Labeling Liabilities – Ease of Navigation through Life, the World and Everything – Made Easier with TWR
- By Conscious Commerce
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- 26 Apr, 2016
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We learn to navigate physically through the world around us. We build maps of pleasurable experiences and dangers that we can then move towards or away from when we are in similar territory in the future.
These are our most familiar ones, the images of the world we have built from earliest childhood. Each map is developed out of our life experiences, which are imprinted upon the software of our physical being and genetic personality.
Jean’s parents were loving parents but often harsh in their criticisms when Jean misbehaved or when they thought she was not performing at her best. She internalized these criticisms, setting unreasonably high standards and demands for herself in her mental maps, which persisted into adulthood.
Sally was a well-liked and popular girl in school. Her parents were enthusiastically supportive and encouraging of her academic and social achievements. She exuded a warmth and charm that endeared her to her peers. She was able to share with them a lot of the nurturing she experienced at home. She just knew she was ok, and was able to help others connect with that inner ‘okayness’ as well.
How we navigate through our emotional worlds will also be mapped out in accordance with our life experiences.
Bob was the second of five children in a family where his father was emotionally and physically abusive. He appeared surprisingly calm and unaffected by the stresses he experienced, which appeared to be similar to those of his four siblings – all of whom suffered from various forms of post traumatic stress disorders. On close questioning, it became apparent that he had developed two assets very early in life that provided him with protection of sorts. The first was a keen sense of when his father was going to become violent. This didn’t spare him the abuse, but he was emotionally prepared when it arrived. The second was the support of his very loving older sister, who favored him over his three brothers and provided comfort when he was distressed. This enabled him to feel that he could deal with the abuse, and so its effects were not as strong on him as they were on his brothers and sister. He simply knew he could weather the storms of his father’s tempestuous outbursts, having the safe harbor of his sister’s love as refuge and solace.
Our rules for relating with others are very strongly influenced by our personalities and our life experiences. To a very great extent these rules are shaped within our families and strengthened (both positively and negatively) through other social interactions.
George was a shy but likeable boy who enjoyed his parents’ love and support and a stable home. He was nevertheless hesitant to make friends and tended to be a loner in school, despite the fact that he was generally liked by his peers. When he went away to college, his shyness became a liability to him, as he felt very lonely without the supports of family and known peers. In counseling, he came to realize that bullying in his pre-school year had led him to live the life of a snail – retreating within his shell whenever he felt insecure.
For many of us our spiritual maps are borrowed from our family’s religious beliefs and practices. Often, we are asked to take these on faith and to not question whether any of the details we have been given are outdated or perhaps even mistaken.
Jean was able to let go of her overly-high expectations of herself and of her self-criticisms, and programmed in a comfortable acceptance of herself and more reasonable standards for goals and achievements.
Sally became a therapist. She was delighted when she discovered TWR because this rapidly and deeply effective method enables her to help people develop self-confidence and ‘okayness’ very quickly and easily.
Bob discovered that his ‘okayness’ had been achieved at the price of burying his negative feelings and memories outside of his conscious awareness. Working in an emergency medical service, he found himself excessively upset when he had to help people who had been traumatized. His patients’ traumas resonated with the ones he himself had buried, which now surfaced to his emotional awareness, inviting him to release them. TWR was enormously helpful because he could use it discretely at work whenever someone’s trauma triggered a reaction in him. He was especially pleased because he could use TWR without anyone knowing he was doing so.
George overcame his shyness, building up his self-confidence through the installation of positive beliefs and feelings, after releasing his habitually shy maps for navigating through life.
