Falling Into The Same Old Hole

You know you have tried to change, but regardless of all of the ways that you have tried, you still keep falling into the same old hole. You have convinced yourself that you will never be any different, so you just climb back up in your tree and watch the world go by. However, after awhile, the pain of being stuck begins to beg for your attention. Once again, you decide to try to change. You climb down from the tree but the fear of change soon terrorizes you. Again, you retreat to your tree. If you pay attention to yourself, you notice that you climb right back to the same old branch. From that branch, you have only one point of view. All you see is the same old sidewalk with the same old hole. If you climb to a different branch, perhaps you will get a different point of view, and you might even be willing to come down and cross over to the other side of the sidewalk. The reality is that the hole is not going to change. The hole is in the sidewalk and you keep focusing on the hole.

What is that hole?

The hole is many things. First, it started with a crack in your ability to feel safe in the world. The crack continued to become larger because of its weak secure base. Shame fills the crack with all of the bad messages, scenes, and feelings from past wounds causing the crack to expand deeply into your very soul. The shame comes from messages that you picked up as a child believing them to be true about yourself. As you grew, the messages became larger and more shaming, focusing only on the parts of you that you have to come to believe are bad. In the very core of your being, you believe yourself to be bad, and then you draw all of your energy into sabotaging the good things. Now this is beginning to sound familiar, isn't it?

Let's ask some simple questions. What comes up inside of you when you think about changing branches? Do you say things like?

1. I can't possibly do that.

2. What will others think?

3. What would my parents think?

4. What if I fall?

5. What if that branch belongs to someone else?

6. What if that branch breaks?

7. I don't know what that will look like. At least I know this situation.

8. What will I say to others when they ask me why I did that?

See how quickly your mind tells you that things can never change? You do that out of your fear of feeling your shame and your inadequacies. You believe if you just stay still, then no one will notice your shame. However, if you can just allow yourself to feel it, then you begin to change it. When you deny that it hurts, then you have a problem. For years, you have been stuck in this shame spiral, and with awareness and interventions, you will begin to heal the crack and fill in the shame with healing and healthy messages, beliefs, and activities that will allow you to change branches, take a different look, and then make the changes you have been so desperately trying to make.