Manning Up?

I look at how I take care of myself and my family and other key responsibilities and sometimes intense feelings arise.  I immediately try to avoid and ignore feelings of egret, guilt, shame, helplessness.

I've gotten so habituated to that pattern that I am actually pro-active in my avoidance. In my spare moments, I avoid thinking about anything too serious. I fill my head with movies and theories and anything that can keep me from feeling things I don't want to feel.  I go through life at such a high-level (vs detail level) and then get surprised (and hurt) when things go sideways or worse. That's what got me into so much trouble with my business and many other areas of life.

By contrast, I see folks who dive into the details for any particular situation really benefit. It makes me think of the movies, Money Ball or The Big Short. In both, underdogs rose to the top because they looked at opportunities / problems from their component parts vs the conventional, glossing-over of how things are done.

When I look at the details, I enjoy it and I am good at it. I benefit from it. I just often start it by thinking that I'll come across something very painful. So, I stop before I start.

Allowing - even encouraging  - myself to feel my feelings as a way of operating, is perhaps THE way to break the cycle.