Monday, April 21, 2014

Emotional Tunnel Vision

Emotional Tunnel vision in my life is when you focus on one thing without considering all the options. It's an obsession of sorts, when you focus too heavily on one person, one love, one issue, one solution, one problem, one way out.

Tunnel vision is a way that you sabotage yourself by over focusing on one detail of whatever it is you're focused on to detriment of all the other potentialities. Over-focusing on one thing can cause you to make mistakes in judgment.

If you were mistreated or abused as a child, you may have the tendency to become over-involved, emotionally over-invested in people and outcomes that healthy people can easily get over. Children who are maltreated get triggered into "fight or flight" mode easily. When the human body is in fight or flight mode, the mind becomes intensely focused on the thing that is a potential source of danger. The brain doesn't give up this fight or flight mechanism easily. As an adult, you carry the wounds of childhood with you, and this can include becoming triggered and over concerned about things that are not in your control.

Tunnel vision is when you focus on things outside of your control in an obsessive-fashion, to the detriment of all your options. You feel like this or that HAS TO HAPPEN in order for you to feel good, safe or secure... so you focus all your energies on this one thing while forgetting who you really are, and many times forgetting what other things are really important to you.

Tunnel vision can be considered to be a cognitive bias as well, when one focuses only one the negative of the situation while ignoring all the positives. It is the process of focusing on only one thing instead of remaining open minded. Paying too much attention to the details of a scenario you want to happen in your life, while not considering the big picture.

In the legal world of the judge and jury, tunnel vision is said to distort the perception of the evidence. It's a term for when the legal system distorts the evidence to suit their original leanings.

It's important that you remove your defenses and to keep the big picture in view when dealing with your own life. You don't want to limit yourself by thinking, feeling and acting on limited data--you want to operate from reality--which includes a multitude of options.

Many times what we think HAS TO HAPPEN is not what life has in store for us. We don't know the future, we can't say definitively what is the best path for us. We have to trust that life is unfolding precisely the way that it should and take our minds off the obsessions of what we think needs to happen, and be open to all the things in the world that may be ours.

Tunnel vision can get you stuck, and lead you away from your Highest Good. Take a step back, a deep breath and a broad view if you want to experience all that life has to offer. There are many roads to happiness... let yours unfold naturally with your eyes wide open.

When Vision Becomes Tunnel Vision - Psychology Today

Sometimes our minds are limited to seeing and understanding what our greatest outcome can be so we become resistant to any other way than how we see it. When we let go of attachments to an outcome, we allow room for things to unfold far beyond what we could have ever imagined it to be. Let go and allow the best to flow. 
 
-Kat Zaghi

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