You Become What You Avoid

I often numb my feelings by living vicariously through the successes of others, watching YouTube videos, checking email – all because I am avoiding the feeling of failure. It is important for me to BE with this feeling.

When I watch these videos and binge on the internet, it only makes me feel that much worse because I become what I avoid. It is morning now and I hear the sound of my son waking up and panic because I fear I won’t have time to be productive and fail because of it.

To BE with my feelings is to bring peace to my feelings. Avoiding my feelings through resistance, worry, fear and control makes my life into a living nightmare because I become what I avoid.

Where does this feeling of failure ultimately come from? It must come from the trauma of the failure to serve those who were supposed to serve me: my parents. I look at how much I seek to control my wife. It is impossible to control another person. I think I can strike the fine balance of guidance of my wife’s addictive behaviors without the control, worry and fear.

I surrender to the higher power – in how I relate to my wife, myself and above all my inner child. I have my inner child surrender to the higher power in relation to his parents – where all this conditioning of complete responsibility for others is coming from. Because it’s hard to simply let go of my control over my wife when I use it to fix and re-correct what I couldn’t do with my parents as a child.

I envision my inner child in the face of his parents projecting their pain onto him and still surrendering them and surrendering it all to the higher power. Simply BE-ing with this trauma frees me of this trauma.