Lots of generalized talk about anxiety now days. Awareness is a good thing, but tools, nuanced language and a path will get you 5000% further in anxiety management than just conversation. One powerful tool is a #Genogram.
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#Genogram is like a family tree, but it captures emotional dynamics, generational traits, mental illness, addictions...
You present a genogram to a trusted group. They help you see patterns, assumptions, family propaganda, what you are holding, what is holding you.
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#Genograms give insight into what you carry into every encounter and what you assume about life. They are not interested in blame, but awareness. Unlike a family tree, they are not interested in objective history, but your subjective experience of it. How you see the world.
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My favorite work and consulting is helping people with genograms because they are deeper tools that anyone can benefit from and they help us go from talking about it to deep transformation. Like all transformative tools, this one requires homework and digging deep. #WorthIt
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We get reactive when we don't get a false need that feels like a real need.
What do you think you need that you don't really need?
We all have dozens of false needs and when we don't wrangle our many false need, they pile up and get the better of us and wear us out.
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Some of my false needs: 1. I need everyone I meet to like or approve of me. 2. I need to be understood. 3. I need to make the person in front of me feel better. 4. I need to always know what to say or do in any situation. You MUST see me as a smart person.
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We end up getting bigger or smaller than human sized.
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Some of us, when we are reactive get 'bigger.' We must have the last word. We no longer listen to learn, we now listen to advise, fix, correct, or mansplain. We get aggressive, we dominate the space. Some of us literally make ourselves bigger.
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Some of us get smaller than human sized. We no longer feel safe to be exactly ourselves in that space. We do not speak up in the meeting, we flatter rather than tell the truth, we get quiet.
Some of course get bigger or smaller, depending on the circumstance and people.
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A gentle reminder that your inner critic is telling you a gospel. It just happens to be a gospel of condemnation and shame.
I fired my IC, but he kept coming to work, like Milton from Office Space. I've learned to quieten it by containing it with God's first and last word.
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This is slow transformation work, not one and done. I started in 2016, noting how often I called myself 'stupid' or a 'moron.
50-100 times per week. Lord have mercy.
I vowed to treat myself the way God treats me. It was harder than I thought it would be.
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It turns out, I believed the gospel of 'self' and inner critic over the gospel of Jesus. And it took much faith and patience to relax into the gospel of Jesus.