The Self Image Solution

PREFACE

PREFACE

A BEAUTIFUL WORLD CALLS OUT TO YOU, ITS SUNNY DAYS INVITING YOU TO explore its wonders, a thousand open roads ready and waiting to take you wherever it is your head and heart might lead you. A gratifying world, its rainy nights inviting the warmth of hearth and home, a safe place for reflection on your life’s journey so far – the satisfying endings, the planning of new beginnings. A world of answered prayers, and a world of neverending new hopes and dreams. A world eager and waiting to receive your unique contribution to the human story. Each new day as you awake in your bed, you can hear the call. You can see it just outside your window, you can almost taste it on the morning breeze. But there it remains, the invitation unanswered. And so the day is dismissed, like every other day before, in favor of that one day, someday, to come. That day when you will “start” your life, again, for real. The coming day that, you now fear more and more, with the endless passings of day after day, will never really come. The simple pleasure of good times, of a fine meal, of celebrations shared with family and friends awaits you, as does the common miracle of a truly fulfilling romantic love. You see the families laugh and hug in their many gathering places, and the happy couples passing you on their journey, as if inviting you by example to find what they have found. But it all seems to be just out of reach, passing you by yet again – always and forever passing you by. All the usual, “normal” things promised to you in childhood. Things that other people get to do, having come by with seemingly little effort. An unremarkable natural birthright. But to you they seem like lucky souls who

vii

THE SELF IMAGE SOLUTION

viii

must have won some rigged lottery. They have somehow “won” that other kind of life that you can only watch from the sidelines. It’s always someone else’s movie. And you are forever just another anonymous audience member, alone in the dark – never the star of your own movie, shining in the light. Why it has to be this way – that’s the question that never fails to float up into your consciousness, grabbing hold of at least some portion of your every day’s waking thoughts. Sometimes it’s present as only a chronic dull ache, an accepted reality to be dealt with. Sometimes it flares into a sharp pain, an unacceptable agony that you know must be ended in order for you to survive. And you just can’t seem to find the answer to the question. All you know for certain is that you are alone. No matter how close the proximity of your family members and friends and acquaintances. No matter your marriage status or the current state of your love life. No matter your financial successes or woes, your life’s great achievements or terrible disappointments. You know that you are alone, separated from all the others, separated from any sort of spiritual source or meaningful center, separated from the fading memory of whatever it was you once knew you were or dreamed of becoming. Somewhere along the way, you have become alienated from your own feelings and affections and desires. Somewhere along the way, you have become forgetful of what you were all about, and you have become disconnected from yourself. It’s as if you’ve carelessly lost the lucky penny that protected your hopes and dreams. Left it long ago in jeans going out in the wash, never realizing the true value, the true magic, in the simple joys of living that were once the most precious moments in your life. You have lost you. And you are alone and you are unhappy. And you know that until you find your way back to your own personal place of happiness, or find a place of happiness you’ve never known, that you will never be able to go forward, and never be able to forever leave behind the lonely, unforgiving and everdarkening place that has become your invisible, suffocating prison.

If life as I’ve described it, in the words you have just read, is a life almost entirely alien and unimaginable to you in the life you are living, then let me wish you continued success and every happiness in experiencing a fulfilling and rewarding life. Your present state of affairs may be due to healthy life choices or to happy circumstance, and in either case, I wish you well. I truly hope you will never find yourself lost in the dark places – the soul-killing dead-ends so many find themselves at after making their desperate escape attempts, physically and mentally, trying to find a way out of their unhappy lives. I have made a life’s work of understanding the need for an escape plan to find a way out, and replacing that need with the rescue plan that shows the way in – a personal map transforming the desire to escape a failing life into the desire to embrace a thriving life. If you have come to find yourself dreaming of open roads, but rising each morning only to face the same brick wall at the end of your own personal cul-de-sac; if short-cuts and compromises and accepted defeats have dead-ended your life and all but convinced you that you are capable of nothing more; and if these words are now resonating in your heart and mind as a welcomed message of concern and understanding – or if you know and care about someone waiting to receive this message – then I hope you will read on. Because I am glad I have found you, and I know I can help you find the answers that have eluded you for too long. I know I can help you realize the wondrous and fulfilling life you deserve to be living – the life we all deserve to be living.

0

PREFACE

When a depressed or otherwise afflicted and symptomatic individual comes to me, seeking help through the program I have developed over the past twenty years, I assure that person, during our first meeting, that after the fourth or fifth week of my program, he or she will no longer be crippled from the symptoms that have ruined his or her existence. His or her symptoms will have become manageable to the point of no longer being in control of his or her life. To say that those suffering from years of chronic, clinical depression – let alone those severely drug-addicted or those paralyzed with

ix

THE SELF IMAGE SOLUTION

x

phobias – are usually highly skeptical would be a huge understatement. Even though they have found their way to me through an acquaintance who found just such relief – that is, through word-ofmouth. I’ve never needed to promote or advertise my program. My former clients have always brought me more suffering friends, family and acquaintances in need than I could ever hope to have the time to help. That constraint of too-little time frustrating my efforts is the reason, in fact, for my deciding to write this book. I also tell the afflicted individual that after the tenth week of my program, the depression or other symptom will not only be controllable for now, but can remain so for the rest of his or her life. Sometimes, at this point, my prospective clients slowly pull their defeated bodies up out of their chairs, shaking their heads sadly, smirking slightly, knowingly, and walk out on me and my outlandish claims. But they usually come back. After all, there’s the living, thriving example of that person they know, or know of, now living in control of his or her symptoms because of my program. The newly transformed life that person is now enjoying is a powerful reason to come back, to listen to me, to try the program – despite the skepticism, even if it’s been a lifetime of skepticism borne out again and again. They have their reasons for being skeptical. They have usually found only frustration with any one of the several standard therapies they had hoped would end their symptoms. These therapies, after all the best intentions and valiant efforts of both therapist and client, many times result in only a temporary respite from the affliction. And then there is the mocking return of the symptoms or syndrome. Sometimes they have exhausted several or even a whole host of competing therapies. They have made their way through the “self-help library” and the motivational training seminars, graduated the 12-step programs and cleansed their bodies through dietary management cures. They have patiently recounted lifetimes of regrets, failings and grievances to their psychologists. They have desperately sought relief in their psychiatrists’ pharmacopoeias. They may have even endured institutionalization. Some finally find their lucky match of sufferer to therapy and another human mind is cleared enough and another human heart unbur-

PREFACE

dened enough to find a better way forward. But my experience has been with those finding little comfort and no clear way forward in these methodologies. They arrive at my door wearing their cynicism and skepticism and soul-weariness like a soldier’s uniform, torn and tattered from an endless losing campaign. It was not the original grand intention in my life to identify a common cause at the core of most all modern maladies. Nor was it my original intent to identify a common defect that inherently undermines most therapies trying to address these maladies. I didn’t start out consciously looking for a key to creating a universally healing solution, a common sense but powerful program that really manages and controls symptoms forever and builds lifelong wellbeing. There was no miraculous vision, no sudden insight, that set me on course for what would become the focus and fulfillment of my life’s passion. There was, instead, a lifetime of daily caring and helping, a lifetime of fathering and teaching and coaching, and above all, of always thoughtfully observing, understanding and loving those who have needed what I could give them. What I can now give them is something that has been effective in managing and controlling the suffering caused from drug addiction, alcoholism, anxiety, depression, the gamut of phobias, anorexia-bulimia and other disorders. It is something that has evolved over the decades of my personal and professional involvement in the community of those laboring to make a difference in the fields of psychology and education. This evolution was greatly accelerated most especially by my chronic questioning of, and sometimes career-threatening rebellions against, the set-in-stone ideas and accepted formulas that I found from my experience to have too limited a record of any meaningful “success.” My diversion away from accepted psychiatric and therapeutic paths was really born from no more than elemental human compassion. And enough intelligence and honesty to know that the methodologies I had been trained in were often well-intentioned but no guarantee of a lifelong solution. It began with a simple recognition that there was too much unnecessary pain in the daily lives of too many, and a hardheadedness in refusing to accept this as an unavoid-

xi

THE SELF IMAGE SOLUTION

xii

able demographic of human society – that a certain number will always suffer. I refused to believe that there is an “acceptable” number. I refused to believe that the only effective treatment lies in endlessly treating and temporarily alleviating symptoms…and hoping for eventual remission. It began in simply refusing to accept what I had been taught to believe was an “acceptable” amount of well-being. Constitutionally incapable of turning away people in pain, I found more and more of my time consumed by meeting and advising troubled individuals, even after I had departed the formal halls of mental health establishments to work in teaching and special education. Private educational tutoring sessions always seemed to default into counseling the underlying reasons for the academic failure. There were always underlying, unaddressed real reasons why Johnny couldn’t spell or add or read or stay focused. I found great success in eliminating the symptoms of poor grades and disciplinary problems through training the students – and the students’ parents – in communicating on a positive level. I taught them to take immediate positive action in their lives to counter and reverse the many negatives holding the children back. I helped them create the positive atmosphere that is essential to learning. Over time, more and more people in the community were seeking help from my methods for personal and family problems not directly linked to academic achievement. Word spread of “The Helper” who could talk to the child non-responsive to available therapy and on the fast-track to institutionalization; who could talk to the addicted cousin nearing the final mistake of suicide; who could talk to the brother too depressed to leave the house to find work; who could talk to the husband and wife who had forgotten how to love. What began as a wealth of life experience rich in practical knowledge about what would and would not help these desperate people in their disparate struggles became transformed over time – necessitated by the ever-increasing volume of afflicted finding their way to my home in need of sitting and speaking with me at the kitchen table. My ideas and methods became gradually systematized into a scheduled program, a graduated series of meetings and “homework” exercises that have been sometimes described as “miraculous” in

helping to control and manage the symptoms, syndromes and degradations of the mental and social disorders too-long borne by those who found their way to my door. What I have gleaned from my formative experiences in the crucible of the mental health industry and in the field of private education, and all the amazing and gratifying experiences that I’ve enjoyed as a committed “helper,” have now found expression in my formally authoring this program. In this way I can finally speak out and reach out far beyond the constraints of my private teaching and training sessions. I have always applied myself to the best of my abilities to become and to always remain a living instrument of caring for and healing those around me in need. I believe that with this book I have created the perfect tool for building the self-image of any and every person, cast from all I have observed and analyzed and intuited and discovered and “field-tested” so many times over. I hope it has found its way into your hands if you are still searching and have not yet found the way to help yourself. But I also hope it finds its way to those of you still searching for the way to truly help the friends and family members who need you, and your positive guidance.

PREFACE

xiii