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| Obsessed. Are you driving yourself and others crazy with your obsession? |
| Heal your Heart - Love your Body - Live your Joy! Simply Stunning! A beautiful and profound experience 3 guided meditations on one CD. Access higher wisdom, intuition and insights. Change habits, release fears and activate healing energies. Buy Now Full description. Read what others say |
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People have addictions which seem incomprehensible to people who don’t have
those addictions. Take gambling as an example; non gamblers just
don’t understand how or why someone would spend every available
opportunity sitting in a casino and disposing of all of their money. From an
outside view it looks like unbelievable stupidity. It seems to be a boring,
repetitious and frustrating hobby at best. On a logical level, we wonder why
those people haven’t worked out that ‘the house always wins’. The gambler
loves to dance around and brag about the times he did win, even though we all
see that the final outcome is that he has no home, no money in the bank and a
huge credit debt. Yet, on a small winning streak he can be completely oblivious
to this fact. The gamblers belief in winning the big one is greater than the reality
of what has happened, what is happening and what will predictably happen. In
short, the dream is more real than the reality.
The same can be said for drugs, alcohol, food, cigarettes, sex and all
addictions. The reality of an addicts life might be sheer devastation but the belief
that one more * will be what the dream expects itself to be.
It seems to me, that a dream can hook into a compartment within the mind and
become completely embedded. It is like a sacred place and it contains all we
want. It could be wealth, happiness, love, security or whatever. We all have
desires and we all have dreams and we all have a place in out minds in which
we live out those possibilities. The gambler might have originally had a dream of
a big win; he probably had a couple of good wins initially and that reinforced
the dream. Somehow though, the gambler became addicted to the dream. The
big win becomes a primary point of reference and in time all experiences loop
back to that point of reference. That is, information and experience gets filtered
through the point of reference. Some refer to this as classic denial. I call it,
‘The Happy Place’.
It seems impossible to talk logic or facts to an addict. They filter out what you
say; they might pretend to listen, or they argue with you or they blank you out
completely. Their eyes glaze over and you can almost hear them singing lah,
lah, lah as you speak. They have gone to their happy place.
This is probably familiar to anyone who has had a relationship with someone
with one of these major addictions. What is less obvious is that most of us are
operating under a very similar pattern – and that is: Obsession.
Obsessions can be hidden or seem as harmless or perhaps a little quirky.
Someone else’s obsession may be boring to us, but we don’t pay much
attention as we are rarely affected by them to any real degree. Many of us don’t
even know that we are obsessed. Yes, we all have our little happy places and
we all filter facts to suit our delusions. But, for many of us, we are destroying
our lives or at least our potential lives.
I remember when a friend of mine became obsessed with her boss. When she
first started talking about him, I thought she sounded like a schoolgirl with a
secret crush. Within a short period of time, I wondered if she was actually
stalking the poor guy. (He was happily married and did not flirt or encourage
my friend in any way.) For almost two years she talked about him as if they
were lovers. Almost every conversation we had somehow looped back to him.
She would say things like, ‘Alan went to Bali last year, so this year, I am going
to Bali and I will stay at the same hotel that he stayed in. Alan loves blue, so I
am going to wear something blue every day. I’m learning to play tennis now, so
Alan and I will have more in common. Alan loves Italian food, so I…’
Then there were the magical signs that Alan was ‘The One,’ ‘We both have an
older brother and a younger sister. He has a cousin called Linda and so do I.
Alan’s name has four letters in it and so does mine’. Almost everything she said
started with, ‘Did I mention Alan…Alan would love this…That reminds me of
Alan…Alan has one of those…’ Finally, it came to “I can’t make any plans –
Alan might call.” and “When Alan and I are married…”
This example might sound a little extreme, but really, I know heaps of women
who think and live this way. I couldn’t count the number of women I know,
who meet a guy, and by the second date start talking obsessively and
possessively about him. Not in a “I wonder...' or 'I hope someday...’ kind of a
way either, but in a ‘This is real and true…’ kind of way.
Mark is obsessed by horses. He spends hours every weekend searching antique
shops and the Internet to buy anything – that is, everything he can find that has
something to do with horses. He has ornaments, statues, posters and jewelry
stuffed in to three rooms of his home. He doesn’t even know what he owns
and much of it has not even been unpacked. In effect, half of his home is
storage – crammed to the ceilings with boxes of stuff, filled with horse
paraphernalia. He is not a jockey or an owner, nor is he a farmer. He has no real
relationship with horses at all. But he bores everyone senseless with his endless
conversations about horses.
Religion is another common obsession. I have had to sever friendships over this
one. I have had people break down and weep for my soul and plead with me to
listen. One woman really distressed me when she turned almost every
conversation into signs of ‘the end of the world’. No matter what I said, she
seemed to answer with something along the lines of Satan talking through me.
Almost everything I said or did resulted in a biblical quote of the Armageddon
variety.
Rob was obsessed with money; he was a wealthy entrepreneur but didn’t seem
to enjoy life very much. I remember traveling on a train with him and
commenting on the ocean views. He ignored me completely, and I noticed that
he was looking out the opposite window. “That land will be worth a fortune one
day. If I could subdivide that…” I also gave him a gift once and he pulled it
apart. I thought that he didn’t like it, but it turned out he liked it so much that he
had dismantled it to see how it worked. He wanted to copy and export them.
When we went to restaurants he would compare prices with other restaurants.
Going anywhere with him was like spending a day with, The Count from
Sesame Street!
Julie was obsessed with her looks. Every time we met, she would ask what I
thought of her hair, clothes, shoes or skin. She spent most of her spare time
and money on beauty products, clothes and hair care. When we went out, she
would ask if she was slimmer or younger looking than other women in the
room. She constantly reapplied make up and fiddled with her hair and clothes.
Boring!!!!
Then there are the health conscious and illness obsessions. Sport and work are
often common obsessions. I wonder if all of us might have at least one thing
which we refer to or compare with, in an unconscious, obsessive way.
It’s like there is one main point of reference within the mind which we filter
almost all of our thoughts through. What concerns me about obsessions is that
we close off our awareness to infinite possibilities. How do we get to better
ways or different ways, if we keep getting stuck at only one way? How much
of ourselves are we really seeing, if we can only define ourselves as one thing?
I also wonder, what this mechanism is that hooks into this one thing, and why
we don’t seem to recognize it or question it. When so many of these obsessions
are destructive or at least severely limiting, then why won’t we let go of them.
What’s really interesting is that we see it so clearly in others, but probably have
never taken the time to question ourselves. Have a casual look in the next few
days and you might actually find one or more of your own. If it serves you well
then stay with it, but if not, then it might be worth trying to change it or replace
it. Apart from driving your friend’s nuts or boring them to death, you might
actually find something else a lot more worthwhile to obsess about.
Copyright Sonya Green 08
those addictions. Take gambling as an example; non gamblers just
don’t understand how or why someone would spend every available
opportunity sitting in a casino and disposing of all of their money. From an
outside view it looks like unbelievable stupidity. It seems to be a boring,
repetitious and frustrating hobby at best. On a logical level, we wonder why
those people haven’t worked out that ‘the house always wins’. The gambler
loves to dance around and brag about the times he did win, even though we all
see that the final outcome is that he has no home, no money in the bank and a
huge credit debt. Yet, on a small winning streak he can be completely oblivious
to this fact. The gamblers belief in winning the big one is greater than the reality
of what has happened, what is happening and what will predictably happen. In
short, the dream is more real than the reality.
The same can be said for drugs, alcohol, food, cigarettes, sex and all
addictions. The reality of an addicts life might be sheer devastation but the belief
that one more * will be what the dream expects itself to be.
It seems to me, that a dream can hook into a compartment within the mind and
become completely embedded. It is like a sacred place and it contains all we
want. It could be wealth, happiness, love, security or whatever. We all have
desires and we all have dreams and we all have a place in out minds in which
we live out those possibilities. The gambler might have originally had a dream of
a big win; he probably had a couple of good wins initially and that reinforced
the dream. Somehow though, the gambler became addicted to the dream. The
big win becomes a primary point of reference and in time all experiences loop
back to that point of reference. That is, information and experience gets filtered
through the point of reference. Some refer to this as classic denial. I call it,
‘The Happy Place’.
It seems impossible to talk logic or facts to an addict. They filter out what you
say; they might pretend to listen, or they argue with you or they blank you out
completely. Their eyes glaze over and you can almost hear them singing lah,
lah, lah as you speak. They have gone to their happy place.
This is probably familiar to anyone who has had a relationship with someone
with one of these major addictions. What is less obvious is that most of us are
operating under a very similar pattern – and that is: Obsession.
Obsessions can be hidden or seem as harmless or perhaps a little quirky.
Someone else’s obsession may be boring to us, but we don’t pay much
attention as we are rarely affected by them to any real degree. Many of us don’t
even know that we are obsessed. Yes, we all have our little happy places and
we all filter facts to suit our delusions. But, for many of us, we are destroying
our lives or at least our potential lives.
I remember when a friend of mine became obsessed with her boss. When she
first started talking about him, I thought she sounded like a schoolgirl with a
secret crush. Within a short period of time, I wondered if she was actually
stalking the poor guy. (He was happily married and did not flirt or encourage
my friend in any way.) For almost two years she talked about him as if they
were lovers. Almost every conversation we had somehow looped back to him.
She would say things like, ‘Alan went to Bali last year, so this year, I am going
to Bali and I will stay at the same hotel that he stayed in. Alan loves blue, so I
am going to wear something blue every day. I’m learning to play tennis now, so
Alan and I will have more in common. Alan loves Italian food, so I…’
Then there were the magical signs that Alan was ‘The One,’ ‘We both have an
older brother and a younger sister. He has a cousin called Linda and so do I.
Alan’s name has four letters in it and so does mine’. Almost everything she said
started with, ‘Did I mention Alan…Alan would love this…That reminds me of
Alan…Alan has one of those…’ Finally, it came to “I can’t make any plans –
Alan might call.” and “When Alan and I are married…”
This example might sound a little extreme, but really, I know heaps of women
who think and live this way. I couldn’t count the number of women I know,
who meet a guy, and by the second date start talking obsessively and
possessively about him. Not in a “I wonder...' or 'I hope someday...’ kind of a
way either, but in a ‘This is real and true…’ kind of way.
Mark is obsessed by horses. He spends hours every weekend searching antique
shops and the Internet to buy anything – that is, everything he can find that has
something to do with horses. He has ornaments, statues, posters and jewelry
stuffed in to three rooms of his home. He doesn’t even know what he owns
and much of it has not even been unpacked. In effect, half of his home is
storage – crammed to the ceilings with boxes of stuff, filled with horse
paraphernalia. He is not a jockey or an owner, nor is he a farmer. He has no real
relationship with horses at all. But he bores everyone senseless with his endless
conversations about horses.
Religion is another common obsession. I have had to sever friendships over this
one. I have had people break down and weep for my soul and plead with me to
listen. One woman really distressed me when she turned almost every
conversation into signs of ‘the end of the world’. No matter what I said, she
seemed to answer with something along the lines of Satan talking through me.
Almost everything I said or did resulted in a biblical quote of the Armageddon
variety.
Rob was obsessed with money; he was a wealthy entrepreneur but didn’t seem
to enjoy life very much. I remember traveling on a train with him and
commenting on the ocean views. He ignored me completely, and I noticed that
he was looking out the opposite window. “That land will be worth a fortune one
day. If I could subdivide that…” I also gave him a gift once and he pulled it
apart. I thought that he didn’t like it, but it turned out he liked it so much that he
had dismantled it to see how it worked. He wanted to copy and export them.
When we went to restaurants he would compare prices with other restaurants.
Going anywhere with him was like spending a day with, The Count from
Sesame Street!
Julie was obsessed with her looks. Every time we met, she would ask what I
thought of her hair, clothes, shoes or skin. She spent most of her spare time
and money on beauty products, clothes and hair care. When we went out, she
would ask if she was slimmer or younger looking than other women in the
room. She constantly reapplied make up and fiddled with her hair and clothes.
Boring!!!!
Then there are the health conscious and illness obsessions. Sport and work are
often common obsessions. I wonder if all of us might have at least one thing
which we refer to or compare with, in an unconscious, obsessive way.
It’s like there is one main point of reference within the mind which we filter
almost all of our thoughts through. What concerns me about obsessions is that
we close off our awareness to infinite possibilities. How do we get to better
ways or different ways, if we keep getting stuck at only one way? How much
of ourselves are we really seeing, if we can only define ourselves as one thing?
I also wonder, what this mechanism is that hooks into this one thing, and why
we don’t seem to recognize it or question it. When so many of these obsessions
are destructive or at least severely limiting, then why won’t we let go of them.
What’s really interesting is that we see it so clearly in others, but probably have
never taken the time to question ourselves. Have a casual look in the next few
days and you might actually find one or more of your own. If it serves you well
then stay with it, but if not, then it might be worth trying to change it or replace
it. Apart from driving your friend’s nuts or boring them to death, you might
actually find something else a lot more worthwhile to obsess about.
Copyright Sonya Green 08
| Heal your Heart, Love your Body and Claim your Joy! Reinventing Myself by Sonya Green is now available in paperback. Click the book cover to find out more. |
| EBook also available. Instant download for only $8 |
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with you or if you found yourself thinking about
someone who would benefit from visiting these pages -
Trust Your Intuition and send them the link.
Join us on Facebook.
If you would like to copy an article to your site or blog,
you are welcome to do so, but must note copyright
Sonya Green and refer to www.reinventingmyself.com
If you would like to support this site you might consider
emailing in suggestions or comments, a small donation,
purchasing a product or visiting the links to our
sponsors.
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