The Things We Do

My counseling and mediation practice gives me a broad view of human behavior.

What we do to our mentality so we can avoid our reality is amazing.

We numb are emotions or distract our attention.

We do it through: alcohol, busy-ness, cleaning, criticism, drugs, food, gambling, God, perfectionism, prescriptions, sex, technology (Candy Crush, Facebook, PlayStation, Xbox), and work.

We rationalize what we do so we can justify continuing it.

Yes, reality can suck. But when our mentality sucks more than the reality we’re trying to avoid, we then have to deal with the reality and the resulting consequences from avoiding it.

Hope is when you choose to face reality. You may not discover all you hope for, but it sucks less.

Deal with reality.

Doubt

In my work as a Mediator and Counselor, people tell me stories. The stories often contain lots of detail and explanation.

People doubt they will be understood, accepted, or believed. Doubt is about trust.

When we don’t trust others to accept us, we doubt their love or care for us. We say things like this:

• I’m afraid you won’t understand.
• You’re gonna think I’m crazy. 
• I don’t know if you’ll believe me.

When we don’t trust our own thoughts or feeling, when we lack self-acceptance, we doubt ourselves. We say things like this:

• Am I crazy to think like this?
• I probably shouldn’t feel this way.
• This is terrible to even have these feelings. 

As a listener, it increases the need for us to have patience and be worthy of trust. We need to offer acceptance to others.

In order to give it to others, we need to be patient with and learn to trust ourselves.  We need to accept ourselves. Start here.

Give acceptance to your self, and it becomes much more natural offering it to others.