Status Updates From How to Do the Work: Recogni...

Great so far

Incredible book. Useful information and not repetitive like I find most self help books to be. Definitely read again

Stress affects every system of the body, including the gut - it’s no coincidence that gastrointestinal problems are one of the issues most commonly cited by people dealing with anxiety. When we’re stressed or frightened or anxious, oh body has trouble digesting food. Stress affects our food choices and the makeup of the micro biome in our gut, high is constantly communicating with our brain.

Once our immune system gets the signal that we’re living in a near-constant threat state, it repeatedly sends out chemicals that cause inflammation throughout the body.

Maladaptive coping strategies enable us to avoid repeating or reliving our past traumas, delaying immediate pain. They do not help us fully meet our physical, emotional, and spiritual wants and needs. When our needs are consistently unmet, our pain and disconnection are compounded. Self-preservation leads to self-betrayal.

Coping is a learned strategy to manage the profound unease in the body and mind that stress generates.

Icing behaviour takes place when the parent-figure becomes emotionally distant or withdraws love from a child, usually as a result of feeling emotionally overwhelmed. Not being able to control their own feelings about a particular experience, the parent-figure shuts down.

Emotional regulation is the process of experiencing an emotion, allowing the sensations to pass through the body (rather than trying to distract oneself - eg phone), identifying it (Eg. ‘I am feeling sad right now’) and breathing through it until it eventually passes. The practice of emotional regulation enables us to remain centred and calm and return to physiological baseline.

When a parent-figure denies a child’s reality, they are unconsciously teaching the child to reject their intuition, their ‘gut feeling’. The more we learn to distrust ourselves, the deeper this intuitive voice withdraws, becoming harder and harder to hear. This results in lost interior in and internal conflict. We learn our judgements cannot be trusted and look to others to shape our reality.

Absolutely love this book. There are so many things that I find relatable and make so much sense. However, sometimes I literally have to put it down to take a breath, because it gets very overwhelming. Till now there has been a major focus on just identifying the underlying issues, rather than working on them.

Emotional/spiritual traumas, which are an outgrowth of consistently denying or repressing the needs of the authentic Self that so many of us have experienced.

Because of these instinctually driven reactions, when we try to change our habits many of us remain trapped in cycles of disempowerment. Instead of understanding that this comes from an evolutionarily honed body response, we tend to shame ourselves.

So unconscious, 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.

“We do not remember days, we remember moments” - Cesare Pavese

Few of us have any real connection to who we really are, yet we want others to see through all of our layers of self-betrayal and into our core selves. We can’t expect others to do for us what we can’t do for ourselves.

40

Choice enables healing.

Healing is a daily event. You can’t go somewhere to be healed, you must go inward to be healed. This means a daily commitment to doing the work. Small and consistent choices are the path to deep transformation.

“This reliance on external appearances leads us to be overly focused on the image of ourselves that we present externally. We may even deny or intentionally hide painful or difficult issues we are experiencing in order to maintain the appearance of bend “perfect.” Social media, which enables us to post pretty photos can exacerbate this and even though many of us are suffering deeply behind the facade.”

When we become a diagnosis, it decreases incentive to change or try to explore root causes.

The Band-Aid Model, where we focus on treating individual symptoms as they arise and never look at the underlying causes.

Instead of listening to the body - after all, symptoms are it’s way of communicating with us - we seek to silence it. In the process of suppressing symptoms, we often suffer new harms.

When we exist on autopilot, our ego holds the reins, so actively engaging the conscious mind helps loosen our egos hold on our daily existence.

207

We are not our thoughts, we are also not our core beliefs.

This is helpful when feeling overwhelmed with pandemic stress

Difficult because of the truths it brings.

Out of renewals — wanted to like it more than I did.

tykkään

Amazing