Saturday 18 October 2008

Prevaricating about the Bush!

Hey
It's been some time and I'm still plagued by thinking too much so here's some thoughts:
We don't half beat about the bush and create unnecessary suffering for ourselves!
I had someone come for help the other day (and many others like her in the past) who sincerely wanted to get better, so, after listening to her story, I started to suggest ways to quickly reduce her suffering.
'Yes, but', she said, 'What I really want is to find out why I keep feeling the way I do. I feel I won't get better till I know this.'
Now, psychotherapists and counsellers do this, and sometimes it even helps people to understand why they overeat, or self-harm in other ways, or get bad tempered or whatever. They get 'eureka' moments where it all makes sense why they feel guilty when a news item showing cruelty to animals comes on the telly, or why they become enraged by someone moving their carefully lined up tins of beans out of line. They cook up a theory with their therapist that sounds very plausable and intelligent, and they believe it because their therapist is the expert.
It's all very nice to get an explanation that satisfies our curious nature, and gives us a sense of knowing ourself a bit better, but, in the end, to stop the repeated patterns of behavior, we still have to let go and move on. Belief changing is one way to do this, which we can do with our therapist, or we can do in our daily lives.
For example, if we believe we are stupid, we find ourselves failing repeatedly at things academic, and we spend a lot of our time thinking self-deprecating thoughts. This belief creates a block to success. It might have come originally from an innocent comment from a parent or teacher. If we make a decision to let go of this belief, we can find ourselves succeeding in things we wouldn't have dreamt of succeeding in before, because we no longer get in a state when we are asked to use our brains or logic. We can think straighter!
But what if we just let go of the need to know why we feel bad, and just got on with dealing with it? What if, whenever we feel bad, we just use a technique like Z Point (www.zpointprocess.com) or letting go in other ways described on my web site www.stressalternatives.co.uk? Quite often, we get insights into the 'whys' when we use these techniques anyway.
Another thing we very commonly do that stops us dealing with it ourselves is blame others. We often will say that we can't feel better till that other person or the rest of our world acts in a certain way. We can't be happy till everyone lines up their tins of beans with the labels at the front or till our loved one stops being angry.
We don't need to know how a car works to get into it and drive it, so why do we insist on understanding how our minds work? It's just wasting time and creating unnecessary suffering.
Ultimately, we can ask ourselves, 'Do we want to know why, or do we want to feel better now?', or 'Do we want to change the world or start with ourselves?'
Honestly, it's that simple!
Love Liz