My personal experience has been that a good portion of my habitual thinking began as a child, and that seems to be true for most humans.
Now why that habitual thinking forms or when it happened exactly doesn’t seem to matter as much as seeing it for what it is, habitual and totally innocent.
It makes sense to me that when people go home for the holidays, this type of thinking can occur, and if insight has not yet happened, continues to look very real.
It has been so helpful for me in all areas of my life to see how unbelievably innocent this all is.
To most people it looks like their experience is coming from their family members behavior or the overall dynamics.
My experience has shown me that freedom comes when we see that it’s coming from thought in the moment that looks real but actually isn’t.
Then when we get triggered that crazy Uncle Larry chews with his mouth open or that an absent minded sibling forgets to include us in some tradition, we can see that our experience isn’t actually coming from that and we no longer take our thinking so seriously.
Inevitably then, the thinking settles down and we see with greater perspective and with greater perspective comes better choices and warmer feelings.
The most freeing thing of all is to see how unbelievably innocent it all really is. Our state of mind, their state of mind. It’s not personal, but rather impersonal. It’s a simple misuse of this incredible gift we have of thought.
If instead of thinking challenging thoughts around family are real in some way, we get to see it’s simply feedback we are heading on a thought train that doesn’t feel good.
The good news is we can go beyond thought, and we can follow the good feelings that are our nature and the entire experience changes.
Wishing you all happy holidays and hope this helps anyone who may be challenged at this time of year.
Much love