My Thinking, Their Thinking

If I change my thinking do I change my reality?

My thinking and their thinking.  Those are the words my therapist used.  She said to me, “That sounds like their thinking, not yours.”

It sparked understanding deep inside of me.

That’s what I’ve been working on the past couple of weeks.  Distinguishing between my thinking and the thinking of the people I grew up with.  A belief system and a way of communicating that have never worked for me.

As I got older I began to form my own beliefs and they collided with the beliefs that I was taught. When I tried  to express my ideas and feeling to my family, they didn’t want to hear it.   My way of thinking threatened their way of being.

The work I’m doing now is to separate my thinking from the thinking that formed in my brain so long ago. And it’s beginning to work.  Where my thinking and their thinking used to be intertwined, I now perceive them as two distinct things, boxed in with defined boundaries.

So now it’s harder to slip from my way of thinking into theirs.  To get from one to the other is a leap instead of a shift.

I do wonder what other changes, besides the obvious will occur inside of me.  I have already had glimpses of a greater sense of self-worth and the freedom to feel more deeply.

I wonder if it isn’t already showing up in my work, which I often learn about myself from.   The last two quilts I made seemed to evoke a stronger response in people than usual.

This morning I feel drained and low from these realizations.  But I understand that’s a part of the process.  It’s an adjustment to my psyche and my body, which holds all of this so closely.