Pause Your Machinery: Emotional Rupture

An excerpt from my recent book, Your Mind Is What Your Brain Does for a Living, now available at Amazon:

Stop and take a moment to “pause your machinery.” The concepts and techniques I present throughout my latest book, Your Mind Is What Your Brain Does for a Living, require mindfulness to learn and master, and this brief written exercise will give you the opportunity to rest, step outside the pattern of passive reading, and bring yourself into the present moment to reflect and see how the information I want to share with you can be integrated into your own life.

Keep your written answers, because they will be valuable for you to review and refer to later. You may want to buy a notebook or open a computer file so that you can keep all of your responses together in one place.

• Reflect on your childhood to see if you remember any events in which your emotional bond with your mother or father (or someone else close to you) was ruptured in a way that felt traumatic to you at the time, or that you now see as traumatic. If you remember one or more such events, write a description of what happened in each and how you recall feeling at the time. It may help you to think about where you were when the incident happened, what you were wearing, or if there is a particular smell or taste that you associate with the experience. Bring to mind as much as you can from that time. Also write down how you feel about it now and what thoughts occur to you as you look back on it.

• Write down whether you feel that the rupture was repaired or if it was left unrepaired (or unresolved).

• Write down your thoughts about whether your parents or others close to you were generally able or unable to repair ruptures that occurred. Please keep in mind that you may have the possibility of repairing these ruptures today if you use the information and tools you’ll learn in this book.

The unresolved emotional pain we experienced in childhood has a profound effect on our default programming, and it significantly contributes to our conscious and unconscious beliefs about ourselves and the emotions we experience in our daily lives.