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Hi everyone! In this video I'll talk about why we end up doing things we don't
otherwise want to do, like over-eating, procrastination,
continuing destructive relationships, and succumbing to addictions and compulsions.
What we don't know CAN actually end up hurting us.
Have you ever felt like you had very little control of your life?
Have you ever felt like it was impossible to fulfill New Year's
Resolutions or
other goals for your life? This can be because you're operating at the mercy
of your unconscious.
What is the unconscious? Humans have been asking this for hundreds of years in a
variety of cultures
from the Hindu texts, the Vedas, to writers like William Shakespeare
to philosophers and artists and psychoanalysts.
So let's break this down. The unconscious is that part of our mind that we are
unaware of.
It's often why we do what we do, even
if it contradicts what we consciously say and believe we want to do.
The unconscious develops from our experiences in the first few years of our
life
setting up a blueprint, kind of like a computer software program,
that is the basis for how we look at life, the world, relationships,
and ourselves. It also helps us to form core beliefs
around freedom, trust, our worth, our value. Those kinds of things.
And it operates on autopilot without
our conscious awareness. It filters information from our external
environment
in ways that are consistent with that original blueprint.
Our unconscious also protects us from perceived threat,
even if that threat is no longer in existence. It can be a resource for us
in tapping into intuition and creativity. It's important to recognize
how much our unconscious
is actually supporting or limiting our most authentic
and truest self in the world. This is much of what psychotherapy does,
is to help us increase our awareness of this unconscious material
so that we can live life with felt sense of self- efficacy
and self-determination in the world.
A helpful analogy for the unconscious is an iceberg,
where most of the iceberg is below the water, the unconscious material,
helping to support and lift up the rest of the iceberg, which is about the water,
the conscious material.
So let's take a look at three examples
of core beliefs that are found in the unconscious material.
One example is, "I have to
earned love by doing," and this often shows up in conscious awareness as a
feeling of being burned out of
work-life, being overstressed, having
a lack of work-life balance because you're constantly producing and doing
to
earn love instead of also allowing yourself to be,
to rest, to know that you are lovable regardless of what you produce.
A second example of a core belief
is, "It's not safe to be real or vulnerable,"
and this is one I often hear among minority or oppressed groups.
It can show up by living life from a false self that is acceptable to society,
friends, and family but then you can end up feeling lonely
and disconnected from yourself and others because you're not living
a genuine authentic life. The third example of a core belief
is, "Something is wrong with me," and this can easily decrease your self-worth
to the point that you get into and maintain relationships that aren't good for
you
or you learn to self-soothe through behavior or substance
addiction. And it can be hard to quit, even if you want to,
unless you deal with the underlying unconscious low self-worth.
We've all heard that phrase knowledge equals power
and when it comes to the unconscious it's definitely true. The more that we
can increase our awareness and insight
to what's going on below the surface in the unconscious,
the greater available choices, options and
felt sense of being able to effect change in our lives.
The tool to do this is mindfulness,
whether it's in psychotherapy, yoga, meditation or otherwise.
Allowing ourselves that curiosity and nonjudgmental
objectivity to look at whatever is going on, with radical acceptance,
allows the unconscious material to rise to the surface
so that we can learn from it, we can grow, we can work with it,
and we can act in ways that are in alignment with our core values.
So in a place of mindfulness
ask yourself, "What kind of core beliefs are limiting my ability to live life more
fully."
If you'd like to look at the handout that I created for this video, please go
to my website
at www.livingmorefully.com