Regardless of how enlightened and knowledgeable we may think we are…. Or how many self-help books and gurus we seek, there will always come a time when we get stuck in repeating patterns of behavior.
No one is immune from it. Many of my clients are under the false assumption that if they come in and do some work with me that their lives are “fixed”. If only this were true. I’ve always said that I’d be a billionaire if I just had that magic wand.
Life is a journey we start the minute we come into this world (and some believe even before). And like many journeys, we often have to go around obstacles or climb some mountains. In my mind, I think the path to enlightenment is similar to climbing a mountain where the road goes around and around as you go up the mountain. There will be times when the road levels out and we can take a breather. Then the climb starts as we go around the other side and we’ve got to work at it again.
At some point, we can get where we seem to be going around and around, not really getting anywhere. Just recently I found myself repeating a pattern that I wrote of on my other blog http://www.MagicMiraclesandMystery.com.
One of the most insidious patterns of behavior we can do is to be co-dependent with another person or even a behavior. As I spoke of in the other blog post, I think for many in my profession, this is something we have to watch out for. Just recently, I found myself overlooking obvious signs and making excuses for someone. I even went out of my way to be sure that I was being fair and reasonable to my own detriment.
When I realized how “unconscious” I was being, it shocked me. Here I was doing the very things I harp on students and clients about! We all need to Wake Up!
Co-dependency is a sneaky habit. It can show up in so many different ways. There are the most obvious ones where a person is codependent with an alcoholic or drug abuser. But the codependent person can also end up anesthetizing their pain with alcohol, drugs, food, sex, work, gambling and even computer games.
Then there are the less obvious ones. Another common one is getting hooked on misery or being a victim. And why not? You get a lot of attention when people feel sorry for you. And you have an excuse for not doing things.
What about not taking care of yourself or your needs? That’s a common one and hard to identify because we don’t want to appear selfish or needy.
In the field of service, many will be obsessed with the pain and suffering of their clients….sometimes more so than the client. They get to sacrifice themselves in this way. This can lead to being a martyr or a rescuer which is another form of codependency.
It’s sneaky. You can find yourself down this path before you realize it. But, not all is lost. The crucial element is to be on the alert for it if this is one of your patterns. The other is to get in touch with your anger about it…..because it will most likely be there. We can be angry at ourselves and at the other person or situation. Use the anger to motivate you to do something. Once you’re ready to move out of the relationship, then it’s time to figure out what got you there in the first place.
Most of us are just running neural pathways we created early on in our lives. At a young age, if we think something often enough, it becomes a neural pathway. At birth we have 100 billion neurons which form trillions of connection resulting in a network of neural pathways. Those that aren’t used often enough are eliminated or “pruned” from the pathway. But the rest can be involved in creating our behaviors.
Research has shown that the brain is very plastic and can be restructured or rewired. We can do this by thinking differently over and over. This requires great diligence and perseverance as it takes up to 21 days to create a new pathway.
When I began my work with Neuro Linguistic Programming and Hypnosis, I wanted to find a way to deal with these repetitive behaviors caused by the pathways. After seeing 100s of clients and trying many different approaches, I finally came up with a process which has proven to be effective in restructuring these neuro pathways. I’ve used it with clients who wanted to get out of damaging relationships, to stop drinking or using drugs, stop gambling, with bulimia and any number of habitual behaviors. And there are now people in Europe trained in the process who are not only utilizing it with these behaviors but with PTSD and MS.
And it has worked. I still get feedback from clients I worked with years ago telling me how their lives have changed.
So, it is doable. Just know that life is a journey of lessons. We learn and we go on with that knowledge. And then there is something else to learn. When you’re done with your learning’s then you’ll go Poof!
If you’re interested in the process you can find out more at http://www.NeuralPathwayRestructuring.com. And if you are finding yourself repeating self sabotaging behaviors, we do have a workshop coming up to address that issue. It’s called Breaking the Cycle™ on June 12 & 13. To sign up or find out more, go to http://www.debrafentress.com/breakingthecycle.html.