Email Campaign Archive

Dear Friend, You are receiving this email because you signed up for the Emotional Healing Quick Start Guide. To unsubscribe, simply click on the link at the bottom of this message. First of all let me take this opportunity to say thanks to everyone who wrote in last week - I really appreciate it! Shooing Away The Feelings Of Not Good Enough Many people mentioned the feelings of not good enough - and how they were going to ask to have it lifted. I may have done you a disservice last week, mentioning so casually how I 'ended' it. Not so fast. Those nebulous and elusive feelings of 'not good enough' come in waves - so even if you end them today, next week another wave can come and knock you over again. The usual reaction to this second wave involves thinking and feeling you never succeeded in the first place. The storm passes - you step out of your house and think it's gone - when you're really in the eye of the hurricane - and you're fixin' to get pounded again. I'm not saying this to discourage you from working with it. Just don't beat yourself up if it comes back later on. Also, when I say "Lord, please help me by lifting this burden," understand that I've already put in quite a few hours trying to end it. In fact I remember it well... It was during a time of destitution (I was almost homeless) living in a dumpy little apartment that just would not clean up. Barely surviving, but absolutely focused on the emotional pain and how to end it. I was like a bulldog on a ham bone. You may need to be that focused, also, if you work with those feelings of 'not good enough'. Just a thought... Oh, and remember that shocking news I promised to tell you about? Going into denial may have saved my life! My Denial Protected Me What I neglected to mention last time - the good Dr. Welch first told me I had cancer in 2001. Four years before I did anything about it. Way back then he urged me to take immediate action. I said I'd get back with him. Instead, I practiced the oldest technique known to man. Denial. If you really don't know what to do (or don't want to do it), just deny! I pretended it didn't exist. "I don't really have cancer. No way. I'm too young. Besides, I'm not sure he said it really was cancer. Maybe it's a wart or something. Don't they call that cancer too?" Maybe it was some benign growth that even now is shamefully slinking away like a bum sneaking out of the Waldorf bathroom. Like an exposed freeloader at a fancy wedding. Maybe it will just do the right thing and leave. I know *I* would - if I were an unwanted growth. "I don't really have cancer." Why would I act like this? Here's the root of the problem, I think - Many years ago - back when I knew everything - I made a rock-hard decision that I would die before I ever had surgery of any kind. Like driving a spike into an oak tree - that decision stuck. I'd forgotten about it, but it probably influenced my mode of action. Besides, "I don't think I really do have cancer. It's probably something else." Eventually I grew weary of stuffing paper towels into my underwear to sop up the blood. I was tired of always feeling like I had to pee. Plus, it was starting to hurt. Through it all, my good friend Mr. Denial never deserted me. He never gave up on me. He was always right there when I needed him. "It's not really cancer. And even if it is, it'll probably start shrinking on it's own any day now," he would say. "Gee Mr. Denial, are you sure? It hurts a little bit." "Oh, that's normal," he replied. "Remember, you're special. The rules don't apply to you." "Uh, okay." Like the first grader who's conned out of his lunch money by the older and wiser fourth grader, I put up with it. Until Mr. Reason came to visit. "Ya know, Mark, would it really hurt to go talk to the doctor again? Just to make absolutely sure it's not cancer," he suggested. "Then you can always go back and hunker down in Fort Denial. You need to stock up on provisions anyway." How can you argue with the Voice of Reason? I *was* getting a little low on salt pork and whiskey. Maybe I could secure a little more gunpowder and cannonballs, too. You never know when Mr. Common Sense will be coming around. As you know, I did make that second doctor's visit. "Mark, I can't believe you never had the surgery. And you're still walking around. You better get it taken care of right away," said Dr. Welch. "So, does that mean in the next few months?" I asked with an optimism so feeble as to be laughable. "No, that means right away." Wouldn't you know it - that's when Mr. Common Sense elbowed his way in. And me without my gunpowder! I tried to run back to the fort but he was too fast. Tackled and pinned to the ground, I finally agreed to have the surgery. It may have been the smartest thing I never wanted to do. That tumor was feeding off me like a fat tick on a country hound dog. An arrogant parasite refusing to pay rent - taking and taking and taking. It had to end. Why Would I Create This? But 'if' I create my own reality - then WHY would I create cancer? Why would anybody create cancer? In fact, why would anybody create anything unpleasant at all? Why aren't we all happy and successful - living in a utopia of our own making? Isn't that what we all want? What's going on? Let's step back and look at the big picture. We live in a miserable world filled with pain and fear. Or so it seems And nobody really knows why. Here's what I believe is part of the paradox of reality creation - At the root of the misery lie the 'big four'. Not Good Enough. Undeserving. Shame. Unworthiness. Four separate issues, all closely related, all starting early in life. All come about because of the actions of others - usually parents or parental figures. (Hence the very real basis of being an adult child of alcoholic parents. The challenge, of course, is to let it go.) All will stagnate or paralyze you. All produce fear and anger and pity and resentment and self sabotage and self punishment and guilt and I think you're getting the idea here. All four will create errant thoughts and feelings: "I'm NOT good enough." "I KNOW I don't deserve." "I really AM defective." "I HAVE no value - I'm worthless." The big dark ships pass - producing in their wake the painful thoughts and feelings such as those listed above. And those thoughts and feelings have a big impact on what actually happens. ESPECIALLY when you don't want to think and feel them. Who wants to feel defective? Not me. I just want those feelings to go away. I don't care where they go, just get them away from me. But those thoughts and feelings are real. Sure, they'll get out of sight for now. They'll go hide in the shadows. They will comply with your wishes. But they'll come back with a vengeance. The big dark ships pass and it feels like I'm in a little rowboat about to be capsized at any minute. The big dark ship of shame comes in the middle of the night, crossing your path. It has impact and you know it. The huge ship of 'not good enough'. It doesn't even have to hit you directly to influence your thoughts and feelings and thus your reality. The ship of undeserving. It keeps you from being powerful, or even trying. The ship of unworthiness. That dull ache in your gut - from the quiet despair that separates you from yourself. All four can have a major impact on your life. All four can devastate you. The ships pass silently in the night and it's so easy to not detect them. But they run deep. They displace a lot of water - which becomes waves. It's the waves - the wake - produced by those four big ships... that's where so many problems ultimately come from. That's part of the reason why bad things happen to good people. Why did you create that bad thing happening? Maybe you've been floating a little too close. Maybe some unexpressed undeserving - some unacknowledged unworthiness - some unrecognized shame - passed a little too close. Maybe they threw up a bunch of thoughts and feelings that were too painful to think and feel about. But maybe they capsized you anyway. Maybe. Is it fair? Hell no! Of course not. But what are you gonna do? Blame your parents for the rest of your life? I decided I better get about the business of facing it head on. Living in that dumpy little upstairs apartment in that termite infested building... I didn't care if I starved to death. I was obsessed with ending those feelings of worthlessness and shame and undeserving and not good enough. Try and stop me. I didn't care about a job. I was obsessed with emotional healing. I didn't have time to work. I was busy. I squeezed myself through a sieve. I grinded myself up and scraped and screened myself like flour through a sifter. I screamed and yelled and cried - sometimes for days at a time. I was busy. You know how when you squeeze oranges you get orange juice? Well, when you squeeze Mark you get Mark Juice. Not a pretty sight. Vile. Putrid. Foul-smelling Mark Juice. Looks nasty. Don't drink it. But I figured it was better to get squeezed and get it out of me then to ignore it and let it keep eating me alive. Making me feel rotten to the core. Which is where I always end up with those four big ships. I was always so afraid everyone could see I was rotten to the core. So I hid in the apartment and worked on ending it. So how did I squeeze it all out of me? A lot of it was boring old processing. Writing out on paper exactly how I was thinking and feeling at the time. (And then ACTING on that processing - a story for another day.) It only took about four thousand sheets of paper. *** And that's why I get to be as arrogant as I want now. Just click below to find out if you, too, can be arrogant like me - http://www.join-the-fun.com/because-I-said-so.html Next time - let's take a really serious subject and poke fun at it. all the best, Mark Brought to you by Mark Ivar Myhre, The Emotional Healing Wizard fiercely slaying your emotional dragons! Ps. - Somewhere, in a place so far away you'll never find it... a place so close you can reach out and touch it right now - lies a world filled with beauty and wonder - a world rich with hope and joy. A world of fascinating adventures and mystical visions. A place where magic happens... http://www.join-the-fun.com/bookletter.html