Are you trapped in a time machine?(Part 1)

If 18 years of counselling has taught me one thing, it’s this - That many people get into an emotional time machine from the moment they wake up in the morning. Then unconsciously travel back to some past feeling, torment, incident, abuse, event or experience and begin t recycle and become overwhelmed by those old feelings

Or they emotionally race off into the future to worry, stress or be anxious about something that hasn’t happened yet. Unconsciously trying to predict their future to stay safe, based on what has happened to them in the past. And so, stress and anxiety overwhelm them.

As a result, their internal state of being is altered and they experience the physiological symptoms related to that emotion. Things like headaches, upset stomach, aches, pains, tense muscles, chest pain and rapid breathing and racing heartbeat.

Plus, their perception of reality is clouded and affected, or should i say, - infected, as they lose their emotional connection with the peaceful present moment.

What do I mean by that?

Simply that the painful feelings and emotions which overwhelm and stress your body, generally have nothing to do with what is happening to you in this moment. As in, how you feel is not grounded or anchored in the present moment – NOW – as you read these words.  The present moment, where as hard as it can be to see or acknowledge, generally nothing bad is happening to a person.

For example, if you wake up in the morning and are quickly overtaken by a feeling of dread, fear, anxiety or stress. Even though you may be still in bed or are making a cup of coffee in the kitchen. And your swamped with negative thoughts, body feelings and emotions. I would propose to you that you have temporarily lost your emotional connection to the present moment, where nothing bad is actually happening to you.

Generally speaking, the thing that is ‘happening’ to a person who is suffering with anxiety. Is that their body’s stress response has been turned on again and again and now their mind and body has an energetic hold over them and controls them. They are energized by the conscious and subconscious thought they have identified with, based on their environment, time or their bodies programming and conditioning.

What happens is, if you practice feeling certain intense negative emotions and having the same negative thoughts for years and years. This creates a specific feeling in your body called a ‘state of being’ 

Eventually this is all your body knows how to feel, anything else just doesn’t feel right, anything else doesn’t ‘feel’ like ‘you’.

Then whether you’re the victim or perpetrator, you unconsciously generate or go and create, a situation in your life where your body can experience and feel and feed on those familiar chemicals.

Most of the time we are not conscious of this behaviour and will argue that we are not trying to create a problem. However, if you look closely enough, you will see that your behaviour is designed to keep the pain going.

 When you’re thinking the same thoughts and having the same feelings all the time, you’re not learning anything new or doing anything different. In effect your brain is firing its neurons and activating the same neural networks in exactly the same pattern, sequence and combinations.

All you’rereally doing is recycling chemicals every day.

Eventually what happens is, a person literally becomes the automatic programs that they unconsciously use every day. Just like a computer automatically runs a program. So, a person re-creates the same mind every day by making their brain fire in the same pattern.

It’s like you have reinforced those circuits & essentially ‘practiced’ feeling a particular way for so long. That this is eventually who you ‘feel’ and believe that you are.

The problem is, when feelings have become your means of thinking – or you can’t think greater than how you feel – your body memorizes the emotion and your body also begins to influence and control your mind.

However what if who you ‘feel’ and ‘believe’ that you are, is negative, limiting and destructive? How do you change something that is an automatic response?