The Freedom to Choose: It does not take... - Anxiety and Depre...

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The Freedom to Choose

TheGalician profile image
9 Replies

It does not take to too long to realise that there is a lot of suffering on this site and that many of us reach out to express our pain and to seek the solace of others and learn how they deal with their own pain.

In my darkest times, what has perhaps provided me with the greatest hope is not always others (although that can be a wonderful source of support) but this resilience that I can sometimes find within myself. And what is this resilience?

Nothing more but this sense that, whatever strait or devilish circumstances that is circling, I always have free choice as to how I view it or how I choose to meet it. This powerful key to unlock the prisons we make of our past or the lurking fears of what may lie in the future. A freedom that allows us to meet the past and the future in the present and use this moment to reshape our future and reframe our past.

What give you the greatest hope and where do you find your deepest resilience?

Love G

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TheGalician profile image
TheGalician
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9 Replies
Agora1 profile image
Agora1

Galician, great post.Choice is one of our greatest attributes that we tend to forget we have.

Thanks :) xx

samack profile image
samack

Hi G. I hope to find inner strength throughout the healing process. Right now its challenging to reframe experiences. But yes, that is the goal.

Isinatra profile image
Isinatra

A very thought provoking question, G. A will to live no matter how bad things are. A ride it out attitude, hoping things will get better. Accepting the things you cannot change, the courage to change the things you can and the wisdom to know the difference. Know when to hold ‘em, know when to fold ‘em. Yes, choices. ❤️👍🏼

TheGalician profile image
TheGalician in reply to Isinatra

Isinatra

Given your heritage, I wonder if you have read Black Elk Speaks?

Isinatra profile image
Isinatra in reply to TheGalician

No, G, I haven’t. I just found out recently about my heritage. But I’ll google it and see what’s it’s about. Have you read it and what drew you to it?

TheGalician profile image
TheGalician

Isinatra

I mentioned that book since it may be helpful given what you have recently learned about your heritage. I came across it as part of a course I did about 10 years ago on Jung and analytical psychology. It is long story but I will keep it brief and touch on the aspects that may resonate with your own journey.

Jung was the heir apparent to Freud. They had been close friends and Freud saw Jung as his natural successor and the future leader of his school of psychoanalysis. But they fell out and the seed of that conflict was to be found in one of Jung's dreams. In that dream, Jung was in his house and finds a door to a cellar. As he descends, he goes deeper and deeper into the basement through many floors and levels eventually arriving at a cave that contained two skulls.

Freud interpreted the dream as representing Jung's Oedipus complex and his repressed desire to kill Freud (as his adopted father). Jung saw the dream quite differently as a journey into his personal psychology with each each floor representing a deeper level of his unconscious seen through the lens of the history of his heritage and ancestors. The two skulls thus representing early Man.

The dream was to lead to the fallout between Jung and Freud and Jung's 2 year personal confrontation with the unconscious which he writes about in his autobiography "Memories, Dreams, Reflections". It was a journey that would inspire his many writings and become the source for all his work and thinking on the psychology of Man.

Black Elk was a Native American Indian, a holy man or medicine man. When he was 9 he had this extraordinary vision which was an apocalyptic prophecy of the end of the American Indian civilisation. In essence, showing how his tribe and people would be consumed by the white man in the name of western progress.

He was illiterate but the book is a memoir recounting his life through conversations he had with a poet, John Neihardt. When you read the book, you get a sense of the culture that has been lost amongst a people deeply rooted in their traditions and land. Connections through stories and ceremonies through which they would honour their land, history and ancestors. The book offers this sense of a people with a deep connection with a soul; connections that has all but been abandoned in this brave new technological world. Johann Hari speaks of this in his book "Lost Connections" which focuses on his understanding of why depression and anxiety is so prevalent amongst so many of us.

If Jung is right, and our psychology is deeply rooted in the lives of our ancestors, it is little wonder that many of us feel lost. But, it does not need to be that way if we find the courage to search our memories and dreams for the loving links to our chain.

Love G xx

Isinatra profile image
Isinatra in reply to TheGalician

Thank you, G for your efforts. I did find info re the book. And I do think present man is still being guided by their innate, instinctual heritage. Modern man has had to change so quickly to adapt to so called progress, it could cause confusion and disruption in human actions and feelings. Subconsciously always fighting the needs we had from the beginning of time …..well, IMO, and an uneducated one at that, Mother Nature had a good plan, but she didn’t realize she forgot that with her plan, we would one day become too smart for our own britches. An unbalanced situation to be in. Instinct versus intelligence. Compared to the length of time man has been on this earth, even native Americans would be considered modern. Some were peacekeepers and some were warriors. A ball of confusion. XX

BTCCET profile image
BTCCET in reply to Isinatra

What you say is so true Isinatra, and very sad because with technology the way it is these days I'm outsmarted by my smartphone more often than not🙈

Isinatra profile image
Isinatra in reply to BTCCET

Yes, B, keeping up with all the never ending advancing of technology is frustrating. So far I’ve been able to avoid having a cell phone. The only reason I’ll need one in the future is to call 911(police emergency). Right now, I need both hands free. ❤️😁

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