 | Habits
- of talking, fighting, forgetfulness, messiness,
overeating, laziness, beating up on ourselves; avoiding responsibilities;
. . .
|
| Thoughts
& Ideas - the persistent thought that you are no good;
that others are to blame; that you always need to fight back;
that you are weak, unworthy, orugly; that the world is out to
get you; and other specific beliefs about others - fixed beliefs
about culture, gender, weight, intelligence or some other rigidly
held belief that stereotypes and easily categorizes the other;
|
| Moods
- worries; fears; panic (which may also show itself as upset
stomach, dizziness, lightheadedness, headaches, feeling weak in
the knees, a sense of dread or impending doom); sadness; depression
(which may also show itself as irritability; indifference,
not caring, lack of motivation, low energy, difficulty getting
started) anger; grief; apathy;
|
| Behavior
- picking on others; goofing off; getting distracted; fighting;
avoiding; withdrawing; avoiding; procrastination; compulsions; |
How
they gain control:
They
tempt us; sneak up on us; trip us up; control us; influence us; dominate
us; make our life miserable, unhappy, or just dissatisfying; they
may blind us to other possibilities; they may feel like internal "voices"
that talk us into destructive ways of thinking, feeling, or acting.
They
may have once been useful: They have have originally been useful
in some context, been our friend: to defend, protect, save or help
us in some way. But they may no longer be useful . .they may now be
a friend who has turned into an enemy, or a fickle friend. Now this
"friend" gets us in trouble, makes us miserable, unhappy,
or makes others upset and angry at us.
What
they become: The can become part of the "story" we have
or others have about us - part of our identity as persons. These "stories"
circulate among those who know us. These stories may gain weight and
become heavy. These stories may become so big they fill the room or
the space around us.
What
we can do:
Personifying
the Problem
Some
have found it helpful to personify the problem. The verb or adjective
becomes a noun. So it is "anger" or "worry" or
"fighting" or "depression" that has some degree
of control over us, some degree of influence is taking over
our lives and relationships.
With
children, you can draw pictures of the problem. Make a sculpture of
the problem with clay. Paint pictures of the problem.
Our
Abilities:
We
use our abilities to resist, overcome, and control the problems and
take back our lives.
Our
abilities are anything we can do, think, or say. Our abilities may
include our imagination. Abilities may also include our beliefs about
ourselves, the confidence we have in our abilities.
Our
abilities are to a large part, what we know. We all know some
things - from living, from our experiences, from our observations.
It is crucial to not lose track of what we know.
Its
easy to overlook, take for granted, or discount our abilities. But
they are there within us and within our experiences nevertheless.
Gaining
back control of our lives from the problem:
We
gain back control over the problem in steps, not all at once. We need
to look for the slightest piece of evidence that we are slowly gaining
back some control over our lives from the life of the problem. The
slightest progress should be noticed and given credit. Speculation
as to how that control was achieved, how that problem was weakened
is very important:
We might ask the person: "How did you manage
to do that?" Persist until you get some kind of answer.
