“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

Now as to your noise episode, here are some suggestions for future use in any episode where irritation is involved. Followed, these suggestions will help you answer the demands put upon you when you feel the need for certain responses. When you are annoyed, if possible state your annoyance to the person involved, reasonably, (underlined) but at the time of the annoyance. When you do not respond in this manner the annoyance builds up and you are then tempted to respond to one incident as if many were involved, because the others were not responded to adequately at the time.

In the particular case for example you should have called your neighbor while you were being annoyed. That would be a healthy and reasonable response. Had this happened in each such case the annoyance would not have continued. Even if it had, you would then be justified in taking more firm steps.

On your part also then there was a reluctance to react to annoyance in a normal natural manner, and this is why the situation built up. By not reacting you gave your neighbor the license to further activity. By reacting normally you would indeed teach her respect for the regards of others, and she would have felt your reaction quite justified.

Your irritation would have been understandable and in proper proportion to the annoyance. When you do not behave in such a manner, bitterness piles up, and generally speaking you are not helping the other person involved. You may end up doing them harm through repressed reactions that suddenly explode.

Now. To begin a program of reasonable adequate response, to annoying stimuli, is your best insurance against overreaction and repression.

Now these are hardly your habits alone. I am using the present case but it has general implications. Your nervous system is prepared to act when you are annoyed. Left alone and operating naturally, you can trust its spontaneous response. It will be in proportion. It is only when you overload the nervous system by such repressed action that it then begins a cycle of overreaction to what seems to be one event.

For a while then you must closely watch your reactions by making sure that you are only reacting to a present episode. Soon automatically the system becomes adjusted to normal action, and the process becomes automatic again. It is also important to react when you feel an annoyance, rather than postpone action, whenever this is possible. Your system is cleared. When you are beginning to learn you may find yourself overreacting initially, simply because of the accumulated, unrecognized charge of past repression.