Subject: Become Your Own SuperheroDate: rev2019-01-10a
Dear Patient,
How bad is it? How bad do you want what you don’t have? How bad do you want to have the good life that others have and you don’t. If you are a prisoner in jail, what do you want? If you are angry and mad at everything in the world, what do you want? If you are alone, hiding in a room, never wanting to see the light of day, what do you want? If you are in poverty and living in filth, with never enough food or warm clothes, what do you want? If you are sick and in misery, what do you want? If you are depressed with nowhere to turn but death, what do you want? If you are on drugs or alcohol and your life is in ruins, what do you want?
I was mentally insane with delusions and voices flying around my head. I was crying out for God to kill me. I blacked out and awoke with a rope in my hand to make it all end when a voice asked me, “Can you go on?” I got myself back into a mental hospital and stayed alive. I blacked out and awoke in a padded cell. They doped me on medications and minute by minute, hour by hour, day after day I spent walking the hospital halls. When released, nightly I roamed the deserts around El Paso until I ended in jail, beaten and bruised but still picking a fight with the biggest man in the cell. A voice wanted me to stay alive and continue my madness in hell. I said, “I can.”
Sharon, my new therapist, when I described my psychotic episodes found them hilariously funny and she created a path for me to join her in her laughter. We both had a good laugh when I described the time I brought the police over to my friend who was in trouble. My friend was a garbage can!? She gave me a task, “Can you find something for yourself, today, under these miserable conditions, that will make you feel a little better, make you feel a little less pain? Can you do something for yourself today? And can you do it again the next day? And the next?” From then on, I made the time to bath in the light of our apartment’s swimming pool. With my face mask and snorkel on, I just stared at the drifting shadows at the bottom of the pool.
Another person who taught self-empowerment through joy was Esther and her inner circle of friends called Abraham. They introduced me to the power of my inner guidance through listening to my emotions. They spoke of emotional guidance as the key to my inner strength and power. From there, I had my eureka moment. If I was depressed or manic and I had a “chemical imbalance”, then when I felt better would my “chemical imbalance” be more of a “chemical in-balance”. That is, in the times when I felt a little better, or actually, less bad, was my biochemistry also a little better? My emotions truly became my inner guide to honor, wealth, justice and freedom.
Like a hamster running no-where on a wheel in a cage, I was caught in an endless loop of being drugged when on medications and psychotic mania when off medications. Then I met the “Salsa Doctor,” so called because he played in a salsa band in Ciudad Juarez. He actually worked with the idea that I could get better. That as I gained more control of my psychotic mind through the guidance and power of my emotions, I would need less invasive medications. My ‘Program to Freedom’ had its setbacks. I ended up in jail, my wife called for a divorce, but after four years of continuous conflict, I saw my last mental health caregiver.
From 1979 to 1996 I kept ‘going on’…. for over 15 years I searched for a path to free me from my own mental hell. I found it in the high deserts of El Paso, TX. Now, over 20 years later, I am writing this to give you hope. I found a path, a way out of hell. I am happily married. I am happily retired. I am still learning how to enjoy life, but I am enjoying life.
I found that success means bringing a “healthy attitude” to life and to the daily, moment to moment decisions, especially to the choices that are made on what to think and dwell upon. I found that a healthy attitude means having the desire and intention to choose ideas, thoughts, beliefs, concepts, awarenesses, deductions, reasons, dreams, and imaginations that feel good.
I found that people who are successful enjoy life because they have made a decision to focus on what feels good. I found that success and having what you want means learning how to feel better. I found that health and well-being are dependent on focusing on what feels good and that mental health absolutely depends on the ability to focus on what feels good.
I found that problems occur when a ‘what feels good is good’ attitude does not get out of the lower, “reptilian brain”, the part of us that evolved first, a kind of “if it moves, eat it” mentality and into the “mammalian brain” where more intricate and complex issues may be resolved with a greater all-encompassing harmony.
The success of our teachers in life – whether they are our parents, teachers and other students in school, religious leaders, or bosses at work, or the powerful academia, political, and business leaders who set the stage for our lives – their success is in their ability to empower others with the skills and abilities to think and to feel good and to move thought and debate up into the “mammalian brain”. Here a ‘what feels good is good’ mentality can evolve into a broader and greater awareness of both short and long-term consequences, so that decision-making and action can mature into greater complexity and imagination. Thus ‘what feels good is good’ can have a compassionate foundation for existence.
When I came to the point in my life when I understood that ‘where I am is not my fault but it is now my responsibility,’ that is when life started getting better for me. It takes effort. But if you have the desire to improve and empower your own life, start using your emotions and understand that if a thought doesn’t feel good, it’s not. If what you are doing in life doesn’t feel good, it isn’t good, for you or anybody around you. You have to become your own ‘superhero’.
Life can become good! Here is a psychology and therapy for anyone to use. If your life or the life of some you know hasn’t been improving with the ‘help’ they are getting…. here is what worked for me. I know it can work for you. Become your own superhero and take charge of your own life: https://emotional-evolution.com/.
Because every super hero needs their own mental super powers, https://emotional-evolution.com/cognitive-emotional-therapy/ tells you how to get them. This latter section deals with the nuts and bolts that you can use to rebuild your own life into something wonderful, a life that you can enjoy and where you can actually feel good most of the time. The whole book can also be downloaded for you to dwell upon at your own pace and convenience (check the menu bar).
Good luck! “Life is a state of mind” (from the movie Being There). Make your state of mind one you like. It all can start with an intention to do something to feel less bad today! With this one step, to do something to feel a little better, you will learn that you do have a power……not the power of a victim, but the power of a warrior, of a warrior knight, of a “Jedi Knight” (ref. Star Wars movie).
Andrew Jackson
2018-03-23
