Unaddicting Myself from Guilt
In my 20s, I read books about relationships. In my 30s, happiness. When BEMER entered my life at 40, I started learning about networking and leadership. Then came books about trauma, the mind, and transformation.
Oh my, I love my learning journey!
Along the way, I discovered Dr. Joe Dispenza. A friend gifted us one of his online courses to experience together, and I was hooked. I listened to those videos on repeat.
One idea went DEEP:
Emotions can become familiar patterns.
Dr. Joe Dispenza said that emotions are addicting. What?! I had never heard that before. That made me curious about my own emotional patterns, or should I say, addictions?
GUILT was very familiar to me.
Immediately I knew my emotional addictions. One was guilt, for sure! What?!
Once I became aware of it, though, I could begin to choose differently.
I remember dropping my daughter off at church one Sunday. Church had been part of my life for decades, but by 2020, my life was changing. Books, friendships, and hours spent trail running were filling me with ALIVENESS and JOY.
I dropped her off without wanting to go inside—and felt guilt.
But this time, I noticed it.
Oh! There it is. Guilt.
I remember exactly how I felt with that awareness of guilt. An awe. A curiousity. And then I went to work on thinking through it.
It took some time, but I reflected, changed the thoughts I was attaching to guilt, and shifted my perspective and discovered I could let the guilt go.
Later, I drove past the meeting spot for a running group I had once joined every week. That group had stretched me outside my comfort zone and had given me wonderful friendships and memories. But my running life had shifted toward the trails.
As I drove past, there it was again.
Guilt.
Wow! Whoa…awareness of my feeling. Ok! Let’s go. And again, awareness gave me a choice. I celebrated feeling that guilt with awareness. I smiled because I knew what was happening. I was becoming aware of ME, my patterns and ways of feeling. Ok!
I worked through my thinking again. Today, when I drive by, I choose to think gratitude. Gratitude for the people. Gratitude for the memories. Gratitude for that season of my life.
The guilt has been replaced by a smile.
And then there is MOM GUILT. Whew! That deserves its own blog post. I am learning there, too—to choose gratitude, presence, and love instead.
These may look like small wins, but to me they are HUGE.
Awareness gives me the opportunity to CHOOSE a new thought, a new emotional pattern, and ultimately a little more freedom.
I don’t need guilt to prove that I care.
I AM addicting myself to the feeling of gratitude more and more.
I love life, and life loves me back.
Life loving me back looks like helping me see an old pattern clearly enough that I can choose something new.
