Understanding / Overcoming Our Reactive States

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Understanding and overcoming our reactive states helps heal our relationship. We can move from being highly reactive to responding calmly to others and situations – appropriate to what is going on at the moment. However, it does take some self-examination and connecting of the dots between our reactions and what lies beneath them.

(This post is a companion to “Connecting the Dots: Worksheet 5b.” Here is the link

Many of us are outwardly reactive. We may be aggressive, controlling, critical, or blame everyone ).and everything for our frustrations and feelings of disempowerment. We may be needy and expect others to answer our every emotional whim.

And we often get angry at those around us for not getting down in the muck and joining us in our misery and reacting to our neediness or hissy-fits!

Negative and inappropriate reactions are just the surfacing of past emotions: hurts, conflicts, or confusions about love that were never addressed or answered. These caused emotional turmoil within us, and until addressed they show up one way or another in our attitudes and behaviors and how we approach life.

This article/blog post is an excerpt from my Book 1 of my new ‘Our  Journeys to Peace’ Series

“Why We Are the Way We Are”

See here  for About Book and purchase info.

(Available from Amazon in print and e-book)

Confusion About Love

The lack of love or the confusion about love we may have experienced when growing up is what keeps us from creating healthy relationships. (I further discuss relationships in book 3 of the series, Relationships in an Evolving World. (Links are below).

If we have not been shown love, or have received conflicting messages about love, we will be confused about love.

For example, a child whose parent professes God’s love for them but the parent doesn’t show the child love will become hurt and frustrated from the lack of love in their life and feel conflicted about love. If the child is urged to love his or her neighbor but the parent does not do so, the child will become confused about the meaning of love.

Deep within us, we have a memory of unconditional love — which we all still long for, and this combined with the lack of love or any conflicting messages about love keep us confused about love — how to give it and how to let it in.

Confusion about love — what unconditional love is,

how to give it — and how to receive it,

is why our relationships are so difficult.

It takes a bit of self-examination and quiet time in honest reflection to begin to first understand and then connect the dots to, our unaddressed emotional world that causes our reactions and frustrations, and to unravel it all.

Connecting the dots helps us recognize why we are bringing past hurts and confusions to present situations. Making this connection helps us to consciously overcome any negative, habitual propensities. It helps us choose differently.

 

Understanding / Overcoming Our Reactive States

We now know that if we want to overcome our habitual thought-processes we need to consciously choose our thoughts and attitudes  It is the same for our reactions.

Our thought-processes come from our mind, which often runs amuck. If we have unhealed emotional pain we are working under the guise of unconscious influences, which cause our emotions to run amuck.

In the same way we have to  consciously train the mind to override negative programming, we also have to become aware of how our habitual emotional are luring us to react and start to shift from anger, blame, neediness, etc. to taking responsibility for attitudes and reactions – and ultimately for our peace and happiness.

The influence of negative factors needs to be released if we want to be the creator of our life experiences rather than being at the effect of our unconscious influences.

Until we override these influences we will automatically react to situations, as our internal tensions from the buried emotions and conflicts within us need an outlet. I call our automatic reactionary or non-reactionary state our Default Position.

Our Default Position

Our Default Position: The reactionary, non-reactionary, or responsive way we deal with others and situations. Our approach is either aggressive, passive, or neutral.    Whether negative or positive our Default Position plays out in all our communications with others. It can waver depending on our mood or stress level at that moment.

Next week, I will further discuss “Our Default Position.”  To access, Follow my Facebook page or sign up for my free monthly newsletter. Bot links are below.

© Rosemary McCarthy June 2019, updated October 2019

Here is link to companion post ” Connecting the Dots: Worksheet 5b.”

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See here for About Book 1 of the series, “Why We Are the Way We Are”

here  for Book 2, Becoming Our Best Self – – due out December 2019

here  for About Book 3,  Relationships in an Evolving World – due out Winter 2019/20.

here for About my 1st book,  “Your Journey to Peace, Bridging the Gap Between Religion, Spirituality, Psychology, and Science.”

here  to Subscribe to my Free Monthly Publication 

here for this blog Page – here for my other blog page (both with articles on various subjects related to our personal, collective, and cosmic journeys

here  for my Facebook page. Following my FB page ensures you receive my new blog  articles as posted

You can share this article as long as you include the full copyright message below. If you share through Facebook (link is also below), the message automatically copies.

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Copyright © June, 11, 2019 by Rosemary McCarthy. All rights Reserved. You may only copy, share and distribute this article provided that the content is copied in its entirety, is unaltered, and is distributed freely and for no monetary or personal gain, and that this copyright notice and the link for the article and the website www.yourjourneytopeace.com are included. However, I would appreciate if you would inform me of where or to whom it has been shared, using email rosemary@yourjourneytopeace.com. Blessings, and thank you kindly. Rosemary

Worksheet 5b: Connecting the Dots:

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Negative or inappropriate reactions are the result of living on the surface level of our emotional world. We are either disconnected from our current emotions out of fear of what we may find, or we are unaware that past emotional upsets or hurts are causing us to react badly.

This post is a companion to “Understanding / Overcoming our Reactive States”  see here  for link.

Having no true connection to the honesty of our feelings and the depth of our emotions, we react from unconscious emotional states that have no bearing upon current situations, rather than respond to what is in front of us,

Connecting the dots between what we are feeling and how we are reacting can help us overcome negative, inappropriate,  and ineffective behaviors.

Worksheet 5b: My Reactions and their Root Causes

Example # 1: I feel hurt: He/she forgot. I feel he/she doesn’t love, value, or appreciate me. I don’t feel loved, valued, or appreciated.

Connecting the Dots:

  • I feel hurt when others don’t meet my expectations.
  • I need validation of love from people.
  • I feel unloved when I don’t get it.
  • Others haven’t always loved, valued, or appreciated me.

I recognize now that I am projecting the lack of love and validation that I had growing up into present circumstances and am  putting unfair expectations on those around me.

Example # 2: I am impatient and fly of the handle easily: I’m always busy and have lots to do. I don’t have time for anything that delays my plans. I am impatient with people who are calm. It’s not my fault – I just get caught up in things.

Connecting the Dots:

  • Being busy makes me feel useful.
  • I like the validation.
  • I feel I must do everything and for everyone.
  • I am impatient because what I am doing is vital to me feeling good – and been perceived as useful – important.
  • What others are saying or doing doesn’t help me, so I am impatient with them.
  • I can’t say no. I don’t like to say no – as it makes me seem not nice. I want people to like me.
  • I feel I must prove myself – and being useful helps this.
  • People say I am a busy body and that I have unhealthy boundaries.
  • I need to prove to others I am of value – that I am important.
  • I wouldn’t feel valued by just BEING.
  • i wasn’t valued growing up … OR … I wasn’t made to feel important … OR … I was told I was lazy … OR … I was criticized … OR … those around me were impatient with me.

Example  #3: I’m always screaming at my family: No one listens to me. No one helps me. There is never enough time for all there is to do. No one realizes all that I do. When I ask for help, they won’t help, or don’t do it right. It has to be done—and done right.

Connecting the Dots:

  • I like organization and structure
  • I need to control my environment — to be in charge of everything.
  • It makes me feel safe.
  • I did not feel safe growing up.
  • My environment did not have structure.

I recognize now that I am projecting past emotional wounds onto others and situations, which is not fair to them and causing unnecessary conflict in my life.

Connecting the Dots to Other Possible Reactions

  • I get angry when someone cuts me off in traffic; I take this as a personal affront; I had am angry and critical parent growing up. I recognize now that the one cutting me off may just be having a bad day – it is not personal.
  • When someone lets me down I feel hurt; this makes me feel unimportant to them; I have been let down often by others and it made me feel unimportant and unloved; I recognize now that things often come up and people can’t always keep their promises.
  • I feel taken for granted when my boss yells at me because I work hard; It makes me feel undervalued; I realized that my boss woks hard and may just be stressed or overwhelmed and his yelling at me is just a tension release.

Both post are excepts from Book 1 Why We Are the Way We Are of my new ‘Our Journeys to Peace’ Series. Available in print and e-book from Amazon, see here for About .Cover Image Below.

  Copyright ©Rosemary McCarthy. From 2018, updated October 2019.

See here for About my 1st book, “Journey to Peace, Bridging the Gap Between Religion, Spirituality, Psychology, and Science..”

here  to Subscribe to my Free Monthly Publication 

here for this blog Page – here for my other blog page (both with articles on various subjects related to our personal, collective, and cosmic journeys

here  for my Facebook page. Following my FB page ensures you receive my new blog  articles as posted

You can share this article as long as you include the full copyright message below. If you share through Facebook (link is also below), the message automatically copies.

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Copyright © June 11, 2019, updated 2018 by Rosemary McCarthy. All rights Reserved. You may only copy, share and distribute this article provided that the content is copied in its entirety, is unaltered, and is distributed freely and for no monetary or personal gain, and that this copyright notice and the link for the article and the website www.yourjourneytopeace.com are included. However, I would appreciate if you would inform me of where or to whom it has been shared, using email rosemary@yourjourneytopeace.com. Blessings, and thank you kindly.

The Importance of Balancing Our Lives

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To be happy and feel good we need to attend to our body, mind, emotions, and spiritual connection. To the subtler parts of our existence. We need to keep these parts of ourselves in balance – at least most of the time, as a sustained unbalanced life will not serve our ultimate peace and happiness.

Modern society has devalued the importance of the subtler aspects of living: of taking the time to reflect and connect to what makes us feel peaceful and happy and of listening to the urges of our soul. Instead, we have been encouraged to follow a work-for-gain lifestyle and embrace the competitive market place that goes along with it.

When we ignore the subtler, reflective, and feeling parts of ourselves, which  convey our soul’s guidance, we fall into the trap of following what society has deemed important.  Unknowingly, we get caught up in social and economic forces that do not have our best interest at heart, and fatigue, stress, and apathy often set in, causing us to undermining ourselves from becoming our Best Self.

These social and economic forces are part of Humanity’s history that has been based on false realities. Of separate motivations grounded in fear, greed, competition – on me-against-you.

Fighting for our survival became paramount in our existence. We were reactive, rather than responsive.

Although today most of us do not have to fight for our physical survival, we have translated this survival mode to one of business – of getting ahead.

And we have maintained the competitiveness and reactive states of that survival mode.

Rather than responding calmly and only addressing what is currently happening, many of us react to others and situations aggressively – often bringing in past issues or unaddressed emotions from our past.

Our business, competitiveness, focus on getting ahead, and our reactive states have left no room to connect to our subtler and reflective natures.

This article/blog post is based in concepts from my books

“Your Journey to Peace … “ and “Why We Are the Way We Are”

For About “Journey … see” here   About “Why We Are …”   here

(book cover images below)

With the reflective and feeling parts of ourselves disregarded, we lead unbalanced lives. We have become disconnected from the subtleties of our True Self.

This can cause us to be uncompassionate. Selfish. Unable to see how our attitudes and behaviors affect those around us.

An unbalanced life undermines our peace and happiness. And we are usually in denial that we are behaving in ways that hurt us or those around us.

The classic example are workaholics, who spend all their time focusing on success, money, and/or power and leave no time for relaxation, family life, or spiritual growth.

Workaholics are usually unaware or in denial of the consequence of their single-mindedness on themselves and the effects of their  pursuits on others.

Or, they may have their eyes wide open and simply not care about anything or anybody else at this point in their lives, which is of course their own choice. They just may have to face the consequences – at one time or another.

It is the unconscious driving forces from Humanity’s and our personal past histories that creates a distorted picture of reality causing us to allow for imbalances in our lives.

We are now starting to understand that we do not have to be greedy or in competition with others. That there is enough love, success, and material goods to go around – for us and everyone. That the Universe operates under the principle of abundance.

The Importance of Balancing Our Lives

However, to be open to the universal gifts offered we have to maintain a connection to universal flow. This connection is weakened when we are unbalanced. And when we live unbalanced lives the important things that ultimately fulfill us suffer.

This is usually related to health, family life, career, or our happiness and ability to connect to the subtleties in life. To feel joy. To feel peaceful.

We need to ask ourselves whether or not our life choices and decisions will bring us peace of mind, contentment, and ultimately make us happy.

Most of us have at least – at one time or another gotten caught up in the business of life and feeling the necessity of being in competition with others.

In his transformative healing sessions, Gerry Clow reminds us that as a society we have tipped the scales way off center as we have replaced the subtler aspects of life with the harsher ones:

“Most of our lives we are reactive, rather than reflective. We spend our time searching, not sourcing; looking, not listening; finding, but not feeling. We involve ourselves in life, forgetting often how to evolve ourselves in life, not realizing it’s essential – and healthy – to be on both pathways at the same time.” (1)

We inherited these attitudes. But we now know how destructive they are to our personal happiness and spiritual growth. It is time for us, individually and as a collective, to realize the importance of living conscious, balanced lives so that we can all become our Best Self. To do so we must:

  • Make the necessary changes to bring about living a balanced life.
  • Support and promote balanced life philosophies for others.
  • Let go of our competitive and combative ways.
  • Place importance on empowerment for everyone—instead of yielding to those who wield control and power over us.
  • Make time for the subtler aspects of living.
  • Ensure we are connecting to and engaging our True Self—and following its guidance.

(1) Gerry Clow, RPP, RCST www.handclow2012.com (2014). http://handclow2012.com/transformative-healing/(2018).

© Rosemary McCarthy, June 2019, updated October 2019

See here for About “Journey to Peace… “

here for About “Why We Are the Way We Are”

here  to Subscribe to my Free Monthly Publication 

here for this blog Page – here for my other blog page (both with articles on various subjects related to our personal, collective, and cosmic journeys

here  for my Facebook page. Following my FB page ensures you receive my new blog  articles as posted

You can share this article as long as you include the full copyright message below. If you share through Facebook (link is also below), the message automatically copies.

 

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Copyright © August 7, 2018 by Rosemary McCarthy. All rights Reserved. You may only copy, share and distribute this article provided that the content is copied in its entirety, is unaltered, and is distributed freely and for no monetary or personal gain, and that this copyright notice and the link for the article and the website www.yourjourneytopeace.com are included. However, I would appreciate if you would inform me of where or to whom it has been shared, using email rosemary@yourjourneytopeace.com. Blessings, and thank you kindly.