Steer Me In The Right Direction, Please

I've read most of the TMS books and am reading Steve's book a second time around right now .... I know somewhere in one of these books, it talks about "acceptance" ... probably in most of the books. What I'm looking for is acceptance in the way that you have a job and there is no other choice because of certain circumstances - you're kind of stuck and so you have to learn to accept it. Hope someone can help here ... thanks! This could go for anything beyond a job, but for me, it's the job.

 

Hi LindaRK. I understand how you have to be in a situation that causes stress or anxiety but you can't just leave -- you have to basically keep going back right? I believe this is what your trying to accept so you can sooth your nervous system and get this nagging problem behind you.

Its like this, a lot of us are stuck in these situations that we know isn't good for our healing and we wonder what to do?

I'd say pay attention to the emotion you feel when your in this scenario. It might be dread or anger or stress. Either way whatever emotion you are feeling it right. The name is not what's important. It's the feeling you get that's good to know ok. When you get this feeling don't try to get away from it but think about the emotion. Notice it's there and do not judge or criticize the emotion ok. Then after you have faced the emotion that your having because of a conditioned reaction then it should get easier for you to deal with the emotion as the bully knows when you look it square in the eye it always backs down.

Another key is what we talked about before in another thread. Why are you reacting this way. Well I know a lot of times when I'd get a negative reaction it was because someone was disrespecting me or just picking at me in a negative way.

I still had to acknowledge that it was me getting up-set by my reaction so I remembered a story about a mother and her son. Her son would come over very often doing everything he knew to up-set his mother and get on her nerves as we say. He'd be doing willies on his motor cycle 1 day and then starting arguments with neighbors the next day. Now she loved her son but he had his own home now and he was out of college waiting on his new job so he figured why not go and aggravate mom. Don't know why he wanted to aggravate his mom but that's the way some kids are.

The Mom decided to ask her therapist what he'd suggest for this since her son seemed to have it out to get to her no matter what. The therapist asked her if someone she didn't know was riding a bike dangerous like that then would it affect her like it does with her son and she said absolutely not. The therapist told her that as long as her son thought he was going to get her stressed then he would continue to aggravate her but if she would just not react to the way he does for 1 month then she would see a huge difference in his actions.

1 month later the mother reported to the therapist that a miracle had happened. Her son came in for 10 days straight doing everything you could imagine to get her up-set but she did as the therapist told her and she did not react to his devious action and on the 11th day he didn't show up at his mothers home. She decided to call him to see what was wrong and he told her he loved her but she just wasn't that fun anymore so he decided to go and irritate his friends mom for a while.

She couldn't believe that this was just fun to him but it was very stressful to her and now 2 years later any time her son comes around he's well mannered and behaved. And she's doing a lot better too since she learned this method with her son. She uses this method to help her in other situations too and it always turns out to be one of her best decisions.

Hope this helps

Bless You

 

Hi LindaRK,
I've struggled at times with jobs and know how challenging this can be. I always find Eckhart Tolle helpful, and here is a short video of him speaking on the topic of acceptance and surrender. Hope it helps.

 

Oh Herbie! I can so relate to this story ...... one of my boys was exactly like that! Long story short, he was diagnosed with ODD (Oppositional Defiance Disorder) and fortunately for us, many years of re-structuring our lifestyle and parenting methods brought up great rewards and he turned out to be a wonderful kid!

Ellen - this video is exactly what I needed - thanks so much for providing the link.

Forest - I'm going to get that book - something else I need to read!

Fortunately or unfortunately, my boss is my husband - we are self-employed. I compare my job to something like being the CIA or Secret Service - you can't tell anybody what you're doing and somebody else gets all the credit (my hubby). Don't worry - we're not doing anything illegal. LOL! It's just that this is a job I sort of "fell" into while being a stay at home mom to our boys and it's morphed into this. The pay is good and the hours are very flexible - not something I'd find with your typical 8-5 40 hour per week job. I live in a rural area, so jobs are pretty lean here - not like I can just go out and find other work. So, I'm trying to figure out how to accept where I am, despite the fact that I really don't like it and wish I could be doing something like operating a horse boarding stable ..... *sigh*

 

Yes acceptance is a hard word to learn at times. We can just about accept anything when we pay attention to our reactions long enough. Just let that simmer a while. I have a family member and each time I'd see him I would feel this anger/anxiety based emotion and then I thought ok he's a family member. The longer I hold this anger at him the longer it will bother me so I just gave up holding the anger toward him. In about a month I was patting myself on the back. It was like magic, he wasn't even bothersome to me anymore.

You see above the many years of re-structuring you did to get the good rewards for your son. That's great, now you can pay attention every time you get blamed or talked to in a way you don't like or just not treated right and feel the emotion then imagine how are you feeling the emotion ok? That alone will make you aware of when your first generating this anger emotion. When you get used to knowing how your generating the emotion you will learn how to step away from it too ok.

Thanks

When you hear me center in on the word anger that's because almost all of our negative emotions originate their ok. Just an illustration. Only you know the content and that's fine. Life is action and reaction. We just have to know when we're doing it so we can learn how not to do it.

Awareness brings Acceptance when you know why you react to your triggers and stressors.

Bless You

 

Hi Linda, thanks for your post. There are already so many great suggestions.

I've spent so much of my life thinking I wasn't quite in the right place, or that I "should" be doing things differently. What I find is when I do that, I'm not present for my life.

Of course some changes are good. My wife and moved from Houston Tx to Cloudcroft NM several years ago which has turned out to be great for me. It's not without it's own set of challenges though!
Where I can get into trouble is getting caught up in the "if only's". It works so much better when I trust that my higher power, or the universe, is not making a mistake. I might as well accept the curriculum

I've had a some issues applying that to TMS, but I'm really getting that now. It is a teaching me so many things about where I've been stuck emotionally, and is also one of the biggest challenges I've faced.

I really like the book Radical Acceptance by Tara Brach. You might check it out.

All the best