Living a life avoiding "loss", holding onto the "old moldy peanuts of life"

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BEING "VAGUE" ABOUT "LOSS", LIVING IN FEAR

Those who have not yet learned that "loss" is not necessarily a threat and who still govern their life through fear as the primary motivator and emotion, remain stuck in life, obsessed with the avoidance of loss.  They narrowly focus on what it takes to avoid the loss and give up what the gains in life that are possible.  They can't seem to choose what is most valuable in life, even if the "know" what is, as they are driven by that fear which is upfront, right there, pressing against their faces, and insisting on being calmed down.  .

["Fear" as an emotion is a broad umbrella, under which are it various forms, such as anxiety, shame, guilt, feeling pressure, etc.  The bottom line is that this creates the negative chemicals of life, destroying one's emotional well being.  The irony is that most of the causes are faux, false, not real, and unnecessary!!!!]


HOLDING ON, "STUCK"

In growth seminars, probably LifeSpring, they have used the example of the "old moldy peanuts" that monkeys hold onto for dear life, unfortunately trapping their hand in a jar, at the expense of letting the trapper capture them.  See The Lesson Of The Old Moldy Peanuts - The Sad Tale Of Avoiding Loss.

One of the problems of trying to avoid loss is that our behavior becomes addictive.  While we do not gain anything from avoiding loss in most cases, we do get "relief" (of a temporary nature) from what we are stressing ourselves about.

One of the most insidious and disabling (to a large degree) addictions is that of "getting approval" or, even worse, "avoiding disapproval".  The latter is highly compelling, where people think it is life itself.   The problem with an addiction is that it often drives one to giving up one's "life" (aliveness potential) to get one's emotional "fix".

A sub-part or related part is perfectionism - driving something so far that it causes damage elsewhere by diverting efforts from where they could produce far more value in life.  (Read Perfection - The Path To Hell.  Note that people often don't think they are perfectionists, because they only see it in those who actually appear to perform to perfection.  But perfectionism is where one pushes the avoidance of non-fault, non-defect efforts so far that they damage the rest of life, like our archetypical overachiever/overavoider Daniel.)

How bad can it get?

See Living Life As A Rat Pressing The Dopamine Lever - Wasting Our Lives - A Huge Pity!

Or, it can dissipate into being temporarily partially disabled, seeking relief by withdrawing or numbing down to lessen the pain.  (The "pain" is real, but almost always the cause is NOT real or not necessary at all!)  Read the series on what happens in such a life, starting at PokeyMan, going through the frog aspect and groundhogs, into the drift...


THE ONLY "WAY OUT" IS "THROUGH"

While we can hope these bad emotions just go away on their own, miraculously, from no real cause, that might not be a very successful strategy. (Duh!)

The only way out is to actually do the necessary learning to see the basics of how life works and how to work it, the basics of how the brain/body/emotions work and how to work them, and then the basics of restructuring beliefs (and viewpoints).   That is a bit of a trek, involving homework and time, but very doable in a reasonable period of time, especially if you read the pieces on the site that are designed for being more directly practical and concise (but not stupidly so).  Just follow "the path".  (Actually, you might want to start with a quicker read The Short Path To An Overview Of all Of Life, which is reading sequence of selected pieces.  Then you would go to the changing beliefs section, quickly looking at the simplest belief changing forms to use in :

We must "cure the cause and not just the symptoms" or we'll keep getting/repeating the symptoms over and over in life.