Message 333

Can you relate to any of these holiday traps….and reaction?

This is from Becoming Minimalist and although I am the farthest thing from minimalist, I could identify with most, if not all, these traps and reactions. So I thought I’d share them with you.

This is from Becoming Minimalist

When it comes to the holiday season, most of us spend this time reacting to what happens to us rather than intentionally planning for what we want.

These reactions tend to come in four distinct holiday flavors:
You react to the spending trap by buying gifts you can’t afford because everyone else is spending big, putting purchases on the credit card with a vague plan to “figure it out later.”

You react to the gift trap by scrambling to find the perfect present for everyone on your ever-growing list, stressing out about whether it’s enough, whether they’ll like it, and whether you’ll be judged for it.

You react to the time trap by saying yes to every invitation, every event, every tradition, because you don’t want to disappoint anyone, even though you’re disappointing yourself by missing the quiet moments that actually matter.

You react to the decor trap by pulling out every box from the attic because that’s what you’ve always done, spending hours decorating spaces you don’t even use, feeling obligated to maintain (or add to) a display that exhausts you instead of delights you.

But when you plan ahead for the holidays instead of reacting to expectations, everything changes.
And the best time to plan? Right now—before the chaos begins.

Message 332

“With awareness, we can make conscious choices, instead of letting our habitual thoughts and patterns run the show.”
Tamara Levitt

First of all, thank you for not making fun of all I revealed yesterday and not being mean. It was hard to expose so much of me so I really do appreciate your kindness.

It took me a very long time to learn about awareness. I think I was pretty aware of what was going on in others so that I could treat their medical issues.

I had absolutely no awareness of anything going on inside of me, however.

I have increased that awareness through IFS and I can now spot things in my mind that are habitual thoughts and behaviors. With IFS I have learned all about the various parts of me that have been running the show for all this time.

Recognizing and acknowledging these parts of me has been liberating. Now I am able to identity parts that are protecting me from some old hurt (they don’t know you’ve grown up so they think they are still protecting a wounded child).
I found this from the daily discipline newsletter by Brian Kight. 18 November 2025

The purpose of self-awareness is to:
• build a healthy relationship with yourself.
• keep you in a healthy relationship with the environment around you.
• show you the factors affecting your quality of life.
• show you misalignment within yourself.
• show you risks and opportunities in the environment.
• inform your immediate decisions and long-term direction.
• feed your self-confidence.
• push you into self-disciplined action.
It’s not the role of self-awareness to:
• freeze you in analysis.
• highlight your flaws and mistakes.
• hide your talents and strengths.
• push you into self-judgment.
• turn you into a self-critic.
• undermine your self-confidence.
• lock you in a self-imposed prison.
• trap you in a habitual cycle of anxiety, disappointment, and regret.

With this work, I am more alert as to what’s going on. No matter how you do it, it’s key that you have awareness so you can live and love in each moment and enjoy what life is in front of you.

I mentioned I had quite a few revelations last week want to hear what they were?

What a week. I thought I would share some of what happened so you could see the power of IFS

I’ve been working on my book. Although I should say I’ve been trying to work on my book. No matter my good intentions though, I always seemed to find ways and reasons to procrastinate. So i decided to explore why using IFS. I discovered two interesting things. One was that there was a part, a protector, that was afraid of being judged so it didn’t want me to get any closer to publishing my book because then people would read it and decide it was horrible and therefore I was horrible. This was a young part that was criticized harshly as a kid. What my “self” (the inner calm and compassionate me) had to do was remind it that we aren’t anywhere near that point yet AND that we’d done it before without harm. This was such a strongly injured part that a second protector was there to back up the procrastinator. It was the part
that dropped a heavy fog of sleepiness over me trying to prevent me from either recognizing the issue or relieving the wounded parts pain. After working with these parts I spent the entire day yesterday working on the book. That was the first time I’ve ever been that productive.

An even more significant discovery was that there is a little boy (parts don’t have to be the same gender as you) who would give me daily headaches every time something good happened. It turns out he was trying to hold me back from any joy or celebration because he felt I should feel guilty about my little brother’s death when I was only 14 months old – he died of SIDS when

My mother put him down for a nap to feed me. This part said if I hadn’t had to eat, he wouldn’t have died. Remember that’s very young Child’s reasoning. I was able to show him that I hadn’t forgotten my brother (a big fear of its) and we examined the fact that my mother probably had more guilt than either of us could imagine. He was in pain because both his mother and his brother left him in the dark. My mother was emotionally unavailable at that point. All he wanted was attention, both to him and to my baby brother.

And to end today’s session, I had been very upset and jealous of the attention someone was getting that I thought I should have some of. It was really getting to me. So once again I knew it was a part but I didn’t t know what it was from. Turns out it had nothing to do with the people. It was a desperate little child who just wanted attention because it equated attention with love. That also made plenty of sense given my childhood experience that I just mentioned and the rest of my childhood too.

There is one other thing from last week too. I went on a 3 day retreat with a friend and it was the absolute best time of my life. I spent that time just with her and didn’t once in 3 days become upset, disappointed, hurt nor did I overreact. If you knew me even 4 years ago, you would not have believed I was the same person.

That’s the power of IFS