Becoming Captain of Your Own Ship |
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| Many adults come to my practice with a sense of doubt about their life choices, their current living situation, and their decision-making abilities. While they are doing fairly well at getting through their day-to-day jobs and family responsibilities, something feels unsettling. There is “noise” in their thinking process—interference with their ability to know their own path, own wants and needs and to truly know themselves. | ||
| We all evolve over many years with numerous messages from our parents, siblings, extended family members, teachers, friends, the media, and society. We internalize beliefs and values and do what we think is “right” according to these outside sources. When we reach adulthood, we are not always comfortable with knowing which messages we truly feel are consistent with ourselves and which ones make us feel that we should behave a certain way despite opposing personal beliefs. This is the process of identity formation. | ||
| Healthy people learn how to behave within legal and moral standards while, at the same time, feeling comfortable enough to feel and act differently from significant others without guilt. So often, adults are living their lives for other people; trying to please those around them while not pleasing themselves, too. We internalize many good messages as we mature and grow up, but we also are not sophisticated enough as children to edit out the negative, unhealthy messages we get. | ||
| Many messages we get are very subtle and insidiously work their way into our basic beliefs. If we learn that children are to be seen and not heard, we learn to be silent and not challenge others when our own rights or feelings are being compromised. If we learn that, our individualism and idiosyncratic differences are somehow “bad” we may feel guilty or shameful for being ourselves or may succumb to peer pressures that are not healthy. We may have an ongoing running tape of our parents or others telling us what to do without really trusting ourselves to be our own guides. | ||
| Confidence to be a truly independent person comes from accepting oneself as being “okay” and “good” regardless of some differences. It develops from recognizing our rights to feel certain emotions and to trust our own perceptions of our life experience. When we grow up in environments where the truths are distorted for others’ needs and defenses, we never learn that our own feelings are valid. This can lead to a sense of doubt about our own opinions, perceptions, and decisions. | ||
| The journey to building the necessary confidence to be one’s own best guide involves a great deal of assessment about the messages we learned especially as children. With an adult intellect, we can revisit the way in which our beliefs were formed. We can look back upon messages we received and evaluate from whom they came and the power we allowed those messages to have in our life. Psychotherapy with a licensed professional can really aid in this assessment process although it is each one of us, who ultimately must recognize our own beliefs, needs and wants. | ||
| I wrote the following poem to describe this journey of becoming one’s own captain: | ||
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Oh Captain of My Soul |
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| When we live for ourselves and feel comfortable being who we are, even if different from our parents and educators, we gain a wonderful sense of accomplishment, freedom, and strength. This is what growing up is all about ultimately—finding ourselves and having a solid sense of self. |
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This article was written by Dr. Laurel A. Sills, a Fully Licensed Clinical Psychologist (since 1987) and Life Coach. She provides direct, down-to-earth, short-term therapy with long-term results. She is passionate in her work and will help you stay motivated to change your life with regular commitment to changing habits in thinking and behaving. See her website at: www.DrLSills.com or www.BuildAStrongerYou.com |
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Copyright 2006© Laurel A. Sills, Psy.D. All rights reserved Back to Articles |