It seems to me that, more and more, I can't depend on others to follow through on what they say they are going to do. Someone says they will call back and they don't. Someone says they will be at my house at a certain time, and they aren't.

I was brought up to believe that it's rude and uncaring to say you are going to do something and then not do it. Not only that, I realized early on that I didn't feel good about myself if I said I was going to do something and then didn't do it. I was able to absorb this ethic because I had parents who were role models of dependability. While they did lots of things wrong as parents, I am grateful to them in this area – they did what they said they would do. They followed through on their promises to me.

This is not the case for Gideon:

"What would you advise for a person who finds it very hard to be dependable day after day? I was raised in a household with absent parents, and I didn't learn discipline. I can work hard in spurts, but I am not very consistent. If I believe in something I can really throw my heart into work and dazzle employers, but I find it a real struggle to be dependable on a consistent ongoing basis. Also, if I am thrown off kilter for any reason or am in difficult circumstances, then I find it hard to continue to perform while untangling difficult emotions, and I start to become undependable.

He goes on to say:

"I am occasionally overcome with an emotion and can't function for a while. If something fairly upsetting happens, I have to take a day or two off. I feel there is a rebel inside me that I can't control, and I can't get myself to function until I take a break for a long while and get my balance back. If something big has happened, I find it hard to be dependable and to continue to function in life until the feelings stirred up have calmed down, which seems to take a while."

The clue to why this is a problem for Gideon lies in his second paragraph.
 

Gideon is abandoning himself emotionally.

When something upsetting happens, instead of showing up for his inner child as a loving adult, Gideon is collapsing into his wounded self, and it then takes him days to recover. If he were operating as a spiritually connected loving adult, he would likely recover quickly.

Because Gideon had no role models for loving self-care, he doesn't know how to be dependable to himself. The wounded self is often not dependable. If we didn't learn dependability with ourselves and others as we were growing up, the way to become dependable is by developing our loving adult.
 

Here is where the practice of Inner Bonding is invaluable.

The consistent practice of Inner Bonding creates new neural pathways in the brain, which is what Gideon needs in order to become consistently dependable. The more he learns to show up for himself throughout a day, the easier time he will have showing up for himself and for others when something upsetting happens.

Recent brain research proves, through MRIs, that whatever we focus on is what gets wired into our brain. Therefore, if Gideon were to focus on taking responsibility for his own feelings through his Inner Bonding practice, this is what would get wired into his brain and he would find himself becoming more and more dependable with himself and with others.

The old saying, "Practice makes perfect," certainly applies to the practice of Inner Bonding!

Join Dr. Margaret Paul for her 30-Day at-home Course: "Love Yourself: An Inner Bonding Experience to Heal Anxiety, Depression, Shame, Addictions and Relationships."

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