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Showing posts with the label Fixation

Healing My Own Emotional Pain

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Trauma. The relationship ends, the baby dies, the firing happens, the illness takes over, the collectors call, the accidents happen, the abuse, crime, and calamity all take their toll. The nervous system goes into hyper-protective mode, senses heighten, adrenaline courses through the body, focus narrows, and for the time being, my defenses are up. Strangely enough, the pain doesn't arrive until later. When the dust has settled, and I'm left alone to process what has happened, then the pain comes. My mind is flooded with thinking - thinking about the loss, thinking about an unknown future, thinking about who's to blame, thinking about revenge, thinking about how I can manipulate the Universe, thinking about putting a gun to my own head. All this thinking keeps the pain alive, and feeds it. Behavior becomes impulsive. I yell at my kid, I curse at my wife, I become self righteous, I power up, I justify my actions because I'm in pain. My compulsions ultimately become futile

Fixin' to Fix My Fixation

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Yesterday when I was walking Vinnie, I realized that for the past several years I've been entranced by a fixation. This particular fixation is money. For at least the last 8 years I've been thinking about money, even when I haven't been thinking about money. Most of my waking hours are spent trying to figure out how to make more. It's the first thing I think about when I wake up, and the last thing on my mind as I go to sleep. This isn't the first time I've been fixated on something. In my late 20s through 30s I was focused on love and sex. My thinking was that if I just had love, my life would be OK, and love was translated as lots of sex. So I had a lot of relationships. I think the longest lasted about six months. Most were one date or one night. There was a flip flop pattern that went on for the duration in which I'd either be fleeing from someone clinging to me, or clinging to someone who was fleeing from me. I read a ton of books on getting and keeping