The Struggle Is Real

Struggle, and potential struggles, are all around us. Nations struggle over boundaries, religious groups struggle for identity, politicians struggle for power. These are the struggles of the greater world that we as individuals have little power over.

The struggle I am talking about here is the personal struggle. We, as individuals, struggle to be seen, to be loved, to be heard, to be confident, to be truthful, to get what we want, to get others to do what we want. The list of things we struggle for, about, and with seems almost endless. Many people wake up in the morning with struggle on their minds, live with it all day, and go to bed with it at night.

Taking On External Struggles

Many of these struggles come to us from our own sense of inadequacy. Sometimes, though, they are planted by the world around us. We struggle with fears about the future because these fears have been planted in us by politicians. We struggle with imperfections in our body because advertising on media tells us we don’t look, dress, or smell right. On a daily basis, we are pelted by hundreds of media messages, many of which create a sense of struggle in our minds.

Since struggle, by its very definition, is a challenge or problem that requires strenuous mental or physical effort to overcome, it is no wonder that people with struggle in their lives feel bogged down, unable to progress. When that happens it can lead to a struggle over self, in which one asks, “Why am I unable to overcome all of the struggles in my life?“

These struggles can then lead to exhaustion, self-image problems, depression, addictions, and so on. And eventually, the struggle becomes so bad, you don’t discuss it. The struggle becomes internalized, hidden behind bad habits that protect it and keep it from being tampered with.

The source of our struggles needs to be tampered with. Without careful tampering, the struggle stays with us always.

Traditional Methods

In my practice, I discovered that the vast majority of my patients were already aware of why they acted the way they did.  They didn’t, necessarily, want to talk about it, but they did want to overcome the feelings of helplessness and worthlessness so they could get on with their life.

Women who didn’t trust their husbands already knew about the infidelity of their fathers. Men who were always angry remembered well being raised by angry fathers. Adults who drank too much alcohol when the going got tough, could recall their parents doing exactly the same thing. None of them needed me to dig back into their painful past. Rather, they needed a resolution to the problem.

When I started developing techniques my patients could use to overcome their struggles, I realized that several of them resisted change entirely. They didn’t want to stop the struggle. It was as though they had made a grudging friend with their struggle. Whether it was food addiction, fear, anger, or the host of other sources for struggle, they just didn’t have the energy, or desire to move out of the rut they were in, and move freely down another path.

Not making a positive change can often be a patient’s choice. But if you are willing to move through the unknown, it will take you far beyond normal, and give you personal power that you never thought possible.

A Whole New World

Patients say that stopping their struggle is like having a spiritual experience, one that moves them beyond the improved world they expected to be in, and into a world of much greater possibilities. For example, if you have learned to control your anger using my techniques, you will feel more in control of your world, and the people around you, because you will suddenly have a new level of respect from those who knew your former self. And if you struggle with a fear of life, you will find yourself free of that rut, and suddenly ready to experience the world as a fearless human being.

For more insights on how to overcome negative patterns and being the healing process download my latest book Stop The Struggle.

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