How to Do the Work: Recognize Your Patterns, Heal from Your Past, and Create Your Self

by Nicole LePera

Even though consciousness makes us human, most of us are so immersed in our inner world, so unconscious, even asleep, that we aren’t aware that there’s a script continually running through our minds. We believe that script is the true “us,” the Self. But that chatter is just our thoughts. We practice thoughts all day long. You might have stopped at this paragraph and thought: You don’t “practice” thoughts. But we do. We practice thoughts from the moment our eyes open in the morning until we close them at night. You’ve practiced thoughts so consistently and for so long that the act of practicing is beyond your awareness. You practice thoughts in your dream states and in your subconscious. You may label these thoughts as “you,” but they are not you. You are the thinker of your thoughts, not the thoughts themselves. Thoughts are electrochemical responses that happen thanks to the firing of neurons in the brain. Thoughts serve a purpose; they allow us to problem solve, create, and form connections. There is, however, such a thing as relying too much on our thoughts. When we’re in the “monkey mind,” as the Buddha first described it, we never stop thinking; our thoughts jumble together; there is no space to breathe and examine them.

Every time we make a choice that is outside of our default programming, our subconscious mind will attempt to pull us back to the familiar by creating mental resistance. Mental resistance can manifest as both mental and physical discomfort. It can take the form of cyclical thoughts, such as I can just do this later or I don’t need to do this at all, or physical symptoms, such as agitation, anxiety, or simply not feeling like “yourself.” This is your subconscious communicating to you that it is uncomfortable with the new territory of these proposed changes.

Trauma occurred when we consistently betrayed ourselves for love, were consistently treated in a way that made us feel unworthy or unacceptable resulting in a severed connection to our authentic Self. Trauma creates the fundamental belief that we must betray who we are in order to survive.