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sarahmayb · 8 years ago

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In Living Color: Get the Most Joy Out of Life - Part 3: The Tools

Part 3: The Tools

Tool 1: Convert Pain Into Growth

Most of the pain we feel comes from two things: grasping and fixating. The solution in that moment will come from recognizing that in yourself – what I call, “circling it,” and then spotting the underlying emotion that is motivating it. This is also when you can see that it’s a basic and childlike emotion that is understandable and something you can soothe. You can also be compassionate for yourself instead of suffering in the mental obsession. When we grasp or fixate, we create anxiety, but when we can see the true emotion, it becomes simpler and less powerful.

Just by enacting this exercise you will have slowed down the reaction process enough that you can change how you proceed. And further, you can change the pain into something that grows you. How? By changing your habituated reaction to anything different than you normally do.

So in the moment you’re finding yourself really upset about something – grab a journal and convert it into growth! Here are the questions I want to you answer:

Journal Exercise:

Look for two things: grasping and fixation. Ask yourself, am I clinging to something?

Am I fixating on something?

Describe the feeling in your body. What part of your body is the feeling coming from? What does it feel like? Is it tightness or heaviness?

Does it remind you of an emotion you’ve felt before? If so, what does it resemble?

What is your habituated reaction to this feeling – meaning, what do you want to do right now?

What can you choose to do that’s different? (Choose ANY kind of action that’s new.) For example, what would be an opposite response?

Last, choose to enact one of your new responses instead of doing what you normally do.

Tool 2: Mantra: Don’t Get Morbid

If you’re a Type-A person, you’re likely an over-reactor. I say that with love – I’m like you, too. It’s how you have stayed prepared for danger in the past and it’s also why you are good at what you do, now. But when it comes to your perception, it can cause you unnecessary harm. We all create beliefs and expectations to keep us operating safely: If this, then that. However, these beliefs are not truths, they are judgments and attempts to create order in the world – and we are truly the ones who make them more solid by imagining them. The expectations are what hurt us more than actual events.

Those who have a desire to control, tend to make things more major and dire – by default. We perceive things to be worse and more immovable then they really are. So a mantra to use when you’re in the moment of dread or worry about something to come is “Don’t get morbid.” Remind yourself that everything is much more okay and fluid and flexible than you are making it in your mind. Maybe there’s nothing wrong, at all and everything is very right.

We anticipate the worst and then we experience it in our minds. It’s an overreaction to things that don’t exist – but we think we know better and that it makes us better prepared. Don’t get morbid – relax, step back and recognize you’re making it into something it’s not.

There’s a Buddhist quote that says, “In the beginner’s mind there are many possibilities, but in the experts there are few.” And that’s because you slowly grow to believe you have control – that you know all, but that’s just a false perception. Maybe this is just another day that just is – like an animal killing another animal in the wild: it’s not good or bad, it’s life. Don’t lump any additional pain on top of that thing – remember, not everything has to mean something.

Tool 3: Hack Your Self-Lens (For Feelings of Intolerance for Yourself and Others)

This one’s for Rich!

How we relate to ourselves is shaped by how we coped, growing up. In part by what our parents told us was good and bad about us, with their responses to us. So if we blame ourselves or judge ourselves harshly or we do that to others, this is in part a method of control. An attempt to protect ourselves in the face of extreme vulnerability.

It all comes down to self-acceptance and compassion. If we did not learn to have compassion and acceptance for parts of ourselves and our feelings, we will learn to reject them – in ourselves and in the world. So if a parent was incapable of supporting you in the face of confusing or scary feelings, a child “manages” them by creating some kind of logic and rules.

It’s how we self-protect: we create some order – like rules and laws that we can point to. And this gives us a buffer: a logic to empower us to arrange things, that stays removed from the intense vulnerable spot. To blame is to assign fault and rules; to blame is to create the order. We strengthen our beliefs with logic and rationalizations: this further makes it separate from us and therefore much more manageable. It’s how we solidify and ground ourselves: we say that is wrong, that is right, this is why. It’s a way to make the extreme discomfort more manageable – a way of denying it. We create terms for ourselves so we can feel stable – where things make sense, where things are familiar, where we’re in the know and in control.

It might seem backwards to believe that anyone would prefer to feel blame even though it hurts – but the truth is, pain is much more manageable when it’s in your control. When we are right, we feel good and when we are wrong, we feel threatened and attacked. It’s a part of the survival mechanisms of our ego: we crave predictability and control. This is why we choose to be right rather than feel vulnerable.

When we blame ourselves or others or feel intolerance, it’s actually coming from the discomfort of extreme vulnerability. It’s not about what it’s about. Our labels for the pain are all made up.

When it hurts us the most is when we’re holding tight to a belief and refusing to let go: shutting down to the truth and retracting from what offers relief. Because life exists in the same way regardless of how we interpret it. Things can be seen in a thousand different ways – but when we try to create the rules, we shut down our access to what is outside us. We cannot relieve ourselves of the hurt when we refuse to look at what is causing it.

The good news is we can change how we feel in those moments: we can loosen our framework in the simple act of remembering we have a choice. It’s just noticing we are in the state of blame or self-intolerance and backing up far enough to recognize that we are grasping for security. We are holding onto a belief that separates us from possible solutions. Softening gives us access to real understanding and with that, relief and change.

So if you are suffering from self-blame or harshly judging yourself, here is a journal exercise to use in that moment:

Journal Exercise

What are you blaming right now? What are you intolerant to – in yourself or something other?

What is the underlying feeling – beneath that title / explanation? Get super micro about how that feels. Where is it inside your body and what is the texture of that feeling?

What’s the underlying emotional ingredient? Can you circle the most potent and simple emotion at the bottom layer of that feeling? Spell out what that emotion comes from – what belief has created it?

Can you feel compassion and understand that emotion in yourself? Does that emotion seem logical?

Choose to accept it as it is and now write out some possible new responses you could have to this feeling that would replace your habituated reaction. It can be anything at all – as long as it’s new. Write at least 3 possible options and choose one of them.

In closing…

I want to thank my monthly sponsors – I have to give a shout out to Rich. Thank you so very much!

When you face up to things that make you feel awkward and instead examine them – when you look deeper into what is happening inside you, you can change your reaction. This is when we can undo our looped responses – when we try to fix things, fight with things, obsess about them for hours and weeks. This is when we can create a better life for ourselves and let things go.

To know thyself is truly the greatest gift you could ever get – it’s like a warm blanket of comfort that makes you feel grounded wherever you are. It’s where meaning deepens as does your enjoyment of your life. There’s a Buddhist monk who said, “Do everything as if it were the only thing that mattered, all the while knowing that it doesn’t matter at all.” It sounds contradictory, but it really means is get the most out of now and don’t let attachment rob you of the enjoyment of the experience. What this approach is all about is cultivating an ability to stay floating atop the waves, not get swept down by them or waste years swimming away from them – all the while, missing the sunset. So think of this as an Emotional Floaties approach to life. It means you’re able to move through your experiences on top– with less suffering and experience greater joys.

“Real” in-person, non-distracted experiences give you greater depth and identity. If you made a choice based on the total sum of life and its worth, I think you would choose the bigger, brighter, deeper, more eventful approach to all of it. But I’ll invite you to ask yourself right now: Do you want the greatest joys if they come with suffering? Or would you choose the shallow middle that doesn’t change much at all? If you chose B, then I’ll also ask you – what’s the point? Isn’t it all just one long binge-watch of a show called “life”? I say, go for the rich life – because that’s where everything tastes better, the sun is brighter, and life in its totality expands beyond what you knew was possible.

Reading list:

Critical Thinking

When Things Fall Apart

#joy #happiness #how to get more out of life

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sarahmayb · 8 years ago

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In Living Color: Get the Most Joy Out of Life - Part 2

Part 2: The Why

A lot of the participation in unconscious cultural habits is biological – which is why I would relate digitally connected groups to an organism: when we are connected to others, we act as one. That’s because we are social beings and biologically, it’s encoded into our DNA to follow the group. At one point in time, our survival relied heavily on fitting into the group. For example, if someone is charismatic, we will more likely follow their beliefs and disregard our own knowledge. This is why cult leaders are all charismatic. We will also, by nature be more inclined to believe authority figures even if our own knowledge conflicts. Authority figures meaning anyone with perceived status – including government officials, celebrities, or anyone well-exposed in media. So without the influence of others, you would likely not use much of the media you currently consume. It’s a way to be a part of the collective organism and when you’re outside it, it feels like you’re disconnecting from “the right way to be social.”

So why would we choose to be more “in our bodies” and experience all the day-to-day pain? Is there any real benefit? What if you like your ego? Why would you want to be bored, vulnerable, reflective, or live without the numbing agents? Here’s the thing about experiences– when you feel them, you grow as a result of them. They change you and give you more capacities, moving forward. Pain and stress and conflict is how we grow. It is quite literally – the way we widen our scope as humans. To stay distracted throughout life makes you more shallow, like selective feeling or partial color blindness. And the lack of investment in how you feel means a lack of feedback about your own understanding of the world – and that understanding is vital to knowing who you are. It’s like taking a walk somewhere and seeing it vs. deciding you don’t want to stray from your front yard. The former gives you new understanding of a part of the world you didn’t know existed before and your map gets wider. The next time, you will not only know where you’re going, you’ll be confident about it and can explore a bit further. Every time you go through a real experience with your mind squarely inside your body, you get stronger, happier, deeper. You can understand more about yourself and the world. You evolve in all directions. I mean you get smarter, more compassionate, and super powered! Like an enhanced version of you.

In contrast, when you avoid pain or try to resist and control your exposure to it, the hurt gets worse. When you hide from discomfort and try to ignore and numb it, it festers and grows more powerful in our fear of it– and over time, the sensitivity to it becomes a false truth that retards your growth and evolution overall. It’s the not-looking-at-it that makes that spot softer and that muscle never develops. And just like a muscle, areas of our self can also weaken without use – it creates a habit in that it catalyzes more of the same style of coping. Like becoming more and more fragile or less and less, you. And in the act of resisting, we create more pain – this is truly where the majority of the pain comes from. The fear and the lack of control. When we remove the internal dialogue around something, it’s not nearly as bad in our experience. Kind of like the the moment right before you get your ears pieced: the anticipation is the hard part, then afterwards you’re like, whatevs.

And this is not to say all pain is in this bucket. I know that some pain is too overwhelming and it feels life-threatening: when you feel so fragile that anything could shatter you or so in agony that you’d rather be in severe physical pain. It’s like sitting in a fire. In these situations, sometimes assistance like medication or therapy is necessary. And it’s not a copout – it’s you knowing yourself and trusting yourself enough to take the right steps. If that sounds like you, don’t second guess your mental health and definitely see a doctor. Regardless of whether or not you require help to manage pain, know that everything passes. And though it feels really terrible, it doesn’t kill you. You move through it. And then the next time, it hurts the tiniest bit less and you’re a little bit more experienced in handling it. And the next time, a little less than that. Whether or not you can see it with your own eyes, you are always changing and growing. It takes great distance to have enough perspective on your life, so trust that change is inevitable when you move through difficult times.

Even if you’re a self-aware person, you cannot see much of what is going on inside yourself – including what truly motivates your decisions. That is because your survival mechanisms are so deeply engrained, you won’t be able to identify when fear is the underlying motivator. However – you can take apart your habits by examining your behavior and this is how you ultimately change. Once you step outside the inner sphere of emotions, you can take a highlighter to your behaviors and begin to understand how they work. It is like a manual workaround that you can apply that allows you to consciously decide what guides your life’s path. It starts when you realize you have a choice to make, at all.

Check back soon for part 3 - the tools!

#how to be happier #getting more out of life #how to stop overthinking #how to stop fomo

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sarahmayb · 8 years ago

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https://soundcloud.com/helpmebeme/a-grounding-talk-for-confronting-what-feels-impossible

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sarahmayb · 8 years ago

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In Living Color: Get the Most Joy Out of Life - Part 1

If you prefer to listen, here’s the podcast version of this post on iTunes and Soundcloud:

This one’s dedicated to Rich and Aldana, and Rich - thank you for your donation.

Hi friends, this is a self-examination practice with ways that you can begin to maximize your growth as a human – including a life-ratio check in, like a path-tuning/awareness-inspiring blog. Because I think a lot of us are spending a lot of our lives not fully aware that our range is narrow and predictable. We are automating a lot of life and simply following a popular routine. It’s in part because of all the modern luxuries and social media stimuli that we find ourselves attached to – and how this removes us from a lot of our less desirable emotional experiences. I will talk about culture and how it acts as an organism, and I want you to reflect on your own habits as you read– whether or not you feel inside this organism, on the border, or outside of it. Just take mental notes – and see how it sits with you. It’s not wrong or right, so don’t judge where you fit in these as too much or too little. It’s more about making sure you are choosing according to what you want for your life and its sum– from a conscious and aware place. As usual, there are three parts – the what, why and how: the tools!

Part 1: The What

Being partly somewhere else, all the time – as opposed to just sitting with yourself as you are, with the boredom, the anxiety, the vulnerability. By that I mean using a phone or clicking instead of interacting – anything that removes you from the place your physical body currently sits and removes you from a fully immersive in-person experience of your life. Avoiding discomfort is what drives most everything we do, in that most of the modern amenities of culture are designed to support us tuning out and soothing. If you think about it – plugging in is really just a way to not be alone with ourselves. Not to be bored, or worse – not to be tortured by thoughts of our own life and whether or not it measures up.

And because we don’t like discomfort, collectively our pastimes take over for the common moments we would have previously suffered: when we’re alone, we can be entertained. When we’re lonely, we can get a confidence boost. When we’re unoccupied in the elevator, we can read about the many important events in our important friend’s lives. Convenience is really just another word for enabling – we grow addicted to the input because it helps us avoid feeling vulnerable or tired or not important – think about online shopping, online tabloids, texting, twitter, Facebook, Tinder. All of this stimuli is a way to be something other than just where you are – it’s like ego food in that it engages the thinking brain – when it should be quiet, now it is still solving and quantifying. Which is part of the reason it makes us less happy, in the long term.

The soothing habit is an unconscious one – it’s like a kneejerk reaction to a lull in distraction, because to be always connected to something means you’re not alone, you’re not one place – and therefore you’re not vulnerable to all those present in your thinking body with silence kind of thoughts.

I want you to take a brief sec and just mentally go there now. Imagine yourself without a phone. Just you sitting on a bench on a street full of people walking by, and you don’t have any props. Not even a book. What does that feel like? Pretty uncomfortable right? In my mind I start to play with a button or examine my nails. Anything at all to show I’m not all here – I’m somewhere else. All the engaging with another virtual space is like putting on a shell complete with a pacifier. It’s a soothing mechanism that keeps us protected from the full gravity of our full present experience – because, well just like your bench told you: the present experience can make you feel unsure. It can feel like not enough. It can make you feel the impact of everything around you. In short, it requires you participate in ways that make you feel less protected and less numb to the outside world.

All the modern accoutrements designed by present day culture remove our connection to pain and keep us more stuck in thoughts. Machine-mode apps give endless streams of stimuli, similar to slot machines that dole out ego-boosts. Pings report news about celebs, friends, and likes to our posts – more ego-boosts. Chat apps put your solar system into your brain at all times. You can read every book twice as fast, or access limitless podcast content at all times, even while you watch something else. Platforms like Netflix give you every show and film so you can watch anything and any show, all the way through. Amazon lets you shop for anything with one click, without a second thought or an interaction with a human. Meds like Adderall and Xanax allow you to keep working and stop worrying. By using these amazing innovations, we avoid having patience, fatigue, anxiety, mental slowness, loneliness, boredom, insecurity, silence, emotional vulnerability, and appearance of weakness. All of this sounds like it’s a good thing – and in the moment, it likely feels like a good thing. Like an ice pack on a burn. It doesn’t make that discomfort go away, but it gives us something to do in the face of it. It’s a cultural move! We are all doing it. BUT HERE’S THE CATCH. 99% of us are doing it out of habit and without understanding how it’s distorting us. It’s a choice that’s unconscious, made out of convenience - and eventually simple routine. And why not, right? It’s fun to watch the same shows everyone else is watching and talk about them with everyone you meet at a party. There’s no apparent reason to stop.

I am not suggesting these are bad things that should not exist. Technology that connects us to others and convenience enhancing services are great things, and they all serve their purpose. What I invite you to examine is the trade off you are getting in your own life and whether or not it’s aligned with your true goals. Most don’t think of their social media use as a soothing mechanism: it’s just part of life the way everyone lives it. To stop participating seems antisocial, like you’re going to fall out of favor with society. Because to stop checking in and replying right away is somehow like unplugging from the world, right? My argument is no, it’s not – and in reality, very little changes when you create boundaries around technology. Even though it feels like you’re more connected, you’re less connected to your own experience of life.

Living via technology is like a projection of life – like watching a movie of dolphins instead of swimming with them. And here’s why that’s important: the depth of your engagement is vastly different when you are physically somewhere and when you are not. The sensory input that comes from sound, smell, and physical touch is a deeper and more powerful interaction. Imagine right now – someone you really like standing right in front of you. Now imagine that same person, but via FaceTime. These are two very disparate experiences. So when it comes to the superficial experiences becoming a majority of your time spent in a day, the difference comes down to your range of felt emotions. The depth of your experiences narrows, and with that – your life’s depth. At the end of this life, you are but a ratio. You can translate your day today – where you spend it, how deep you go with it, into an overall ratio at the end of your lifetime. I want you to think about that right now: if not today, then yesterday. How does this ratio sit with you? Are you really getting to the meaty parts of yourself, as a human? Do you want to expand that range? Ask yourself, how much of my life did I choose to live and how much did I spend plugged into something else?

#how to be happier #how to stop fomo #social media addiction

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sarahmayb · 8 years ago

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Codependency: Part 3 - The Tools!

Part 3: The How: The Tools!

I wanted to start this section by saying that you do have control and power in whatever situation you’re currently in. You're just not using it now because you can’t see your own power. That’s what I want to help you begin to own: what you can do with your own body and self in every situation, regardless of what anyone else does. You can change everything in your life just by changing yourself.

If you prefer to listen here's the podcast version of this post on iTunes and Soundcloud.

REFLECTION EXERCISE: My Coping Style

Before we get to the tools, I invite you to do a reflection exercise is your journal. Think on your parents and upbringing and ask yourself, what was the coping mechanism you took on in the face of the type of absent parenting you experienced? What was the behavior you were faced with? How did that affect you? How did you empower yourself in the face of that, based on what you’ve read thus far? The tendency will be to downplay your own experience. Try hard not to do that. Write it like someone else was writing it. Know that the current patterns are something you can undo; they served you at one point, but now you are going to work to let them go. Remind yourself that this is your goal: to become emotionally healthy. Write this goal in your own words, to yourself in your journal. Decide it for yourself. Set your sights on that target and don’t give up on it. Okay here we go – some tools!

Tool 1: The Love Bank, “Get PAAAYD!”

Receiving care equally from others likely feels REALLY uncomfortable. Think about the last time you were sick and someone took care of you – did you feel really bad allowing them to do everything for you? Or think about someone doing things JUST to make you happy, even though they don’t like that thing, themselves – does that feel awkward to you? If not, good for you – that’s a sign of emotional health. If so, that’s because receiving is an issue for codependents: they’re not used to it and therefore, it feels icky. This issue is also a cultural thing – for example, British and Asian cultures are often reserved and not overt with affection, especially physical affection. Regardless of where it came from in your life, it has made you incapable of receiving equally from others. So this tool is kind of like a muscular workout for you!

Think of yourself as having a love bank – it’s like a piggy bank, but it’s shaped like a heart. You have to keep it full by giving and then receiving equally from others. Because that’s not natural to you, you’ve got to train yourself to ask for and cash any incoming checks. That means, when others try to do things for you, you have accept them and be grateful. Imbue this with value that you will grow to feel and enjoy. This act of “receiving” is like a paycheck you are putting in your bank, one that makes others feel more valuable because you allow them to do them. Don’t dismiss the acts value, accept and welcome these acts – honor them and the meaning of their gesture. Additionally, if you’ve given a lot of yourself to a person without repayment, you’ve got to STOP giving to them. Because this is going to ruin you, financially.

Right now – because of your background – you are constantly depleting your tank until you feel empty. Your receiving department isn’t being used – and you’re not cashing any checks! Instead of looking for ways to give or help others, I want you to ask things of others. Let them give you their gifts. Begin to practice accepting gifts graciously – this will be like learning a new culture and it won’t be very relaxing. Trust me, it gets easier and eventually, it will come naturally– but you’re going to have to “act as if” as a start. This is not about controlling the gifts others choose to give or deciding their gestures are not good enough– it’s about learning to graciously accept and acknowledge the meaning behind an act of love. It’s an art. Currently you’re fixated on OUTPUT: What do they want? How are they feeling? How can I help? I can make it better if they just listened to me!

If this is confusing, here’s some shorthand: you deserve, from others, what you do for them. I want you to assume the receiving position – especially when it comes to new relationships. You are not a fixer– you are a treasure. You don’t have to DO anything to be loved. You are of the same value whether you lift a finger or not. Your value is unchangeable. Take off the tool belt.

Tool 2: REGULATORS vs. ME-OFFICERS

This is a silly visual metaphor but here goes: you are a cop on the beat in the city of Me. Meaning, your jurisdiction is not someone else’s city – you have no authority, you are not there to protect and serve, you are crossing a boundary and they don’t abide by your laws in other territories. When you try to patrol other people’s cities – you’re like a regulator – you’re unwanted and you’re going against the code “To protect and serve” by trying to regulate the lives of others. (Deep exhale.) Yeah that was a long one. The point of this one is, everyone’s responsible for their own destructive behaviors. Whatever’s going on in someone else’s life is not for you to solve. This is a tool to help you begin to practice exercising a lack of control over the lives of others. Embrace your job – which is to protect and serve YOU. Let the people around you make a mess! Let them destroy everything again and again! It’s not your job. If you stop obsessing about whether or not they’re messing up, your life becomes more manageable and therefore, happier. Not to mention, being forced to confront the work you’ve got to do is the best way to start change. If you intervene all it does is enable the bad behavior. You are a cop in the city of me, not a regulator.

Tool 3: Let’s Build an Internal Veggie Bed!

Aka, let’s start building some healthy boundaries. This is another visual metaphor for a new practice I want you to take on for building new boundaries – one new one, each week. Think of yourself like a rich and beautiful garden that’s unable to thrive because you’re not keeping out the weeds. They’re growing all over you! To fix this, you need to build some wooden retaining walls – boundaries – to give yourself the space and healthy soil to grow.

This is a once a week assignment you will do in your journal. So much of being a codependent is about being a martyr and not having healthy boundaries. “Doing it yourself” even though you shouldn’t have to, allowing people to ask anything of you, feeling obligated to help, tolerating rude and selfish people and giving them what they want. If you relate to this, it’s because you do not have healthy boundaries. A big major fat heads up: when you enact this process of retraining yourself, it will NOT FEEL LIKE YOU. It will feel foreign and unlike you. But you’ve got to act as if and make YOU important in your own eyes. Slowly it will become synonymous with who you are.

How do you build a new boundary? Choose one thing that makes you annoyed – that tests your tolerance. Or one thing you do for others that makes you wish you could be treated the same way. Or one thing that takes the focus off you and your feelings, and puts it on someone else.

A few examples:

• You always do what a friend decides when you’re out and having fun. Whether or not your friend meets a date decides if you go home early or not, no matter how you feel.

• You constantly surprise your significant other with gifts that are perfect for them, you plan everything around them, and they don’t even return your calls promptly.

• When your friend is mad at you – even if you can’t tell why or you know it’s for an irrational reason, you will do anything you can to make them like you again.

So a part of this exercise is to start enforcing a new boundary each week. If you are setting a boundary around something like reciprocation – you want to be reciprocated for the efforts you put in, you must enforce this by NOT coming to a person’s rescue the next time they fall apart. Take care of you, first. Your needs should always come first. If you are working on feeling controlled by others – your new boundary will be to not respond to manipulation tactics. You might write in your journal your new boundary is: If someone is not respectful of me and my time, they are not allowed to have access to me. What does that mean when it comes to enforcing the boundary? Don’t call the person back. Do not engage. Do not respond to their pokes and threats. If they are not being respectful and loving, they are not allowed to be in your life. You set the terms by whether or not you give another person your time and attention. Turn the spigot off.

This is tough! It can take a few tries before you’re ready to commit, just because it’s new and scary. If you fail the first time at setting a boundary, try again – it just means it wasn’t fully baked yet, inside you. You weren’t angry enough, yet. You’ll get there it– will just take a bit more time to really see and “know” the truth of your situation.

Tool 4: Remember to Let Go

This is one of my favorite tools ever!!!! It’s a little mantra/meditation to use in moments when you recognize yourself getting attached to a future outcome before it’s happened. You can embrace the unknowing and your lack of control by accepting all outcomes, ahead of time. A way to remember it is imagine you’re holding onto a rope attached to a bull and that bull is at the gate of a cage. Before they open the cage door, remember to let go of that rope. Let go of your attachment to the thing altogether and welcome anything that might happen. Quite literally go through a mental visualization where you play out the future outcomes happening – and plan out that you will be okay with it. Even if you want one outcome over another, mentally practice being okay with both good and bad outcomes. Tell yourself what you need to hear if things go the way you don’t want them to – for example, if you’re waiting on hearing back about a job interview: “I will be fine no matter what. If they don’t want me, that’s because this job isn’t meant for me.”

If you go through this exercise before something big is about to happen, you will find that you are mentally way more okay with what happens, regardless of the outcome being good or bad. Because you expected it – you are prepared and because of that, it’s way more doable. Welcome the fact that what is meant to be, will be. When you fixate on an eventual outcome – this is truly what sets you up for hurt. It’s less the actual outcome, more the expectation. We lump on soooo much pressure that creates how “major” the shock becomes. Additionally, when you fixate on what’s out of your control, you lose access to your real power in any situation. You cannot see what is in your control, only what you’re upset about. Surrender to the moment, accept all outcomes and then you will be able to say, “I need to be with friends who remind me of my best self.” This practice will just give you the safety buffer before anything happens – the outcomes will be the same but this keeps you safe in how you emotionally react to it.

Tool 5: Date Yo Self!

This is a tool that I want you to do from this point forth, forever and ever. Part of codependency is believing what you want is wrong or too much. It comes from ignoring and negating your own needs growing up, but now it’s blocking you from placing value in yourself. Not being focused on your needs is a habit that creates a perception, but it can and will be retrained.

The easiest way to act-as-if is to pretend you are dating yourself and you are really into you. Treat yourself like you’re trying to impress you in as many ways as possible. So imagine it right now: how would you treat someone you wanted to impress? Smile when you see yourself in the mirror. Be kind and sweet to yourself. Make sure your room is nice and tidy for yourself. If you’re cold, get yourself a jacket. Prepare yourself a nice dinner that takes time and light a candle. Rent a movie and give yourself a nice foot massage. Beyond the pampering, I want you to listen intently to your needs. Since you have been cut off from your own needs, it’s going to be a very acute listening process. Am I stressed? Do I need to get to a gym class? Even if your brain is obsessed by thoughts of someone else, I want you to go through the motions of caring for yourself. Do whatever you can to support yourself with a distraction.

To be emotionally healthy, you should treat yourself like you’re perfect and worthy, exactly as you are – everything you want in your life, is valid. That is the truth. If no one has ever told you that before, I am telling you that right now. You deserve to be loved and coveted, no matter what you do for others or what you give to others. Your value exists at priceless, permanently. You don’t have to change A THING about yourself or DO ANYTHING FOR ANYONE in order to earn kind and loving treatment. It isn’t about what you do or don’t do and it has nothing to do with what you have or how you look.

Tool 6: Put Your Shoes On!

Imagine me rapping this: “If you’re runnin’ ‘round in pain, stop n’ put your shoes on!” Or don’t, but it’s funny, trust me. This is a visualization tool to remind you in the moments of powerlessness, when you’re running in circles, the only thing you need to do is take a step to empower yourself. Big or small, just do anything you can think of that will get you closer to grounded and rational. When you are calm and emotionally sober, you can navigate the hurdles vs when you’re freaking out and panicking, you break things and start fires.

If it’s taking a break from the issue and calming your chemicals, or calling a close friend, or eating some food, your first step is simply to get more grounded – don’t skip to the future or fixate on the past. Don’t further engage the issue, get closer to the most capable, balanced You that you can. Everything you need to know is already inside of you – how you handle yourself doesn’t require anything from anyone else. Step back and empower yourself to be calm. Soothe yourself so you can let go of what others think and simply try to define how it is you truly feel. Fear will cloud your judgment – it will make you feel like you need to fix something or everything will hurt too much. “Put your shoes on” means take a step in a direction that will protect you and support you. Head to a meeting, call a wise friend, go to a yoga class – return to your journal and write what you know to be true. Empower yourself in as many ways as you possibly can. Your power lies in how you care for your own body and in getting grounded in the truth of that self.

Your job is to stay aware of what’s happening and how you feel, separate from anyone else. If you’ve been manipulated over and over again for a very long time, it’s likely created a false reality and the outcome is not trusting yourself. If this is the case for you, you need to get back in touch with how you really feel based on REALITY. So your first step will be create enough distance and room for yourself, so that this awareness is possible.

Tool 7: Unlock Obsession

Obsession is painful and degrading because of how helpless you feel in the moment. So the next time you are in a state of obsessing – remind yourself that there’s a magic key to unlock it. Obsession is a symptom of something else – deeper, related to you. It’s not about what it’s about. It’s happening because it’s telling you something about yourself: it’s resistance to a truth. Obsession is often our way of not arriving at acceptance – the habit is self protective – a way of hiding from truth.

Often it’s an automatic reaction to something that isn’t acceptable to us. Obsession is a natural part of grief - it’s part of the path to healing. But outside of grief, it’s a roundabout way of dealing with feelings. Like covering your eyes and singing loud so you can’t hear what’s being told to you. So to unlock this obsession, the key is to look beneath the surface and examine what it is that’s unacceptable to us. What is the feeling that threatens our feeling okay? We can directly deal with the fear by confronting the feeling beneath it and choosing to know it, process it, and then release it. It also helps to name it – “I am afraid to be sad. I am afraid to be alone.” Once you can see the truth that the obsession is shielding you from a feeling that is already inside you, you can help yourself and soothe.

If you cannot stop your obsession even though you have become aware of the pain, I also recco scheduling your obsession to take place solely within a certain window of time in the following day. It must be scheduled so it doesn’t take over your life.

Before I wrap up the tools, here’s something to look out for in the future: Codependency is thought of by many as a first stage to grief– the stage following is anger. So you might find as you move through your particular baggage that you feel an intense rage and anger. Don’t worry, it’s intense but it’s a sign of healing – it happens when you’re safe enough and strong enough to look at whatever you were not capable of seeing before. Keep going and keep investing in your health.

One more thing I recommend is the personal priorities pond episode – this will help you grow stronger for the healing process. It can be hard to feel like your own person when you are strongly addicted to another person. I also suggest you go to a help group that’s specific for family members of alcoholics – why? Because this type of dynamic is PERFECTLY aligned with children of alcoholics. Same patterns manifest.

In closing …

I want to say Thank you to all my awesome new sponsors!! Justine, Ariela, Ty, and Johnathan and Hollie! You are amazing!! I heart you.

A large part of codependent behavior is actually grieving for what you never got during childhood. It’s like being stuck in a desperate clinging position. Like a reaction to feeling like you’re losing what is out of your control. Most of the time what you see and feel is an extreme reaction – because the nature of codependency is control. When something isn’t in your control, it feels overwhelmingly painful and threatening. So more than anything, moving forward I want you to tell yourself to just soften. Release the need to clench and solve. Let go and remind yourself that everything is much more okay that you perceive it to be. Your job is not to control everything and make it better. It’s just to take care of you, and enjoy this day as best you can.

This is not about not needing anyone or never being needed by a loved one – we need human connection and we thrive with relationships! Feeling like a vital part of another person’s life is a great thing! But it doesn’t mean you can’t be happy, alone. The goal is balance: so you are safe and autonomous and strong, not being dependent on the love of others. You can be proud of who you are and grow that self as an individual and rely on others to be strong when you need them, too.

Much of this process will be about nurturing yourself and not judging yourself. Know that you are strong enough now to support yourself through the learning process. It will be a mental excavation that will bring up some overwhelming stuff, but it leads to lightness and love. You are capable of growing to know real and equal love. It starts by saying you want it – that it’s your goal, and then committing to that process. Don’t turn back – don’t say you don’t want it. It can and will be yours – but it starts with acknowledging you are this way, understanding how it happened, and choosing to train in your new, healthier habits. I know that’s true for a fact – I did it myself! And it’s soooo worth it. At the beginning, this process will feel like you’re trust-falling backwards. But if you practice the actions of a healthy persona, the rest will follow. Don’t give up! With that, I wish you luck and love and all the happiness that is meant for your future. This is a great gift in disguise. Be brave and smile.

Essential reading list:

Codependent No More

Courage to Change

#how to choose better relationships #why do I date losers?

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