I hate conflict, but I had what for me was a highly stressful confrontation with someone I care about yesterday. It was intentionally begun by myself, because I felt, rightly or wrongly that it was necessary.

But it didn’t go well at all. And the levels of negative emotional activity in my brain soared for a period afterwards. I was very sad, and feeling very sorry for myself.

This sort of experience would have often lead to me collapsing into a vortex of depression and even despair in the past. But I sit here, the morning after, feeling calm after the storm.

There are few reasons for this I think.

- I’m older. There is a point in life where, simply by virtue of having come through lots of these storms in life, and survived, we recognise the transitory nature of things, even in Darker Moments.

- Afterwards I was able, and this has been helped by my meditation practise over the last year, to supplement that life experience by not identifying myself with the emotions that surfaced. They arise in consciousness, and disappear there too, and by acknowledging that and noticing them as appearances in consciousness, not who I am, they disappeared a lot quicker.

- I simply repeated this every time the emotions resurfaced. And I recognised that this experience too, would, before long, become a distant forgotten memory, like all the other darker events in my life. Again all of this seemed to lessen the impact.

- Finally, I went for a pint of Guinness and a couple of whisky’s in the evening with my wife. There were some nice tunes coming from the speakers. At this point I didn’t even need to talk about what had happened, even though Ineke was also aware of, and connected to the situation. It was, in fact, a nice end to the day.

So. Sorted.

Now I’m trying to work out how I could have approached the catalyst conversation better. Or even if it was necessary at all. As a recent blog that I wrote noted, first do no harm. I should perhaps read my own material sometimes. LOL.