Overcoming Obsessive Thinking

We adopt an amazing array of emotional defences to protect ourselves from feeling emotional pain.  We tend to spend a lot of time in our heads, thinking, fantasising or worrying (negative fantasising).  When we do this, we are always in either the future or the past, trying to escape unpleasant feelings in the present.

We distort the facts, magnify the consequences and try to predict and control the outcome. This type of thinking becomes addictive and is the result of early childhood trauma and our attempts at survival in an emotionally hostile and unsupportive environment.  But as adults, we are no longer either helpless or powerless, and we can begin the process of recovery by choosing not to react to the melodramas created by our wounded inner children.

Just by observing our reactions instead of being overwhelmed by them is the first step to removing the power that our ego has over us and to healing the wounds that created this coping mechanism.

The minute you begin to observe any aspect of your thinking or reactions, it starts to lose its power over you and just the act of observation whilst refusing to engage in the melodrama, will over time quieten the reaction and give you greater inner peace.

Welcome to the journey

This is my first post on a journey that I would like to share with others, travelling the road out of the inner discomfort of co-dependence.  I have been travelling this road for the past ten years, when someone told me that co-dependence was not a happy place to live and that although it wasn't my fault, I was the only one that could make the decision to undo the emotional damage that my dysfunctional upbringing had caused.

I have been lucky to have been given many helpers on this journey, and I have discovered that there will always be parts of me that need mending, no matter how far I think I have travelled along this road.  It has also struck me that in helping others to recover from their issues, I am also highlighting the issues in myself that I need to work on.  So this really is a journey that we all share and not one where one person 'heals' another because they are ok, but the other person is not.

We are all 'ok' but many of us don't believe this.  We can all help each other along this path.  We aren't broken and we don't need fixing, but we can all learn from each others' triumphs. If anything I say is helpful to you, then that is great. I'm sure that you will also have much to teach me.  So for everyone that would like to contribute, I would like to say ' Welcome to the journey'.