I love this work by Carolyn Lovewell. I have gone in and out of practicing exercises from her book, Existential Kink, and want to get back into it.
Lately I’ve been feeling the discomfort of humiliation – and it’s something I almost always fear whenever I release art I’ve created, or when I perform, or in the risk of telling a person how I feel. I have been practicing speaking my feelings more these days, as I am aware that so many of my relationships could have been deeper had I only recognized and shared what I was feeling.
I have also figured out that humiliation is my own feeling – no one actually humiliates me.
And – oh! Feeling the fear and doing it anyway almost always makes me stronger, even if I might feel temporary discomfort.
I think it’s time to do existential kink work around that almost sickening feeling of humiliation and desire, and playing with the idea that I actually have what I’ve been desiring. I’ve tried EK techniques before and there is a liberation that comes with really feeling an experience. My tendency, if I don’t like a feeling – is to bury it, or knock it aside, or bypass it before I can recognize it.
I feel like personally, my taking things as slow as possible has also been maybe my own form of EK – but I’m feeling my pace and experiences beginning to quicken, it’s time to go with the flow. Some of my feelings I’ve been sitting with for months before I can even name them; that’s all part of the growth path I’ve decided to take, and also part of the grief I’m feeling around my mom and all the things her illness and impending death kick up.
It’s time to integrate the shadow and express myself at a pace that feels more enlivening to me.
Existential Kink is not an experiment to dive into if you are depressed, but if you are feeling curious or want to make changes but can’t seem to move past your feelings or beliefs about your present reality or your capacity to expand your life, there are a lot of EK techniques to help dissolve that helpless stuck feeling.
Personally, I am going to be picking up the Deepest Fears Inventory with a friend again. I did some work earlier this year that yielded quick and synchronistic results – now I want to focus on a specific aspect of my life and see what in heck happens! Why not??
Carolyn Elliot talks about EK in the video below, and her immersive spiritual esoteric “coed naughty slumber party” – Sleepover Mystery School. I love the idea of “wholesomeness that is not afraid of the dark.”
May you have fun dancing with your shadows~
December 23, 2023
Flagstaff, AZ
image – in between grief and peace
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holly troy ~ sacred folly 
The shadow sometimes overwhelms a person’s actions; for example, when the conscious mind is shocked, confused, or paralyzed by indecision. “A man who is possessed by his shadow is always standing in his own light and falling into his own traps…” I didn’t write this Carl Jung did. Lol.
I loved your post. It is very hard to find people who incorporate this kind of thinking into their lives, or for me, exploring what it is agitating me, swinging my moods, or keeping me from processing my goals and aspirations. For example, I put a quote into action frequently, which either springs me into action or leaves me conceptually shaking with fear. This is the quote:
“Depression occurs when fantasy collapses in the face of reality.”
I love the idea that words, phrases, or literary quotes can be applied like mathematical equations. This quote can pertain to the literal, the symbolic, or the mystical. Like ‘existential kink’.
As I get older, however, my process of creating art is less compelled by the end result, which I am finding is very short lived. I’m often unaware when I’ve reached my result, especially with music. When I am aware, It usually happens unexpectedly. I’ll be in the middle of a show, having just finished a song, reach for a drink of water and have a sudden realization I’ve just experienced the result of a process; it usually lasts for a couple of days and then I move forward. But I do like the implication I’ve reached something profound in a realistic way. As you say, though, humiliation is often the norm, because during my process I’ve done this enough to know the faults in what I’ve just played or written. It’s why I love poetry, or writing a post (like you’ve just written.) The process and the result are very close to each other. A poem can lift me for a day, sometimes two, three if I think its good. It’s often a very personal experience, because generally, there is no one to tell. Hopefully, the reader experiences an atom of what I am experiencing.
Yesterday, (New Years Day) I had someone I don’t know and have never met write a scathing review of a video I posted of me talking to my mother and playing songs. (The message was strange, he was strange, there was something wrong there) wanted to strike back a review of his review, but instead, just unfriended him and blocked him. But, it shook me. During my years as a playwright in Phoenix, critics used to come to all my opening nights if I had a new play going up. My first review shocked both my conscious and unconscious mind to a degree of a long bout of depression, (the reviews were scathing). Very gradually over a period of years I turned it around, but it almost killed me with the humiliation. I did learn to not let it overwhelm my actions, and tried not to produce out of spite. I also learned to look for light in other places as opposed to just my own. Yikes, I’m blathering on and on, I haven’t thought of these things in a very long time. (Your post stimulated some long ago ghosts in my soul) It’s very hard for me to understand being hated or maligned for something you do, or post, or write, or sing.
I don’t know how much of this pertains to existential kink, but its a really great word equation and a profound idea, and it obvious triggered something…Thank you for willingness to write these down, They are raw and moving.
Raymond
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Raymond, I am so grateful this moved you. And oh – there is so much here to dive into. It is rich and helpful to me – as I can’t help myself but to keep on creating, even when it hurts.
And ha! I just posted this as a post – which I will leave up.
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Fascinating journey you’re on! Embracing discomfort for growth resonates. How has Existential Kink transformed your creative process? 🌟
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Thanks so much for the question.
I am very much in the (re)beginning of it all, exploring Existential Kink. I can say that one of the things I come away with whenever I make art, whenever I prepare to perform music – is that I experience a crisis with the piece, massive discomfort before the work resolves. There is a period of time of chaos which is distressing – and I almost always wonder why I make art whenever I make art. Why do this if it is so vexing? Well, because I like it, I like the twinge of displeasure that urges me to resolve it, to work through it. So in that way, it sort of is like existential kink.
Now to apply the microcosm of the creative process into my actual life – that’s a little trickier, and yet, it bleeds through – and of course – creating is my actual life.
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