But I remember having a few days like that!
It's easy for me to make fun of myself, but when we lose our minds there is nothing fun about it!
So what exactly is it?
Losing our mind is a direct result of having deficiencies in our psychological evolution. Simple put we have Emotional baggage.
Why should we care? Emotional baggage causes us to suffer greatly, lose relationships, leave
jobs, break friendships, miss opportunities, feel lonely, and keep us from achieving our true greatness.
AS a linguistics person I notice that I am careful about the words I use! Just staying that I've lost my mind has the ability to make my subconscious brain feel unsettled, unclear in my thinking. But I do notice that I have TRIGGERS! And whenever I have lost my mind it hasn't been pretty. KABOOOM!
So I learned how to be in
control of my mind rather than my mind controlling me!
Why should we learn to control our mind? Because emotional baggage is not actually ours. Think of stepping into a big pile of quicksand. Would we chose to do that? No, Well emotional baggage is like that, it's not something that we would carry around on purpose and emotional baggage is dangerous to our over all health.
Emotional baggage has the ability to side tracks, make us
feel bad about ourselves and it usually take us by surprise and results in more pain.
How does it create more pain? Guilt, regret, berating ourselves creates a "stress" biology to flood through our bodies, creating the physical assault of the emotional baggage. When we need self love the most... our inner negative chatter can get real LOUD!
When the negative inner voice gets loud, we may start to notice that we
use our "stop words". I can't. I'm not good enough. I'm not funny. I'm not athletic.
We may notice we are not accountable, We blame others for our situation rather than empower and direct our own lives.
Like the wind through the mind, negative thoughts crash through our minds faster than the speed of sound and then sometimes they escape the mind and enter the world...
Have you ever witnessed someone
real nice say or do something "not so nice" and you wonder where the bleep did that come from...?
I have been there! I see myself clear as a bell. Just thinking about me losing my mind, makes my head go numb... ever had that feeling of anxiety in the center of your gut? Tight uncomfortable, then the un-sleepable night that follows. Oh the guilt uuggh.
Ever had your inner critic rake you over the coals, or felt
yourself shrinking away from what just dropped unannounced from your lips? Felt your hand slap over your mouth?
Inwardly moaning... did I really say that OUT LOUD!!!
Oh #$@#$@ can't take it back now... so how do we ensure it doesn't take us by surprise next time.
There is no easy answer, it takes the desire to look inward and the persistence to see it through. By understanding where emotional baggage exists is the primary first
step.
My understanding is that the Ego mind exists in all of us. It is a way of thinking and processing our experiences& is dominant in the first 3 layers of psychological evolution.
- #1 Infancy: safety, security and survival. When deficiencies are triggered, we drop into our primitive mind. Why?
Why? Losing a job or having a relationship breakdown makes us insecure. This uneasy feeling is a stress
reaction, triggering our brain to search for memories that had similar feelings. In the case of stress, our brain then sends signals and triggers a flight/fright response by flushing the matching stress chemicals and hormones through our bodies.
Why is this important?
I find there are 3 key reasons. Not only is flight or fright is initiated in our reptilian brain, making us less able to think clearly, and limits our
use of our Neo-Cortex, our rational brain. Stress hormones over time can weaken the hippo-campus which interferes with its ability to communicate with the different parts of our brain.
Hippocampus weakening has been associated with Depression, Alzheimer’s and Dementia as well as other psychotic breaks. On the physical side, constant stress is a precursor to heart disease, which kills more men and women than any other cause.
- The 2nd layer of
psychological evolution begins in early childhood. During this period of development we learn about relationships. Typically we are surrounded by family or social structures that are similar in thinking to our immediate family. We engage with people that look like us and act similarly. Hopefully we experience feelings of being loved as well as a sense of belonging.
WHY? Feeling like we belong is fundamental need of humans. Humans are herd animals and
gather to feel safe and secure when they belong to a tribe. There is a sense of belonging that is required for our well-being.
In today's technologically based world, where texting rather than face to face communication is the norm... the sense of belonging can be missing.
- The 3rd psychological phase arises in Teen years where we learn and attain; or not; self-esteem and
self-worth.
WHY? As we grow and expand as humans, we naturally want to step out on our own.
This is when teenager pull away from the family. They “rebel” as they exert their own personality. This is the time when they have an opportunity to become an individual outside of the
family. Through learning their strengths and developing a sense of pride in their accomplishments they increase their sense of self-esteem and self-worth.
Why does emotional baggage get triggered?
When we are young, we have use of our Reptilian brain and our Limbic Brain. We can only process experiences as feelings that then as process through the Limbic brain to become memories. If an experience was destructive, the
stress that was experienced becomes a memory of that feeling. If the feeling was stress, then feelings of stress also become the trigger.
So when we experience stress later in life, this old memory or the “feeling behind the memory” is triggered. We react to the new stressful experience with the mental maturity of when the original stress memory was created!
Leaving emotional baggage unresolved allows us to become
unconsciously get pulled back into the feeling we experienced during our youth. And as a child we did not have a fully functioning neo-cortex, so our memory is that of a young mind, without rational, strategy, creativity or logic. We "react" rather than respond.
How would we know if we have emotional baggage? What would it look like in everyday life?
- If we have ever experienced that we acted like an adolescent
then consider that the wound was created in our teen years. If they reaction was one that made us feel like we were “not good enough” or “I can’t” or “I not smart enough/ capable enough”, then our baggage is one of low self-esteem or low self-worth, and our response will remain the emotional maturity of the age when we were deeply wounded.
- If we ever had fit about something totally out of proportion, then think about the years when “tantrums” are normal. Look at the terrible 2’s! These
“tantrums” will be focused around relationships, feeling unloved or that we don’t fit in.
- Running scared? Just lost a job or in danger of losing a home, then safety and security may be an issue. When we just can’t cope on our own consider the age when we require support in order to survive. The age… is infancy. When our mental state is that of an infant, feeling of just not being able to do something on our own are present. Help me help me, I need help, won’t someone help
me…
Recognizing deficiencies are the first part of healing. From here we can begin the process of removing the deficiencies for ever, or making sure they no longer influence our everyday lives.
How can we help ourselves? Working through any number of energetic psychological processes available to you so that deficiencies can be safely Identify and the triggers removed.
How would we recognize if that is occurring
today? A internal sense of unhappiness, states of dis-satisfaction. When we question the purpose of our lives, question the careers we are in and the truth of who we are as individuals.
Here's a little exercise for you move away from ego and towards soul thinking!
By 40 we start getting the pull, and when we ignore, we may experience feeling unfulfilled.
Humans
require community, unity with the world, connection to intuition and inspiration. If you want to call it spiritual then this is it, the pull towards soul thinking.
Letting go of what was... Adaptation: allows us to live in “flow”. Not having set expectations of how it should be, it just is. What emerges is what we energetically focus on.
How to stay in flow?
- How your passion, when you feel inspired, your living in flow
- Shift
perception often, do not attach to an idea. Be adaptive.
- Let go and trust yourself.
- Trust yourself but never have the ego that says “my way is the only way”
- Believe that what happens happens for a reason.
- Focus on the task, by staying present we remain in our neo-cortex, rather than running automated programs in our SC mind.
- Sometimes… understand that doing nothing may be the best answer
- Life is change, and yet it directly initiates our reptilian
brain need for certainty
- Be curios, engage others by asking questions
- Think multi-dimensional, what else influences an action
- Look at both the big picture and the details
- Always stay with you core values
- Live with passion
Help is available in the form of one and one consultation, group workshops or online learning. I am currently creating an online webinar called Detox your mind.. that you can enjoy in the privacy of your home. Watch for the release at end of 2016.
So if we are questioning
our life’s purpose.. consider it a sacred message that is nudging you towards a greater life and nearer to soul thinking.
I’m here to help. If you want to know more, contact me directly, I offer a free 30 minute consultation for you! Until we speak in person, stay well and here is a free giveway: A
Core Value worksheet!
xoxo Adele
