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Completely destroying your life is painful- take it from personal experience. But it does offer a huge advantage if you’re still standing when all that’s left is wreckage. If you desire to lift yourself up from that point, you can make a deep assessment of exactly where you went wrong.
Even if you haven’t nuked your incredibly successful career with excessive drug use like I did in 2016, you will, I’m sure, recognise at least a few times in your life where you’ve stepped back and made a commitment to make improvements in the way you’re living.
Maybe you felt you were drinking too much and tried it scale it back. Maybe you let your sweet tooth get the better of you and you realised you needed to lose a stone or two. Maybe you recognised you keep attracting the same type of man and each time it ends in disaster.
Perhaps you made the correction instantaneously. If so, well done. But most people don’t manage that. Despite knowing full well that their behaviour is destructive, most people struggle to let go of the pattern, and even if they can, they return to it quickly or exchange it for another equally destructive behaviour.
They lack discipline you say? Well, maybe. It certainly is my belief that in order to create good habits, there are times where you have to commit to something that might feel uncomfortable and just keep doing it until it is ingrained or until the desired goal is achieved. However, this is what I would refer to as “strong arming” yourself. One part overpowers another. For instance. The part that desires to lose 2 stone overpowers the part that desires to drink wine every night.
This creates internal conflict. And, as already stated, the part that is missing out on its needs getting met can fight back and do its own strong arming in the end. Afterall, both is dedicated to a cause. It’s just society (and common sense) says that the dedication to exercise is preferred.
So what else can you do? The thing that has created lasting change and brought about healing in myself is “parts work” It has worked so well for me that I have integrated it into my work with my clients.
With parts work, you can come to understand the part that is causing the resistance and you can integrate it. This means you bring it into alignment with your other goals and needs. You find another more desirable way for it to get its needs met.
What is often surprising about delving deeply into a part that drives us to troublesome behaviours, is that in fact, at the deepest layer of motivation is actually something we can understand to be positive. In other words, it’s doing us a favour.
For instance. The part of us that drives overeating could actually be aiming for us to not reach our full potential. For this part of us, reaching our full potential means an overwhelming level of pressure to maintain it. Perhaps it identifies with a pushy parent who put unnecessary pressure on it to succeed and therefore never felt accepted. This feels incredibly unstable and unsafe. So, the eating in this instance is actually meant to keep us safe. However, we would all accept that eating unhealthily is not a way to achieve safety, at least not in terms of our physical body and our ability to prevent disease.
So what do you do? Well now you know that this part requires safety. It’s a reasonable request. So, provide it with safety. Look at your life and assess what actual safety looks like for you. Are you spending time with dangerous people? Get rid of them if you are. Are you in a precarious financial situation? Clean that up if you are. It will feel safer.
So, what you have now done is rather than strong arming a part you see as weak, or difficult is tell it you’ll meet it’s needs in another way. Plus, you are aware of the pattern that drove overeating in the first place, so you can make a choice to do it differently, if you wish!
Going through this process has the power to create long lasting change for the better. At White Line Coaching I use parts work as part of my clients’ sessions if I feel it is necessary to delve a bit deeper into behaviours that are holding them back from achieving the maximum results. To book a session or to find out more about how I use parts work you can contact me using the contact form.
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