Have you ever found yourself suddenly feelingangry or scared or shut down when a moment ago you were feeling fine?
People or situations can trigger us into rage, anger, blame, compliance, caretaking, resistance, withdrawal, numbness, dissociation, explaining, complaining, lecturing, righteousness and so on. These triggered feelings are generally attached to previous traumatic events, such as:
We all deeply desire connection with others, but what is necessary for us to have this?
When we were born, the most important thing to us was connection with our mother. We needed connection with her body for adequate sustenance. We needed emotional connection with her, or with someone, to feel safe, and to develop the ability to regulate our feelings. Connection with someone was essential to our physical survival and our emotional well being.
When we are fortunate enough to have a healthy experience of connection with our parents, we grow up feeling loved, lovable and safe. But in order to have this healthy connection, our parents or other caregivers need to be connected with themselves. They cannot fully connect with us if they are disconnected from themselves.Continue reading Connection: Our Deepest Desire
Discover when getting things done is healthy, and when it is unhealthy and obsessive.
There are many addictive ways that most of us have learned to avoid our painful feelings, and focusing on getting things done is often one of these ways.
It’s not that there is anything wrong with getting things done. Most of us have a lot that we need to do and we may feel stressed when we don’t get done what we need to do. It is certainly not addictive to make lists and be self-disciplined enough to follow through on our lists.
Whether or not it is addictive depends on your intent. If your intent is to be a responsible self-disciplined adult, then getting things done is healthy, loving action toward yourself. But when your intent is to use your list and obsessively getting things done as a way to avoid responsibility for your feelings, then it becomes addictive. Continue reading Addiction To Getting Things Done
Our imagination is a great gift – a connection with our Divine Source – when we use it from an inwardly connected loving Adult to create the life we want.
“Imagination is everything. It is the preview of life’s coming attractions.” – Albert Einstein
We are often told that in order to manifest our dreams, we need to be able to imagine them. I have personally found this to be true, and I’ve also discovered that there is a big difference between imagining and daydreaming.
This is often what clients who seek my help ask me in a first session. Because they have never learned to manage and learn from their pain, they want to avoid it, eliminate it – find a way to hide from it.
The problem is that they have been unsuccessfully hiding from their pain for years by abandoning themselves – by staying focused in their head rather than their body, hoping that if they avoid feeling their feelings, the feelings will go away. They have been judging their feelings and turning to various addictions for the same reason.
When trouble comes, which it inevitably does, they intensify their avoidance of their feelings. Continue reading Are You Hiding?
Do you try to control during conflict, or are you conflict avoidant? Neither works well to resolve conflict. Discover what does work!
Leslie asks:
“When I approach my partner to address an issue, he only sees me as controlling and creating ‘controversy’. He can barely stand in the room for more than a minute…and it ALWAYS escalates into a big frustrating fight. It seems IMPOSSIBLE to deal with any issues with this man. What do you suggest?”
Leslie, I suggest that, instead of discounting what your partner says about you being controlling, you go inside and be honest with yourself regarding your intent. Are you certain that when you address an issue with your partner you are truly open to learning about his very good reasons for doing what he does and about why it is upsetting to you, or are you trying to get him to change? If you are trying to get him to change, then this is why he sees you as controlling. The fact that it always escalates into a big fight leads me to believe that you are trying to control rather than learn. If you were truly wanting to learn, then if he became resistant or agitated, you would move into an intent to learn about why he was feelings this way, or you would disengage rather than fight. Continue reading The Challenge of Conflict
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