Emotional Challenges

As parents become more successful in running their own lifestyle behaviors & habits, they become better "parent-mentors." It's not just about being a healthy weight, nor food or exercise. We want to look at the process that supports the result. This is about good choices, managing stress, emotions, thoughts, language & balance....Elizabeth Bohorquez, RN, C.Ht

Sugar....the Hidden Eating Disorder - Who's Killing the Kids is a book/workbook/workshop in our Parenting the Parent Series.

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INTO THE WORKSHOP

While the four steps of this program are equally important, the order of progression is equally so. Disorderly eating is like any other disorder or mess & we get out of this in the same way. First we wake up. Then we bring organization to all of the facets.

Disorderly eating rarely lives alone. When one area of a life is in disarray, you won’t have to look far to find another. Disorder & stress go hand in hand, bringing imbalance to the mind & body. Addictions become the easy answer for managing discomfort. We can grow to like, even love them. Like other bad relationships, they can consume us. It is important to understand that while we may have genetic tendencies towards addictions, we do have choices in the matter. We can choose to stop.

Changing disorderly life patterns & addictions means giving up those dangerous relationships while managing stress in new ways. This is where most people make their mistake when looking to stop smoking, drinking, bingeing, etc.

First order of business is to have a very good stress management program in place, one that includes the four steps of this program.

Managing emotions is key to managing addictions & disorder. From the time you were born, you have been developing your own brand of emotional-patterning. Some of the patterns have been heavily etched & are super-automatic. You may have mentored some of these from others, especially when you were very young & more sponge-like. At that time of life you absorbed everything, even if you didn't like it or agree to it.

A good exercise is to become aware of what you dislike, or what annoys you about your parents or siblings, then look for those in yourself. You can do the same exercise with your significant other relationship, or your relationship with your children. Try the same mind game with your work relationships. Now look at your disorderly or addictive patterns. They will be there as well. It's not uncommon to be blind to one's own patterns, as well as to the emotional states that automatically attach to them.

EMBEDDED NEGATIVE PATTERNS

Once a negative pattern has been self-embedded, it must to be removed subconsciously. If not, the pattern will have a tendency to adhere to other experiences "in the moment" or even to future experiences.. Suppose you are thinking about meeting someone you know. You have a history of being annoyed with this person's idiosyncrasies. In your present thoughts, your emotional state crayons are already engaged, coloring your expectations. Even if that person isn't demonstrating the irksome traits in the real-time meeting, you will probably find yourself in your old programmed mind-state anyway, responding “as if” there were.

EXERCISE

Let's work with a different future-paced example. Let's play in your "fantasy department." Suppose you are going on vacation. Take yourself into your "vacation preparation center." Assume that on the last vacation you had difficulty adjusting to a non-working relaxed state, finding the vacation finished before you really began enjoying yourself. This is probably not a far-fetched fantasy example. Now take the fantasy a step further, just for learning purposes. Notice that even though your current vacation is not for some time, you are already anticipating this, probably playing it in the theater of your mind.

This is a special kind of mind program called a negative expectation. If you play this over & over, you will actually pre-program enhanced mind & body tension. Other negative emotions may choose to join in with their negative color crayons. The chances of an enjoyable vacation is becoming slimmer with each negative mind-etching.

KNOWLEDGE HOOK

Working with emotional states is a skill just like anything else. We have emotions that work in a positive way & others that don’t. These are often called negative emotions, but it’s important to keep in mind that even negative ones also have their good points & can be useful in certain situations. You’ll come to understand that these emotions can help to open the subconscious mind through releasing.

When looking at emotional states it’s a good idea to know that there are hundreds of them. Few people can name more than twenty. . Some emotions are experienced as having negative high-power such as anger. You also have positive high-powered emotions as well, for example ecstasy could be considered in that group.

You also have negative lower-powered emotions, for example annoyance & on the positive side you might consider the emotion of being pleasant. Sometimes the momentary experience is about the choice of emotion & other times it’s about the intensity of the crayoning.

Interactive awareness practice helps you to see the details, as well as what is truly unfolding in the moment. How good are your self-observation skills? While most of us can name or describe our high-powered positive & negative emotions, most of us fall short when it comes to the lower-powered ones. This is most unfortunate because these are the emotions that hang around more frequently, coloring daily experiences & are usually the ones responsible for stress related diseases & interfering with goal achievement. We often call them our personality traits, often believing that they can’t be changed because “they are who we are.”

This in itself conjures up some interesting images. For example, what would happen if one’s anger, resentment and failure programs were diminished or removed? Would they evaporate? This is a living example of how “nonsense language” finds it’s way into our subconscious mind programs.

EXERCISE

Take a few moments & jot down some of your most powerful positive emotions & then your most powerful negative emotions. Look into different areas of your life, for they will be different. Have a look at your health area & then your relationship with yourself, then your significant other, children one by one, next your work & prosperity area. This exercise is key in programming your subconscious mind for change.