Hi! My name is Dean Henryson. I have recently finished a self-help book
entitled BE YOURSELF. I have a masters degree in clinical social work
and a bachelor's degree in psychology. I have counseled individuals,
couples, families, and groups for years. My experience and personal
growth have helped me write this book. I currently provide clinical social
work services to foster families at a private, non-profit agency. I have uploaded this portion of the book for people to download free.
HEALING
(taken from "Be Yourself")
Life becomes a greater struggle than it has to be when you are insensitive to your feelings. If you are not sensitive to your hurt, you will not be able to use that feeling as a guide to focus you in the direction you should be growing. When you are not growing in the right direction, your life fills with more negative stress, complicating any healing that needs to be done. If you are in a job you don't want, if you are in a marriage you are not supposed to be in, if you are doing things you are not supposed to be doing, life will be a greater struggle because you are not in your life. It is like trying to swim up a river that has a current too strong for you. The river has a strong current of stress that only can be dealt with positively if you knowùlike the salmonùthat your home is upstream. You should not be swimming up a stream that your feelings do not direct you up. Regular life-stress becomes compounded with stress from things you shouldn't have accepted. You don't get the relief you should because you are not doing things which make you feel good. If you don't follow what you are supposed to be doing, nature will get angry at you and punish you by making things more difficult than things should be. This does not mean that you cannot grow from swimming up a "wrong" river; you may be growing simply to become more sensitive to your feelings. Don't complain; start becoming what you are supposed to become. Get back into your river.
A powerful force that gets us off track is having never dealt with the pain we experienced as a child. This pain can become so old and deep that we forget it is even there. When it gets superimposed on the present, as it does despite the best attempts of our defenses to contain it, it makes us more needy and sensitive to present pain. This confuses us, and we may think we are going crazy because we don't know where so much pain and anger comes from. We don't know how to deal with the feelings because we have not placed them where they belong. The feelings cannot leave us until we attach them to where they belong. We may be afraid to look at the old, deep hurt. It may seem as an endless, dark space where we may never find light. After all, it must contain something scary for us to have been running from it our whole lives. In fact, it is the single most scariest thing for us to face in our lifetime, but we must in order to be healthy. And we must face it over and over again.
What helps you walk through this scary, dark space is knowing that you are in the process of embracing and becoming yourself. This is the little candle you can hold onto in the dark. You can stop looking for yourself outside: in other relationships, places, and in excesses of money or material objects. You are already complete in this moment. Other external things may come as they come, but you no longer need them. You are on the journey to yourself.
Stop running from yourself. It no longer makes sense. You are not bad; you are not powerless; you are not worthless; you only feel so when you do not face yourself, preventing yourself from being. Think about that. You should feel bad, powerless, and worthless when you are not being yourself. That is where you should be. That is part of your healing process. Otherwise, it would be too easy and painless for everyone not to be himself. Humanity would stop existing. Why won't you take the next step into the darkness? It is through the darkness that you will find true light. Do you want someone else to take that step for you? That will never happen. The step is yours to take, so you must take it.
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The book can be purchased at www.1stbooks.com. Simply type
in the title of book and author's name, and the site will find it for
you. You can download a copy of the entire book for a small fee at this
website. Or you can order a paperback version at your nearest major
bookstore for pick-up in 48 hours (tell them it is supplied by Ingram
Book Company). Preview & download available after August 22; paperback
