{"id":5381,"date":"2015-08-02T00:41:10","date_gmt":"2015-08-02T00:41:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thelamplighters.org\/llblog01\/?p=5381"},"modified":"2015-08-02T00:41:10","modified_gmt":"2015-08-02T00:41:10","slug":"letting-go","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thelamplighters.org\/llblog01\/letting-go\/","title":{"rendered":"Letting Go"},"content":{"rendered":"

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\u2019s Your Choice! Decisions That Can Change Your Life.\u00a0<\/em> While trying to heal from childhood trauma we discover that obsessing on something or someone is a daily part of our life.\u00a0 How do we let go once we discover how harmful this is?<\/p>\n

A side effect of childhood trauma is hyper-vigilance.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 Since our self-esteem is so low, we know that surely we must deserve something bad happening.\u00a0 Life becomes fearful on an almost daily basis.\u00a0 This hyper-vigilance becomes exhausting.\u00a0 Trying to escape from it leads us to addictions; alcohol, drugs, sex and especially people addictions.\u00a0 The original childhood trauma, whether it is sexual abuse, physical abuse, mental or emotional abuse continually comes out of the closet.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 Logic and reason cannot help us with this.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 Thus goes the mind of a human being traumatized as a child.\u00a0 It is hard to trust when this fear begins.\u00a0 We trusted before and that trust was violated.\u00a0 Having been betrayed once we know it\u2019s going to happen again.\u00a0 And on and on it goes, this obsession and hyper-vigilance that wears us to a frazzle.<\/p>\n

I thought I had worked hard on this during my five years of recovery.\u00a0 I had read the words, That which we put our attention on grows, <\/em>over and over as it sat on my \u201cmagic mirror\u201d(a mirror upon which I had scotched tape positive sayings and then read them every day),\u00a0 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.\u00a0 I found that if I didn\u2019t they ruled my daily mental routines.\u00a0 The obsession room was often quite crowded.\u00a0 It included childhood pains, lists of men I\u2019d 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\u2019d walked away from but that kept returning, wrongs I\u2019d done that I continually beat myself up for and that old stand by we all use, \u201cwhat if\u201d and \u201cif only.\u201d\u00a0 But thanks to recovery I knew I\u2019d 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.<\/p>\n

I started by devising my own Ten Commandments of Obsessive Behavior.\u00a0 Some of them were tried and true phrases I\u2019d heard over the years and would now need to put in practice again.\u00a0 They included the following:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Thou shalt remember the number one rule: That which we put our attention on grows; that which we ignore will diminish.<\/li>\n
  2. 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.\u00a0 Have we been without flaw to such a degree that we can afford to obsess on someone else\u2019s behavior?<\/li>\n
  3. Remember to accent the positive and eliminate the negative.<\/li>\n
  4. Thou shalt keep in mind that \u201churled words, like hurled swords, can be brought back no more\u201d.<\/li>\n
  5. Remember to find ways to build up your own self-esteem. A confident woman cannot be dragged down to obsessive behavior.<\/li>\n
  6. Remember to look at the forest, not just the trees. One incident does not undo the good in an entire marriage.\u00a0 Each day is made up of actions and interactions and all of them threaded together make a whole marriage.\u00a0 Choose your battles wisely.<\/li>\n
  7. Once a subject has been brought up, discussed and resolved, put it away. No good will come from reiterating it.<\/li>\n
  8. 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.<\/li>\n
  9. 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.\u00a0 Use our head before we use our words.<\/li>\n
  10. 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.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    Learn to use reason to handle fears.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 In the end, as Twelve Steppers so eloquently phrase it, we<\/p>\n

    LET GO AND LET GOD.<\/em><\/p>\n

    \u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

    ( It’s Your Choice! Decisions That Will Change Your Life<\/em> has been published by Loving Healing Press and can be ordered from amazon.com)<\/p>\n