Most people in westernized countries live an adrenalized lifestyle. It is so widespread and so widely accepted that we do not even know that we do it, why we do it, and how destructive, and useless it is. 

Addicted to adrenaline

Yes, adrenaline can be addictive. Imagine what a continuously heightened physical state does to your body in the long run…And to your state of mind, beliefs, and relationships.

We praise our adrenalized lifestyle

Many people secretly, and openly praise our adrenalized lifestyle. Our society secretly, and openly praises our adrenalized lifestyle. It’s a cliche but true: Anywhere you look you find a call for an adrenalized lifestyle. We do this to ourselves. We take on this addictive and obsessive behavior unknowingly and unconsciously. And we pass it on to each other without noticing.

We mistakenly find that an adrenalized lifestyle is better

(The whole thing looks like some kind of collective hallucination…) 

We find that working faster creates more value (at least many ‘managers’ do). 

We find that drinking more coffee will make us more effective.

 We find that talking fast is the way to do it.

We like to use our ‘need for speed’ as an excuse not to go deep into something. 

We like to overvalue people’s activities when they are doing them in a hurry – ‘Oh, he must be doing something very important if he is in such a hurry.’

We find that it is good to encourage each other to do more, overwork, and hurry up. 

We teach our kids to always be on the edge.

Let’s live a de-adrenalized lifestyle

How about valuing relaxation.

How about valuing deep thinking, and deep emotions,  how about not being half-cooked.

How about claiming back our peace of mind and common sense.

How about valuing the type of kindness and confidence that comes from a mature person. 

How about not letting others break our limits.

How about not letting others even try to control us or make us do things that we don’t want to.

Forgiving has much more to do with me than with the other person.

The English word forgive is pretty descriptive, because what I do is ‘give back’. When I can get to that point where I am not emotionally attached to that situation anymore, then I have the opportunity to become conscious of it and see the situation more realistically. I am saying it this way because most of the time (with me always) I also have something to do with the situation ‘going bad’.

Anyways, coming back to the point – Someone hurt me, someone did something bad to me – I ‘give’ that thing back to that person. It is very important to realize that I don’t forgive in the sense that I bury the hurt, or explain to myself something like ‘It is ok after all’. No. I do not forget, I remember, I don’t allow it to happen again. But I can separate myself from the situation with an open heart, give that wrongdoing back – as it is not mine -, and release myself. 

It is important to understand why such things happen; Understand, so that they may not happen again. We are all different and this is my personal understanding of why hurt happens most of the time: It is because we have some relationship-related problems that are yet unresolved. Put more simply, we have an unmet need and we bring that into situations to solve them. One example: I am a people pleaser and I act like that. This behavior triggers people. I am likely to meet people sooner or later who will want to take advantage. My unmet need may be that I am afraid to lose my sense of safety and I chose a behavior that I think will help me get some level of safety: I become a people pleaser. The other person will have some kind of unmet need also if they want to take advantage of the situation.    

I know I have forgiven when my energy shifts.

A change happens in me when I deeply and clearly see the problem I have about myself and realize that it is not true.

Let’s do it through an example: Belly shame

Although I write about it through a specific example and through imagined happenings, please focus on the abstract behavior and mindset behind it (Though I find that the example may be very relevant to most of us). 

1 – I start facing it.

I sit down, close my eyes, and start focusing on my belly. I am feeling the curves, its big size, and the discomfort it is causing me. I am looking at myself from the outside with my imagination and what I see is an ugly, chubby person. I start to feel disgusted with myself. And I start to become depressed. 

I want to escape from the emotional pain and want to give up. I have my usual escapes: I pull back my belly, start to sit up straight, and put a relaxed smile on my face – ‘I am fit and beautiful, I am fit and beautiful…’. It works for one or two minutes and then my disgust and sadness are back. Probably this is the time I should go to the fridge… or head to the gym and start starving. Not that those worked. Nor the idea that I ignore the fact that I am fat and tell myself that I am still ok. 

There is no escape, I sit back in my pain of disgust. Maybe I can take it for one or two more minutes…No, but I cannot, I pass out. I cannot take it any longer. Let me just cry. You won. I am a failure. I admit I am fat.

(what happened: You could come closer to it. You had the courage this time to face it.)

2 – I am separating from it

I am genuinely facing my emotional pain and thoughts about my belly shame. Somewhere I read that the method to start processing my pains is to ‘revisit’ them and look at them consciously. Observe it while being in it. Good that this comes to my mind just at the right moment.

So I try to look at this situation from the outside, like an observer. Sort of like there is me and there is the situation. It is happening to me but I am not it.

Holy shit!! It is working to some degree. I am starting to feel some relief. And I am able to stay in it. What I experience is that I am still feeling those curves and how big my belly is, but I am basically just looking at it. I am not saying that it is physically pleasing but somehow the emotional pain is fading. 

(what happened: You have started to rewire yourself. On all levels.)

3 – Window of additional opportunity

In addition to the above, you may experience some other things. You may consciously realize that your beliefs changed (or even that you can decide how you want them to change.). And maybe not only in connection to the given issue.

If we take the above belly shame example: While you may not like the size of your belly, you are not shame-bound to it. And you may experience that you are now less shame-bound in other areas of your life also.

Notes

• Seek professional help or someone you trust if you feel unsafe! It is important!!! Someone who can hold you emotionally as you are doing your work. Tell that person what you are doing and what help you wish to receive.
• Don’t give up if it doesn’t work ‘soon’ enough. Trust me, you will find no one who did it ‘soon’ enough.
• Experience shows that although we all dream of a sudden and everlasting release, what happens to most of us is that we are going in and out until we fully process it and integrate it. 
• Although the above outlines a specific and consciously known issue, I find that it can work the same way for problems that we are not fully conscious of. 

Am I right with my assumption that you think you are not doing anything now? Well, most probably that is not the case. In fact, you are probably very busy thinking. 

This is what may be happening. You are waiting for something to happen. Whatever it may be, if you are a bit like most of us, then you could probably not tell what you are waiting for. 

And chances are that all the thinking that you are doing in your inner world is nothing else than an attempt to figure out what exactly you should do so that the most awaited change finally happens. Be it fully unconscious or partially conscious – I mean your thoughts – the thing is that they probably arise from some conflict or contrast, and until this conflict is solved in you, you will not be ready to do a change – and so stop your waiting.

So the question boils down to: How do I resolve an internal conflict in me? Now that subject is well beyond the scope of one article but I would like to share this with you now: When change happens in my life it usually happens if one of these three things happen: (1) I get so fed up that I give up, or (2) I realize that getting something that may not be the exact thing that I want is still better than nothing, or (3) I just simply start doing something (anything) that actually triggers a change of mindset in me where I realize that this lack of movement (waiting) is in me and not in the world around me. 

I think there is this positive mindset that arises that whatever comes will be good. 

Certainly, there is very well the possibility that you are waiting for something to happen that is real and ‘outside you’. At the time of this article there are huge changes taking place, and you very well just feel that there is something to wait for.

This article is for the overthinker in you.

Do you know why we don’t remember the first couple of years of our life? It is because that part of the brain that stores memory is not active yet at that age.

Nevertheless, we do have body memory. For many of us – especially the ‘overthinkers and overdoers’, and for those of us programmed not to listen to our body – this fact can stay on a conceptual level. And that is a big miss. Almost like a different world.

Why do I mention trauma in relation to body memory? Because I want to make conscious that it is traumatic experiences that get registered in the body (be sudden and ‘big’, or long-lasting, ‘small’, and ‘subtle’ in nature.) And mostly, they are the real causes of long remaining physical issues. (As I mentioned above, this article is for the ‘overthinker’ in you – which I have been-, and my only goal is to trigger your consciousness (maybe the article finds you at the right time) to concentrate more on your body. But anyways, if you want to go deeper, I can recommend a great resource: The Body Keeps The Score )  

What worked with me

(In short: Learn what to let go.)

I have been a serious overthinker. It has become my habit that I wanted to find the cause-and-effect relationship behind all of my behavior. My general logic has been that if I could state clearly and honestly (i.e. it resonates) what was the cause behind a problem of mine then cool: I was almost there to solve it. While this habit of mine proves truly valuable in my life, it took some time for me to realize that there is a catch: It just simply wasn’t effective when working with my body (I mean things like yoga asanas, meditation, breathing, jogging, etc.).

It just simply did not work. Why? The way I started to put it was that those memories in my body are not conscious – in the sense that they are not connected to my thinking/memory-keeping mind. And more importantly maybe: I just don’t know. Luckily life is not as mechanical as our thoughts and our thinking mind. 

The change started to happen when I stopped wanting to conceptualize, verbally describe, or ‘understand’ my aches, cramps, and all those kinds of things in my body. I changed from trying to make them conscious through my old ways of doing it, to just simply looking at them. It was such a good feeling for me that I could let myself stop doing something that actually never resulted in anything useful ( perhaps other than the realization that it was not useful…)

The story would not be complete if I did not mention this: Ok, I stopped trying to find causes all the time as my main tool, but I also did this: I kept in mind that they are traumas and I started to look at them as ‘beings in their own right’. I am not sure if this is the best way to put it but what I am trying to say is that somehow this developed in me: They are with me, part of me, they exist – but they are not me. 

For an overthinker, as I have been, it was a huge change. It helped me to start to think less and let things happen more naturally. 

Are you among those who change jobs frequently and you feel that it comes from some inner struggle that is not clear to you what causes it? If you may not have heard yet: It is happening to a lot of people recently.

I am listing some inner mental constructs (belief systems if you will) that may help to understand this behavior of yours.

(This article is not about the job or work environment, but about your inner relationship to your job/career. And there is any suggestion that one behavior is better than the other or if any is unhealthy. Perhaps quite the opposite.)

See what resonates with you the most.

There is a transformation taking place in me

You may be going through an awakening like a lot of other people in current times and your constant quitting of jobs is a byproduct of it.

However distant it may seem and you may not have originally come for such an explanation but consider it. (This somewhat stands out from the rest below.)  

The career/path is actually not for me

It speaks for itself, although it may not be conscious in many (most) of us that this is the core of our problem why we don’t enjoy our job. It is unfortunately common in our society today that we land in a career path that is actually not for our true nature. This is my oversimplified take on it: We ‘must’ choose way too early in life before we have the level of independence to be able to decide for ourselves. And then we carry on doing something we don’t really want and over time it solidifies more and more. 

To me, the great question here is: How do I get out of this? The circumstances work against me. Most of us (including me) who came across this will probably agree that it is tough to make the change – both from a practical/physical, and an emotional point of view. (I don’t have the silver bullet. I know from my personal life that my inner urge to change the course of my life in this regard became big enough to make changes.)

I mirror my unmet needs onto my workplace

This is about the mostly unconscious unmet needs that I carry into my workplace in an attempt to have them met. My goal with many of the articles on Self Chatter is to provide possible cause-and-effect type explanations, and since this subject is rather deep, I have put it into a separate article. See if this resonates with you with respect to job quitting?: I Have Been Waiting All My Life.

My inherent understanding of the dysfunctional and toxic nature of work life in today’s world

I find that this is becoming the main theme recently (the Pandemic was one main trigger for it). And frankly, this is truly good news. I wrote a separate article on this – The Cause Behind the Great Resignation. 

A huge amount of us are getting conscious of how toxic, inhuman, and dysfunctional our life at work is. I sincerely hope that a critical mass is building up that will trigger a positive change in how we want to work, how we want to relate to the world of work in general, and how we want to create meaning through what we call ‘work’. It will not be the old structures and systems that will suddenly want a change, but we will do it.

I don’t know what I want

It may sound a bit awkward to state something like this but there may be great deepness to it. I wrote a separate article on it here: Why don’t I know what I want?

I have a disorganized attachment style

I refer to John Bowlby’s Attachment Theory and from those four Attachment Styles (Ambivalent, Avoidant, Disorganized, Secure) I find that the Disorganized Attachment Style is common among those (including me) who keep changing jobs. 

With a Disorganized Attachment Style (you can read about it more in the link above) we do not have a clear attachment pattern, we experience a confusing mix of behavior around us, and our relationship with our workplace serves both as a source of comfort and also fear.

(If you ever wondered why workplaces can be so disorganized and chaotic (even if companies pretend not to be such), well, with so many of us having some sort of dysfunctional attachment styles, what can we expect?)

Again, my oversimplified take on it: I gravitate towards workplaces where the main style of attachment is disorganized in nature (because it is ‘fa-mil-iar’ to me…). And when I get overwhelmed and fed up, I quit. If this is your main theme then the good news is that your decision to leave such a workplace means that your Self is actually healthy: You don’t want to be in a relationship that is disorganized in nature. 

I have low self-confidence

Again, it speaks for itself that it is impossible to feel good at my workplace if I do not have or cannot build a certain level of self-confidence in what I do. This is here as a possible ‘Aha’ paragraph because so many of us are blind towards ourselves regarding our self-confidence.

I stand in my own energy. I do not let others invade my space or drain my own personal energy.

Fear is one of the hardest emotions to become conscious about. It goes deep and touches almost everything in most of us, yet it is very hard to consciously grasp what exactly we are afraid of. This article is for those who want to know the root cause of their fear. And I picked the one “root cause” that I see coming up everywhere.

In my life it took years to state why I feel fear many times. And this is what I distilled it down to: “I am afraid of losing my safety.”

How Does it Form?

Did you ever think about this: What comes first in your opinion, thought or emotion? In other words: Do your thoughts and beliefs form your emotions or your emotions form your thoughts (beliefs)? I asked this question a lot of times and way more people said that emotion comes first and they form the thoughts.

People dealing with this say that what may be closer to reality is this: First we have a sensory perception of the situation. Then our mind processes this perception, tries to understand it, make sense of it. The result of this “process” is what I call a thought. Then this thought (a way of looking at the situation) may trigger an emotion. 

So my point is: Fear is a reaction to how we perceive a situation. In other words our logic on how we understand the given situation.  

There are so many things that we can be afraid of. Why the fear of losing our safety is one of the main themes?

Why Does it Form?

Just this one article would be way too long to go into deep details and my intent is to come with some food for thought. Also, I am not implying at all that any of the below are in direct cause-and-effect relationship to the fear of losing safety.

• Passed on as a mindset from the family of origin or the “world around us”.
  • We are social beings, we learn from each other, we require unity. And it can happen all too easy that we unconsciously take mindsets and behaviors from people around us. Note: The fear carried on with the mindset may not have much or any connection to reality.
• Abandonment in early childhood.
  • Developmental psychologist recognize that abandonment – especially if prolonged – will lead to severe problems. I find that one of the layers deep down will probably be the fear of losing our safety.
• Emotional or physical abuse.
• A father (or father figure) unable to help the child to become more independent. 

Hiding Places

Again, I am not implying at all that any of the below are in direct cause-and-effect relationship. I am only trying to come with some food for thought again so that you can connect more dots in your life. (And I guess the below list could grow into the hundreds until we said, ok, now we covered some…)

• I am a people pleaser.
  • I was taught (verbally or non-verbally) that I need to always look to please people well beyond what is in balance so that they “don’t leave me and tolerate my presence”.  I need to be the inferior one.
• I am pulling back my belly so it doesn’t look that big. Belly shame in other words.
  • I get to the conclusion from the world around me that I need to look good to fit in. Otherwise I run the risk of getting excluded.
• I cannot say no.
  • Maybe I was not allowed to get to that place where I could understand that there is nothing wrong with saying no.
• I have a hard time to know what I want.
  • The idea of letting myself think freely and experiment mentally makes me think that I would lose control. Not to mention the shame that may also kick in.
• I want to become very rich.
  • It isn’t hard to inherit this twisted belief in our society that money will buy you safety…
• I do not dare to leave a bad job, a toxic relationship.
  • One of the main things why we want to belong somewhere is to feel safe. Sometimes at any cost. I am probably not saying a lot of new thoughts here.
• My back is hunched.
  • My belief that I have to be inferior to other people so that I “receive some safety” shows up in my body posture. 

Fear of Losing my Safety as My Main Belief System in My Life 

It can go so deep, it can start to form so early in life, and it can bind us so much that it can become the main theme. It can be so much in front of us that we can have a problem to consciously realize that it is one of our main themes. 

If you went to a relationship counselor with this: “My relationship got into crisis. These are the things that are happening lately: …What do you think? Shall I leave my relationship?” And if that relationship counselor said something like this: “First of all, I would like to congratulate you! You have entered the next step in your relationship.” Then you would know that you are speaking with a good counselor.

The cause of a relationship crisis

Development Trauma

The development of the Self is in stages. And those stages can get stuck, “blocked”. These “blocks” form due to what is called Development Trauma. Most of us suffer from some form of Development Trauma in early childhood (a staggering ~98% of humanity) that we unknowingly carry into adulthood. 

Your Self wants to “overcome” your Development Trauma(s) and one of the ways we, humans try to do it is to revisit it – which is all cool because by revisiting it, we create an opportunity to process it, rewire it, and eventually move on. 

Developmental Trauma is relationship trauma and what we do in our relationships is that we “replay” those trauma(s). (If you ever wondered why your relationship problems keep coming back and feel ‘familiar’ …- you can connect the dots.)

)I could go much deeper into Developmental Trauma but it is far beyond the scope of this article and my goal here is to point out its relationship to our present relationship problems. If you want to go one step further into understanding more about Developmental Trauma in your life, you can visit the My Past page here on Self Chatter.)

Self-development

I think that there is another thing that can cause a relationship to end and it is important to mention here: I have seen relationships end because one person had developed further and the other hadn’t. So the one who did doesn’t get what she/he is looking for anymore. This is natural that in such a case the relationship can end.

Don’t get me wrong, I am not saying that it necessarily will happen. Nevertheless, it is kind of strange when one develops further and still doesn’t leave or does something with the relationship.   

Shall I leave?

A pretty easy logic down here.

• If your partner is willing to do the work together with you to overcome your personal relationship traumas: definitely try to stay! This is a golden opportunity for self-development and to have the relationship of your life. 
• If your partner is not willing to do the above work (but you are): Probably leave.
• If your partner is abusing you physically, emotionally, or in another way: Leave!
  • If you know that you are abused and the other doesn’t: Stop hoping that your partner will change.
  • If you are unable to leave because you are so much bonded to this other person then work on your Self so that you can end this trauma bond.
  • If you are not sure what is happening or if you are not sure whether you are in danger: Seek professional outside help immediately! 
• If you have not yet wrapped your head around it: Try to stay and work on your Self.

Self Chatter is about going into a higher level of consciousness and for the majority of us, relationship problems are the biggest blocks in front of it. 

The cause behind the great resignation (which is pretty much the same thing as what is referred to as quiet quitting) is a mental and emotional shift. And it is a positive and good thing. It surprised many people, and the ‘professionals’ and ‘statisticians’ are coming up with all kinds of mechanical explanations, instead of looking at the mindset change that caused it.

The trigger

The combination of the Pandemic and lockdowns coming with it has been a near-perfect trigger.

The Pandemic

The Pandemic has been a shock to most of us – I really do mean a mental and emotional shock. Shock usually makes us anxious, confused, etc., but what is important to see is that it creates a ‘short circuit’. Also, this shock has happened on a collective level and on a mass scale.

The lockdown

I find that – among many other things – the lockdowns caused a reset to our personal lives. What happened was that we got removed from our everyday life. And we did not get into a familiar situation that we are used to – i.e. “work all day as before”, “socialize the same way as before”, “get busy filling your day with stuff and activities as before”. 

But instead, we got forced into doing nothing. We were given a “blank sheet of paper”. (Ask a meditation expert what miracles you can expect when you “do nothing”.)

The outcome

The combination of personal and collective shock, coupled with a halt to our “everyday life” triggered a lot of people to rethink their lives. A mindset change happened. More precisely the mindset has been there for quite some time but could not come to the surface. What was this mindset change? In one sentence: “Enough of the toxic, inhuman, dysfunctional, hustle-culture workplace that disconnects me from my own Self!”

It doesn’t matter if it was consciously or unconsciously done, it doesn’t matter if it was “forced” or done unwillingly, and it is also ok that there is fear and anxiety around it. It happened. 

And I find that the outcome has been truly positive and life-giving. I must leave the rest of the thoughts and personal opinions around it to the reader, to you.

Conspiracy theory

There are a lot of talks that the Pandemic and the lockdowns are a part of an organized effort to control and suppress the human race. If this is the case then the Great Resignation has been a blow to this effort. (Well, not the Great Resignation, because that is the effect, but the cause of it.)