This is a reblog of an earlier post, March, 16, 2010 – It felt like a nice remembrance.
Remembering the attitude of gratitude graces your every step. Take a day and be grateful for everything that happens and everyone you meet, even the things that look unpleasant at first…the attitude of gratitude heals and shows you the gifts of the universe just waiting to be embraced.in love and light, bg
Have you ever walked around all day in the attitude of gratitude?
It’s kind of a weird thing to do. I have done this to increase my mindfulness. For me it looked like this – something frustrating would happen and then I would try to be grateful for that thing. I had to look at how the frustrating thing was a gift.
It was stilted and foreign but I made it through the day. The interesting thing I got out of it was to focus on how negative things can be beneficial. Which is paradigm shifting. Sometimes it was an issue of increasing my understanding of another person or myself, and sometimes it really increased my availability to patience.
It definitely allowed for me to re-frame situations and choose to respond to the situation and people differently.
The most revealing aspect of this was in my relationship to myself…
If you want to find the secrets of the universe think in terms of energy, frequency, and vibration – Nikola Tesla
Hello friends
The miracle of healing is at your fingertips. It is simply a matter of seeing, listening and responding to your senses, energy, frequency and vibration.
I see immediate and complete transformation in my practice, relationships, and life every day!
The corresponding elements that allow for this are a matter of knowing, belief, and sight. It is through this knowing belief and seeing that the miracle presents itself. It is greater than a course in miracles. It is an instantaneous truth seen through your eyes when you are completely connected to your sensory guidance system and the healing knowledge of sight and action.
Your sight must be aligned with the frequency, energy, and vibration of health, light, and spiritual knowing. From this wavelength and universe all things are possible.
This allows for the immediate perception of a miracle.
Three steps will help you to see the miracle.
First, use your inner sightconnected to your inner knowing. So that you are open to how the fabric of your life can shift to create, offer the miracle – this results in seeing the miracle.
Second, accept that choice is the ultimate foundation for each soul on the planet. And you do not have the power to change another person’s choice for his or her life.
Third, see the miracle in each event…even when your first reaction is to say that no miracle exists. Pay attention to the energy of the event and within you the intensity of your reaction. Vibration and frequency are also useful in assisting you to discern the message therein… once you have aligned yourself with the miracle you can bring forth a healing either in spirit, cognition/thinking or the body/physically.
The universe is always offering a gift to move you toward your soul’s path.How – that is true is the tricky part. Seeing the miracle requires integrating spirit, mind, and body knowings as well as energy, frequency, and vibration. Use paradigm shifting through compassionate sight and inversions to see the balance in the universe. Use a long, broad view to understand what the universe is presenting as a miracle.
A fourth step helps to align with the miracle and integrate the lesson.
Embrace even those events that are painful and look for the healing lesson within – you will know when you have found that lesson when you find yourself, smiling, looking lovingly on another or a new perception of the event, and feeling a release of anger and fear.
Miracles are the norm in your life…. as you train your internal dialogue and sight to attend to your sensory guidance system you will experience them in every step of your life. The natural outcome to this state is love, peace, upleveling consciousness, collaboration, acceptance, and success in all of your endeavors.
This is a quantum shift in experience and knowing; a quantum shift in energy, frequency and vibration. Once you allow yourself to see differently you will act and be different, immediately, in a quantum and whole way. Paradigm recognition, shifting,integration and creation in the moment. in love and light, bg
When working with relationships one of the first necessary steps is to look at how the parties relate.
Are they defensive and competitive?
Do they maintain a balance sheet of exchange patterns?
Do they spend time and energy listening to their partners point of view seeking to understand or waiting to find the flaw in the argument?
How parties relate gives you information about what is driving each person and what is the underlying foundation of the relationship. Once you have a sense of this you can identify the underlying needs. Evaluation of what is driving each individual results in n integrated picture of needs, exchange patterns, belief systems, paradigmatic structures, connections and relationship and security structures.
Narcissism and Competition in relationship are forms of relating that disallow inter-action and interdependence. These are styles of relating that are part of a singular, need-focused structure.
Narcissism tends to be a ME form of relating and often results in a co-dependent relationship structure. In this structure the parties utilize an exchange pattern and the paradigmatic structure is you take care of me and me take care of you; each exchange is noted and weighted, and the parties require an equal exchange for each action of care. Need underlies the tie to each other and there is a lack of independent action or thinking. It may appear collaborative but in actuality the giving is highly conditional. The insecurity in this type of relationship is that the other completes him and so abandonment is feared; there is a high degree of separation anxiety. These partnerships require intense agreement on everything and do not respond well to independent thinking. Intensity can be the marker of intimacy rather than a sense of trust and security. From a financial perspective one party may have all the financial responsibility and the other party may have all the emotional responsibility. The exchange is money for support. In this style of relationship the two persons are halves to the one whole, there is no individuality, only couple.
Competition tends to be an I form of relating and often results in a pairing that is independent without inter-action or interdependence. Each party is in a wholly enveloped structure. There is no dependence or co-dependence, as you might see with a ME structure, but there is no inter-dependence either. Each party stands on his or her own two feet. It is as if the two people are walking side-by-side. There is no integration or mixing of the two beings. Fairness and rigid boundaries are the characteristics of this type of relationship. There can be an exchange pattern balance sheet but this has more to do with winners of the competition and proof of being right rather than what each brings to the partnership. The financial structure of this relationship is independent as well; each person pays his or her way and if there is a need for a money exchange it is set up via a contract or with some set of conditions and plan for pay back. The emotional structure is equally self-contained. In this style of relationship the two persons are two persons, there is no sense of we-ness or group only the two selves walking side by side. Here the insecurity centers around avoiding dependence and connection as this is seen as a way to stay free from bondage.
Collaboration and connection are a third wave of partnership. In this style of partnership the two parties have an interdependence and integration without a loss of individual selves. In this style of relationship the two persons maintain a sense of self and have individual beliefs and experiences AND the two have an integrated participation with each other which is we. In this style of partnering there is space for two Is and a We, interaction incorporates a tapestry of flexibility, a weaving that results in a rich experience of collaboration, connection and a sense of increase. This WE style of relating offers enhancement of each party, without a loss of freedom. It is flexible, accepting, and inter-dependent. The security is derived through a sense of support and connection without a loss individuality. Conflict in this style of relating offers a way to work through issues to come to a higher level of understanding and connection to each other that incorporates each person’s core desires, needs and beliefs. It is a function of negotiation rather than a compromise. Financial and emotional structures are interrelated and integrated so that both parties are flexibly participatory, flowing easily in a responsive, dynamic fashion.
Once you have found your style you can begin to shift your attention in the relationship. Embrace your fears and your insecurities and embark on a journey to move from narcissism and competition to collaboration and connection.
These styles of relating are developmental in nature, you are able to move through these various styles or structures through loving, attention to your own security and individual fear-based patterns. Mindfulness is a useful focus of thinking to assist you and your partner to evaluate and transcend your personal blockages in relationships.
Development of your personal sensory guidance system will be highly valuable in this process.
You can use these models to determine what kind of relationship structure you are in and then use mindfulness to uplevel your style of relating.
If you discover that you are in a Me oriented relationship turn your love toward yourself so that you can be the best partner to yourself first, this is a beginning step to moving to independence.
If you find you are in an I oriented relationship trust yourself and your partner to risk giving and receiving in an unconditional way. Create a belief that being connected can be fulfilling rather than disheartening, this will open your heart to create a path of connection with your partner.
Mindful, loving, attention toward yourself and your partner opens the door for a shift in how you relate. Namaste, beth
The power of intuitive understanding will protect you from harm until the end of your days – Lao Tzu
You have within you a perfectly fine-tuned personal sensory guidance system. It includes your five senses of hearing, touching, seeing, tasting, and smelling plus your intuition. This integrated system of intuitive understanding combines to inform you about your environment and your actions. Use of this system guides you on a path that is in your best interest and away from that which is not.
To develop this system pay attention to your senses.
Do things feel off or right on?
Do they look clear or askew?
Does the information go in with veracity or in a sticky fashion?
Do you have a bad taste in your mouth or does something not smell right?
Is there congruence or incongruence in another’s statements and behaviors?
These questions orient you to listen, feel, see, know through your personal guidance system.
It is in the quiet, light, notions and intuitions that you can feel and know. These represent the direct and ever vigilant guidance of your personal guidance system.
Truth is revealed from within, from your integrated sensory guidance system. When you get information from an outside source translate it through your personal guidance system.
Pay attention.
Apply mindfulness.
Focus your compassion and lovingkindness toward the whole of the situation and pay attention to the messages you receive from within from your sensory guidance system. The presented messages can guide your actions thoughtfully, mindfully and with compassion.
Delay immediate, reactive-responses to loud, forceful, manipulative messages from without, especially when your receive contradictory information from your personal guidance system or you experience these as out of sync. Efficient responsive action comes from your personal guidance system.
To develop your relationship to your sensory guidance system.
Incorporate a daily breath and meditation practice.
Use your third ear to listen.
Listen, pay attention, hear with your whole being, to the content and the non-verbal aspects of what is said.
Practice daily Yoga, even a 10 minute focus on breath or the sun salutation to bring you into your integrated spirit, mind, body vehicle.
Question from a mindful space the basis of other’s beliefs while listening with your sensory guidance system.
Treat yourself with the same love and kindness you use to treat others; pay attention to the whole of how others treat you.
These actions allow for increased understanding of both other and yourself. Namaste,beth
I just returned from an amazing event that offered an elevated example of how groups can indeed find agreement and harmony through a concerted effort to focus energies on the thread of connecting and similar thought and a commitment to upleveling consciousness.
The focus of seeing where there is agreement and to honor a partnership of love, offered a perfect starting point for compassionate mindfulness. Several politically and culturally diverse groups came together in harmony without the need to compete, push their agenda or malign the others. I observed individuals who typically lived in a way that required them to push their ‘rightness’ shift and search for a way to meaningfully connect and open to the ways in which others were ‘right’ too, or at least where there was agreement in broad terms. Through this openness there was a transformation and increase in consciousness and light that vibrated at a higher frequency; a stable threshold opened for 48 hours creating an environment that was indeed a bit like the description at the end of the Celestine Prophecy (Redfield 1993) wherein the protagonist simply vibrated into a different dimension or the Star Trek Next Generation episode where the doctor’s friend simply evolved in front of her eyes into pure light energy. It was amazing.
I left considering the implications of such an evolution of consciousness toward the concept of one world. I visualized and fantasized about how this could be a view into what was to come in the new generation, an evolution of spiritual and cognitive consciousness for the embracement or inclusion of all of humanity and the planet.
Mindfulness, compassion, paradigm shifting and sincere, open-minded interest and focus on looking for a way to truly create a consensus that is driven by love and understanding is the most effective way to create success in partnerships – to truly embrace the space of “we”.
I observed something else which I had not anticipated. There are those who cannot do this. There are individuals who use mindfulness, and the words of compassion or understanding as a manipulation to trick others into vulnerability. This was something I had previously understood was a reality, but had not considered in my writings on the application of mindfulness.
As a therapist I would use the term psychopathic to describe this kind of behavior. A psychopath is an individual who is devoid of a conscience. He or she manipulates the chosen target against him or herself. The psychopath has no real internal experience of guilt or shame, but manipulates the normal aspect of guilt in others to manipulate them to act in ways that suit the needs of the psychopath. An individual with this style of relating in the world can shift their exterior behavior, continence, tone, and words to appear as if he or she is something he or she is not. This type of personality structure does not have the interior strength or flexibility to evolve his or her consciousness and so simply observes and imitates without a real or true internal shift.
When considering mindfulness and its application toward parenting or partnering you must be able to discern when you are dealing with a psychopath. When this is the case it is best to follow the words of Stephen Covey in his book The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People: win-win or no deal(Covey, 1989). This is to say when you are interacting with a psychopath the habit of mindfulness and focusing on where you agree and the concept of win-win is unattainable as a psychopath is unable to move into a true “we” relationship. A psychopath is “I” only and therefore unable to negotiate in an honest and fair fashion.
Covey wrote when you cannot find a place of win-win then it is most effective to choose no-deal(Covey, 1989). This is to say using mindfulness can assist you to discern what another wants and seek to understand the other but when you are interacting with a psychopath once you understand the other is unable to create a win-win (a negotiated perspective that includes both parties needs/wants) you are best to choose no-deal. This no-deal concept can look like a termination of the relationship or in the case of someone with whom you must continue to interact (like a divorced parent of your child) it can look like an acceptance that there can be no “we” so negotiation is from an “I” to “I” experience, where you seek to simply create what is most effective for you and any other party involved ( like your child) but not get into a discussion of an integrated “we” with the psychopathic personality.
Once you have discerned you are dealing with a psychopath you must take care to not let him or her “play” on your emotional fears, concerns, or feelings of guilt to manipulate you toward his or her goals. This is a different form of mindfulness it utilizes compassion and understanding so that the actions, words, and behaviors you choose are without malice, but they incorporate the full and complete understanding of the other person’s true lack of capacity for “we”.
Here are a few simple guideposts to assist you in discerning if you are interacting with a psychopath:
He or she acts dramatically different in specific situations.
He or she has a chameleon quality and can take on a persona that is expected to be accepted.
He or she utilizes your feelings of guilt or desire to be kind, helpful and the bigger person to get you to forgive him or her and give him or her another chance.
When a third-party is involved in mediation or evaluation, he or she is able to manipulate the third-party to agree with him or her against you – even once you have shared your concerns.
He or she never takes true responsibility for any negative behavior inflicted upon you and deflects such to some element of you.
He or she changes his or her continence to get his or her way including mimicking words and emotional behavior .
Finally, it is important to use your internal guidance system, your neutral, mindful, observation powers to discern whether you are interacting with someone who is honestly and sincerely communicating with you. Notice whether his or her actions, behavior, and words are in congruence.
Pay closest attention to the subtle, small things as this is where the psychopath’s true consciousness and intentions will be shown.
I can feel that the energy of how partnership and collaboration is evolving. It is moving toward a higher degree of spiritual oneness. As this shift continues to develop focus your energy on interactions that will be fruitful, loving, and increase the value of your world. Give yourself permission to use your mindfulness to discern the capacity for partnership and focus your energies on those who are also working toward the thread of compassion and love and “we”ness.
Having had this moment of perfection over this last weekend my heart is on fire with the joy that awaits in our near future as a community of “we” on this amazing planet. It starts with each one of us, love, compassion, open-minded neutral mindfulness, and focused attention toward harmony and balance. in love and light Namaste, beth
Parenting offers the chance to rewrite history. It gives you the chance to choose which aspect of your childhood you want to model for your children and which aspect you want to change.
Be –ing the change you wish to see in the world requires an understanding of what interferes with your own joy and what limits your consciousness.
You can use this knowledge as your guide toward mindfulness. An awareness of differing perspectives creates the space to embrace paradigm shifting to increase awareness and find connecting points.
As you practice this you will discover that you are drawn to connecting and solving problems devoid of hate and anger, proof and defensiveness.
This can be applied to every aspect of your life including from how you consume, to how your model relationships and partnerships, to how you parent.
The inner and outward congruence of joy, forgiveness, compassion, and real interest or curiosity in the other leads to real power to change not only your world and sphere of influence but the world.
Happiness is a state of mind – it reflects your inner capacity to be the best you can be.
I am grateful at this time in my life to see this gentle, mindful, compassionate, strength, and sense of empowerment in both my son and my daughter. I feel joy in my own release from the prison of proof and defensiveness that separates humans, and gratefulness in the path chosen by my children.
Look into your children’s eyes see that joy and empowerment. This is how you can change the world, by modeling your commitment to practice mindfulness and compassion in your interactions and parenting.
Just as water through its persevering flow along a crevice can create a canyon, so too can you transform your environment through this gentle, persevering pressure of mindfulness, compassion and non-violence.
First you must see it in your mind’s eye then you can create it and see it reflected all around you.
To increase your capacity for mindfulness, compassion, forgiveness, and non-violence practice Yoga, prayer, meditation, internal paradigm shifting, listening to understand before speaking to prove, through these practices, in time, your will shift your perspective and through this your words and actions. Namaste, in love and light, beth
Soul guidance is a set of 5 easy steps to shift your focus so that you can have your heart center guide your path.
Anxiety and guilt wreak havoc on the human spirit and lead to breath-holding, inflexibility, and burning off of true soul guidance.
To see your way through these two habitual ways of letting fear separate you from your true self and true path –
1st. begin with a simple review of your breath,your senses, your emotions, and your muscles. What ever you find notice it – tension, flexibility an inner grimace, tightness –
2nd connect these – emotion to breath holding, and tightness or rigidity in movement
3rd Discern which aspects of your inner sensory guidance system reveals intuition and which reveal fear -here are the most common: Fear: pit of stomach tightness-fear, anxiety in chest breath holding-fear, inflexibility in hips-fear (trauma), inability to think clearly and utilize mindfulness-fear Intuition: quiet light voice in the center of your being-intuition – may be in you heart or your mind, this has a sense of ringing clear through your spiritual, emotional physical field – it allows openness, neutrality, space, and mindfulness.
4th Now feed the intuition
5th release the fear.
Breath is the key. Breathing through to trust and have faith in your knowing requires deep full breathing drawing into you the power of the knowing. Breathing through as you release the fear, allowing it to disconnect from you, letting go as you release the lack of power.
Simple and easy
If you shift your energy slightly, you can change your life in a big way! Try it with something small first to practice your skills of letting go – then increase your intention and focus until each day you simply adjust and release and follow your inner guidance
Love the simplicity? It’s all within you, pay attention when something seems to go in crooked or doesn’t feel right or causes you to withdraw – this is a message from your sensory guidance system. Respond accordingly. Engage your critical thinking and your mindfulness, and respond to what you discover. When you feel stuck, unworthy, anxiety or fear, breathe, and go through these steps to release the fear and embrace your inner knowing.
Listen to your true voice – the sound will be sure and firm, loving and compassionate, light and quiet.
Ignore the loud fear-filled, guilt-filled, anxiety voice. Avoid defensiveness deciding your course of action.
Choose the sweet loving inner smile of love and joy – live there and everything you desire will be at your fingertips to create.
This honors you and creates an opportunity for your inner being to guide your life and results in resilient, flexible powerful action.in love and light, beth
Habits and paradigms are tricky. A habit can be defined as something that guides you toward success or shifts you into a rut out of which you are always struggling to evolve. Paradigms give you your first structure of morality, right/wrong stories, and modes to interpret the world. Habits and paradigms work right up to the point they become obsolete. When you feel stuck or clinging to a habit or paradigm that feeling may be a sign that you need to birth through to the next way.
Challenging your paradigmatic perspective including your habitual reaction patterns allows you to discover a deeper and fuller experience in your relationships and work environment.
Not long ago I encountered a dead-end on my path. At least I thought that was what it was at the time.
I had gone as far as I could in the pursuit of something. I had reached a stopping point but not reached the goal. At least that stopping point didn’t look like my picture of the goal. I felt discouraged. I didn’t want to turn around and go back, but I could go no further.
So I sat down where I was. I stopped pushing. I looked around. I looked within. I began breathing and focusing on what I felt as well as what I saw. With my breath and focus the energy around me shifted. It was as if I was vibrating into a new level of consciousness.
As I sat there I felt inconsolable. I had become attached to the goal I was pursuing. At first my attitude didn’t allow for me to see anything positive. I could only see through the eyes of my disillusionment. Then I began to see through an attitude of gratitude. I began to notice some wondrous things around me: extraordinary relationships and family; time and freedom to pursue my dreams; support; love; space; an inner awareness. This awareness, breath, gratitude, and peacefulness filled me and opened up an inner imaginal world filled with plausible creations.
I realized the dead-end was a logical conclusion of my limited thinking and perception – an inner shifting of paradigms and habits.
It wasn’t that I hadn’t reached the goal, it was that my goal had transformed. I had shifted from pursuing an independent, proving, route to experiencing and developing a collaborative, integrative, holistic, path. This required me to shift my perspective, my habits, and my capacity to take in what was around me, to see through a different lens.
At once, with this realization, I noticed a beautiful path that veered off just to edge from my sitting place. It was a slightly elevated pathway that was not immediately noticeable, hidden from view when looking straight ahead or downward. It was light and airy, covered in a material that was vastly different from the path on which I had been walking. I could only see the way, through my new perspective of present moment now and receiving joy.
The hard work, perseverance, and hard choices, the trauma and difficulties of my youth had created a primary paradigm that anything of worth required this set of behaviors. And that I had to prove who I was, a doing, rather than being style of living. What I had endured to get to this point could only bring me this far on my path.
Only via these new lessons of ease, joy, laughter, love – that lovely concept of flow could I see the way through. An evolution of consciousness was the action required to take my next step. And this evolution comes from a releasing, a relaxing, and a letting go rather than a persevering, pushing attitude. The shift in consciousness creates the new paradigm in a quantum-style movement, rather than a linear movement. Each new paradigm births through its predecessor through a natural shifting of perspective.
If you are feeling stuck or clinging intensely to your habitual style of behaving, thinking, or believing; if you are feeling defensiveness, anger, anxiety or discouraged stop where you are, both metaphorically and physically. Take the time to feel into your ideas, your habits, your goals, and beliefs. Open yourself to the attitude of gratitude, notice everything that is working in your life, environment, relationships, and work. Through this space you will find an evolution in your consciousness so that you can shift your perspective and birth yourself into a new paradigm of living and being. in love and light, beth
Following these steps to increase awareness and allowing creates space to respond effectively and change your behavior.
An easy way to begin is the Stop, Look, and Listen method.
Stop multitasking or whatever action in which you are involved that may split your attention or where you feel you are being pulled along a track in an habitual thinking/behaving way; Look, or pay attention by bringing your attention to the situation at hand, pay attention to the actions of others and yourself and how relevant these are to the whole of the situation; Listen to your inner voice and the style, tone, timber of your and the other’s voice. Stop look and listen is focus, see, and hear in the present moment, the now. This is a simple unambiguous phrase that brings you into mindfulness.
It is a simple way to interrupt habit-reactive firing of behavior. This method slows down your reactive-linking behavior. Through present moment refocusing of your attention you can gather information and then develop a response that meets the present moment situation.
This recovery process can be applied to any habit that has gone awry. What’s really great about this set of actions and behaviors is how they help in every instance when a habit has simply overtaken your life as the driver of your behavior rather than the mechanism of your comfort or alleviation of difficulty.
Here’s how to decipher if you are dealing with a habit reaction pattern.
Check in with your senses and intuition. If you feel that the experience is familiar or a pattern then you may be participating in a habit reaction scenario. If you feel that you have trouble trusting that things can/will go well for you, then your early history of having to survive is coloring your current day choices/actions.
If you have an immediate feeling of anger, like someone has crossed a boundary and your feeling is charged in that the level of emotion (intensity) doesn’t match the situation or boundary crossing, this is a sign that you have been triggered.
In this instance, proceed in your actions with thoughtfulness.
Query yourself on whether your intense feeling is consistent with your overall experience of the person or the environment toward which you are feeling the intense reaction.
Stop, look, and listen – think caution in proceeding.
Invoke mindfulness and centered, present moment attention to the situation.
Work against the pull of the groove into the habit reaction pattern.
This is how you can engage the a more balanced attitude. Focus is the key. If you are in danger, utilizing your reaction skills to get out of the situation is paramount. If you are not in danger but rather caught in a habit reaction pattern then focus your attention on what you want rather than what you fear as the best response.
Use mindfulness to re-view the circumstances in relation to your emotion. This is the stop, look, and listen component, it will help you identify whether this is danger or not. In example, if a stranger is doing something that feels dangerous allow your survivor reactions to move at lightning pace. If however, the situation is with a loving partner, or friend – you need to view your emotion within the context of the relationship in present-time and with clarity and genuineness.
Awareness, Breathe, Wait it out, and Reveal.
The most difficult element of confronting a habit reaction pattern that is driving your behavior is the stopping part.
If your car is out of control, you need to stop its forward movement – this requires first, a recognition that you have lost control of the car, and then second, an action to gain control.
This awareness is key. Once you are aware you can begin to take back control of your thinking and behaving/actions.
Stop look and listen focuses you on increasing your awareness. Breathe, wait it out, and reveal focuses you on how and what to change. It requires a shift in how, and on what, you focus. It requires a re-view of yourself through a centered, mindful attention to yourself, your skills and limitations, what brings you joy and centers you in your best self.
Shifting perspective actually creates the power that you feel you have lost. It is a relaxation of the struggle to survive or fight and a gentle movement into the mindful, balanced living of life. Consider the simple action of relaxing in a hold, this action alone telegraphs to the holder to lighten his grip and causes laxity so that you can wiggle out of the stranglehold.
Lightening your grip, your need for habit reactive linking behavior allows you to move through situations and your environment in a mindful and relaxed way, still nimble in your attention and responses to act if necessary to a dangerous situation but not reactive, held or tight in your nature. in love and light, beth
Having worked for many years with individuals struggling with various forms of anxiety I have identified a coping mechanism I call habit reaction patterns to manage anxiety.
This is a coping strategy that starts out creating a sense of control over their internal anxiety. The individual will describe that indeed the habit reactive pattern in some way saved her from an extraordinarily stressful situation or circumstance. Unfortunately this anxiety management method produces a false sense of security and overtime the habit reaction pattern serves to drive the individual’s overall behavior and results in a diminished sense of empowerment and a lack of security.
Habits are highly desirable to create structure in a meaningful way. When a habit degrades into a habit reaction pattern it becomes undesirable . Habit reaction patterns lack present moment authenticity. These are reactive in nature, a set of unconscious, unthinking, unchallenged, automatic reactions.
The patterning pulls you into a specific way of behaving. Think of how the groove of a rut pulls you around a circle. It takes an extra exertion of energy to jump out of the rut and choose your course. The habit reaction pattern acts like the groove or furrow, it takes you into the behavior Habit like any reaction in an automatic, non-present-moment-thinking-way (unconscious).
This reaction is not responsive to the present moment situation, it happens in a non-intuitive non-mindful way. Habit reaction patterns can be triggered into reaction; where a trigger acts like the groove that pulls a person into a set of interpretations and actions (reactions) to survive, or to solve a historical problem, or quell anxiety.
Tied into the habit reaction pattern is a highly fine tuned trigger-detection mechanism.
This mechanism is super-sensitive to interpreting danger, hyper-vigilant, hyper-reactive.
The trigger may be linked to an earlier situation in which you felt in danger of severe harm.
The experience trips the trigger and then the habit reaction pattern fires into action – forcing you to behave in a specific way – even when you cognitively feel you do not want to or feel it is inappropriate.
When this set of feelings happen, the habit reaction pattern is now driving your behavior rather than your proactive spiritual-cognitive-behavior processes. You are no longer in the driver seat of your life. It is as if you are simply watching from behind a glass window, rather than responding to the specific, dynamic multi-level issues at hand. You feel powerless to stop yourself from reacting in the manner prescribed by the habit reaction pattern.
In order to get out of the rut, groove, or habit reaction one has to invoke two things, awareness and allowance. This allows for a sense of present moment empowerment and mindfulness.
The habit reaction pattern behavior may have been highly effective when you first developed it. In fact it may be the best thing you could have done to respond to the original anxiety conflict that set of the patterning habit. This makes it difficult for you to let it go.
You may feel like it is the thing that sets you apart in some way or gives you an edge in some way. This internal feeling creates an attachment to that style of being in the world, such that confronting the need to eradicate the ineffective habit reaction pattern may be thwarted. This sets up a difficult and challenging cycle, you continually, automatically, invoke the original survival mechanism without awareness that you are actually diminishing your power through the reactive mechanism.
The most healing thing to do is
to accurately identify how the patterning was beneficial
to accurately identify that the habit is ineffective in your present moment situation and management of anxiety
to place the behavior into your past as a once successful, but not currently successful pattern of reacting to anxiety
and disassemble the coping strategy and its automatic reactive power.
Habits are developed through a series of trial and error. A need arises, a behavior appears to resolve the identified problem and viola a habit develops. This is an excellent mechanism of comfort and structure or meaning-making in action. It is a part of how we develop, learn and integrate, structure behavior. It’s highly effective model to make sense out of the competing needs in society.
When this mechanism goes awry. The insidious quality of a habit overtaking as driver of your behavior is subtle.
First, there is a sense of invention,
then a settling-in of success in using the habit to resolve a conflict.
After a time the habit begins to drive the situation. The action becomes an automatic reaction of if this then that.
Once this internal directive becomes hardwired the habit drives the set of responses available to you in a given situation, so it becomes a reaction, like the jerking of your knee when hit by the doctor’s mallet – kick straight out. This automatic reaction creates a hardwire rut that drives your behavior.
Any awareness process can assist you in getting out of a habit reactive pattern coping strategy toward anxiety.
Mindful meditation,
the practice of Yoga,
Journaling,
are all excellent practices to increase centering, present moment focus, and balanced neutral response to anxiety.
Use the stop look and listen method to increase your awareness.Once you have developed awareness, use the breathe, wait it out, and reveal process to increase your tolerance for allowance.
These two together, awareness and allowance, create space to respond effectively to your anxiety and change your behavior from ineffective habit reactions to mindful responsiveness. You will move from a need for control and a sense of insecurity to self-confidence and a sense of inner empowerment and strength. More on this is the next few blogs, in love and light, beth.
InstinctiveHealthParenting4U 