| “Worry is a thin stream of fear trickling through the mind. If encouraged, it cuts a channel into which all other thoughts are drained.” | |
Its over. You try to move on and get back to life. It seemed like a logical decision at the time but not long after, no matter how well thought out the break up was, it's rationale is suddenly foggy. You cant even remember your logic. The more caught up you feel in the swirling thoughts of "what if?" and "is this right" the more the feelings grow inside, the weaker your body gets. A lump in the throat, heart skipping and thudding. The words of your thoughts are slow to form, forming agendas to convince you to change your mind. Was it that bad? You forget why this is happening. The change in life is too much to bear. Your subconscious engineered a reliance on the patterns of this relationship, yet it was your conscience that argued the rationale that day. The subconscious is not happy with the meddling conscience and, being infinitely more powerful, sets in motion the thoughts and biochemical responses, demanding that you - the conscious driver of this life, return things to habitual comfort. Resistance is futile, the sobconscious commands every signal and receptor in your body. Just make this stop... ok... I will try to get it back. Just make it stop. Make this anxiety stop... According to Richard Bandler, there are two types of fear: Phobias and Anxiety. A phobia is associated with external stimuli, objects, situations, things that could occur in the environment around the phobic. Anxiety is associated with internal stimuli, thoughts, feelings, imagined scenarios, worrying, stressing. A phobia is a very manageable type of fear. Since it involves extrernal stimuli, the logical thing to do is simply avoid the stimuli. Were it so easy with anxiety. The nature of anxiety is to literally paralyze the body's functions from within, to send a strong message that your entire being is incapacitated due to change. LIke a flood of memories, the stark realization of every detail of the past can render one breathless. Since we cant just "walk away" like we do with a phobia (in most cases), we may decide or find the strength to breathe deep breaths to regulate oxygen and return the heart to its normal heart rate, returning blood flow to the brain and allowing us to think more clearly. A decision is often made to act. We are, after all, designed to survive and that very much includes surviving our own self destruction. In a the case like above, we tend to rationalize ways to reverse the change. Employing outside opinions, strengthening the resolve to undo the damage and fit the piece that was just ripped out back into place. To do anything else would require great strength, and statistically, most of us dont got it, especially not the first time anyway. Conscious vs Subconscious. Thats like David and Goliath. In other circumstances, like a loss of job, or other such extreme circumstances, when reversing it isnt an option, the subconscious can deliver a powerful dose of despair.. enough to convince us that we're screwed! I'm not trying to give the subconscious a bad rap here. Its a collossolly powerful supercomputer that you designed yourself between the ages of 0-6, plugging in "add-ons" and peripherals, and upgrades ever since and its just doing what it was designed to do. This powerful beast doesnt always bend to a single command from the conscience - in fact, its well known that you often need to command it for 28 days straight before it will actually listen. The habituation of programmed perceptions and responses can often play a major role in the anxiety we feel when we are trying to "let go" of the part of ourselves we are trying to remove in order to replace it with a preconcieved goal or change. When we are consciously assertive about a direction we want to take, it makes sense to write it down and measure it. We need reminders because in that moment, you were arriving at a conscious conclusion, only to continue to operate unconsciously shortly after. Unconsciously and reflexively, we go about our daily business by virtue of the commands of our subconscious. That breath you just took? You didnt tell your lungs to do that. Ok thats a pretty lame one. Those keys you are pressing to type this blog? Your barely thinking about where they are. Its been done enough so that the conscious can divert its energy to more creative and improving endeavors. Neglecting to remind ourselves and repeating why we think the change is necassary, or making the change too abruptly, can lead to a painful and challenging "let go" process, where much anxiety can set in. Two things you can do here. Either visualize the change and think it through daily, adding new thoughts and rationale to it, affirming your belief in it until you are ready to actually orchestrate the change, thereby lessening the subconscious' coming attempt to repeal your logic - meaning less anxiety. Or learn how to deal with the anxiety, which makes sense if the decision needs to happen fast. For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction. If you stand up and declare that from this day forward I will go to the gym every day - you might just pull it off. If you have the strength and will to resist the coming complaints of your habits that were content to fill the time you are now allotting for the gym. No simple task. Letting go of the part of the change requires awareness and repetetive affirmations. Letting go of a change that you didnt sign up for is a little trickier, but several NLP methods are available to do either, such as the swish pattern. Statistically, we operate 95% subconsciously, and 5% consciously - some even more extreme. This makes it challenging to cope with change and to "let go" Some folks take a different approach, choosing to live conscsiously as often as possible, repeating the words of their beliefs, forming powerful convictions. Letting go of the ugly side of change is probably a scarce problem for these folks because they dont exist day to day as a subconscious drone, only to wake up in ten years with the conscious and depressing curiosity as to what the hell they have been doing with themselves over the years. I leave you with this inspiring video of someone who challenges himself to live extremely consciously every day - his power to let go of his resistance is so strong, that resistance has simply become an invigorating reason to try harder consciously: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pfWGoLj1JCM&feature=related
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