Be A Mind Watcher

Watching the mind takes a little bit of will power. Why would I recommend to watch the mind? Well because the mind is full of traps, deceitfulness and it causes misery.

Allow me to explain through a story.

One day I was going to work and I said farewell to my husband. As I was departing, he mentioned he would go rock climbing with a friend one day that week. Then my mind went into overdrive, I would finish work, come home to my two little boys and he would go and I would have to clean the house and put them to bed. My mind went straight into a little future prediction and this caused me to become a little anxious and feeling a little resentful. A feeling of abandonment also overwhelmed me and I felt like I was being left alone to do a tremendous task.

That whole day at work I was so out of kilter and I just couldn't shake the feeling of being abandoned. Out of being desperate, I went to my online library and typed in "issues with abandonment." I then sifted through the books until I came across one that I thought, this author gets it!

The book was "Taming You Outer Child" - Overcoming Self Sabotage and Healing from Abandonment by Susan Anderson

So I read it and it was really insightful. It helped me to understand my past and current behaviors and see them as mechanisms to deal with unresolved emotional wounds. This also made me think of other people with questionable behaviors which we can see everyday in the world media right now and realize how many emotional wounds people are carrying without even realizing!

After the day of feeling abandoned for no rational reason, it made sense why I took the news of him rock climbing so personally. I automatically brought it back to me. My mind would say things like " He doesn't love you if he's leaving the family to go out" or "He doesn't want to spend time with us."

The silly thing was when Thursday came around, the day of the planned rock climbing, my husband woke up very ill and didn't go out anyway. So my mind created this amazingly over dramatic story for nothing. However, this incident, albeit, microscopic in the grand scheme of things, really highlighted how wounded I am with regard to abandonment.

I believe I am improving and every time I catch my mind into thinking thoughts like "Where is he?" or "He's been gone for a long time" (when he is actually just in the garage talking to his friend), I focus my mind on what I am doing and say things like "Hey ego, I know you are there, I hear you, but you are OK. There is no need to worry. I'm not abandoned, and the world doesn't revolve around me or how I am feeling."

Feelings are fleeting and they can become stuck in the body if the same thoughts are triggering the same feelings and I am reacting the same way. So in order to break the pattern, sometimes my thoughts are too fast to account for but once the feeling sets in, I always wonder where did this feeling come from? Especially when I'm doing a mundane task and there is no rational reason to feel out of kilter. Therefore, any reaction based on this feeling could be downright wrong.

Catching thoughts that could lead to an unnecessary battle later takes some awareness, slowing down is helpful and intentionally creating a calm environment is not a bad idea either. I caught my thoughts early and guided them into another direction and I even talk to my thoughts when I know my mind is dead wrong in its thinking.

I think it's OK to speak about our inner minds without being ashamed of the possibility of being mad. However, in this mad world, maybe my madness makes sense.

“The child does not merely observe the world around him. He does not shut himself off from the strange, complicated world around him, but tastes it, touches it, hefts it, bends it, breaks it. To find out how reality works, he works on it.”

John Holt