How To Pull Yourself Inside

One of the neatest things I learned along the way in my healing transformation from being a fear-based person to a love-based person is how to "Pull Yourself Inside." This is a process that I created myself, as a basis of healing, based on my extensive research. This is not a process you will find in any other book on the planet, unless someone decides to copy me.

This is one of the many things I learned along the way that helped me in the healing process, a tool, a process that was not available anywhere else, but that I discovered through research and soul searching. It's fascinating, it's amazing and I believe it has the potential to revolutionize Childhood Trauma Healing process as well as Codependency Recovery. This is powerful.

Learning to "Pull Yourself Inside" is a natural outflow of the healing process when you're on target and moving forward. I think it is akin to personal integration and it feels magnificent, although a bit awkward at first.

Pulling yourself inside is about capturing yourself, every part of yourself, parts you used to regularly, easily give away, and refunneling that good stuff back into yourself where it belongs. See how weird that sounds? I don't care. It's true! It's about taking your thoughts back. It's about taking your time back to use for yourself. It's about taking your energy back, your concern, your care and your compassion, it's about taking all that good stuff inside you that you used to give away to someone who wasn't emotionally available, or worse, who was abusive; and funneling those things back unto yourself where it always belongs.

This means that when you talk and connect with others, your focus is not on Sue Ellen, Bobby Sue or Bob Smith. No. Your focus is not external. You bring your focus back to you, no matter how awkward it feels.

There is a reason why so many of us in recovery focus externally... Firstly, you feel like your worth comes from the outside, not inside... and second, because it can be quite uncomfortable to focus on ourselves... It's because nobody ever focused on us before, not truly, not like this, and we don't know how to focus on ourselves.

• It's because we don't know who we are or what we're supposed to focus on. 

• It's because we don't want to be exposed and vulnerable, so we converse about other people's issues (or shall I say, we project our issues onto other people) so that our ego can keep its hands clean. 

• It's because religion has taught us that to be humble we must never think of ourselves. 

• It's because we're filled with shame and thinking of ourselves often triggers a bad feeling.

• It's because as children, in order to get approval, we had to focus externally to survive. 

• It's because we don't know any other way. 

• It's because our brains were conditioned early-on to abandon ourselves and focus on others.

• It's because we think that we focus on ourselves a lot, but in actuality, our primary focus is on others. 

The problem is, when we're focusing on other people, when we're blaming instead of taking ownership, then we are just delaying our own progress. We cannot get ahead if we stay stuck on the merry-go-round of denial, blame and projection. It's not possible. In order to heal, in order to transform, in order to grow, in order to get to the next level mentally and emotionally, we must deal with the truth. We must be friendly with the facts. We must focus on ourselves.

There are many ways to pull yourself inside. Any of the following techniques are extremely helpful and represent some ways I've discovered to pull myself inside. Perhaps you have your own way. Perhaps some of these ways that work for me won't work for you. That's okay. The point is, making a concentrated, FOCUSED EFFORT to pull your affect inward, toward yourself.

Focused Effort

• Refocusing your thoughts ONTO YOURSELF.
• Refocusing your conversations ONTO YOURSELF. (Not being selfish, just not talking about the problems of other people--you can do nothing about those people... also steering clear of too much data and 'intellectualizing.')
• Refocusing your actions ONTO YOURSELF. (Not saying to disregard responsibility, but rather, take more time out to do things to your benefit, especially if you're over-concerned with doing for other people most of the time.) 

Focused effort means to catch yourself when you feel yourself slipping away toward external control.

• This means, catching yourself when you're day dreaming about that awful relationship, telling yourself that it really wasn't so bad.
• This means catching yourself when you're crying about a past relationship. (Shouldn't you be thinking about yourself?)
• This means catching yourself and redirecting your thoughts when you find that you're focusing on someone elses issues.
• This means catching yourself and redirecting your thoughts when you take too much time dwaddling when you promised yourself you would spend time on yourself.
• This means catching yourself and redirecting your thoughts when you're worried about whether someone likes you or not, whether they approve of you.
• This means catching yourself and redirecting your thoughts when you're working non-stop and not taking any breaks.

 The process of pulling yourself inside is just that. A process. It takes time to strengthen your neural pathways in your brain to make this process a habit, but eventually, it will become more natural for you to center on yourself than outside parties. The payoff is that you have a place from which to start to build your new identity, that of a "Healed Person," and write a new story for how your life will go from now on. Granted, your new space inside your own heart may feel bland and empty right now, but pretty soon I'm going to walk you through the process of decorating your inner life with things such as gratitude, compassion, beauty, knowledge, wisdom and love.