It's All About The Process....No Skipping Steps

What does it mean to skip steps? Everything in life has a process. When we grow from children to adults we have stages and steps to go through, when we plan something there are stages and steps to go through, and when we experience a moment of any nature we go through stages and steps to process it. If we try to go from point A to point C without first stopping off at point B we are skipping steps. When we skip steps we are forced to repeat them later or else we create experiences and challenges that force us to experience them holding us back from moving forward. There is technically NO skipping steps. I learned through being a foster parent that many children skip steps in their early development. Because their parent's didn't hug and hold them enough they skipped vital steps, or because they never had a crib or bed they never felt secure or closed in and skipped that step in their development. In turn these children need to have those early experiences recreated. If they continue on without recreating these experiences they will have many challenges to go through in life until they do so. This is the same for adults who go through traumatic experiences. When their is a sudden break up or event that happens in a relationship like death you must go through all the stages and steps in order to process what has happened. You can not skip steps. If you choose to live in denial and not deal with what has happened to you, you will not grow and create much unneeded havoc in your life. This came to my consciousness recently due to some unexpected traumatic experiences that changed my life in an instant. I immediately wanted to detach from the experience and move on with life but the more I tried to do so the harder time I had emotionally. I was being forced to go through the process. I was consciously realizing I was not able to process what was happening because I was trying so hard to skip steps. The stages of grief one must go through are shock and denial, pain and guilt, anger and bargaining, depression and reflection, the up turn and reconstruction,  and working through acceptance and hope. I wanted to skip all of them and get right to reflection and reconstruction! It just does not work that way. Instead I found myself in the middle of denial and swimming through guilt. The basis of this post is to help bring awareness to the fact that skipping steps is the same as sweeping things under the carpet, it will still be there until you deal with it. In life we can wake ourselves up to being more self aware and recognizing stages and patterns in life, when we actually go through them the process will be much easier and smoother. It is when we choose to shut ourselves off and not want to deal and feel things that we make things so very much harder and drawn out.
All in all.....deal with life straight on as it presents itself and do not fear the pain you will feel....allow yourself to feel it, process it, and then finally let it go!