So regardless of how entrenched or entwined your situation seems to be, to heal you need to bring choice into your life.  If you believe that you “have to” do something then you are in your mind.

 

It may be helpful to take this all the way to the bottom (the beginning) and accept that you chose your life, the ramifications of which include living in a physical body, being human itself, having a gender, experiencing gravity and affecting and being affecting by others.

 

OK, so how can I start to find my way out of my mind, out of this terrible mental control trap?  Well, the higher purpose of the mind is actually to do just that, to help you find your way out by catching itself in the act, in moments where you realise that your model of the world needs updating. 

 

Paying attention to the body is the way to start to recognise where you’re operating from.  Am I in the “little me”, or something which isn’t really me, or am I in my adult-present-time-self? In other words, am I operating from a place of contraction/dissociation from the body or from a place of occupancy of the body?

 

For example, if you recognise, that because your jaw or stomach got tight, that the words you just spoke in a conversation with your partner came from little me, that piece of information can immediately be put to use by stopping and changing into your adult self before saying anything else.  Or, if you noticed for example, that you went quiet in a situation where it would have been better to have been vocal, did you also catch any sensations in the body or changes in your sensory perception?  These are important clues as to how the self-abandonment is taking place and are markers for finding your way back in.

 

An added difficulty here is that (when no one was looking) the mind assigned itself the role of chief filterer of information and it tries to ignore or deny anything which challenges it’s existing model.  New information is taken as a threat by the mind and defensiveness and fear of feeling stupid replace curiosity and openness to not knowing. (Try getting in touch with your stupid, the part of you that doesn’t know, he/she might turn out to be a lot smarter than you think.) 

 

So part of this is about having the courage to let your body lead. It’s about openness, humility, willingness, curiosity and determination to overcome your own defences.  Believe me that your self-trust will start to grow by catching these displaced responses to the world around you. The only way to do it is in the moment, from direct sensory input from the body, no point in thinking about it or analysing it or coming up with a plan.

 

Occasional reflection (not advice) from others will also likely help because aspects of your model are so habitualised that you’ve essentially never known anything else and so reflection from another is required for the realisation to come.  

 

Know that I'm rooting for you.  

 

Happy hunting!