When I was 19 I went to my first therapist. Arranged by my parents. “You need help”.
My parents didn’t know how to help me, but they truly believed there had to be a way. They may have been very worried and had many stressful thoughts about me, but they also had the thought that any human being is capable of finding happiness, and stability.
I knew it too. I remember thinking, in the middle of extreme suffering and wondering if it was worth living, that I just HAD to be born with the same abilities as the next human to achieve peace or balance.
Part of me was extremely determined to reach enlightenment, or die trying. Like the Little Engine That Could “I think I can, I think I can, I think I can…”
In fact, it isn’t possible that a human being would be born with the absolute inability to achieve happiness or peace.
Even Hitler, Vincent VanGogh, or your mean grandma.
But for some of us humans, we’re caught in the mine fields of fear, hatred, defense or sadness. Believing that there isn’t a way out, we’re trapped, stuck, hopeless.
If it goes on for awhile in time, we think of it as lasting forever, even more hopeless.
For me, that first extreme depression in my teens led to me dropping out of college, becoming totally OCD with food and eating (turning into a borderline anorexic) and then struggling with bulimic episodes for a decade.
It seemed like the worst of times. If you had asked me the honest truth, in my opinion, about whether or not I was happy and peaceful, I might have told you “NEVER! I am NEVER happy or peaceful!!”
But that was actually not true.
Here we are in this world, floating around on a big ball of rock, living our lives, and we may have the idea that we aren’t having a particularly good or amazing life all the time. We may really believe that we need help.
I have found this kind of moment, having the thought that I’m a mess, a wreck, I don’t like this situation, I don’t like being here, I need help, to be an amazing time to do The Work.
This means questioning a stressful belief like “I can’t find peace” or “I am not capable of getting out of THIS” or “I can’t heal or help myself”.
First question: Is that true? Really absolutely 100% beyond a shadow of a doubt true that you have no way to get to peace? That you are not capable of getting beyond your situation? Or that you can’t get help or find healing?
If nothing changed, if you did nothing, if you just stopped worrying about what that person said, or your lack of help, or your inability to heal or find peace….what would that be like?
Who would you be without the thought that you need to find something that gets you peaceful? Who would you be without the thought that you don’t have what it takes to be truly happy right now?
Back when I was 19 I might have had the thoughts that I needed help, was not peaceful, and was deeply screwed up somehow…but I also can find examples of how all the opposite was also true: I am receiving help all the time, from the whole world, from my life. There is a part of me that is entirely peaceful no matter what is going on. I am healing, I am capable of getting beyond my situation. I am moving into balance. Even if things feel traumatic or worrisome, or destructive…there is peace, freedom and creativity here. Anything is possible.
Here at age 51 now, I find how amazing it was to experience disordered eating. Wow, that was extreme!! It forced me awake.
It was incredible to drop out of college, go to therapy with the help of my very loving parents, and begin to study life and freedom that has taken me into a spectacular journey.
“Life creates situations that push you to your edges, all with the effect of removing what is blocked inside of you.”~Michael Singer
The advantages to having such depression, addiction, and pain in my past was that I answered a call from the universe, God, the Tao to come to the middle of the storm, find the eye in the center, un-do my belief system that wasn’t working.
You are getting unblocked, no matter what your mind is telling you about your situation. Find out what is good about it.