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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 Sound samples and instant downloads |
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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
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
| 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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someone who would benefit from visiting these pages - Trust Your Intuition and send them the link.
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.