Answer Concluded
Answer Concluded
Hello. Adult child of an alcoholic here. I still don’t know what to do with my life. I don’t take any risks. I live in television, movies, and books. Is there a career in that or is that just escapism?
I have big dreams and then talk myself down. Example: What if I wrote a novel, and it gets published? What if someone starts to stalk me? Or sues me? Or someone from my past writes something about me in a tabloid? I don’t start anything so I can’t finish anything. I know there is more but am so afraid.
Becky
Becky, Wayne often says he admires the amoeba, a tiny creature with only one cell. If you watch an amoeba through a microscope, you will see a creature which moves toward what it needs and recoils from what it doesn’t. Life is no more complicated than that.
People with good parents and favorable circumstances build from a center of encouragement, and they have a place to fall back to. People whose development was thwarted cannot change until they are freed from their negative conditioning.
To cope with things like alcoholism or abuse they developed certain patterns of thought and behavior. These patterns are the normal operation of a mind recoiling from a bad situation, and unfortunately, they can’t be changed by will power alone. These patterns include such mental habits as reliving bad memories, physical habits like holding tension in the muscles, and emotional habits like dwelling on fears.
Last week we offered three techniques to break these patterns. The mind can be freed through simple exercises focusing on the breath; books on mindfulness, relaxation, and meditation explain such techniques. The body can be freed through simple stretching and flexibility exercises, like the warm-ups people do before a sport, or the exercises taught in a beginning yoga class.
Two weeks ago Tamara made a comparison to a block of ice. We cannot change its shape with will power, but if we restore the ice to its original form - water - we can refreeze it into almost any shape we desire. If we restore the mind and body to their original state, we can break our negative conditioning and transform our lives.
What you need to do is recondition your mind, recondition your body, and understand what you are capable of by seeing what others are capable of. That is why we mentioned a third technique: look for good role models. They can show you how to live. Seek out highly functioning people the way ancient navigators sought the pole star.
Lastly, we want to address your fears. The fears you have today are no more than the fears you had as a child in slightly different form. As a child you worried about why daddy was drunk and why mommy lied for daddy. As an adult you torture yourself with fears about being sued or being trashed by a tabloid. When you dissolve your negative conditioning, those fears will also dissolve.
Can you publish a novel? Perhaps. But often the desire to write or paint or live in the country is simply a placeholder. It stands for something else. It stands for the desire to uncork the bottle; it stands for the desire to release the energy trapped in negative patterns. Until you begin to change you won’t know what your desire to write is really about.
What we are suggesting is very, very simple. It does not preclude using any other means, like counseling or support groups, to help you change. But people who follow this path look back after a period of years and feel their life was guided by an unseen hand. That unseen hand is the natural unfolding of their potential as a human being.
Like the amoeba, which can change its form to adapt to circumstances, you can change in ways you cannot now imagine.
Wayne & Tamara
Authors and columnists Wayne and Tamara Mitchell can be reached at www.WayneAndTamara.com.
Send letters to: Direct Answers, PO Box 964, Springfield, MO 65801 or email: DirectAnswers@WayneAndTamara.com. |
Posted on Feb 26, 2007 by Site Admin
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