I just had another amazing revelation/breakthrough!

And I hope this helps someone else. It blew my mind. It's another long post though, so stay with me!

I think I just had one of those breakthroughs that makes years of studying manifestation, frequency, shadow work, and the subconscious suddenly rearrange themselves in your head. There are thousands of people on YouTube talking about reality shifting, manifestation, Law of Attraction, shadow work, frequency, etc. You can study the same concept for YEARS, hear essentially the same thing a hundred different ways, and then one person phrases it slightly differently and suddenly... Oh. My. God.

It clicks.

Yesterday, I was listening to Mitesh Khatri. He was talking about emotions as patterns—almost like habits. And the way he explained it completely changed how I understood something I thought I already understood. His point was basically that crises and emergencies don't necessarily create the emotional pattern we're experiencing. They magnify what is already there. The external event gives us something to attach the emotion to.

"Whoever wants to cry will find a reason to cry." Whoever is carrying anger will eventually find something to be angry about. Whoever is carrying abandonment will experience an event and say, See? I've been abandoned. It caused me to look at the last two years of my life completely differently.

My marriage collapsed. I lost my home. I got a job and then lost the job. I've experienced uncertainty, rejection, grief, instability, and this recurring feeling that I need someone or something to choose me so I can finally feel safe again. I've spent a lot of time thinking: Of course I'm grieving, I'm sad, angry, etc... Look at everything that happened to me!

But now I'm asking a different question: What if these things didn't create the emotional pattern? What if they amplified an emotional pattern that was already there? 🤯

Were these events the first time I had ever experienced these emotions? No! When I looked backward, I could see it... I grew up without much emotional safety. My mother wasn't emotionally or psychologically safe for me, and although I adored my father, he worked nights and wasn't available much during the week. Somewhere very early in life, I seem to have learned something like, "Safety can disappear" or "Safety doesn't exist" or "Support isn't guaranteed" or more importantly, "I have to handle things alone."

Maybe if I'm good enough, useful enough, accommodating enough, someone will choose me, and then I'll be safe. (Since my mother never did and nothing I did was 'good enough' I grew up with a lot fo grief and loss without realizing that's what was happening). Grief is so familiar to me, it's like a second skin... that I carried into adulthood. Into relationships. Into jobs.

Abandonment too... even to the point where I was constantly abandoning myself to appease others in jobs and relationships just to have a safe place to stay.

I'll change myself.

I'll prove myself.

I'll take whatever job will have me.

I'll make myself indispensable.

Just please don't leave.

And the wildest realization is that while I've been terrified of abandonment, I have repeatedly abandoned myself trying to prevent other people from abandoning me. Recognizing the pattern was a shock to the system.

🚩🚩🚩When the emotion of abandonment gets activated, I have a habitual response to it. But we can change our habits. We can choose our emotions.

This brought me straight back to the book Existential Kink and the idea that "having is evidence of wanting." That concept used to make intellectual sense to me, but this gave me another way of experiencing it.

"Wanting" doesn't always mean our conscious self says, "Yes, please, I'd love to lose my job or have my marriage fall apart." Maybe some unconscious part of us has an emotional state it knows incredibly well—anger, grief, rejection, abandonment, helplessness—and it continually participates in situations where that emotion can be expressed... Not because we're consciously asking to suffer, it's just familiar.

The emotional habit wants somewhere to go.

So, if I am carrying enormous unresolved anger and grief, there will always be something available for me to become angry about so the emotion can run amok. If I am carrying grief, the mind can always locate loss. If I am carrying rejection, there will always be evidence that somebody didn't choose me.

And then the external world appears to justify the emotion:

"See? I'm angry because THEY did this."

"I'm devastated because THIS happened."

"I'm afraid because THAT situation is uncertain."

What if the emotion was there first? What if the external event simply gave me something to attach it to?

That doesn't mean painful events aren't painful. It doesn't mean grief over genuine loss isn't real. For me, this realization is about responsibility for the emotional pattern rather than blame for the external event. Because if my emotional state is entirely caused by the external world, then I'm trapped...

I can only feel safe once somebody hires me.

I can only feel loved once somebody chooses me.

I can only stop grieving once life stops taking things away.

I can only feel secure once every circumstance around me becomes secure.

But if some part of the emotional experience is an old pattern that has been running for decades?

Then suddenly I have clarity on a previous blind spot and can catch myself in the moment.

I have alarms set on my phone twice a day for a gratitude practice and four times a day simply to stop and observe my emotions (I use a free app called MoodFlow to track this).

What am I actually feeling?

When have I felt this before?

What does this emotion usually make me do?

Who do I become when I feel it?

What would I choose if I didn't need to obey this emotion?

For me, the opposite of abandonment is refusing to abandon myself when somebody else does.

The opposite of uncertainty isn't controlling the future... It's learning that I can remain myself inside uncertainty.

Changing our frequency isn't about forcing ourselves to feel happy all the time. There will be sad events and times we feel anger, and that's fine. We shouldn't fight those emotions. They need to pass through our body somehow; otherwise, they get stuck.

We must recognize the emotional states we've unconsciously rehearsed for years and realize:

Oh. I know this one.

If emotions can become habitual, then I can begin practicing a new habit. I can dance around my apartment twice a day to music that uplifts me THEN read affirmations, so that I'm already in an elevated state when I read them instead of expecting them to elevate me alone...

Also, maybe that is what "letting go of the old self" actually means... Not pretending the past didn't happen or suppressing our emotions, but understanding, "This feeling is familiar, but familiarity doesn't make it destiny."

Let's start making those uncomfortable emotions unfamiliar!

4 comments

I just had another amazing revelation/breakthrough!