Manage your emotions or they will manage you! Sounds logical, but how does one go about doing this? Working diligently with emotions is key to managing addictions & disorderly mind states. From the time you were born, you have been deeloping your own brand of emotional patterning. Some of the patterns are heavily etched & are super-automatic. You may have mentored some of these from others, especially when you were very young & more sponge-like. At that time of life, you absorbed everything, even if you didn't like it or agree to it. A good exercise is to become aware of what you dislike, or what annoys you about your parents or siblings, then look for those in yourSelf. You can do the same exercise with your significant other or your relationships with your children, relatives & friends. It's not uncommon to be blind to one's own patterns, as well as to the emotional states that automatically attach to them. Becoming aware or awake to emotional patterns & their crayons is KEY to diminishing those that produce negative tones, while giving you the opportunity to enhance the coloring of those that are helpful
NOTE TO NEW READERS:
This experiential blog/workshop is based on my new book, "How Many Cookies Will It Take to Make Me Happy?" If you are new to my writing, you might want to read the earlier mini-chapters. They are available on FaceBook, The PublishersMarketPlace & at the following link. Remember to scan down to find the earliest chapters & work your way up. http://beyonddisorderlyeating.blogspot.com/
A bit of background.... we are working with creative Interactive Self-Hypnosis imagery, planting suggestions directly into the creative subconscious mind as you read along. What appears like a story is a series of self-hypnotic sessions, designed to bring about desired lifestyle changes. The inner mind is creative & rather child-like, loving to play with images, especially when they are emotionalized. Just like the saying, "a picture is worth a thousand words", well-planted mind images, can be worth hours of therapy. We can actually change or motivate in 1/200th of a second. So come along & look forward to some lifestyle-changing events
KNOWLEDGE HOOKS
Throughout my books you will find hooks, designed for hanging newly presented knowledge. While these hooks are very important, they are simply not enough to evoke lifestyle behavioral changes. One must take the knowledge off of the hook & bring it to the worktable where a plan is designed & then executed. Let's go ahead & experiment with this.
Working with emotional states is a skill just like anything else. We have emotions that work in a positive way for us & others that don't. When looking to identify emotional states, which is a KEY practice, you will come to know that there are hundreds of them. few people can name more than twenty. Some emotions are experienced as having high-power negative energy or coloring, such as intense anger. You also have emotions that are high-powered positive energy or coloring. Ecstacy being a good example. You also have low-powered negative & positive emotions. There energy or coloring is very different. Annoyance is a negative example of one of these, with pleasantness living in the positive column. Sometimes the momentary experience is about the "choice" of emotion & other times, it's about the intensity of the crayoning.
Here we are practicing Interactive Awareness, which helps you to see the details of the emotions & what is truly unfolding in the moment. How good are your self-observation skills? While most of us can name or describe our high-powered positive & negative emotions, most of us fall short when it comes to the lower-powered ones. This is most unfortunate because these are the emotions that hang around more frequently, coloring daily experiences & are usually the ones responsible for addictions & interfering with other goal achievement.
So, now we have this knowledge hanging on the hook. Let's go ahead & take it into the SchoolHouse & place it in "active imaginology."
WHAT'S GOING ON NOW
We find the emotional children in the SchoolHouse, of course wearing their Golden Egg Shapes, in preparation for new learnings. The children are very relaxed & you notice that. Since you have just entered, go ahead & tune into that level of deep relaxation for yourSelf. It's quite easy to do. Simply notice & then breathe. You might remember this as the instructions for "releasing" & that is exactly what you are doing now; releasing body tension & slowing your brain waves, ready to enter the "library of your mind." When you are ready, notice that there are large boxes of crayons on the desk of each child. Inside each box is a crayon labeled with the name of a particular emotion. Stop at the desk of that emotional childSelf...one that is involved in disorderly eating adventures.
Ask permission to open the crayon box. When it is granted, look for the crayon labeled "depressed" or "sad" or "compulsive" or "angry" or "fearful" or "helpless" or any other emotion that brings you into any scene of disorderly eating or one of it's equivalents. On the desk you will also find a coloring book that depicts actual scenes from your life experiences in this genre. Now take the emotional crayon & begin to color in the picture. Notice you can press hard & color in dark strokes OR you can hold the crayon lightly & just place a hue of color. Your TeacherSelf is now at your side, removing the crayon & instructing the page to "un-color", freeing you to choose a positive crayon, perhaps the one labeled "wise" or "balanced" or something similar. You choose.
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Copyright 2009 Elizabeth Bohorquez, RN, C.Ht
May not be copied or reproduced without permission of the author.
Elizabeth Bohorquez, RN, C.Ht is author of Sugar...the Hidden Eating Disorder & How to Lick It. She is also the writer/producer of over 350 mp3/CD programs in the areas of medicine, health, prevention, addictions, self-development & sports for adults & children.
http://www.hypnosis-audio.com
http://www.sugar-addiction.com
http://www.international-medical-health-writers.com
