It's a really hard habit to break & for me a lot of it was just practice, practice, practice. I think of it (& other AC0A habits I have/had) like trying to grind giant gears to a halt & reverse their direction - it takes time & a lot of hard work. I have to create a NEW pattern, it's not enough to just stop the old for me. I've been doing this MY ENTIRE LIFE.
Being aware that I was going down that Codie road was the biggest step -I had to *see* myself clearly first. I ask myself: Do I know this to be TRUE? Can I say that yes, I KNOW 100% that this is FACT? If not, there's my answer right there - do I want to get worked up over something fully knowing I don't know anything about it? (It just
sounds ridiculous when you say it out loud like that.)
I also acknowledged it out loud with people I was close enough to feel emotionally safe with. "I didn't want to assume x,y,z so I thought I'd just ask you?" Well, once I spit out the acid taste, lol, I totally agree with that analogy! Sometimes I am reading the situation clearly but when I've been wrong, I've been REALLY wrong too. A lot of times being wrong leads them to open up about whatever "it" is & then I learn even more. (More about how I could have never anticipated what was really going on.)
Then I need to replay it all later on in my mind & put it through my "recovery filter" too (I know I'm not the only one, lol); looking at the differences or similarities to what I'd been "sponging" off of them initially. (great term!)
Replaying it reinforces the new synaptical routes that I'm working on creating for the habit/pattern. These videos are better at explaining it than I am:
https://www.khanacademy.org/science/...ional-memories https://www.khanacademy.org/science/...tic-plasticity
For ME this is also a great tool for my gut checks/self-trust too because I started to see the things/times/etc that I'm "right" about too, which made me more confident in turn.... each time I felt better about knowing where the lines/boundaries were, got calmer during those emotional moments & could think more clearly because I wasn't focusing on interpreting & questioning myself. It's a big circle!