Situations arise that we feel we don’t have control over.  Sometimes it is positive, but most of the time it is the negative experiences that gets us flustered and responding poorly.   It is these experiences that are the building blocks of our lives that we filter today’s issues through.  Our interactions with others, our body images, our thoughts, our feelings our ______________, you fill in the blank.  Everything goes through our past whether we like it or not.   The question is how do we change these perceptions and judgments for a more positive understanding? 

            This question creates the answer we all look for from a counseling perspective, why do I do what I do and what can I do to change?  The process while it sounds relatively simple borders on the complex.   What do we need to change within our selves to achieve the goal we so desperately want?  This can be difficult pending on the depth of the hurt and how we have buried the hurt and what we are doing in the present time to ignore the hurt.   We as humans love to be physical.  We can see it, we can feel it, we can hear it, we can taste it, and we can smell it.  So the physical part of our existence seems to be validated by our senses.  However being human means we are emotional, and this can be tough to validate through our senses but it is validated through our feelings and emotions.   What’s running the show and how?

Handling these past experiences that influence todays decisions is tough.  We think we can handle it if we only ___________, yes another fill in the blank.   Taking a look at how we are dealing with that experience from the past to the present is a beginning.  Accepting that while this has happened, it does not mean this is who I am.   What do I need to do to change, the people I hang with, the places I go, the things I do, the amount of sleep I get, the things I watch?  The negatives I feed my senses with contribute to the negatives I have in my thoughts and feelings. 

                                             It does not Run My Show.

Mark Holloway | MA, LLPC