Many moons ago, I wrote a list of 12 Prin­ci­ples that were the basis of my under­stand­ing, both of my life and of my coun­selling prac­tice. I’ve been think­ing about pulling them together into a small book that I could give to new clients.

I’ve decided that I’d, at least for now, tackle each of the top­ics here, in the blog. We’ll see how it goes.

7. Grow­ing up means hear­ing hard truths about our­selves and, rather than get defen­sive and run around whin­ing about being ill-treated, deal­ing with what is revealed. This process begins from where I am, as I calmly accept myself, and then incor­po­rate into my self-knowing all aspects of who I am and what I am doing.

“It’s all your fault!”

I sus­pect that most peo­ple are more con­cerned with per­fect­ing their defen­sive­ness and whin­ing than they are with rad­i­cally alter­ing their way of being in the world.

I am of course guilty of this, too. I remem­ber sit­ting with my ther­a­pist some years ago, and going on about being hard done by. She said, “I have a book that will help you, but you have to actu­ally fol­low through with what the writer sug­gests.” I agreed that I would.

She handed me a copy of my own book, This End­less Moment.

I took her point. I was clearly using the ses­sion to end­lessly gripe about what I thought was hap­pen­ing to me. I could have been using the ses­sion pro­duc­tively—exam­in­ing options for mov­ing on from where I was.

The ses­sion was becom­ing a sup­port session—one that sup­ported my feel­ing bad about myself.

This is all too com­mon. We are excel­lent at find­ing evi­dence for our pre-conceived notions. If I believe that I was vic­tim­ized in the past, and also believe that I have no choice but to stay a vic­tim now, all I will see are things that sup­port my belief. If I think some­one is behav­ing badly, all I will see is bad behav­iour. If I believe that I am depressed, or manic, or con­fused, or stu­pid, I will see end­less exam­ples sup­port­ing my belief.

So, what is the “hard truth” of this?

Well, sim­ple. You are select­ing things to sup­port beliefs you say you want to change.

The hard truth is that what you are feel­ing, and how you are act­ing, is all about you. Out of a myr­iad of options, you are choos­ing the one(s) that lead(s) to mis­ery, self-alienation, and confusion.

Because we get into the habit of see­ing things one and only one way (in sup­port of our belief in our “hard-done-by-ness,”) we have learned that whin­ing gets us a cer­tain amount of atten­tion. Peo­ple seem to feel sorry for us, make con­ces­sions to us, (so as not to have us ruf­fle our feath­ers,) do what we want them to, etc. So, there is a ben­e­fit to our whin­ing. We appear to be the cen­tre of other people’s uni­verse. Until, of course, they get sick of lis­ten­ing to us.

We then dump them, and blame them for being insen­si­tive. And prove again that we are hard-done-by.

See why it’s called a “hard truth?”

Years and years of blam­ing oth­ers, and sud­denly you wake up—to what you are doing, who you are, and how you are dig­ging your own pit.

Some choose defensiveness

“Maybe if I duck my head???”

Insight ther­apy is pre­cisely about get­ting us to see the games we are playing—with our­selves and oth­ers. When the insight comes, it’s like the V8 commercial—it involves a vigourous slap to the head. There’s a “Yikes! I AM doing that, aren’t I?” The wise per­son then accepts the infor­ma­tion as “so,” incor­po­rates it into their self-definition, and pro­ceeds to mak­ing other choices.

Oth­ers, imme­di­ately after the slap, say, “But… but… but… I can’t help myself. That’s the way I am, how I was brought up, and besides, what you are sug­gest­ing is too hard, scary, com­pli­cated…” And the drama goes on.

Many are the excuses, but all of them boil down to “I am the help­less vic­tim of…” Being defen­sive sim­ply means you are not ready to give up your beliefs and behav­iours—you are, in a sense, happy to be miserable.

It’s another hard truth—all excuses are tools to delay doing your life differently.

Our approach is sim­ple, and likely obvi­ous by now. It’s called self-accepting, self-responsibility. You start by becom­ing aware of the games you play with your­self, and accept­ing that it is, indeed, you that is play­ing with you. Once you make this leap, which requires learn­ing your own pat­terns and also notic­ing your defen­sive­ness, you begin liv­ing self-responsibly.

Self respon­si­ble liv­ing is key

We con­sider self-responsibility to be entirely beyond sim­ply own­ing that you are respon­si­ble for you. It’s also not about blam­ing your­self for your past errors of judge­ment. It’s about fully and com­pletely accept­ing respon­si­bil­ity for your life.

In other words, you atten­tion shifts from blam­ing oth­ers, and look­ing out­side of your­self for the source of your mis­ery, to mak­ing ele­gant choices.

Our work here is not designed to tell you how to live your life—that’s com­pletely up to you. Our goal is to help you to take respon­si­bil­ity for it all—to own the life you have, and to man­age your self and your life accord­ing to your deep­est desires. The focus then becomes “What can I do to make my life the best it can be?”

The com­plain­ing, grip­ing, and whin­ing are silenced, and you begin to walk your own path, your own way.