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

Ways to Abandon Yourself

What does it mean to abandon yourself? Many people who have issues with self love have a tendency to abandon themselves and give up who they are very easily. But what does that mean? You are you, so how can you abandon the person that you are? I thought it would be helpful to have a list to get started. In the coming months we will be delving into this theme continuously. It's time we bond and connect to our true selves and stop abandoning ourselves. We need to keep hold of who we are so we can live our best lives.

Ways to Abandon Yourself

• Ignoring your inner voice.
• Allowing opinions of others to change your mind and/or direction.
• Allowing actions of others to make you feel guilty or ashamed. 
• Denying or minimizing your feelings.
• Not paying attention to yourself, your needs, your health.
• Eating candy and junk when you're hungry for nutrients.
• Smoking, drinking or taking drugs.
• Not speaking up for yourself.
• Not standing up for yourself.
• Allowing your own defenses to block your progress.
• Using your energies toward anything not conducive to your highest good.
• Ignoring the cry of your heart to improve or change in any area.
• Disregarding your qualities.
• Judging yourself as less than another.
• Doubting yourself.
• Blaming yourself.
• Dissociating from reality.
• Denying your true feelings.
• Dimming your sparkle to make another comfortable.
• Putting up with disparaging treatment.
• Ignoring yourself. 
• Sabotaging your success.
• Focusing on the feelings, actions of another person.
• Trying to control the perceptions others have of you.
• Trying to prove yourself or win approval.
• Daydreaming too much; fantasizing.
• Being obsessive, compulsive or delusional.
• Being bombarded with excess shame.
• Having an external locus of control.
• Lacking in self care and self compassion.
• Lacking boundaries. 
• Chasing after someone who rejected you.
• Expecting the worst.
• Thinking the world is a bad place. 
• Having to be in control.
• Being perfectionistic.
• Beating yourself up for mistakes. 
• Negative thinking. 

5 Ways to Stay Open Despite Rejection

By Pam Garcy, PhD
My Inner Guide.com
 

Just sharing some midnight thoughts with you about how REBT-CBT can help you survive if you happen to live with a very open heart...Using REBT and CBT to live with a more open heart, despite rejection.

Have you ever extended yourself, made yourself vulnerable, and then been rejected by another?

As a child, one of my influences was the late Dr. Leo Buscaglia & I loved his messages about being willing to take risks & be open about love.  Once in a while, after listening to Leo on PBS and embarking on our weekly visit to Luby's, I'd even ask my mom if we could invite lonely looking strangers to sit at our lunch table so that the strangers wouldn’t have to be all alone. Sometimes she'd even let me & how glorious it was to make a new friend and decrease the loneliness of another!

Even still, as a supposedly more mature adult, my heart often & almost always directs me to be just a little bit more open & take those risks which I'd call living from my heart.

When we listen to this courageous part, we find that we can have a radically open hearts. Yet, even in the spirit of love, kindness, caring, and compassion, I have inner conflict about the topic.  For example, I recently cared so much about a client, and I really wanted to check on the person.  I had to turn inward and really ask, “Do I call this person, leave this message, send this e-mail?” 

I certainly want to be thoughtful about what I do. The logical part of me does not want to scare another or do anything that could be deemed professionally inappropriate. I am fully aware that it is a privilege to be someone’s therapist, not a right & everyone is different.

But, within these boundaries, I find that the general pattern of my self-direction would be to say “yes” when it comes to me to extending myself in a loving, warm, open, and often expressive fashion. This open-book transparency isn’t always cool to everyone, my friends tell me. And sometimes in the aftermath of my openness, my knowledge of REBT has led me to realize that I need to do some solid shame-attacking, to balance out the feeling like my heart was breaking!

So, how can one live with a very loving and open heart, knowing that not everyone desires to receive this?   REBT says to live without shame.  And the shameless answer is, “Love on and learn to live with rejection.”

Here are 5 things REBT teaches which will allow you to love on despite rejection:

1. You may label yourself as a reject when you get rejected. Just because someone rejected you, this doesn’t mean you are a reject–you are simply a person who has had an experience of being rejected. Avoid rating your entire personhood based upon what happens to you!

2. There are definitely many worse things than being rejected. Think about it, feeling unloved, being treated like you're goofy, or being ignored by someone you love; sometimes when you do what feels right to you, you can still get rejected, fail to get the love you want, end up being treated like a goof, or get ignored. If you avoid lableing this as awful, you’ll cut down the pain a lot. To anti-awfulize, remind yourself that there are so many worse things that could have happened to you & start dwelling on what is still good, right, and okay in your life.

3. You may say that you shouldn’t feel what you feel, but you do feel what you feel, therefore you actually should feel as you do. To clarify, of course you’d prefer to feel better, but you feel as you feel because you think as you do! Until you think differently, you will feel as you feel, so demanding that you feel differently won’t change how you feel; it’ll just make you feel worse. Accept how you feel and know that it is exactly fine for now. If you’d like to change it, work on your distorted thoughts.

4. If you’re still standing, then you can stand whatever it is you’re saying you can’t stand!

5. You may be really outwardly expressive & not receive that beautiful expression of your love in return from the person you expressed it to. This may provoke thoughts in you such as “no one loves you back”. First of all, how do you know that no one loves you back? Second of all, sometimes people are in different head-spaces and heart-spaces, so they can’t or won’t express their love back ever & often won’t express it back right when you want it. Third of all, are you ignoring evidence that there are those who have told you they love you back?

When you feel badly, you’re more likely to spit out cognitive distortions. This is called emotional reasoning by David Burns, M.D. You basically think worse of yourself when you already feel badly emotionally.

So, dear ones, keep this in mind, keep working on your distortions, and keep living with a full heart and open mind.

Love to you all,

Pam Garcy, PhD

My Inner Guide.com