Letting go of anything can be challenging especially if it causes you more pain that it brings pleasure, the pain in fact could be a part of the reason this is because we are hardwired to survive and our instinctive survival responses kick in and cause us to move away from the source of pain, this creates a pattern of behaviour that in the presence of pain we will be motivated away from it.Interestingly this can be our own or the perception of another.
It can be so challenging that many have compared it to giving up other types of addictions, like smoking, alcohol, inappropriate partners etc
The most obvious side affect of an “away from” motivation is we are compelled to experience the problem, issue, pain or experience to set off the triggers and alerts the system to pain, eventually depending on how ingrained the model of behaviour is awareness dawns and the process of resetting one self begins, this cycle can play out for many circuits some last days, weeks, months and in some cases even years!
You may think logically this doesn’t make sense to continue to do what causes pain, distress or trauma, well think again as if this has become the way a person changes it makes sense to repeat the model, even though pain forming and potentially creating dysfunctional behavioural patterns as a side dish, it does work eventually…., so from this perspective one can say that it is a “Success” model.
Now for my money, time and energy I would rather learn and apply a model that causes less pain, stress, trauma and drama and the change model would then become a toward model,incorporating choices that move us toward pleasure, happiness, unhealthy stress free.
Similarly we need to experience an increase in pleasure, happiness and healthy stress to know what it is that is available as a choice, we then need to build awareness around the available choices and then action the choice to create a different experience and then practice, practice and more practice will create progress and a neurological super highway for the newer model of change / motivation.
Steps so far:
Identify movement away or toward – ie do you have a habit of experiencing pain before you will change?
Do you realise you are choosing to repeat the cycle?
What do you do differently when you realise you are repeating the cycle?
What could you do differently?
Do you practice that point of difference, action, thought, behaviour, belief etc?
If not why not?
I invite you to consider what could you do differently and how often do you need to practice this to make it a new reality?
