Why Reflection Is Not Enough For Change
- Jul 28, 2022
- 4 min read
Written by: Kristi Peck, Executive Contributor
Executive Contributors at Brainz Magazine are handpicked and invited to contribute because of their knowledge and valuable insight within their area of expertise.
My client said to me, “I will die if I do this.” We were speaking about an emotion that kept coming to the surface of our work together.
Emotions are tiny little volcanoes ready and willing to erupt at a moment’s notice. The moment is always an experience that would unravel our hidden features – those aspects of our personality that we have disowned, neglected, and even refused to accept. These non-evil and beautiful parts of our personality drive our focus and desire. And when the moment arises, in order to keep us locked in a perpetual illusion of safety, emotions will cluster in combat to the outer influence and project in the protection of our discomfort. And yes, it will feel like you might die if you feel the emotion and accept the parts of your personality that have been dismissed for so long.
Reflection – simply taking a bird’s eye view – of a situation or symptom will never equal the depth of change that is required for integration.
Integration is a system of giving ownership and responsibility to your full personality. There are 3 waves of change that enable the individual to accept and recognize all aspects of one’s full personality in order to create intimacy with life:
Awareness
Emotional Foundation
Inspired Action
Awareness is the act of reflecting and beginning to see the patterns that keep presenting in the individual’s life. The personality has a way of behaving and, when aspects are hidden and denied, it will behave in such an insidious manner to keep those aspects from reaching fruition. In awareness, the individual can see these behaviors and the situations that illicit such an actionable reaction.
Deep transformation does not happen only by being aware and conducting new behaviors.
There is an unconscious force that will bypass the awareness and sabotage a newly developed way of behaving. This is why many individuals revert back to old ways following sudden success.
The emotional foundation of all behaviors is the genuine act of feeling. In order to change one’s behavior, a feeling must be emoted that serves the change. Most often, we seek feelings that serve the comfort of not changing. Having the desire to change behaviors and habitual patterns is not enough to orchestrate a new narrative. Transforming the unconscious into a known understanding requires one to wrestle with the emotional stories that keep the pattern alive and subservient. The individual must face the emotion and bring it to form so that the stronghold can be relinquished. This is the game-changer for all transformational work. And, if bypassed, will only result in no change.
Once the individual has faced the emotion at the foundation of all insufficient behavior patterns, there is true freedom to allow for choice and inspired action. Integrating the full personality gives the individual their totality of wholeness and the openness to choose based on fulfillment, joy, and peace. Inspired actions are choices that derive from a consensual fullness where no part of one’s personality is denied, rejected, or hidden.
This level of intimacy with oneself will result in true intimacy in all other relationships. By reclaiming the totality of one’s existence, a powerful force begins to generate a life wildly in contrast to that before the work. This new way, while deeply transformational, will lead to hopes, desires, and wishes actualizing into form and a dream come true way of living life.
Kristi Peck, Executive Contributor Brainz Magazine
Kristi Peck helps individuals develop agency of the true self in all relationships, through every life transition, and by partnering with their dreams. As an intuitive Jungian life coach who specializes in relationships and dreamwork, Kristi believes we are whole, worthy of divine bliss, freedom, and peace, and have unique value to share with others.
For over 30 years, she has helped people remember who they are beyond old conditions and outdated influences. Kristi loves sharing stories that captivate and inspire people to take adventurous leaps of faith within a framework of understanding who they are. Her own vulnerability offers audiences a safe haven to be seen and heard while courageously choosing new ways of living life and showing up in all relationships. Kristi lives by example that the most impressive gift we can offer to another in any relationship is the agency of our true self.
Kristi is the author of Coming Home – A Love Story, and a podcast host of Living the Liminal: Finding Joy in the Pauses of Life. She has a wealth of transformational life experiences and her warmth and vulnerability have been described as a “soft-toughness”. Kristi is fierce in her compassion to learn, opens her heart to courageous choice-making, and deeply understands the human dynamic. Her passion for living life consciously is a game-changer.
