FM-11: Pro Tips – Managing Your State and More

Fieldwork Mapping Series #11

As we begin our practice of fieldwork mapping, our intention is to hold the priority of creating a map of the unique inner territory of the explorer. We choose to honor the explorer’s subjective experience rather than attempting to leap into more universally objective observation or interpretation.

At this point in the development of our science, this choice serves both the explorer’s own needs and the ultimate requirements for a true science of subjective experience. For the explorer, we must recognize that the subjectivity barrier remains firmly in place. The explorer is spelunking through private caverns to which they and only they have access. Our priority must be to honor the reality of that subjective experience rather than attempt to force it into conforming with existing ideas and expectations about what that experience should look like.

For our science, we are traversing a threshold into a true frontier. Our priority must be, at this early stage, to simply observe… and observe… and observe, supporting discernible patterns to emerge over time without the infringement of biases from existing ideas. At least, we must seek to do this as much as we are humanly able.

Let’s take a look at some strategies for honoring this intention to support both the explorer and our science.

Honoring the Uniqueness of Every Inner World

If we were to bring the mindset of ordinary science into our fieldwork mapping observations, we would probably find ourselves struggling. If attention is our instrument, and fieldwork is our operating manual, we might expect that what we are observing are universal properties for emotions we all share. And we might expect that those properties are exactly the same for every person. A solid is a solid, right?

If we’re in a lab, for example, and we measure the viscosity of a specific oil at a specific temperature in Lab A, we expect the same viscosity reading when we conduct our measurement on the same type of oil at the same temperature in Lab B. So shouldn’t we be going for the most universally-shared definitions of what we mean by things like solid, liquid, gas and such?

As it turns out, the answer is no. Let me explain why.

First, we still do have the subjectivity barrier in place. We cannot assume that the experience of a hard solid for one person is the same as the experience of a hard solid for another person.

“But wait a second,” you say. “Now that we have a way to precisely observe inner experience, we should get to compare one person’s experience to another’s — to find out if my sadness is the same as your sadness, for example.”

Well, yeah, that’s kind of what I expected when I first started using this method. But let me be up front with you, and jump to one of the first discoveries this method reveals. To take your example of sadness, it turns out that my sadness is likely to be very different from your sadness. In fact, we will discover very soon that our labels for feeling, mood and emotion are blunt and crude when it comes to making comparisons to actual, inner, lived experience. When we start to map “sadness” across many people, we discover an infinite variety of forms.

What to do with that? We must enter every inner world with a reverence for its utter uniqueness, and a respect and support for the explorer’s access to that uniqueness.

Honoring the Variability of Inner Landscapes

As you will soon discover, inner landscapes vary greatly from one person to another. And that means that people will vary in their engagement with these questions and in the granularity of the answers they generate for specific questions.

For example, sound seems to be not as compelling a parameter for some people as for others. Yet even for a single person, mapping one state versus another can yield a different profile of what qualities stand out. For the person who seems not so sensitive to the dimension of sound, for example, one feeling state might carry a particularly dominant sound which is a central feature of that state’s mapping.

These differences among people, and among different states within the same person, can show up with any of the parameters we explore in mapping. Give plenty of space for these differences, and be OK with skimming over detail that’s just not there while indulging in great precision where that seems useful.

Let me take this one step further. As you engage further in fieldwork, you are going to find yourself being very surprised at times. Be prepared for that and check your expectations at the door. The interior world of any human being (that includes you) has ways of defying any preconceptions you might have.

I still remember a moment from the early days of this work, where I was facilitating someone mapping a state she called Anger. Well, I had mapped anger a few times by this point, and I had certain ideas about what it would probably look like. But when she began to describe these vibrating green boots on her feet, I was floored. WTF? Never could I have imagined that anger would look like this. For anyone. Yet, when the full mapping was complete, this state fit seamlessly with the other states she was mapping into a congruent whole. It made sense inside her unique world.

So as you get into this, even if you are mapping a state you think you have mapped before, stay open. There are more varieties of “sadness,” or “anger” or “fear” than there are people using those labels to name a feeling state. (I’ll share a sample series of different maps of sadness in SO-2: Surprising Results as We Begin.)

One thing you’ll discover if you map more than a dozen states is the magnificent diversity of experience within your own self. And if you facilitate this process for more than one or two other people, you’ll very likely find yourself in awe at the wondrous variety of inner styles. It’s beautiful to behold, so allow yourself to be fully open to whatever shows up. Attitudes of wonder and curiosity are your allies in this work.

Welcoming Whatever Shows Up

One general principle you can trust in the work is this. If it shows up in your session, it is most likely relevant to what the explorer is investigating. This is true whether you are working solo or facilitating a partner. So if you have entered the session with a focus on a particular state or states, and something comes up in the course of that session, then no matter how random or unrelated it seems, invite it into your inquiry.

One way this sort of thing will show up is in interactions between the explorer and the facilitator. In psychotherapy this is often called transference and/or counter-transference. In fieldwork it is an opportunity to excavate further relevant states and patterns.

So as the facilitator, if you notice something that catches your attention in the way the explorer interacts with you, make a note of it and call the explorer’s attention to it. Do so with encouragement, welcoming what is showing up, asking about what the explorer might be feeling that is feeding into that interaction. Ask about whether and how that feeling or this pattern shows up in the larger pattern you are exploring together. Invite the explorer to name the relevant feeling states and include them in the mapping process.

The entire fieldwork process will assist you in welcoming whatever shows up. When you are working the process, you are functioning as a neutral proxy for the explorer’s own agency. You are the faceless guide serving the intrepid leader as they conduct the epic exploration of their own inner landscape.

The same is true when you are facilitating your own process. Let’s say for example that when you sit down to map a state you’ve named Fear, you keep picking up your phone and getting lost in doom-scrolling. It will be useful for you to identify the state underlying your habit/impulse and to include that in your mapping work.

The Freedom and Responsibility of Facilitating

In partner work, this framework of relevance for everything that shows up is incredibly empowering to the facilitator. Never are you in a situation where you have to manage someone’s way of interacting with you by interpreting it one way or another and figuring out the best way to handle it.

You simply include it in the inquiry in the same way as any of the other states being examined, and very quickly whatever reaction the explorer may have had toward you is no longer about you at all. Both of you are engaging the behavior shoulder to shoulder, side by side, with curiosity and eagerness to discover what is really there.

At the same time, be honest about your own vulnerabilities. Even in your facilitator role, you are a human. As a human, you’ve got a lot going on inside, always. So while you may be doing a great job keeping the center of your awareness on your explorer partner and leaning into the structure of the fieldwork practice to support the process, you will benefit from noting any inner reactions of your own, to save them for your own work if that seems relevant. Opportunities abound for expanding your awareness of what’s inside.

Confirming Our Maps

We have been discussing the importance of prioritizing the actual, lived subjective experience in our fieldwork mapping observations. We have “checked our expectations at the door,” set aside our concepts and objectivity, and emphasized that the maps we are creating are one-off, unique representations of the unique terrain of the first-person explorer.

This raises an important question. In service to both the effectiveness of our work to benefit the explorer and the furtherance of our scientific data collection, how are we to validate the observations we make? How do we know that the virtual material properties identified as those of a specific feeling state are, in fact, accurate representations of something “real” in this supremely subjective world?

At this early point in our science, where we have not yet established any kind of objective triangulation of neural patterns, for example, with the data of our observations, we must rely exclusively upon our front-line, first-person explorer. The explorer’s experience of the link between virtual material properties and the actual experience of feeling must be our source of validation. As the explorer, here is what this can look like.

The Slider Test

After completing the mapping questions, in most cases you will have the intuitive sense that your observations are congruent with your feeling experience. It just fits, and imagining alternate values for everything from substance to color yields a swift and certain “no.”

But occasionally, you may have doubts. Fortunately, it is usually pretty straightforward to confirm your readings.

These virtual material properties you have observed carry a dynamic relationship with the feeling experience itself. At one level, we can say they are one and the same. We’ll talk about this in greater depth in the next section on the science, and we will leverage this relationship to the nth degree in fieldwork’s moving phase in Volume 2.

But here, as we finish mapping a state, we can apply this connection to confirming our observations. Here’s how:

1. Choose one of the properties that seems most intense to you. If none are intense, any will do.

2. Bring your awareness fully to that property while cultivating the full experience of the feeling state.

3. Deliberately shift the value of that property in one direction along a continuum of values. Then bring it back to its original value and shift it in the opposite direction. Then bring it back. Notice whether (and how) the actual experience of the feeling changes.

4. If the feeling does not seem to change at all, choose another property and repeat the shifting process. If it still does not change, choose yet another property and repeat.

Temperature is the property that is simplest, existing on a linear spectrum along which it is easy to adjust. With substance, you will find it easiest to make your adjustments along the gradient of a sub-property like hardness, heaviness, density, or thickness/viscosity. With color, a sub-property like brightness or vividness of hue will often provide an appropriate slider, and with properties of movement, force and pressure, simply shifting the intensity, speed, or frequency will serve well. Similarly for sound. Size is also an excellent parameter to adjust.

As you shift the values of your selected sub-properties, if the actual experience of the feeling changes, you have confirmed your data. This feeling experience = this part of you = this affect field (see Introducing Inner Fields in SO-11:Getting Real About Inner Experience), and the virtual material property you have collected accurately represents the field as it occupies your consciousness. Good job!

If you wish, go ahead and confirm other properties as well. It may be that some properties are relatively neutral in their role in the feeling experience for a particular state, and their value may not matter so much. But there may be multiple properties that can function as “drivers” for the feeling experience.

If your changes seem to do nothing to the actual feeling experience, simply return to the beginning of the mapping sequence and cycle through it again. And consider whether the name you have chosen actually points to a state experience, or whether you might need to adjust your approach. Some choices: identify a new state related to your first intention, provide a new name for what you’re intending to map, or simply set this one aside.

Managing State Intensity

One convenient benefit of this ability to shift the feeling experience by adjusting the virtual material properties is that we can deliberately reduce the intensity of a distressing state, giving yourself some immediate relief. To use the virtual material properties in this way, start making adjustments to those that seem most extreme. Make small adjustments at first — all you’re going for is a bit of relief, not complete transformation. That will come later in the moving phase.

Usually, the direction of change to bring relief is the one that’s intuitively obvious. For example, a feeling state that is extremely hot will probably benefit from cooling down a bit. One that is vibrating intensely will probably benefit from calming down a bit. A feeling state that is very heavy could probably use some lightening, and one that is very dark some brightening.

Once in a while, the obvious adjustment doesn’t relieve the distress. In that case, first try the opposite direction to alter that property. And if that doesn’t work, leave it as is and try another property. For most feeling states, just one or two properties will turn out to be drivers. Making adjustments to these will effect the greatest change to the feeling. Try making small changes to discover one of these drivers, and go with that one.

You may even wish to practice altering that property back and forth between one value and another, almost as if it is a slider on an electronic device. Slide to one end to experience the strongest distress, and slide to the other end to experience the greatest relief.

Paradoxically, when you intentionally intensify your state, you experience a kind of relief that seems to originate from your experience of being completely in charge of that experience. And of course, demonstrating your capacity to slide your experience in the other direction further confirms your relief. You have control of that slider at any time you need it.