Under stress people fall back to their comfort defenses...

Seems like a strange juxtaposition of terms comfort and defense…but the concept is that you have developed a set of defensive mechanisms that have protected you in life up to now.

These are a result of missed-connections in your parenting and missed-understandings and missed-communications in your social relationships…through family, friends, teachers, and supervisors…even your clergy can at times miss in their target of teaching.

The defensive position is ..the interpretation plus reaction… you developed as a result of those missed-interactions.

If you find yourself having the same fight — again, — shift your reaction by trying to understand what is stressing your partner, child, friend or colleague… then you may be able to help alleviate the stress and find a new and more secure way to connect.

Begin by aligning fully with yourself, while completely aligning with your friend, partner, child, or colleague… in that space of complete alignment you are standing in the center of both paradigms.

It requires empathy, boundaries, and inner security.

• You must empathize with the other while you have compassion for yourself.
• You have to understand where your responsibility for yourself begins and ends and your responsibility to the other person begins and ends.
• And you have to have a sense of knowing (confidence rather than insecurity) or security.

The fall back position happens

• when you lose your sense of security or trust in the relationship (or yourself),
• or you confuse where you end and the other person begins (recognize the for/to responsibility issue),
• or you interpret the other as attacking you, rather than having compassion and empathy.

This action (or reaction)where you fall back to comfort defenses is the way you reset in a war.

When a person is in a war he advances, when the attack is too strong the person falls back to a comfort defense, a place where he can reset and recuperate.  That’s what happens with stress.

Stress challenges individuals at a core level and causes each to feel the need to fall back and recuperate…the natural or rather knee jerk reaction is to become defensive and interpret the other person as attacking.

The best way to respond rather than react is to focus on your feelings, your sensory guidance system…what are you feel in your senses…then you align with your feeling BUT not with your historical interpretation of what that feeling means.  By unlinking your feeling, from your interpretation of what that feeling means about the other person, you are creating the space for empathy (compassion), boundaries (paradigm recognition and shifting), and inner security.

• Catch yourself when you are in the fall back position.
• Catch yourself when you have raised a shield of protection, defensiveness.
• Catch yourself when you feel alone behind a rigid wall of your own creation.
• Catch yourself when you feel yourself pulling back your heart from the situation.

Truth is held at the center of all paradigms. When you allow yourself to release your attachment to something being a certain way then you are free to shift your paradigm and connect. Take the time now to understand what matters to you.  Look for ways to be congruent in your beliefs, your thinkings, and your actions.  Allow your words and actions to align with each other.

• Discern what creates defensiveness, fear, insecurity, and lack of faith in you.
• You can shift away from defensiveness through these steps:  Find ways to Create:
• Connection out of defensiveness,
• Love and Knowing out of fear,
• Confidence out of insecurity,
• and Faith out of lack of faith.
• Do this and everything you desire will be at your heart center and your fingertips.

Use these uncomfortable feelings to teach you about yourself through Inner and Outer Reflection.  You will become the strongest person in your world, empowered to create what you desire.  Remember, to release energy blockages, you need

These steps are outlined in Beth’s upcoming book, 6 steps to transcending conflict and elevating consciousness, due out in 2014.  You may participate in seminars to learn these techniques through her website.  This book is the HOW TO companion book to Turning Me to WE: The Art of Partnering with Mindfulness(2013).

 Discover where you are in the Temperament and  the MAAPS section.  You can see how you see the world, and whether you have an attachment that is creating problems in your relationships.  MAAPS will help you to discern your insecurities and understand how and what underlies how you developed your insecurity driver (Money,  Achievement,  Attachment, Power,  Structure). You can find ways to simply connect to yourself in a loving forgiving way through theTurning No to ON: The Art of Parenting with Mindfulness Book (2011). If you want to change your life, see how you can bring mindfulness to your parenting and relationships.  One being at a time you can elevate the way in which you treat one another and elevate the consciousness on the planet so that equality, balance, and freedom BEcome the norm for all.  in love and light, bg