over time, you can respond to it depending on its strength.  A very strong emotion will need repeated positive reinforcement and deconstruction before the feeling of a threat goes away.  Once it starts coming up less strongly, dismissing the thought as unimportant is the best way to decondition the trigger.  The less time you spend thinking about something, the less important it becomes.  Eventually the thought will come up and be equal to any other benign thought you might have.  The eventual goal is to live without feeling a need to prepare yourself for what's coming.  Freedom from negative feelings is actually just being confident that you can handle the future and the present - you don't need to prepare for anything or fix anything.

Thanks Nottao,

I'll try it.

Do you understand the relationship between thoughts and 'reality'? 

If you do, then you can see this isn't  just a matter of wanting to feel better.  When I have an expectation of something, the chances of it happening rise enormously.  This adds a huge element of tension and fear to the whole situation.

"Downgrade the seriousness" - that was the most useful part of your post Nottao.  Thanks.

I call this "magical thinking" - it's not a thing. You can spend the whole day thinking about getting hit by a car. It will do nothing to influence your chances of being hit by a car. In my own experience, I can say the opposite appers to be true. In the past, when I've spent a lot of time worrying about things, they never happen. Things actually seem to turn out better than I expect, on average, and I think this is because I've been incredibly pessimistic most of my life.

Anyway, it's best to treat magical thinking as a delusion. Try jinxing yourself a few times, you'll notice they don't come true. For example, today I definately will not be fired from my job, hit by a car, or shot. I'll come back tonight and let you know if I'm still alive and have a job.

Hi Not Tao,
Good to see you're still thinking and writing and figuring it all out once and for all - you like to do that
Couple things though - one, I don't think you challenged the whole premise of the thread at all, you challenged the premise of the idea that watching thoughts and emotions in a detached way is not the best way to disempower them, instead, you recommend distraction, which is not always bad advice. You did not challenge the idea that uncomfortable thoughts and feelings can be disempowered over some period of x amount of time through practice. That was the larger question, and, in a way, you still recommended equanimity and a change in view as the solution. Sounds very Buddhist
Second, the advice you give tends to involve thought loops, and general anxiety, and what I would call, extremely low level dukkha. Feeling anxious about a test at school is low-level, feeling anxious about your child's positive cancer diagnosis is on another level, and I would assert that 'changing the subject' may not be the most skillful, or human, method for dealing with such challenges 
Third - you said someone could kill you right now and you don't care. If that's true, you may have reached your goal, the end of fear, and I would certainly commend you - that is my goal as well. Thing is, I don't believe you
Last, I guess all of the answers to these questions depend on one's goals - I've thought a lot about this as I've read your (good) writings and then thought about my own motivations, then about all those people in life that I respect and revere the most: my father, malala yousafzai, MLK, Ghandi, etc - people I consider to be the most highly developed. These were not people that turned away, or people that put their comfort and happiness above the reality of the world that says (for example) that you and your family are dying of starvation becasue of political unrest in your country. Men are killing each other and raping your family members, people being burned alive and decapitated, and you have no home. You advice is change the subject? It's all just an idea? These do not sound like very deep or very inclusive insights to me, or ones that address the real human condition and situation in our F-ed up world today. NT, our personal reality at this moment in time may only involve anxiousness about an exam (or include any of your many examples of dukkha from your comforatable life), but it's insulting to the victims to equate the two. Real human suffering exists, more than not - the fact that you and I have been spared the vast lionshare of that misery, does not make it any less real, or painful to the world. Turning away sounds like an immature solution for someone who has not developed enough to be able to look directly into the pain. Without people willing to step into the fire for the safety of others, we wouldn't be here on our couches and beds typing about all the troubles we have with anxiousness and expectations and perfectionism - or whatever
The instructions you are giving on distraction, are also one of the instructions that the Buddha gave, when everything else failed! When one cannot cultivate equanimiity and dispassion, sometimes looking away is best. You (again) think you are onto something new that nonone else here practices. What you are describing here is called equanimity, dispassion. From a Buddhist perspective, that is a good and helpful practice, only your View would be incorrect 
From my persepctive, it just sounds depressing, and like you are stopping short of realizing your full human potential, by deciding that the goal is here. I disagree, we can develop more fully. Do you think it's more honorable to not feel any pain when others do (to not have compassion)? Or is it more human, more mature, to see how things are in reality, to not stick your head in the sand, or say to yourself, pain and pleasure - there's no real difference, nothing matters, there's no meaning. How do you know that? Isn't your perception flawed like everyone else's? Do you leave open the possibility that you could be wrong, maybe evolution is the meaning? Maybe meaning vs. no-meaning are simply just two different persepctives on the same phenomenon and one is not correct, just two ways of looking at things? That's my insight anyway
So my question Not Tao - is that the height of human development, to be happy in the face of others' misery? To change the subject? Have you finally reached your goal (again ; ) Or is it the development of a mature human, who can see roses where there are roses and thorns where there are thorns, and not pretend that one is the other just so they can feel a bit better, that is the total potential of the fully developed person? Our goals may just be different
D
EDIT: Sorry for the semi-derail C C C. To address the OP more directly, IMO, there is simply no good answer to that question - sorry. It takes as long as it takes. The Buddha said karma was indescribably complex - or something like that. The only real answer is to practice as if the future was simply an idea, a fleeting phantom - a solid insight IMO regardless. At some point in practice, maybe when awareness no longer wanders off habitually into lala land, but mostly stays fixed in the visceral sensate now-ness, adopting a more Dzogchen or Nondual view becomes beneficial, perhaps unavoidable. But taking this view too early in development, as may be the case with those that fully embrace Existentialism as a final truth (as NT seems to do here) can lead to an imbalanced nihilistic wrong view - or so my own view says : )

Well if it's 'magical thinking' and therefore untrue, then neither it NOR its opposite would occur.  Thus you accuse others of magical thinking, then do the same yourself!  ;-P  Anyway, in the 'you make your own reality' belief system story, if you think something won't happen, it won't happen.  Thus if you think about getting hit by a car all day but believe strongly that will not change your chances, then your belief that it will not change your chances is the story that is inacted.  Thus the 'you may your own reality' belief system is fairly hard to challenge, test, or have a control groups for,  because you can't get around beliefs, you always have them while still on Earth.  Whenever you think something is true and then find evidence for it, whatever the belief is, it would still support the 'you make your own reality' belief system.  You can't prove or disprove it as far as I can see.   
The thing is beliefs are so complex with millions of beliefs and desires and stories being held by any individual and they all interact. 
That's your story. 
Another one of your stories.
Your belief that it won't happen is your story. 

Daniel, you seemed to miss half my post.

That aside, I don't think suffering comes in very subtle degrees.  Suffering is all about context.  The shame and embarrassment of being called a "poophead" in second grade is experienced equally to getting called a faggot or a nigger as an adult.  I've felt long periods of uncertanty and "high level anxiety" in my own life.  The idea of degrees is just part if the story we tell ourselves.  The more involved the narrative is, the more anxiety we will experience.  The reason I use low level examples is because they're the easiest to illustrate and practice with.

As to fear - I'm not afraid of dying or being dead.  This is because I'm completely uninterested in my legacy or the story of my life.  I'm cetainly still afraid of pain, which is shitty in its own right and has nothing to do with a fear of dying.

To answer your final question - there is no height to human development.  There is no development, that's just part of the story.  There is no progress, not better or worse, there is just a bunch of animals living on a planet.  Sure, we can learn to make our lives less painful, and we could call this progress from our subjective vantage point, but this isn't better or worse on an objective universal level.  The idea of "human potential" assumes there is some end point we're supposed to reach.  Everyone will have a different answer to that if you ask them.

Yes shrinks call it 'magical thinking', and new agers call it the 'Law of Attraction'.

One can certainly worry a lot and the feared thing never eventuates - people are doing that constantly.  But the reason it doesn't eventuate is because the body tenses and the mind tends to say "no!" to it on some level.  If the body is relaxed and the thought is completely unopposed, stuff happens.  I have a lot of evidence for this. 

Regarding your car accident scenario, I recall driving along once and having the thought "car smash".  For some reason I didn't resist the thought on any level (I don't know why, maybe I was tired) and seconds later a car flies across an intersection and nearly hits me.  Nowadays if I have a negative thought and I realize it's there, I very forcefully change my focus.  This is sort of easy for novel thoughts which I'm conscious of, but my problem is with old fears which grind away in the background.

Most unopposed thoughts I have are neutral ones.  So just yesterday I had two instances both extremely unlikely.  They sound weird when you type them out so I won't do that, but be assured they were so outside of chance you'd never bet on it.

@Daniel san, no problems. 

This is an excellent point, I agree.  Even in medicine where they perform triple blinded research trials, everyone involved still has beliefs which may well be playing out.  Despite being blinded, Patient A has a strong belief that he has recieved a placebo and so nothing happens for him.  Patient B strongly believes that no one would ever be given a sham tablet, and he improves.  Researcher X has a lot of doubt about tablet y and his results prove this to him (no fudging required - he is honest).  Pharma company Z believes that researcher X has it in for the company and is fudging results.  They check his data and find an error which shows the drug y to be less effective than it actually is.  It was an honest mistake...  and so on....

Yep, you see the issues.  It makes a kind of sense though if you look at the world.  Smart hardworking people struggling to make ends meet, flighty clueless types getting paid the big bucks, etc.  I read once the only thing that really accurately predicts success in life is attitude.  Beliefs and attitude are very very closely intertwined.  Thus even if you are hardworking with an IQ of 160, you could easily fail if the attitude is  poor.  Whereas someone else that has few skills but just thinks he should do well for whatever reason, be it ego or whatever, may seem to 'get lucky' and end up doing well in life.  Also could speak heavily to indoctrination of youth, raise them to think they are stupid, worthless, not prized, etc and their attitude will reflect it, they will often internalize that belief and carry on the 'stories' they were told in childhood into adulthood, plus add more of their own in a similar vein.  Flip side though, too much praise and they may feel they HAVE to have outside praise, they may not have internal motivation.  Attitude and beliefs are so complicated. 

Well guys, I'm still alive and I still have a job!

The reason I used a jinx to demonstrate was because I have a subtle belief that by saying something won't happen, it will. So, my thoughts after jinxing myself were all telling me to knock on wood or I'll end up getting shot or etc. I decided to trust logic instead, haha. If magical thinking was correct, I should have been hit by a car, shot, or fired yesterday - I did actually think about the jinx a few times during the day, so there was ample opportunity for my thoughts and beliefs to influence the world.

Actually, hunting season just started, as well, and I've woken up to shotgun blasts outside my window a few times. The cards were stacked against me, I'd say.