“You cannot ESCAPE the responsibilities of tomorrow by avoiding them today.”..
Wise words from Abraham Lincoln.
This is an emotionally demanding reality I began to grow up and face back in 1995 when my personal recovery from booze, drugs and running away from good men commenced.
Some of us have worked out our ESCAPE or exit strategies in new relationships and situations well before we will allow ourselves to settle. Takes one to know one. I used to master at this.
Many of us choose one or more “weapons of mass distraction” to help protect us from full-frontal love. ESCAPING being fully focused on the relationship or situation before us allows us to distract ourselves with other loves that we dovetail into our precious time and hide behind.
Our subtle emotional ESCAPE mechanisms ensure we never remain fully emotionally available i.e. our ex, our work, drugs, alcohol, body-image issues (excessive exercise, dieting or binging), finances and even our children or the absence of them. These distractions help us feel safer and more protected than we’d feel being fully emotionally present and seen for all of who we are without these convenient inconveniences.
Those of us whom rely on ESCAPE options defend these excuses self-righteously using them as ultimatums (exit routes) if they are ever questioned. They are actually our protection, bandaids on our heart’s unhealed wounds. Sometimes we choose “weapons of mass distraction” as strategies to avoid having our heart become vulnerable to yet more wounding or to intercept feeling trapped and powerless again. So if our heart still carries wounds from past love we will require emotional healing and need to be brave enough to ask for help.
Or if our heart still carries unresolved fears about being trapped, shackled to the belief that others will always be and have more because we’ve bought the belief that we are less than and undeserving; help is required here too.
So let’s check who and what it is we have felt trapped by that we are still trying to ESCAPE from so we no longer let past relationships sabotage our present ones. We can never fully ESCAPE the fact that our heart truly desires to love and be loved. If we have had problems with trusting in love, which is at the heart of all deep wounding, the only way to ESCAPE this problem for ever is to work on solving it, one day at a time.
I have had to learn many, many new strategies as a woman who left two marriages as a past expert ESCAPE artist.
One of the most important truths I have needed to embrace before marrying my third husband (Mr Delicious) is to always remember that to succeed in love and life those like me need to surrender all of our “weapons of mass distraction.”
We also need to be willing to become emotionally available and change our focus from ESCAPE strategies to commitment strategies, one day at a time.
As a recovering ESCAPE artist I am delighted to report that since 2003 when I remarried for the third time I have finally learnt how to relax and not run away. I am in awe. No-one is more surprised than me that surrendering my weapons, my emotional armor, would be the key.
Lotsa love Cynthia xxx
© Copyright 2016 Cynthia J. Morton Emotional Fitness™
This Word Vitamin is an excerpt from my latest bookset “The Four Seasons of the Heart”. If you would like to order your own full set of Daily Word Vitamins one for each day of the year, in book form for yourself or as a gift just click on the SHOP tab and place your order.
