Is There a Better Roadmap to Navigating Difficulty?

In this edition, we will present on a topic we hope challenges thinking in a different way. If it pushes buttons – that’s OK. We recommend you consider these ideas with an open mind, despite possible discomfort. Too often we can miss opportunities for change when there we struggle to work through new or different ideas or models for healing.

Regardless of what is presented to you here, or in any book, podcast, or social media post, you are the owner and author of your thoughts and emotions. What is presented to you can be set aside. You can close the book. Scroll past the post and move on back to what you are doing or believing right now. We honor your agency. 

However, if by chance, you have a curious mind. If you like to consider ideas different from your own – not because they will be automatically adopted, but because they give you an opportunity to continue to discern where you stand and if you need to move or stay the same. 

*Remember, the same thoughts you think today, will be the same ones you have tomorrow if they are not challenged and updated.

Let’s get into it…

Information, Emotion, and Thoughts – Are Energy

 (*This is not a conversation about woo-woo topics, this is neuroscience)

All around us, everyday, whether we are out in the wild of the world, or home alone in our protective caves – there is energy from incoming technology, information from various sources (mail,neighbors, etc.), emotions, and thoughts swirling around us  – even if it is just the pet’s energy. It’s there in the home and in the world around us. 

Energy doesn’t stagnate – it moves. We move it or move within it. All of the incoming data is sorted into our various categories of experience, reality and truth. We weigh these ideas and beliefs based on what hurts us or what protects us. 

From this – we curate our stories about our experiences. We create our rules and boundaries for how we want to be treated. We examine hurt, categorizing the pain with the assignment of fault and what is needed to fix it for us. 

There’s so much more here, but this should get us started to make our point.

Stories, Boundaries, Rules Don’t Protect Us

The most important task humans have in life is not survival – it’s growth. This isn’t financial success, it is personal growth, resilience and well-being. The problem is, we live in a world where there is incredible harm and agony is experienced on varying levels. 

We also live in a pop-cultural mindset that we need to protect ourselves from all the toxic people or potential traumas out there. Fear is pushed via countless posts that seem supportive and caring. 

So we protect ourselves. We are already wounded enough – we protect ourselves. We boundary up, believing it keeps us from hurting. While we have ourselves emotionally and psychologically caved up in our mind, with our rules and boundaries – we are waiting for change to happen outside of us. 

Life doesn’t work this way. 

No matter how much effort you put into these protections, waiting for someone to do something is a sure way of causing yourself more disappointment and overwhelm.

If your rules have looked like, ‘You can’t do that to me,’ or ‘you can’t say that to me.’ You may have a rule or boundary that is not protecting you – because the expectation is in someone stopping instead of you moving to change what you are experiencing.

Hurt, Confusion, and Neuro-types

Every human on the planet has a neuro-different brain type. We all have the same brain structure – but the mind created to drive that brain is created by the individual owner of the brain. It is that person’s experience and the meaning made – the answers they parsed out of the experience to get to the ‘why did that happen’ or ‘why did that person do that to me?’

Every emotion we cultivate and every thought we seed is unique to the owner of that mind. 

*Hint for those of you who have experienced betrayal and the associated traumas of abuse – this is the answer to why abuse does not make sense to you. 

Believing we are going to be able to get to safety or healing through someone else’s change, is one of the biggest misconceptions we have. We have no control over anyone but ourselves. (Remember all of the pleading and explaining you’ve done? Those attempts at reasoning with the one who hurt or abused you – never worked). 

Believing we will feel better or be happier, once we have a better job, make more money, nicer house, kids are older, husband gets into recovery – it’s all conditional on external factors and this is where we struggle – in the external expectations.

This is where stuck lives.

Our hurt, confusion, lack of well-being is in the things we think. This doesn’t mean our beliefs or values are necessarily wrong. However, it could mean we have an other-focus on the solution. 

• My job will be better when that other person gets moved to a different department.
• My child will be safer if I can get my husband to stop lying about me.
• The church will feel safer if they would just try harder to hear how bad abuse is.

Do you see where this is going?  This other-focus is like cognitive quicksand. We get mired in it. It’s energy that fuels anxiety, fear, doubt, depression and all sorts of overwhelm and problems we struggle to solve and then mis-code in our predictive minds – making the future more of the same.

What is the Solution?

The solution for the things that concern you – is you. The solution for the way you feel treated by a co-worker, child, parent, husband – all of the answers are inside of you.

This is NOT blame – this is freedom. Because you are the only one that can make corrections and changes for you. 

Seeing life from the point of control is not an incorrect concept, what might be off track is what we focus on when we are assessing if the concern is in our lane or not. 

Thoughts and Emotions – The Energy of Movement or Stuck-ness

Those of you familiar with our Center for Peace model know that abuse is about the thinking of the perpetrator. If this is true, then it stands to reason, the patterns of healing for victims are in the thinking of the victim. 

*If this sounds like blame – this is the point to take a deep breath and slowly consider what is being offered. 

There is nothing you did to cause your husband to betray or abuse you. However, there is so much you can do to achieve a place of well-being (healing). This has nothing to do with his ‘recovery’ or him stopping the abuse or the porn. 

Your self-governing, self-ruling, self-determining thoughts and emotions are best metered and measured by the values you hold and what you can do to ensure their best execution. When we are thinking that life will be better when ___(something different)________ happens. That line of thinking – is putting off the self to focus on expectations in the other. It is ineffective.

All humans are responsible for the way they navigate and make sense of their life. That doesn’t mean people aren’t going to do things to you that disrespect or abuse you. That doesn’t mean that everything will be perfect for you. What it means is, when there is struggle, you can live in the discomfort of the event or you can take a step into the solution. 

For wives of ‘Targeted Partner Abuse©,’ this does not mean leaving – that isn’t what this discussion is about. It means how you think about what is happening may be what immobilizes you. 

There are so many people around us that are adverse or inimical to responsibility or change, largely because we tend to focus on things outside of ourselves needing to be different.

What’s at Intersection of Change?

The crossroad or intersection of any change point is how willing we are to say, “So What!” to ourselves and mean it. We can stay put — just where we are, with the same reasons, or we can ask ‘so-what’ to the change questions and see what shift you can make.

Epictetus made one of the most profound belief statements about human experience, but most of us avoid this truth like the plague.

*Does this mean that you should not be bothered or upset by your husband’s betrayal and porn use? Of course not. Every feeling you have is language for the meaning of your experience (not his). The point of the ‘reaction’ is your decision point for responding to what you are going through. 

            If you stay – you are willing to accept the cost of that – because YOU are making the decision. It might feel like you don’t have a lot of say, but if you stop and ask yourself, if the reason for the decision is your assessment of risk and possible future success if you pace the actions you take now, rather than make an emotional or low-energy fueled move – you have YOUR answer for your potential to grow instead of stagnate in painful indecision.

If you leave – you are willing to accept the cost of that decision. You know that the abuse is likely to continue. You know you may possibly have legal challenges. You may have custody or parent time issues, but YOU make the decision for your well-being. 

It is all in what we think about our choice in the matter. It is in being willing to face the circumstances, the ones in your control, and learning how not to wait for others to move, or until someone changes, or until things improve, or….

Designing Your own Power Pattern or Power Style

When power is a loaded word for victims of “Targeted Partner Abuse©,” we often struggle with the idea of using our power or of something being empowering. This is what we are asking of ourselves when we talk about harnessing our energy (thoughts and emotions that fuel actions). We are looking at the energy of our own potential. We are not looking at taking power away from another person or from the abuser.

What energy source will keep you charged so that you can navigate yourself in the world around you? If it is emotions, you might find that to be the source of some of the struggle and stuck-ness. If it is thinking, you might realize that life is flat for you and you are missing the awe and gratitude that help propel you in conditions that you are choosing to wait for a movement opportunity. 

The benefit of balanced thought and emotions is that you cognitively and emotionally granulate yourself in the environment and a potential (power) pattern of agency and autonomy. Your thoughts and emotions are your potential source.

Despite what is going on around you. Despite the pain of abuse. Despite the challenges of co-parenting – what you do to fuel your mind is where you will find your greatest strengths. 

Unfortunately, too many of us have learned to avoid the discomfort of this process — we’ll save this topic for another post.

Final Thoughts

If this edition hasn’t been long enough already, as a final thought, we are extending a 20% off offer for the Living Well Academy, where you will expose yourself to ideas like this, challenge long-held beliefs that may be preventing you from experiencing what may open up growth opportunities for you – without even having to change the current circumstances you are in. 

Small print – to receive the discount, pay and stay for the three-month course. The discount will be applied to your last subscription payment with the code, “POWER26.”  The next three-month course begins on April 15.

Email for more information.

Until then, 

Live Well!!