This Week's Breakthrough (Insight)

I got some relief from mild chronic anxiety Wednesday with really hearing, "It's just a job", in my own mind. It's one of many, and my task is to do the work. It's no longer about my ego's needs to be "special". It is evident that I do my work differently than other Case Managers in that I am mainly doing psychotherapy, not just the 12 Step program. Addiction & alcoholism are SYMPTOMS of a mental problem or emotional Dysregulation. By using "The Untethered Soul" half the time, with clients who aren't ADD and are able to focus, I have had good success. Mindfulness is a key element in recovery for emotional victimhood. That and what we've been discussing here lately: Not focusing on the anxiety for disappointment for events not being as we wish they were, but accepting Reality as it is, and using that feeling of acceptance to adapt ourselves to Reality instead. It's impossible to control the outcome of events by wishing and hoping; it's exhausting emotionally, all to protect our vision of how things need to be to satisfy our emotions. Isn't that that fundamental law of humans that nothing OUTSIDE of us, any object or event, has the power to MAKE us feel anything? That WE create every emotional attachment, so as we learn to choose our emotions willfully, we no longer need to DEPEND on outside events to determine how we feel. We just feel. We choose how we feel, consciously, because that's what we allow ourselves to do. WE give OURSELVES permission to attach feelings to sensory information, and we assign importance to it. That's what mindfulness is, choice. It's about recognizing our responsibilities for choosing how to feel hurt or accepting what is.

So, the "job" is what it is. Humility suggests that I give up the quest for proving I am needed, important, or wanted by others in my job. THAT is hidden co-dependency. Let's go back to the, "Four Agreements": Be impeccable with our word, take nothing personally, make no assumptions, and do our best in the moment (realizing our best will vary from day to day).

Have a nice day.