Do not be surprised (or ashamed) when you discover how much you want to return to your Familiar Bad Feeling Place once you start walking away from it.
You aren't bad because you catch yourself desiring to swim in the warm cozy waters of sorrow, despair, or self-pity. You're in a rut you're trying to break out of and breaking out of it requires AWARENESS.
Mind is actively, even aggressively, looking for reasons to feel bad. Hear me: In Mind’s point of view feeling safe no matter how that happens is NOT bad.
Feeling safe and being a good/bad person are two completely different concepts to Mind.
Your Reticular Activating System is still in the mode of taking your eyes to evidence of your less-than-ness, your poverty, your everyone else has X but me, your ugliness-can-never-be-loved-ness.
You will more and more clearly hear your own voice shit-talking yourself. It may shock you with its level of destructiveness, violence, and fierce desire to suffer because suffering makes sense to it.
Remember that different = deadly. Normal feels abnormal in the beginning.
It might be embarrassing or shameful to see how you've been causing all the problems you thought were "out there" with "those fuckers." And even worse, how hard it is to change those patterns.
It's ok. You want to feel safe, and the safety zone is still that Familiar Bad Feeling Place.
So what to do?
> Activate Compassionate Curiosity immediately.
> When you catch yourself, interrupt the pattern by doing ANYTHING different. If your FBFP is to zone out and watch too much trash TV (looking at you, 90-Day Fiancé), then sit in a different spot on the couch or walk in place while wondering, “What in the hell am I watching here?”
> Ask yourself if something scared you - another person, a dreadful thought, noticing a lack of sales, the fact that your feet seemingly keep getting bigger - what sent you running for safety?
> Ask yourself if something exciting and wonderful happened and if you are rattled by unfamiliar JOY, and so you’re now running for safety.
> Remind yourself that you don't hang out at the FBFP anymore, so what would you like to practice thinking and feeling now? Make it a game.
Changing this deepest of patterns takes time. Never shame yourself by seeing how often you choose to, and even delight in, feeling wretched. It served you once but doesn't now. It's that simple.
XO,
LMW
P.S. If you’d like to join me for a somatic writing workshop on March 23 from 11 am to 2 pm Eastern time, you can explore HERE