Dealing to the Turmoil


"I've gotta be dumb to let things go on this way for so long right?' WRONG! 
How many people have agonised over having stayed in a bad situation for far too long. How many of us said to ourselves over and over again, 'Why would I do that? I know it doesn't make sense.' Looking back things mightn't make sense now but back then was quite a different story.

You can't beat yourself up for what you think were bad choices. Every decision that we make throughout our lives is made with whatever emotional tools we have to work with at the time. It's only when we avoid learning from those experiences, that we are no longer doing the best we can.


Rewiring the Mind
The human pschye is an amazing place but it has a tendency to gravitate toward the negative. How many of us become the criticisims of the people around us. Its so easy to take the ideas that others impose upon us for their own very human reasons and keep them as precious core beliefs. Painful memories are more easily called upon than happy ones. Rather than let things go and release our pain, we tend to hold on to it.....stuffing it down inside ourselves to keep it where we want it. And why would we want it? Why would we work so hard to keep it? Because we have in our minds the idea that the person who caused the pain can be changed - that their attitude towards us can be changed - that one day they will say sorry and they will be the person we hope they will be.

We don't have to give up on them to release that pain. We just have to accept them as they are.....that that's just where they're at and their reasons for being the way they are...are very very human - just as we are who are for the same reasons.

And the truth is.....whether or not they change is irrelevant. If they did turn around and apologise and change and become the person our idealistic label for them tells us they should be.....the chances are we would find some other reason to hold onto that pain. Because we have convinced ourselves we need it. It has become such an integral part of us for so long that we are addicted to it - like cocaine. And just like cocaine - it makes us sick - in body and mind. We must kick it or we can never evolve.

So it is a habit and it is not our natural state of being. When we start to dwell on the negative, when we call up the memories that hurt, when we indulge in the criticisms of others that we know not to be true.....we gotta try to remember to reach for the positive. No effort should go to concentrating on the actions of another that has made us unhappy. No time in our lives should be spent obsessing over a wrong done. These things deserve NO time and NO attention. Reach for a happy memory or a mantra. Those are the moments that deserve our attention and passion. Reach for them and use them as a weapon. Eventually it will become instinctive. When that happens we will start to really win.


A Black Hole called Depression
You get home and sit in a chair or lay on your bed...two hours later, you're still sitting there. You know you've got to get cleaned up, you know you need to eat, you know you've got that assignment deadline looming that you just can't seem to get started on, you do not want to have to go out of your house again and the idea of go out to meet people is way too hard - you don't want to have to see or deal with other people. You know something's wrong but you can't put your finger on it and if you did, you just can't deal with that crap right now. Sound familiar? Welcome to depression. 

Where does it come from? Why has it got so much power? It has so much power over you because it was born from a core belief that was created when you were too small to cope and certain events and personalities have re-enforced it throughout your life. Somehow, you came to believe that you didn't matter as much as something or someone else, that you were unimportant to those who should have been there for you. The only tools you have to deal with that pain, are the tools that you had when the core belief was first created. For most people that began before the age of five. It could have been something a simple as being left at kindy or something truly life changing like divorce or the loss of a parent. It may have been perception or reality that created it - the child's mind knows no different. 

Without other emotional tools, outside of what you already know - you don't have a chance in getting past it. So....here's a new tool for you: change that original core belief - that's what's crippling you - that's where it began - that's why it's so hard to shake. 

How do you change it? Questions. It will not stand up to the questioning of a rational adult mind. When you question it, you will come to realise that whatever happened to you when you were 2 or 4 or whenever these beliefs first appeared in your mind, that it cannot possibly be your fault and that you didn't deserve it. For the lucky ones, they may even come to understand that it was a child's perception of events and it was never true. 

For the not so lucky it might help you to understand this.....the reasons that our loved ones weren't there for us or did us wrong, are human reasons. A vicious or selfish person is reacting to everything with their own behaviour patterns that were created from their own core beliefs. They have never stopped to think why they do what they do - even when they know what they've done is wrong. It has not even occurred to them that there are different ways to deal with the curve balls life throws at us - or if it has, they've been this way for so long, they're more afraid of changing than death itself. Sometimes we just get caught in someone else's dance.

So what else can you do? Where to you go from here? Go to counselling, talk to friends, think about why you feel the way you do and where those 'ideas' could come from. And it can help to try to remember what sparked this bout of depression off because there is always a trigger. Truth and knowledge are your weapons - use them with precision and ruthlessness.

A link with  ALOTTA knowledge :) http://www.depression.org.nz/content/home


When the Depression stays...and won't go away....
If you are still suffering with depression after many attempts of counselling and medical treatment, it may be that you are choosing to keep those core beliefs that are causing you so much pain. Why would an adult mind do that to itself? Well, you're not thinking with an adult mind for starters. The original event in our lives, that started the ball rolling, almost always arrests our abilities to deal with similar events past the age it first happened. In other words, if you were three when you first started feeling like you had no voice, then you will continue to deal with that issue from your three year old mind's point of view and it's repertoire of emotional tools. You were three!! Give yourself a break! Just how much sensibility can you expect a child at any age to deal with life-changing stuff! Again, it's not your fault - this way of being is all you have ever known. Now, as an adult, you are terribly afraid that if you discard it, you won't know who you are - that you will simply stop being. 

Understand that you cannot stop being when you change and that change is our very nature - with every breath, heartbeat & thought, we are changing. Know that your future is not black as night, that finding out who you really are is not an unknown journey. You were always you, from the very beginning. Your job now is to uncover YOU and rediscover YOU and explore what the adult YOU loves to do. 


So......your new tool is: "I'm an adult now - I can be whatever way I want to be and when I leave my old beliefs behind, I will finally have a chance to be me". 
The sun is rising before me, its a brand new day and I'm off on an adventure to rediscover ME."


The Truth About Anger
When someones says.....'you're choosing to be angry - just let it go', there's no doubt its a bit irritating but they are sort of on the right track. It's not that you're choosing to be angry when you're angry at someone but you are choosing to allow anger to have more power in your life. Of course you'll generally only see that if you can step outside yourself for a bit and watch yourself in action! 

Anger is a diversion. It diverts us from the real goings on of the situation. It diverts us from recognising the humanity behind what people do. Anger is like an ugly wrapping on the outside of a parcel. The parcel inside is the human reasons as to why somebody does something and believe or not - that really matters.

It's no good saying, "But I would never have done that to them." That's irrelevant because people can talk themselves into justifying anything they feel the need to. And that's the crux of the matter - they felt the need to. And that need has a name - fear or greed or guilt or anger or grief.

They are all human reasons - very very human reasons and for what its worth, we ALL do things we shouldn't have done because of those reasons - ALL of us.

The anger stops us from seeing that because if we see that we have to consider (for a moment) the things that we have done that we shouldn't have (and there's always something).

The beauty of it is this: you may not be able to forgive whatever was done to you but you can forgive the human reasons behind what was done. They are seperate. And in forgiving someone else's human failings it becomes easier to accept and forgive our own.

And once you get that far........it removes the parcel (we're back to the parcel/wrapping simile) from the inside of the wrapping and there's nothing to hold the anger up - it deflates. It loses its power over you and then you are free.