Turning Emotional Scars Into Strengths

How To Turn An Emotional Scar Into An EMOTIONAL STRENGTH

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Getting Started By Joshua David INSIDE THIS ISSUE 1

Getting Started

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What`s Inside An Emotional Scar?

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Removing The Emotional Scar

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Turning The Emotional Scar Into A Strength

Turning an emotional scar into an emotional strength may seem like it`s something that’s next to impossible. I use to feel the same way when my wife was going through her period of anxiety disorders. You name it, she had it. Generalized Anxiety Disorder, Social Anxiety Disorder and Panic Disorder… and this was just up until her late 20`s. Back in 2006 when she was diagnosed with schizo-affective disorder I knew something had to change. I wanted to help her so much that I was willing to try anything, and yes we went through all types of medicine, therapists and positive affirmation techniques to help her get rid of her anxiety issues. I was so heartbroken because I felt powerless as my wife was going through this. I don’t know how many of you believe in fate or destiny, but I was surfing the internet one day I just so happened to run across this audio with the speaker Dan Kennedy and he was talking about how powerful Psycho-Cybernetics and the research of Dr. Maxwell Maltz was in Please see Getting Started on page 2

What`s Inside An Emotional Scar? “Michael Jackson`s selfimage problem was what fueled his anxiety disorders…” How do you see yourself?

By Joshua David Emotional scars do numbers on your self-image…and I don’t mean that in a good way!. Every hurtful word said by someone you respect or look up to, every humiliating episode, every mistake that you wish you could just forget stays in your mind. If it goes unchecked, it could cause you to act differently in order to keep you from humiliation or making the same mistake. However, if those past experiences are constantly dwelt upon, constantly relived in vivid detail to the point where you can actually start feeling the same emotions as before, well according to Dr. Maxwell Maltz and his work Psycho-Cybernetics, this can cause serious emotional scars and tear up your self image something awful. This is like the domino effect, and can lead to anxiety as well as other health related issues. Although Dr. Maltz’s work is geared toward the area of successful living, the principals are universal and can be applied directly to anxiety, stress, compulsions, and Please see What`s Inside An Emotional

Scar on page 2

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How To Turn An Emotional Scar Into An Emotional Strength

Getting Started from page 1

By Joshua David helping you to take back control over your life. The thing that sparked my interest was when he said something about the self image being the driving factor for a person`s success or failure. This seemed like a revelation to me at the time. I remember watching Oprah when she was talking about the movie “The Secret”, and how powerful your thinking is. I remember when I saw this I was thinking, “Huh? Yeah right… wolf-tickets!” Then when I heard of this research from Dr. Maltz about the self-image being the driving force in humans, I realized in myself that the reason why I do a lot of things , the way I dress, talk, and act is all directly related to how I look at myself or the self-image. After stumbling on this concept I couldn`t wait to tell my wife who was having major issues at the time.

“Men occasionally stumble over the truth, but most of them pick themselves up and hurry off as if nothing ever happened.” -Sir Winston Churchill

Now, I`m just a regular person, a loving father of 4 , who just so happened to stumble across this information . After I explained the psycho-cybernetic principals to my wife it help her free herself from anxiety issues. Actually it worked so well that her friends and family noticed , and when she told them that it was her husband that helped her , these people started coming to me and asking me about it too. I am not a teacher or public speaker , and I was actually pretty apprehensive about sharing this information with everyone, but because so many people are suffering from anxiety issues because of their distorted self-image that if I can help just 1 person realize their true self I`m at peace . I have no idea why most psychologists omit this from the heaps of information that they “reveal” to their patience. Well, since my goal is not to keep you coming back to get a “fix” of therapy or medicine, I will tell you the truth about how to fix your anxiety issues.

What`s Inside An Emotional Scar from page 1 phobias. Let me try to describe it …..It`s like, when you scrape your knee on a pavement, a wound appears on that area where ,eventually, a scar forms in order to protect that same area from further wounding. The same can be applied for people when they get wounded emotionally. When you get hurt from what other people say about you or when you find their actions rubbing you the wrong way, it`s only natural for emotional scars to form in your mind and you tend to build a protective wall around you in order to prevent from getting wounded again. But the problem with this is that the same wall that you build to protect you can also stop you from feeling true happiness, contentment and other genuinely good sensations that life brings. For example, if you had an experience where you were riding a bus and as you sat in one of the seats, someone you didn't know placed their

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hand on your thigh as if it was a normal thing to do. This kind of experience can cause you to believe that all men or women are like that. You may end up never getting close to anyone physically or emotionally as you feel that you cannot trust people.

The prevailing concept of beauty in our current society can cause emotional scaring as well. “They say” a person must have a proportional face and at the same time, they must be tall, slim and fair in complexion in order to be considered “typically beautiful”. Anyone who does not fall under this umbrella is deemed ugly. Worse, if you have a scar on your face due to an accident, you would feel and believe that people would reject you and they would not take you seriously because of the way you look. Unfortunately, if you believed this without any question, your self-esteem would surely drop to zero. You would withdraw from society so much so that you would become reclusive leaving yourself even more vulnerable to insults, hurts and criticisms. People gain emotion scars primarily because there are people in their past who have wronged them in such a way that they just can`t seem to let go of what happened. This is especially true when the people whom you love and respect were the ones involved in that wrongdoing. Let`s say you had a controlling parent who constantly told you what to do and criticized you often for every little mistake, you`d probably become this person who sees their self as a failure and this may also lead you to defy any person of authority later on because of the loss of trust from your authority figure from the past. By building an emotional wall that`s meant to protect you from any emotional hurts and criticisms is also denying yourself from ever feeling the power of true love, kindness and other awesome feelings that that are difficult to encounter with a hard heart.

Removing The Emotional Scar? By Joshua David What you need to keep in mind is that people are not the ones who hurt us. It may seem as though people hurt us by their actions and words, but rather, it is the way you reacted to your bad experiences that has caused you to develop these emotional wounds. When you have a poor way of seeing yourself along with constantly feeling negative about yourself, you tend to get hurt easily. You tend to form a picture in your mind that you`re the kind of person that other people don`t like or accept. You tend to build an image in your head that you are this person who is out of place in the world that you live in. The stronger your self-doubt is, the more susceptible you are to petty threats and insults. But, the reality that you have to realize yourself is that all those thoughts, feelings , and preconceptions are all in your mind. The good news is ,since you put those thoughts in your mind, you can also change them. Panic-Stopper Psycho-Cybernetics gives you all the tools you need for you to be able to see yourself clearly, and help you to be able to help yourself out of the funk that you are in. Helping yourself is key. So, you must realize that you need to be thick-skinned, and a bit vulnerable all at the same time, so you can prevent yourself from getting upset and stressed easily but still be able to feel warmth, happiness and all the wonderful things that life has

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How To Turn An Emotional Scar Into An Emotional Strength

to offer. Whatever criticisms that you may get from other people, you must take them in a constructive manner. For example, if people constantly tell you that you are fat, don't get insulted. Just simply ignore it and tell yourself that nobody has the right to judge you, especially in terms of one's physical appearance. You can stay unaffected by what the others tell you and once they see that you don`t get bothered by what they have to say, their criticisms would eventually stop as they learn to accept that you are happy with what you look like and how you are as a person. Or, you can also use the criticisms that you receive from other people about your physical appearance and turn it into motivation for you to get physically fit. You would be able to drop some pounds and at the same time, increase your selfconfidence and self-worth. And in so doing, you would be more comfortable with who you are as a person and you would feel more mellow and relaxed so much so that little things won`t even bother you anymore. Did you know when we are relaxed, there is a lesser chance for us to get insulted because it`s easier to ignore threats? Being relaxed is what enables people to have “a sense of humor” about things that would normally make the anxious person upset. Other than preventing yourself from being overly sensitive, you need to realize that you possess a responsible attitude naturally . We all do . It`s part of human nature. By responsible attitude I mean you need to realize that YOU are in control. You need to be prepared to do something to get what you want rather than waiting for things to just happen but not at the expense of other people of course. You also can't rely purely on other people to do things for you. You need to take charge of your own life as well as your emotional needs. So, to ensure that you get what you need, you should be ready with a plan of action, then take action while at the same time anticipating the little twists and turns that may happen along the way. Another key in order to turn your emotional scar into a strength is to realize that you can`t please everybody. It`s just down right impossible. Even if you try to make everyone accept and love you, there will always be people who don`t, it`s just a fact of life. Accept that there are people who will not be able to like you for who you are and if you do this, then, you probably wouldn`t ending up feeling frustrated, disappointed and angry. You must change the way you think. How? By focusing on a past success that you`ve had in your life. It could be anything great or small. Remember the feeling that you had when you were able to accomplish that past success. And you know what you should do about all the times where you may have failed…? Forget them. It is naturally difficult to forget a bad experience, but you don`t have to constantly think about it. Constantly reliving a bad past experience only does one thing…… It teaches your mind and your self-image(how you think about yourself) a pattern to follow. By beating yourself up about a failure and reliving those emotions teaches your mind to follow the same pattern all the time. It`s true. Realization of this fact is key to your recovery. Strive to change your attitude towards things and how you react to people and circumstances as this would surely enable you to achieve the life, happiness, inner strength and peace of mind that you have been looking for. In addition, you need to learn to forgive yourself and other people with no strings attached. Did you know that forgiveness is phony if you hold on to the bad

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memories of people who committed some sort of wrongdoing against you? If you don`t truly “forgive and forget” you`ll find yourself feeling that the person who offended you owes you something for forgiving them and you would appear selfrighteous in a bad way towards that person if you cannot let go of the fact that you were right and they were wrong. For example, if you made a mistake such as being absorbed with your own life and failing to be there for your close friend, especially when they needed you, just let it go. Stop laying guilt all over yourself. Stop mulling over whose fault it is that your friend turned out that way due to what they went through. Forget the days you made a mistake by not being there for your friend when they were in trouble. Live and learn. All you can do now is to lend a helping hand and an open ear to your friend and provide them with all the support that you can give starting now. Live for today not yesterday. Forgiving is key to turning your emotional scar into a strength. When you forgive, you must never have a reason to forgive a person. Rather, you should forgive with an open heart and an open mind. You must be willing to let go of his indiscretion and stop condemning them for what they did to you. If you are able to do this, then, you would be able to obtain true peace of mind and real happiness. Removing emotional scars is a major step in becoming the person who you really want to be as you would generally live happily and freely because you don’t feel worried or frustrated. Have you ever thought of taking a personal crisis head on and convert it into an opportunity for growth, especially those circumstances that remind you of how you reacted to your painful experiences? For instance, in the above example, you take the criticisms that you receive from other people regarding your weight as a motivation and allowing it to fuel your desire to become physically fit. Thus, you would have the determination and the commitment to see to it that you accomplish your goal. And once you accomplish that goal successfully, this would bring about a stronger self-confidence and selfworth for yourself which will be more defined than ever before. These so-called crisis situations can be encountered everyday as it depends on how you react and respond to these circumstances. For some people, all they want to do is to avoid circumstances that they see as difficult or even painful, especially when these same situations remind them of their bad experiences. But in the event that they cannot avoid getting involved in this kind of situation, they become so stressed out and pressured to handle such situations that they may experience heightened sensations such as dizziness, hyperventilation and nausea, the “panic attack”. If a person has a bad experience where his peers made him the butt of the jokes in a social gathering and he was made to look like a fool, it’s highly likely that he would avoid attending all other social events in the future. This is because he feels that if he goes to a gathering, nobody would take him seriously and that he would just get himself embarrassed.

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Turning The Emotional Scar Into A Strength By Joshua David However, there are people who thrive in situations filled with pressure because they can convert that pressure into a motivation that would help them perform better than ever before. That same pressure makes them more determined and more driven to focus in accomplishing their goals never ceasing until he achieves what he wants to achieve. For instance, theater actors may feel nervous and agitated before the start of the play but they can use that nervous energy to psyche themselves up to become more focused in delivering a stellar performance, call upon whatever abilities they may have that are not usually obvious and be able to actually achieve that throughout the show. A crisis can either make or break you. Reacting to a crisis in a positive manner can give you more confidence, inner strength and wisdom so much so that you become a better and more mature person. On the other hand, if you react to a crisis in a negative and defeatist manner, you would become more frustrated, empty and at the same time, it can undermine your skills as you discover that you are not capable to handle such situation. So, if you want to transform your emotional scars into emotional strengths, you need to possess a winner’s approach. It is all about: 1. Preparation – We need to be able to prepare for situations that we may try to avoid so, that we would be able to stop avoiding them and handle them in a proper and healthy manner. For instance, if you are afraid of public speaking, you can do preparation work so, that you would be able to get used to sharing your insights and feelings with a group of people and becoming used to mingling with different types of people such as becoming a member of a club or two, joining speech clinics and workshops and attending social gatherings with family and friends. When you are able to train yourself in relaxed situations, you would be able to become more resourceful in finding out many viable responses for anticipated crisis situations and actually apply them to overcome such circumstances. In addition, you would be able to learn more about yourself and the situations you are preparing for if you would be able to do so in a relaxed manner. You control your thinking , so teach your mind new habits. 2. Reaction - Your reaction to crisis situations is very important as this dictates how you respond to such circumstances. You need to be proactive in the sense that you need to accept the challenge that comes your way in a positive manner. You need to analyze it realistically to form the appropriate response you would need to make in order to reach your ultimate goal. For example, when my wife was diagnosed with schizo-affective disorder, she felt like her whole world collapsed. She was crying all the time. She heard disembodied voices. She felt like everybody was conspiring against her. She felt so alone because she believed no one could really understand what she was going through. But then, she came to know about the principles of Psycho-Cybernetics that Dr. Maltz discovered some 50 years ago, and she

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learned that her negative reaction to what was happening around her as well as inside her caused her to become so depressed and angry. Since she became aware of this, she decided to use her medical condition as a way to get to know her self better. She discovered many things about herself such as the situations that irritate her and the reasons behind her irritation. She was able to improve her resourcefulness in finding out practical solutions as well as garner inner strength, confidence and courage than she ever had before. And as my wife was able to recover from her illness, she appreciated what she learned during this whole ordeal and this made her realize that since she was able to survive from schizo-affective disorder, she would be able to survive anything that life would bring her. 3. Attitude – A defeatist attitude can cause you to feel that nothing goes your way. This kind of negative attitude makes you feel that life has cheated you from everything that you feel you deserve. However, a positive attitude allows you to accept whatever challenge life gives you and to exert your best in overcoming crisis. In addition, you need to be practical when you analyze crisis and stop treating it like it is a do or die situation. Crises may seem difficult and unsolvable in the beginning. But if you are able to step back to analyze it realistically, you are willing to give your best shot to overcome it and you actually carry out what you planned to do, then, it’s highly likely that you would be able to triumph over that particular crisis. And in the process, you would emerge with more confidence, inner strength and grace than before. As mentioned before, crises can happen everyday that may seem difficult to handle, especially those that remind us of painful experiences in the past, which caused you to have emotional wounds. But if you are going to accept these situations positively and be proactive about them, then, you would be able to embrace crises as opportunities for you to not only eliminate whatever emotional scars you may have but also grow as a person. This is just a part of what the Panic-Stopper Psycho-Cybernetics program is all about. Psycho-Cybernetics fills in the blanks for you and helps you to understand and learn how to work your own mind. Now, I am by no means taking any credit for discovering psycho-cybernetics principals. Dr. Maxwell Maltz discovered these principals decades ago, but because these principals can actually help you recover for good and can`t be easily bottled and sold to you every two to three weeks, this information has not been popularized by the mainstream. Since psycho-cybernetic principals have made such a difference in my life as well as my loved ones, it gives me great joy and a feeling of self fulfillment to share it with you. If you would like to learn more about Panic-Stopper Psycho-Cybernetics visit www.panic-stopper.com and get free instant access to our forum and social network. Take Care, Joshua David

“Stop stressing and start living” -Dr. Maxwell Maltz