Attend to Yourself!
For a month’s worth of posts, I (Scott) am critiquing my own past blog posts. I’m viewing this as an experiment in being willing to admit when I’m wrong, change my mind, and to do so publicly.
Read the past few days before reading today.
If the son is not attentive to himself, and has done very little work, then a question from his partner about cleanliness will likely lead to an explosive reaction. Overtime he's learned to associate his mother's standard of cleanliness (which he later attaches to any conversation about cleanliness) with a deep internal sense that he has no value, that he's a burden on others, that he is a failure, that he's inherently damaged, that he's completely misunderstood, or some other core message. In this case, an innocuous question (from the partner's perspective) can lead very quickly to a conversation about whether or not this relationship is even worth continuing.
Triggers don't mean that a person is weak or stupid or overly sensitive. Triggers are merely things that remind us of our baggage. If we've dealt with our baggage, triggers are not necessarily overly disruptive. If we haven't deal with our baggage, they wreak havoc.
We require attentiveness in order to discern what kinds of conversations or events create unnecessarily large reactions within us. If we're able to recognize these reactions when they happen, then we can begin to parse out the root of these reactions.
This is the beginning of learning to choose new and different responses.
2021 Scott enters the ring to destroy the writing of 2017 Scott, and here’s his response:
I don’t have a tremendous amount of new things to say in response to these few days that I haven’t already said. I will continue to say that it’s a complex web of factors that leads to our healing. Some of it is attentiveness to ourselves and our patterns. Some of it is healing relationships. It might take counseling or support groups. It might take new hobbies. It might mean slowing down. It might mean a career path. Whatever the case may be, it’s worth asking ourselves: Am I living a life that I am excited about? If not, what is in my power to change that I believe might help?
