Paradigm Shift
Steven Covey says a paradigm shift occurs when you suddenly see a situation in a different way. The introduction of new knowledge can cause a person to change their thoughts, feelings, actions, etc.
I am having trouble shifting my paradigm. Intellectually, in my head, I know what abuse is and how it affects and has affected me. I know that abuse follows an textbook pattern. I know I have been abused, and I know who did the abusing.
However, what I know too slowly filters into what I feel. I wish that when I discovered the abuse in my relationship that I was able to completely detach from it. I wish that “knowing” solved the problems that come from feeling.
It would have been liberating if I had said to myself, “Kellie, that no good hunk of flesh abuses you. Do not love him anymore. Don’t listen to him anymore. Don’t try to help him anymore. Get out.” And then automatically FELT the same way.
But that didn’t happen. My emotions cling to Will even though my thoughts are free. My paradigm shift is held back by my heart.
Someone told me that when I found my thoughts and feelings focused on Will, that I could imagine Will attached to me by a taut rope, then imagine a pair of scissors, then imagine cutting the rope. Will falls away, leaving me the space I need to think on other things. It works (pretty well), but I think Will is attached to me by MULTIPLE ropes! It’s going to take a while to locate and cut them all.
I wish my paradigm shift was as simple as the examples in Covey’s book, The 7 Habits. One example is a man’s annoyance with unruly children until he discovers their mother died in the hospital hours before. Another is when an egotistical battleship commander sees an oncoming ship in his path and radios “Change your course; I am a battleship” only to get the reply, “Change your course, I am a lighthouse.”
When my paradigm shift does completely occur, this is what I envision:
A cordial relationship with my ex-husband in which we can discuss our children. When he acts out in “the old ways” I see it immediately and exit the situation. After leaving, I do not give what he said or did a thought other than, “He was right when he said he wouldn’t change” and I snip the thread that binds me and continue with my day, my thoughts, and my feelings unscathed.
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