I have blogged on this before but it can become such a huge problem that I have some more thoughts to add that are in my book It’s Your Choice! Decisions That Can Change Your Life. While trying to heal from childhood trauma we discover that obsessing on something or someone is a daily part of our life. How do we let go once we discover how harmful this is?
A side effect of childhood trauma is hyper-vigilance. Having been betrayed, we look for betrayal; we are watchful for anything that might hurt us; we anticipate trouble, hoping to head it off before it becomes too painful. Since our self-esteem is so low, we know that surely we must deserve something bad happening. Life becomes fearful on an almost daily basis. This hyper-vigilance becomes exhausting. Trying to escape from it leads us to addictions; alcohol, drugs, sex and especially people addictions. The original childhood trauma, whether it is sexual abuse, physical abuse, mental or emotional abuse continually comes out of the closet. We may not be aware of it but it is lurking in our unconscious, waiting to make an appearance as it parades back and forth prompting us to be ever watchful. Logic and reason cannot help us with this. We know something bad is about to happen and if only we can do something to control it, to ward it off, then this time it may escape us. Thus goes the mind of a human being traumatized as a child. It is hard to trust when this fear begins. We trusted before and that trust was violated. Having been betrayed once we know it’s going to happen again. And on and on it goes, this obsession and hyper-vigilance that wears us to a frazzle.
I thought I had worked hard on this during my five years of recovery. I had read the words, That which we put our attention on grows, over and over as it sat on my “magic mirror”(a mirror upon which I had scotched tape positive sayings and then read them every day), referred to it often during my daily activities, and tried to stay disciplined about chasing away thoughts regarding things and/or people that lived in my obsession room. I found that if I didn’t they ruled my daily mental routines. The obsession room was often quite crowded. It included childhood pains, lists of men I’d slept with and my shame at the discovery of how high those numbers were, memories of abuse suffered at the hands of males I thought I’d walked away from but that kept returning, wrongs I’d done that I continually beat myself up for and that old stand by we all use, “what if” and “if only.” But thanks to recovery I knew I’d conquered all of them. During the years after my recovery I found situations crop up that reminded me I needed to keep working on letting go.
I started by devising my own Ten Commandments of Obsessive Behavior. Some of them were tried and true phrases I’d heard over the years and would now need to put in practice again. They included the following:
- Thou shalt remember the number one rule: That which we put our attention on grows; that which we ignore will diminish.
- Remember that people who live in glass houses cannot afford to throw stones. Sometimes obsessing on something or someone means we are too busy judging others and not looking at our own behavior. Have we been without flaw to such a degree that we can afford to obsess on someone else’s behavior?
- Remember to accent the positive and eliminate the negative.
- Thou shalt keep in mind that “hurled words, like hurled swords, can be brought back no more”.
- Remember to find ways to build up your own self-esteem. A confident woman cannot be dragged down to obsessive behavior.
- Remember to look at the forest, not just the trees. One incident does not undo the good in an entire marriage. Each day is made up of actions and interactions and all of them threaded together make a whole marriage. Choose your battles wisely.
- Once a subject has been brought up, discussed and resolved, put it away. No good will come from reiterating it.
- Remember that we have choices. We can choose to assess each new situation and decide if there is truly a wrong committed, address it and resolve it.
- Gently push away any attempts on the part of the demons in the obsession room to engage us in fear. If our intuition tells we to keep our mouth shut, listen to it. Use our head before we use our words.
- When an obsession begins to take hold and we are having a difficult time making it go away, we must distract our self with a walk, a good movie or a good book, anything pleasurable to place objectivity between our emotions and the event that set off the obsession.
Learn to use reason to handle fears. Once we couple it with wisdom and continue to remind our self of the Ten Commandments of Obsessive Behavior, we will be able to overcome this monumental problem. In the end, as Twelve Steppers so eloquently phrase it, we
LET GO AND LET GOD.
( It’s Your Choice! Decisions That Will Change Your Life has been published by Loving Healing Press and can be ordered from amazon.com)
