On Taking That First Step

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New clients (the virgin therapy folks) blow in from what seems like nowhere.

What prompts them to start the journey?   Usually they feel desperate and are in a lot of pain.  It’s a bottom of sorts.  It’s amazing how much pain a person can endure before they reach out.  How many things must go wrong in their life before they “get help”?

Fears of making the phone call stop them.

Knowing they want/need help, but also knowing they are smart and successful, so they’re not “allowed” to need help.

The sense of the “success” or “okayness” to the outer world overrides all the pain, all the mistakes.

It is truly amazing how much pain, disconnection, and deceit a person can endure – even if it is self-deceit.

What about you? Perhaps you arrived here at the end of a long road of self-interrogation.

“How can I tell him this now when I was supposed to be honest already?”

“How can I disappoint him again?”

“How many times can you disappoint a person… Before they leave you?”

How much dishonesty can one relationship endure before a person catches on or really sees the pattern?

How much before they mark you as distrustful?  Before they grasp the essence of your addiction?

How many times can you seduce a person and suck them into believing your half-truths? When did you think it would all come crashing down, really?

Inside this chamber of self-deceit, nothing matters except the rules you make for yourself. No one else counts. No one else exists. Actually, it hurts you to allow another to exist, to just be, when you’re devoted to this state.

The isolation is like that – a person pretends to “self” – creates their own rules and believes in that reality. It dictates, promises, calls… The delusion from that inner space echoes and reverberates until it is the only sound. It creates waves that bounce back on themselves, mixing and matching until all the tones are stale brown.

Which makes therapy like air on an open freshly drilled tooth.

Because of this, taking the first step out of that shell truly takes courage and persistence.

It’s an ongoing process of acting… then watching for outer results. Of moving and seeing the counter movements. Of slowing down so you can see how the world responds to you – the real you – moving through time and space.

It’s an ebb and flow – action, watch, reaction.

You learn to listen inside, listen again, and act in the outer world with authenticity.

When you can finally live outside that shell, it can feel like a new life.

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