Caretaking case study — Healing and Reflections

I haven’t written for a while… partially, because I don’t know where the fuzzy line of legality lies, so I am going to use the rule of thumb I learned in my 20 years of being a Landmark Education graduate: you can share your own experience to your heart’s desire.

So I am sharing my own experience of Pam Ragland’s work, “Quantum Thought Shifting” which is an 8-month program, and I am in the middle of it…

There is a distinction that I never heard before Pam’s program, called “caretaking.”

It is a crafty little distinction, because on the surface it seems that it teaches you to be selfish, but that is really just the very surface.

You are caretaking if there is no winner. Neither you win, nor the one you “caretake”.

I did not think it applied to me, but then again, Pam said, that caretaking drains your energy, and increases your negativity.

So I started to pay attention to my energy level (and how much work I got done in a day), and my negativity level (in my case bitterness, or the lack of ambition, enthusiasm, sleeping well).

A few weeks ago I started to notice that I am quite forceful in wanting to give (to everyone, especially people that I diagnosed as they could use my help.) It wasn’t without pleasure, especially when they didn’t say no.

One day I found out that one of those people actually didn’t want and didn’t need my help, in fact he was way ahead of me in a class we are taking together, because he seems to have more energy, and he seems to ask for help when he needs it. He didn’t ask for help from me. I felt crushed, but I started to pay attention. I suspected a pattern here…

The next door neighbor, when he went to rehab about 15 months ago, asked me to take care of his cat. I have been taking extreme hardship to take care of the cat, and I am noticing that the cat is neither grateful, nor is the experience a rewarding one.

When I look back at my life, it seems that I have “shacked up” with people who “needed my help” only to end up unappreciated, and often dumped.

The only common denominator is me. Hm. Interesting.

So it seems that the pattern is that I “help” unsolicited, I am unappreciated, and I am crushed.

When I looked what is underneath that, I saw that there is an underlying conviction that I am not wanted for myself, that I need to earn my keep, that I am on borrowed time, and that I am buying a sense of belonging.

Now, since the “shift” all of these “truths” have become less controlling of my life, but they are obviously there, given these new acts of caretaking/victimhood.

The homework has been to identify a negative emotion and replace it with a positive… I think the negative emotion is something like I am ALONE, and the positive could be, I am FREE. A free agent… wow, what an insight. I have created ties, chains and bonds to create a sense of belonging, but it did not work that way.

Just the thought of being a free agent brings a lightness to my heart, a fluttering, a joy, tears into my eyes. I have never been a free agent! (This is how you know that free agent is not an “IS” but is an attitude, a state of mind, a “BEING”. In Landmark we used to create beings all the time, it never occurred for me to create free agent as a being.

Amazing. This stuff really works. Thank you Pam, thank you Landmark.

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