Topic : Defining Your Authentic Self

Life will present us with challenges in order to make us stronger, kind of like training for the big race...and that the grand event comes and all of our cumulative skills will be called upon in order to handle the situation at hand.   

  

I don't know if this is true or not, yet there have been times in my life where I have had to say "Creator must be setting me up for something BIG!", as I was also told that God does not give you more than you can handle.   

  

The way I see it Brenda, you are the person who will be ready when everyone else has either lost interest or lost sight to help.  You will be kind yet add the lightness that will be needed for others to cope.  Your humor has it's place, you know.   

  

I too am working/procrastinating on Chapter 4, yet finding more and more strength to face those moments with an open mind.  

  

One of the wonders of this is I am recalling more happy childhood memories, which for years I was unable to do.  Even though this has not healed any relationships between my parents and I, I can now say they did work to create a good life, as misguided as they were.  We are all allowed our mistakes.   

  

You are precious, Brenda!  Thank you 

Teri 

 THE JOURNEY

One day you finally knew
what you had to do, and began,
though the voices all around you
kept shouting
their bad advice-
though the whole house
began to tremble
and you felt the old tug
at your ankles.
"Mend my life!"
each voice cried.
But you didn't stop.
You knew what you had to do,
though the wind pried
with its stiff fingers
at the very foundations,
though their melancholy
was terrible.
It was already late
enough, and a wild night,
and the road full of fallen
branches and stones.
But little by little,
as you left their voices behind,
the stars began to burn
through the sheets of clouds,
and there was a new voice
which you slowly
recognized as your own,
that kept you company
as you strode deeper and deeper
into the world,
determined to do
the only thing you could do-
determined to save
the only life that you could save.

by Mary Oliver

Hey gang!
Just got back from the west side of the state. This was taken in Independence ghost town, an old mining camp.
This was how I used to view the world, about twice removed and timidly.

I find that beauty and love is all around us, if we open ourselves to the reality that it exists.
The colors are beginning to turn in the high country, and the tourists are leaving for a little while, until ski season opens.
Longstory, if you're still out there reading but not posting, you are missed greatly.

Hi everone,

I've been following the messageboard for a few weeks now, but this is my first message. I found Dr Phil's book Self Matters in February 2005, but must say to my own disappointment that I haven't gotten through it yet. I'm still stuck on chapter two after rereading and rereading and rereading. Sometimes I get to chapter 4 before giving up. I've never been good at goalwork, nor does this "set your life on projekt status"-thing seem to work on me. I just don't understand it!

I think my problem is that I'm THINKING too much, because I know that my brain is CONSTANTLY working and that it's exhausting me to no end. My happiest moments in life can be pinned down to those few times when I don't think, all during the last year. What I notice about my thinking is that it's like I'm putting words on the thought I had half a second before... Doesn't that sound tiresome to you?

Sometimes I feel like I need a huge wake-up call, someone to shout and shake me, but if my Father's death (12th of June 2005) didn't help, what will? I do recognize loads and loads of thing with myself that I've been told ("You're so clumsy!", "Look at your handwriting!", "Do you have to make me unhappy?", etc) and I KNOW I'm not living the life I want to live. It's not mine! It's like I'm living to please my Mum. I've been told that I have an obsession with my Mum, and before that my Father too (Ever heard "everybody loves you when you're dead"? It's true!), and I have to agree. I went to see a dietist last week - and when I got there I realized it wasn't I who was supposed to be there, it was Mum.

I just want to live. I want to be free. I want to be me. I want to tell my mother to sodd off, I want to tell my littlesister that it's okay to cry, I want to hit the idiot who ruined my childhood, and I want to scream at my Father because he didn't behave like a Father would. I want to ask people to leave me alone, I recently moved away from my hometown and now people seem to think I'm somekind of shelter that they can go to everytime they're going south.


... I'm just so sick of my life (and I hate myself for having been able to make that sentence for months, yet doing basically nothing) ...

Hope you can understand and excuse my whining,
Enzymbia.

Sometimes it takes drama in the form of poetry to help us visualize what we, in good common sense, already know.  I really like what you shared, Ritehere.  It is appreciated.   

  

I love your photos.  I especially like how you drew a parallel with the Independence photo and your prior view of the world.  And the mountain photo, well, WOW!  The colors are starting to turn, and when we were at Palisades near the Tetons, there would be spots of bright orange and deep read on the mountain scattered among the evergreens like sparks in the dark.  I love this time of year, harvesting, the changing seasons.  This is the time of year I tend to feel my most energetic.   

  

There is beauty everywhere we look, even in the midst of the Urban Jungle, there is beauty.  Thank you for sharing your beauty with us.   

Teri 

The wisdoms that are posted on this board come from real people, living real lives in places all over the world.  I also have much gratitude for this venue, as I can get feedback from different paradigms, and find that I am not "terminally unique" in any way.  That has been so healthy for me! 

  

I have had to do some reading about a Gestalt Group, as I had never heard the term before.  Sounds like an interesting way to approach group psychotherapy.   

  

When I read your post, the song "Comfortably Numb" by Pink Floyd came to mind.  I wonder if sometimes we have this protective barrier that keeps us from feeling, or at least recognizing feelings, when we don't know how to handle them.   

  

In the movie "What the Bleep do We Know" they talked about how the Indians in the Caribbean didn't see Columbus's ships because they did not believe they could exist.  They saw the ripples on the water, yet could not see the ships because they were beyond their comprehension.  Sometimes I think we don't feel what we are feeling because it may be more than we can comprehend at the time, giving us this flat, numb thing where we almost live as observers in our lives instead of participants.   

  

As a teenager, I used alcohol and pot to numb myself.  I had feelings of anger, hatred and rage, and because I couldn't recognize them at the time, I went numb.  I became quite depressed, using alcohol a lot.  My parents had no idea, so they took me to a shrink who put me on Elavil.  I took 30 of them and slept for 3 days straight.  Nobody knew.  Nobody really cared.  This reinforced the numbness to me, as if nobody else noticed what I was going through, why should I?   

  

Thank goodness I am not living like this today.  I love having feelings, even if they are negative ones, because they reinforce that I am REAL!  I am alive and I am experiencing my world as actively as I can and participating to the best of my ability.   

  

My heart is warm with appreciation for the words you have shared with me.  Thank you. 

Teri 

Enzymbia, you are spending too much time reading the same passages.  Allow yourself to just read the book - do the exercises as they come and the continue.  The 1st 1/2 of the book is to help you understand how a MOMENT, A PERSON, A CHOICE made carries through your life until you look back on it.  If it's painful, that means that it was written and it's been your mechanism for making all the life choices/decisions in your life. 

  

I tried your way too; it didn't work - when I finally gave myself permission to just READ the book from front to cover, I was able to finally understand the process.  For me, I found that once I read the book, I chose a goal that was easy to break down into steps.  I chose sewing - I made a list of what was stopping me and then what I needed to do to obtain closure.  Luckily, I discovered the 2 classes I needed to understand what I was lacking in knowledge.   

  

I used Self Matters & it's companion workbook to help me thru the crap I had been telling myself. It was pretty amazing.  I had to turn to other books as well.  LIKE Martha Beck's the Joy Diet - her chapter on RISK really helped me thru a period where I couldn't sit down and sew.  I mean it - I was so terrified - I was actually afraid that I didn't really want to do it and I had wasted so many years of my life (over 45 years) wanting this.  But it was just fear raising it's nasty little head. 

  

I too didn't like goal work - it didn't work for me either -- but I made myself do it and probably just like you I made it so hard for myself -- until I named what was going on as CATCH UP.  That's when I decide to do 1 thing and all of the suddent all the other goals pop up wanting to be done.  My AFFIRMATION for handling that was:  Well if I haven't done it in 20-30-40+ years, THEN it won't hurt anything to just focus on 1 thing.  By doing that, I have been able to make progress.  I only focus on 1 thing at a time. 

  

I also discovered that I had to do A LOT of UPFRONT TIME when I did something - I needed to learn/educate myself, I needed to tackle my thoughts, I needed to obtain the necessary tools, I needed to be nice to myself.   

  

However, I committed to doing this 100% because at 52 years old, I'm just so tired of having that crap in my life and not going anywhere with it.  I'm just plain BORED TO DEATH of the same thoughts and feelings. 

  

p.s.  In the summer of 2003, I was on a family death watch when I experienced another painful work event, learned I had hyperthryoidism (a stress related illness), and discovered Dr. Phil's WLC. Because of all those events, I have changed who I am.  I had been running amok all that time - then when I read his words, until I COMMIT and TAKE THE TIME to work on bringing all the closure in my life, I realized I had never done that before. I had always attempted, did it for a week or two, and quit.  I gave myself 1 year, which turned into 2 years and last year, I decided that I needed 3 years.  I committed on 11/18/03 to doing Weight Loss Solutions life style changes and my 2nd year is nearly up. 

  

I spent this summer tackling Key 4, Step 2 issues.  See if you can locate  HARRIET LERNER's FEAR AND OTHER UNINVITED GUESTS.  It will help you do Self Matters.  Now that I've read it, I understand what's taking me so long - when you have finished that book, post back on this site and I will recommend the next book.  There are 3 I recommend and doing them will help you tremendously to get pass your fear of the unknown.