Fixing

I would guess that there are other therapists who go into our fields because we not only want to fix others, but ourselves too. Fortunately, at UCO, we were "encouraged" to work on our own stuff before we tried to help anyone else. (Required to go TO therapy ourselves).

One of my biggest faults as a therapist is that it makes me furious when someone is being tortured right in front of me. If they said, "He only hits me on the weekends," or, "She only has a fling now and then; it's no big deal," I want to flip around on the floor like a trout!

Why, why, why are we all, or many of us, if not all, susceptible to lies? If I told you I am the Jolly Green Giant, you would dispute it. Yet, if someone, somewhere, when we were ten, told me I was the Jolly Green Giant, I put velcro on the words and stuck them on my back. Then, I repeated, over and over, "I'm the Jolly Green Giant," and proceeded to only wear green clothing when I could find it, even though I might hate green, it makes me look dead, which it does.

Hmmmm....Could that be because I feel dead, and the green complements the lie I've believed so fully, and that believing that lie is making me feel that I am actually dying, inside?

One way my first therapist helped me battle the lies that were bombarding me from every direction (possibly worse depending on how many voices said you were the Jolly Green Giant, or how insistent they were that you were in fact, only good enough to be on a green bean can), was to LISTEN to the ridiculous things they say.

AND I PROMISE YOU: IF YOU LISTEN, AND THINK ABOUT IT, THE LIES WILL BE AS RIDICULOUS AS THE ABOVE SCENERIO!

Some of the smartest think they are stupid. Some of the prettiest think they are a beast. Some of the most talented never develop their gifts!

Interestingly, several therapists later, this newest one also said the same thing: "If you don't listen, how can you ever dispute it? How can you ever identify that it's a lie?"

(Picture yourself standing in the kitchen with the blender on, and everyone in the kitchen is trying to yell over the blender, each a little louder, until your head is exploding? That was me when Doubt and Unbelief kept me stuck in the lies!)

So, Therapist Six had me write down what I was hearing. I discovered that I said to myself, as I passed every mirror, "You are fat as a hog." I was totally shocked. Well, if you said that to me, I'd never listen to you again, never speak to you again, yet I was listening to it all day every day from inside myself, because someone, a sadist in Tuff Nut jeans, said that to me when I was ten!

(By the way, I weighed 135 lb. when I was plagued with that lie, down from 260).

The next step was to put a line down the middle of a page in a spiral notebook, and on one side I wrote: "Lies I've been Listening to." On the other side I wrote the title: "What's really True." So, on the left side it said: "I'm fat as a hog." On the other side I wrote, "NO, THAT'S A LIE. The truth is, I'm heavier than I would like to be, but God loves me and my family loves me, and none of them would love me more if I were thinner." Then I would say, OUT LOUD, a Truth from God's Opinion about me, the Bible. more later...