Awareness Acceptance & Action

Most of the emotional difficulties in my life have been sustained by patterns of behavior I learned very early in life. Achieve to feel loved. Look after yourself because you can’t count on a dysfunctional parent. I think of all these patterns as being grounded in self-centered fear. Fear of not being okay. Fear of not being good enough. Fear of not being lovable. It is a cruel, isolated and lonely way to live. The tool I have found most helpful to break these survival-driven patterns is Awareness, Acceptance and Action. I have to become aware of the pattern. To do that I have to allow myself to feel emotions I have always sought to avoid. Once I bring awareness to the feeling, I almost instantly recognize that there is no basis in reality for my fear. The next step is harder and that is to accept the fear emotionally (even though I know mentally it is groundless). Acceptance frees up psychic resistance to change. After acceptance then I am emotionally free to act in a different way. My life is no longer subject to the tyrant of unintended wounds we all get in childhood. I am now free to find love, joy and serenity in my life.

Emotional difficulties are always triggered by uncertainty. Especially do these arise in the chaos of a pandemic. I just keep going back to this slogan when they creep up.