Navigating Your Mind (eBook)

Section 1

Life is Loss

Chapter 1

Life “Screwed Me Over”

To be human is to experience loss. Dealing with loss is difficult no matter who you are; some people may be better at managing loss than others, but it is always difficult. I have been in the field of psychiatry for twenty years and a clinical social worker since 1995. In that time, I have seen people experience all kinds of losses and deal with those losses in different ways–some productive, others destructive.

Many of us internalize our beliefs, thoughts, and feelings about a loss, even repressing our memory of the events that surrounded it. We may accept our loss to the point where we believe we have little control over anything in our lives because of one event that happened we could not control, such as the death of a loved one, the loss of a job, or being abused as a child. Life can be difficult, and just surviving from day to day can take a lot of energy. Consequently, many of us are stressed in our current situations and believe we cannot change anything that occurred in our pasts, or even the problems we are having in the moment, much less change what the future holds for us. Our parents, grandparents, teachers, and society have taught us that we are not strong enough to change or better our lives; the process is too difficult, and we cannot overcome difficulties.

We have been taught to deal with loss by not dealing with it. We may learn at an early age not to express our emotions or tell people how we think, what we feel, or what we believe; we do not share what has happened to us that has caused us pain. We have been taught that people don’t want to hear about our problems. Society tells us, “Pull yourself up by your bootstraps. Don’t dare tell anyone what happened to you. Just get over it.” We are even taught to find shame and fear in the loss—to fear that other people will look down on us if we talk about it, which will only make matters worse—so it’s best just to “get over it.”

This book is not going to show you how to “just get over it.” It is about having the courage to face your losses. It will provide you with techniques to overcome any adversity that life throws at you. Throughout my life, I have had to overcome personal adversity, and I will share some of those stories with you in these pages as well as stories of people with real problems who have overcome their own fears and adversities and how they did it. This book won’t provide you with a way to escape pain, because everyone experiences pain, loss, and adversity. However, you can find opportunities to reclaim and recreate yourself in your struggles so you can move forward. If I could overcome adversity and go on to have a successful and happy life, then trust me, you can do so as well. Let me tell you a little of my story so you understand why I believe we can recover from our losses and go on to lead peaceful, joyful, and happy lives.

When I started elementary school, I had a hard time reading and writing. As a result, the school psychologist, said to be the best in the state, gave me an IQ test to determine where I should be in school. The test showed my IQ was 78; the experts said that score reflected that I was barely able to function in a learning environment. The psychologist told my parents to get me ready to be a truck driver, a laborer, or something very simple. She predicted that I wouldn’t even graduate from high school. After that test, the school decided to place me in special education classes.

My parents petitioned to have me tested again, but their requests were denied. School officials said their psychologist was one of the best, and her test results were all they needed. Ignoring the school officials’ predictions for my future, my parents had me tested at the local university, and those test results were markedly better than what the school found. However, the school chose to ignore those test results, again saying that the school psychologist’s findings were all they needed and all they would use. I was only in the third grade, but the school had decided my future for me.

To me, the situation felt hopeless. I was miserable, and I had no hopes for a future beyond what I imagined would consist of activities like pulling weeds, digging ditches, or driving a garbage truck.

Lonely and bored, I stayed in special education—I called it educational prison—until tenth grade. That year, the school had a new psychologist, Dr. Ericson. After watching me in class for a few weeks, Dr. Ericson asked me, “Why are you in special education classes?” After I told him my story, Dr. Ericson quickly said that I needed to be reassessed. At his request, the school tested me again, and my IQ was 126! As my parents and I had known all along, those first test results were wrong. Thanks to Dr. Ericson, I was finally able to attend mainstream classes.

I could hold a grudge and dwell on the difficulties and mistakes of my past, but today, when I look back on what was admittedly a hellish time, I don’t feel angry or sad, In fact, my years in special education made me who I am today. What I learned during those years of being treated differently, losing friends, and being scared and lonely, made me want to go to college to learn a way to help people so they wouldn’t have to experience what I’d been through. You see, I followed my grandmother’s advice by taking the lemons in my life (and there were plenty!) and turning them into lemonade that everyone could enjoy.

All through those years I was in special education, my mother and grandmother still encouraged me to set my sights on college. While I could not foresee how college would be possible, I was left with a little hope, and once I was reassessed, I knew college was a good possibility. When I went off to the University of Utah, I realized my mother and grandmother had been right all along, and I could do anything I wanted to do—without the limitations that had come with my special education label. So much for the naysayers who had said I’d never be more than a manual laborer.

College wasn’t easy at first. I had problems with the remedial classes I had to take to make up for what I hadn’t learned in high school. But I stuck with them because I knew I was going to graduate from college. My studies started out in communications and business at the University of Utah, but when I moved to Texas, I decided that entering social work was the correct career choice for me. I might have started out in special education, with no hope for the future, but I didn’t let that stop me. I graduated with honors with bachelor and master’s degrees from the University of Texas.

Several professors encouraged me to get a Ph.D. and join the university faculty, but I knew what I wanted to do. I wanted to take what had happened during my years in special education and college and use them to help people get through their own trials and adversities. Today when I’m asked, I tell people that special education was the best thing that could have happened to me because it helped me learn to navigate through any other adversities that life threw my way.

I am here today to show you that YOU can overcome ANY fear or problem you have. You overcome by facing the fears that problems create, changing your thinking (which will change your brain), and learning techniques to stop just DOING your life, and instead, start CREATING what you want your life to be. You can be as successful as your greatest dream or aspiration by creating the proper thought patterns that will help you to create the reality of that dream.

Nobody gets through this life unscathed or problem free. Simply put, problems will always exist; losses will always occur. What we do with them is what we can control. For most of us, problems start when we are children being bullied on the playground, not being understood by our parents, being abused or neglected, experiencing problems in school, not believing or feeling that we are smart, not accomplishing everything we wanted to do, and most of all—not feeling we are understood.

We “bottle up” or what I call “emotionally constipate” ourselves with the pains and problems of life in order to be okay. We repress our feelings because we are afraid of relationships—we fear not feeling safe in relationships and not being able to trust others. Not feeling safe and not trusting drive fear into our relationships that results in problems with other people. We may try to communicate how we feel and what we think, but no matter how we try, we never really feel understood by others. The most logical way to deal with not being understood is to quit sharing and expressing ourselves with others. We emotionally constipate ourselves. For example, as children, we tried to express ourselves in the best way we knew how. If our parents were attentive, they listened to us. If not, we tried crying, yelling, throwing things—whatever it took to get attention from our parents and others. Sometimes this behavior resulted in our being placated, but as we grew older and tried to use this behavior in school or in the workplace, it backfired on us, resulting in more problems. As a result, emotional constipation became the way we dealt with our feelings, our desires, our wants and needs, and how we coped with any loss in life, including a loss of being understood, appreciated, or having meaningful relationships with others.

Most of us will equate loss with death or bereavement, the loss of a loved one, but losses can cover a much broader number of life events, and they can all cause us great stress. Beyond the...