I’ve been trying to write a blog post on my process for about a month now.  It scares me, talking about my process.  I feel uncomfortable because it’s not a perfect process and because a lot of my process was built around childhood wounds.

Part of my process is that I’m a total avoider.

I learned about attachment styles from a seminar I attended a couple of years ago.  There was a little test you took and you could be secure, anxious, avoidant, or disorganized.  I knew there was no way I was secure so of all the styles, I really wanted to just be anxious.  It sounded the easiest to fix.

As I took the test, more an more of my answers started to fit in the disorganized category.  It means you’re a combo of both anxious and avoidant…oh shit.  I really am not a fan of disorganization and I started to feel a lot of shame as I realized Disorganized was where I was headed.  I guess a part of me thought that being disorganized meant you were the most fucked up.

As we went through the seminar, I started to see that being disorganized wasn’t that bad, it just meant you had to be a little more self-aware.  Luckily, self-awareness is one of my super powers.

So become aware of my avoidance I did.  I have started to see how I have a tendency of letting things pile up from avoidance.

As these things start to pile up, I feel a tremendous amount of guilt and shame.  My head starts to become this nonstop asshole who piles guilt and shame on guilt and shame.

These emotions are like 1,000-pound bricks.  They are so heavy and yucky feeling.  And then I am just looking for anything that will help me escape which used to come in the form of alcohol.  Only piling on more guilt and shame.

This is hard for me to write because it’s vulnerable.  Avoidance is hard.  It’s hard for me to feel like an avoider, it’s hard for me to be an avoider.  Avoidance can take over your whole life if you let it.  It can consume you.

I’ve avoided a lot of things over my 37 years.  Talks, emotions, feelings.  And lately, I’ve made a change.  

In becoming aware of my avoidance, I’ve noticed that when I avoid feelings and emotions on the inside, I avoid things on the outside.  My house starts to get messier.  To-do’s get pushed down in favor of anything else.

The beauty of becoming aware of what is going on is that I now get to make a choice.  Do I want to continue to pile guilt and shame on when I avoid, or do I want to do it another way? I could just notice that something is getting avoided.  I could take the judgment out of it.

And I think that’s the kicker, right?  If I’m judging myself for avoiding, I’m hiding within the avoidance.  If I can just take the emotion out of the avoidance, then it can just exist.  Then it can be surrendered.

And maybe in the surrender, the answers can come.  In the awareness, healing can happen.  When I can take the emotion out of it, acceptance can come.

It’s fascinating what I can come up with when I just let avoidance exist without needing to analyze it.

Analysis is a part of my process too but I’ll save that for another post.

Thanks for listening, friend.