The Viable Alternative

I was talking to a close friend recently, and she was telling me about a friend of hers who had a successful physical therapy practice in Brazil. She was quite well off financially, but she was extremely negative, unhappy, and always complaining about her life. In her head, her life was horrible and she was never happy with what she had. She said her external life reflected her behaviour in that it was a mess.

After listening to the story with interest, as I’m fascinated by human behaviour, I mentioned that her friend probably has a lot of deep issues from childhood centered around self-worth to which she agreed, and then I said that her friend needed to be in therapy She said she already was, and I then asked, “So then what’s the problem? Why isn’t her attitude improving?”

She then said to me, “Ike, you have to want to get better. Just because someone is going to therapy doesn’t mean that they want to take any responsibility for themselves. It’s your job to heal you, not the doctor’s”

I found that to be a very fascinating insight and it opened a whole new set of realizations for me.

It dawned on me just how much people don’t change or get worse just because they don’t want to take responsibility over their lives. They even deceive themselves into thinking they’re doing something by going through the motions but not doing any real work.

For example, when I go to the gym, I see people who’ve gone for years who have the same, sloppy body. They think that just because they go to the gym, their body is going to magically get into shape. They don’t work on changing their eating habits or go through the trial and error of finding out which exercises their bodies would benefit from, and which foods is more personally conducive to them being in shape. To top it off, you see them smoking a cigarette before and after they leave the gym while holding a McDonald’s bag.

Going to the gym is the excuse for them not to properly take care of their bodies.

Many people, when they visit a therapist, are not interested in confronting those deep issues from childhood that is causing them all sorts of dysfunction and unhappiness in their lives. No, that involves too much pain. Instead they want to skip all the hard work and for the Doctor to give them a pill to make them feel better so they can be on their way.

I’ve shared in this blog here that I started going to a therapist a few months ago because it’s time that I learn how to heal from my childhood wounds and come from a place of wholeness not pain. I want to give the best of myself to the world and as of now my wounds are preventing me from doing that. To make sure that I get the best out of my sessions,, I take notes during the week of things/issues that come up for me and I bring them up to my therapist during our sessions. I also take note of breakdowns, breakthroughs, and insights about myself that I have so they can be brought up and help in the healing process.

I take a proactive role not only because I’m paying for these sessions out of pocket and don’t want to waste my money by not taking them seriously, but also because I realize that it’s not the therapist’s job to heal me. I pay him for the insight and tools he gives me so that I can take them and in turn use them to facilitate my own healing process. The therapist’s job is to lead me to the water, and it’s my job to drink.

A friend of mine went to a program some years back because he had an issue where he was a perpetuator of domestic violence and he realized that he needed help. He went on his own free will, not via a court order, or as a condition of parole or probation. As a result, while he was intently listening and using the insights and the tools that the instructors gave him to transform his behaviour, the other participants in the program who were there by court order would argue with the instructor, refusing to take any responsibility for their behaviour. Ultimately, he was able to transform and become the star student in the class and was even sent to colleges to speak out against domestic violence. He is now a completely different man and never looked back.

On the other hand, I almost guarantee that those other participants of the program because they refused to take responsibility are still the same way getting into the same type of trouble.

Healing, growing and evolving are all choices. People trapped in The Illusion want the benefits of such things without the responsibility of doing the work.

It floors me how some people choose to stay in pain because they’re so afraid to deal with themselves.

The Viable Alternative is to step into the driver’s seat in your life and accept that the “pain” of taking responsibility of your healing and growth is a small price to pay for the pleasure, wholeness and fulfillment you experience for having done so.

Hope this helps,

Ike Love