THE
ANSWERS
ARE
WITHIN
By Peggy Holloway
Copyright 2010 by Peggy Holloway
Smashwords Edition
This e-book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This e-book may not be re-sold or given away to other people If you would like to share this e-book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your used only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner without the written permission of the author.
INTRODUCTION
One day while painting a landscape, I decided to put in one of those really high mountains like you see in the Rockies, the ones with snow on top.It was one of those spring days perfect for painting outside. I was working on the patio where I lived at the time and Confederate Jasmine covered the fence surrounding the patio. While I was putting on the snow with a knife, like icing a cake, I began to think about mountains and mountain hiking. I had hiked up mountains all over the United States when I was in my twenties and thirties.
One thing I always noticed while hiking up a mountain was that the higher you hike, the less growth there is.The most growth is in the valley. As soon as the word “growth” entered my mind, it set my thinking off in another direction, that of personal inner growth. And that is what this book is about.
One thing I want to say at the onset: If you’re looking in this book to find answers for yourself, then you need to put it back on the shelf. But if you have the guts for self examination, self reflection and self discovery, this book may be for you. But I warn you right now. You will never find answers for yourself in any book. They are all inside you. The biggest discovery you may find is that there are no right and wrong answers and sometimes there are just more questions which helps you grow even more. But I’m getting ahead of myself. Just turn the page.
CHAPTER ONE, DISTRACTIONS
Does it surprise anyone why you meet so few truly enlightened people with all these distractions going on? When was the last time you took a morning walk on a brisk spring day without a cell phone pressed to your ear, without music playing in an ear plug, and listened to the sounds of nature?I’ve known people who turn the TV on the minute they come in the door. I knew one woman who would come in with an arm full of groceries and turn the TV on while still holding bags full of groceries. There are some who sleep with a TV going all night. I’m not criticizing anyone, and not everyone wants to grow.
But this book is about inner growth and I do believe that in order to grow, you have to be quiet with yourself and listen to yourself, not someone else. NO ONE ELSE HAS ANSWERS FOR YOU! THEY ARE INSIDE YOU. LISTEN!
So, how do you listen? I don’t know. You have to figure that out for yourself. Some sit on the floor Indian style with soft music playing. This never worked for me. I would keep trying to figure out if I knew that tune and I would get super distracted. I won’t even tell you what does work for me.
You really do have to capability to figure this out for yourself.
At first it can be terrifying to be with and listen to yourself, especially if you’re used to being with a lot of people or if you’re used to having a lot of distractions and noise, so you might want to start with small units of time and work up.
CHAPTER TWO, ISLAND OF THE BLIND
One of the very few enlightened people I met, a supervisor, when working on my internship, told me a story that had such a profound effect on me, I just have to share it. I don’t know where he got it, but here it is:
A man crashed his plane on an island inhabited by blind people, who nursed him back to health. The island was very beautiful and, as the pilot was healing, he walked around the island talking about the beauty. There were many varieties of flowers, waterfalls and pools of blue-green water, and white sandy beaches with crystal clear gentle waves coming up on the beach.
The people on the island, who had nursed him back to health, began to believe something was wrong with him. They took him to see ministers, psychologists, psychiatrists, and every kind of counselor and therapist. Finally, he took their hands and put them on his eyes and said, this is what I see with.”
The “wise” men and women had a meeting and decided that the patient’s eyes were the cause of his delusions. They decided that in order to cure him of these hallucinations and delusions, they would have to cut out his eyes, and so they did.
I tell this story to forewarn you before you decide to embark on a journey of inner growth. There will be many well meaning people who will try to put your “eyes” out because they will not understand and will feel threatened.
Most people like for things to stay familiar. If you change and grow so much that no one recognizes you anymore, they may not feel comfortable around you at first. They may even think you’ve lost your mind.
My biggest change that people noticed over time was the fact that I used to let everyone walk all over me and I learned to stand up for myself. Some people thought I had turned into a real bitch.
One of the biggest lessons for me to learn was that I couldn’t grow and change and at the same time have everyone’s approval. I was used to getting everyone’s approval by being what whatever who I was with wanted me to be. So I had to give this up and decide I would never please everyone and be myself.
A journey of self discovery can be very lonely. It may alienate loved ones for awhile or even permanently.
So, there will be a point where you will have to make a conscious choice between being happy with who you are and pleasing who you’re with. Once you are happy with who you are you won’t need to please people who don’t have your best interest at heart.
CHAPTER THREE, GROWING PAINS
I can honestly say that my biggest growth experiences were deep level gut wrenching and very painful. In fact I thought I would die sometimes. These were the lowest of the lows, the deepest and longest valleys. I believe that everyone is capable of growth, but some will turn to their drug of choice (alcohol, street drugs, prescription drugs, sick relationships, etc.) to try to make the pain go away. If they only knew what they would eventually gain by going through this valley, I don’t think anyone would try to numb this pain out.
I want to make one thing very clear. I’m not talking about choosing to stay in a situation where you’re in constant pain. I’ve never known anyone to grow from this. One example would be to stay in an unhealthy relationship, where you’re criticized and even hit. Some people call this “love.” I call it addiction. I don’t believe love is supposed to hurt.
I’ll say again, growing can be painful. You can’t be on the mountaintop all the time. It can be lonely, this growing process. That’s why, for me, it was necessary to do it with a good therapist. So, what is a good therapist?
Pay attention, because this will probably be the only place in this whole book where I will dare to give a few guidelines.
How much of his own work has she done? Think about it. How can a therapist possibly know what you’re going through when you get to the painful stuff if he hasn’t experienced it for himself?At a weekly staff meeting one morning, when I was a therapist, a fellow therapist was asking us for some ideas about how to help one of her patients to get in touch with her feelings. At the very next staff meeting this same therapist was complaining about this same patient and how that she couldn’t get her to quit crying. When some of us started questioning her about why she needed the patient to stop crying, she became defensive. She could have explored this some within herself and learned from it and she might have.
Is she merely trying to give you her belief system, or is she giving you the opportunity to explore your own. Here I’m talking about any belief system but a religious belief system is what a lot of therapist I’ve know try to give their patients. A belief is a “BELIEF” that’s why it’s not called a “FOR SURE.” I was lucky to have found a therapist who didn’t try to give me her belief system. In fact, to this day, I have no idea what she believed. But she did enable me to undo the brainwashing I had undergone growing up.
Does the therapist sit across a desk from you or does she have more of a living room setting?
Does your therapist insist on a “treatment plan?” I devoted a whole chapter to the DSM and treatment plans, but for now just think of a treatment plan as totally opposite from what this book is about. THE THERAPIST DOES NOT HAVE ANSWERS FOR YOU.
I would try to find a therapist who is there for me, who can tell me that whatever I’m feeling or thinking is good.
If a therapist starts giving you advice, run. A therapist I worked with once did nothing but give advice. He was a very popular therapist and made lots of money. His clients didn’t have to grow up. They had found a daddy with answers for them. Of course some of them had been going to him for many years and never seemed to grow. One day I was walking past his office and he was doing “therapy” with his office door open. I could hear him telling his client what to say to her husband when she got home. He was saying things like, “If he says this, then you say that.” If this is what you want, go for it, but buying a daddy can cost you plenty.
This brings us back to the growing pains part. I can remember in my own therapy and in my journey, what seemed like the really rough therapy sessions or times of my life that were the most painful was when I grew the most and gained the most insight. So a therapist who believes it’s their job to make you feel good all the time is not the kind of therapist who will help you grow. And I’m not talking about being stuck in a suffering cycle where you’re just enjoying your suffering.
One example of this is a client who has finally gotten in touch with the pain suppressed since childhood, and kind of staying in this pain and not moving beyond it. I had a client once who got hung up in her childhood pain and blamed any bad behavior on the fact that she had a rough childhood. Criminals sometimes do this, to try to escape prosecution.
Are you willing to go through the temporary pains to grow? There are plenty of people out there to give you support while you go through it.
CHAPTER FOUR, PERCEPTION
One day my sister asked me if I would watch a preacher on TV with her. My brothers and sisters, bless their hearts, are still trying to take me back to where I used to be. But I was visiting her and she had fixed me a delicious meal, so I agreed to watch with her.
There on TV was this thin dark haired man on a stage surrounded by literally thousands of people. He was smiling showing all his teeth and his eyes were blinking about a hundred miles an hour. He looked so nervous that it made me nervous watching him. I turned to my sister and asked, “What’s wrong with him?”
She looked at me and said, “What do you mean? You don’t think he’s fabulous?”
Now this is where Perception comes into the picture. My sister and I were watching the same TV show but were seeing two different things. Isn’t that amazing?
To my way of thinking, which may or may not be yours, perception is about 99.999…% of everything.
That’s why there are so many different religions using the same book, The Bible. Personally I think more people have messed themselves up using the bible than any other way. I used to say the bible has messed more people up than anything thing else. But I like to place responsibility where it lies. These people have messed themselves up. It’s not any books fault. But taking responsibility is for another chapter.
Think about something if you will. I’m standing on the NW corner of Vine Street and Rhubarb Avenue. You’re standing on the SW corner. There’s an automobile accident involving a truck and a car right in the middle of that intersection. Is our perception of this accident going to be the same?
My life experiences are different from yours. We had different parents, different teachers, different illnesses, different accomplishments, and different friends. We have been to different places. Even if we have been to some of the same places, we were there at different times, or if we were there in the exact same hotel at the very exact time, we probably ate different things, saw different things at different times, and had different dreams while sleeping while we were there.
Someone recently mentioned something about the truth. When I asked whose truth, they looked at me like I had lost my mind. To my way of thinking my perception is my truth. Does that change from time to time? Of course! As I grow, I see things differently.
None of us is going to see things the same way ever.
It doesn’t take any studies or so called research to see that, even if all babies were born the same, which we know they’re not, there are no two people alike. It’s common sense, right?
If no two people are alike, then how can any two people have the same perceptions? Then how can anyone else have any answers for you? NO ONE ELSE HAS ANSWERS FOR YOU. LOOK INSIDE.
CHAPTER FIVE, THE MAGICAL “IT”
In the 1970s there were bumper stickers proclaiming “I Found It.” I knew several people who had this on their car but I never did understand what this “It” was, but “it” must not have worked because “it” went away after awhile.
There have been many “its” over the years and I have tried many of them. I admit I was one of those people who would go around quoting things I read in books or heard someone say on TV. At one time, I was reading 3-6 “self-help” books every week. It took me years to finally think to myself, “None of these people have answers for me. How could they? They aren’t me.”
I’ve also seen people use the magical “It” as an excuse to not take responsibility for themselves. There is a whole chapter devoted to not taking responsibility and refusing to grow up, but for now I will mention this. I’ve heard people say, “I tried group therapy. “It” didn’t work. I tried AA, “it” didn’t work. I tried religion, “it” didn’t work.
After I completed my master’s degree in psychology, I started doing an internship with a psychologist who believed she had found a magical it. It was her discovery and she was going to write a book on this technique.
She claimed that none of the other approaches really worked before she invented this technique. She drove me crazy with all these rigid rules about following her techniques. She had patients who had been seeing her for five years and longer and appeared to still be stuck. I finally told her I couldn’t complete my internship with her.
Her enormous ego didn’t take it too well and she tried to tell me I needed help or I wouldn’t feel threatened by her technique.
I’ve seen therapists have their patients do some really weird stuff and the patients blindly follow. I’m talking about adults.
There is no magical “It.” The answers are inside. Look!!!
CHAPTER SIX, KNOWING
When I was in the first grade, I was walking from the school bus stop to our house with my sister who is three years older than I. We had about a half mile walk down a sandy one lane road and there were woods on each side. As we were walking along talking, I happened to notice off to my right were some baby quail on the ground. We thought they were so cute that we decided to take some home with us.