Few days ago, as, I was driving around as usual, running errands, suddenly a big red light, lit up on the dashboard and grabbed my attention. It was an alert sign and It read “Tyre Pressure Check Tyres.” It got my attention. I immediately reduced my speed and drove slowly back home. When I got out of the car, I noticed a flat tyre. If the red signal light had not appeared on the dashboard, I would have continued driving around compromising my safety as well as the safety of the other drivers on the road.
Using the above metaphor, we can see that our negative feelings are also like the red alert signals on the dashboard of the car. They are demanding our attention. Instead of giving them our attention, we look outside for distractions, which keep us from feeling them. It is so easy to divert our attention to something outside for temporary pleasure, rather than to feel what we are feeling. We turn to the outside world, looking for comfort and pleasure. We suppress our feelings by eating too much, excessive drinking, smoking, spending vast amounts of time on the internet, watching too much television, gambling, online games, impulsive shopping etc. These become our temporary escape from the painful feelings. Any unhealthy behavior, which distracts us from feeling our uncomfortable feelings, will soon end up becoming an addiction. Sooner or later, the temporary escape, becomes an addiction and we think this addiction is causing the “problem.” If we deal only with the addiction which is the “effect”, without dealing with the “cause”, how do we cope when the negative feelings come up again?
I see many clients who want to stop their unhealthy behaviors, and I explain that the behavior is there because of an unresolved feeling inside of them, which they don’t like to feel. Without changing the feeling, the need for distraction will come back in another form and create another unhealthy habit. For example, a smoker who smokes due to feeling overwhelmed at work, how is he going to cope with the stresses at work if he stops smoking? Sooner or later, he/she turns to another form of distraction e.g. unhealthy food, for comfort and pleasure.
Ironically, these unhealthy coping mechanisms, are trying to keep us “safe” from feeling our uncomfortable feelings. We continue to find ways to run away from them. If instead of running away, we looked at our painful feelings, as indicator lights requiring attention, we will be led to the cause of our emotional pain. The cause is the underlying, unconscious limiting beliefs, we hold within us. Working with the “effect” without going to the “cause” is only a temporary solution. These distractions do nothing to resolve our negative feelings, instead by avoiding our negative feelings, the feelings just get stronger. How many times have you felt guilt, regret and anger after spending hours on social media or online games, when that time could have been used more productively? Now, in addition to feeling overwhelmed by the workload of your job, we have added more negative feelings such as guilt, regret, and anger to that. The cycle will keep repeating until we get to the root cause, which are the unconscious limiting beliefs. Our negative feelings are the “bridge” that bring us back to these unconscious beliefs.
Can you imagine, what would have happened, if I had noticed the red alert signal on the dashboard and just ignored it or worse still just covered it with a masking tape and continued driving. What would have happened, if I had not reduced my speed and had not slowed down?
It’s the same with our negative feelings. We can temporarily smoke them away or eat them away, but they will always come back. The negative feelings are just trying to get our attention; to look at what we are thinking and believing. The negative feelings are coming from our unconscious limiting beliefs and they are like little children wanting our attention. If you don’t give a child your attention, it will scream louder. So, to ignore our feelings by suppressing them or ignoring them will not make them go away. They will come back stronger.
As a 5 Path®hypnotist, I work together with my clients using advanced hypnosis techniques, where we safely allow the negative feeling to come up and then follow the feeling back to where it started. The limiting beliefs were formed in the early years of childhood. As children, we had no logic or reasoning and believed everything we saw, heard, felt, and experienced.
As the beliefs change, feelings change. In this process of inner change, we transform and create a better today, which creates a better tomorrow. Now we are no longer held back by our past but become powerful creators of our life. Take responsibility for creating the best life for yourself. What happened in the past cannot be changed, but you can take the responsibility of creating a better present and future for yourself by healing the past.
All change begins inside of you. When you change, the world around you changes.
Let me end by this quote from Mahatma Gandhi.
“The Future Depends on what we do in The Present”