I have been working with a wonderful holistic therapist who has taught me that thoughts are nothing and have no substance: they are just air.

However my brain does not know this fact.

It attaches powerful emotions to my thoughts. To my brain, negative thoughts can be as real as the computer I am writing on and feel as heavy as 100 pound weights. I can take one simple thought and work it into a drama worthy of an Academy Award.

Why does my brain not know that these thoughts are not real? One of the answers might be that my brain stopped growing emotionally at the point of trauma when I was seven years old. I think I lost my personal power and the ability to love myself at that age.

At first I lost my power to my parents. I now give it away unconsciously in relationships with men. I didn't know I was giving away my power. I forgot I had it. Now I am trying to remember what it feels like to have personal power. Right now I feel weak, terrified, ashamed, defensive, defenseless. I cannot move forward because I am waiting for someone's approval. I am not getting his approval so I feel like nothing and the thoughts are debilitating and paralyzing.

But he doesn't have the power. It is an illusion. My brain though fights the idea that I have power and that I can take my power back. My brain wants me to stay in this victim mentality I guess because it's familiar and I did get some protection out of it along the way. But I am learning though my therapy that that is an illusion.

I have done some deep meditative work and gone back and talked to myself when I was seven. My therapist always asks me: what would you say to her as a loving adult? At first I didn't know. But now I am starting to tell her that no one can take her power away. That she is strong and beautiful and well worth loving and being loved. If someone cannot see this in her then it's his stuff, not hers. I am still the same person that I was when he first met me. I will miss him. But I can do that and let go and still hold on to my power.

So today I am working to retrain my brain to let go of the old thoughts I gathered about myself when I was seven. The adults in my life then were my mirror, but the mirror was cracked. What would life be like if I knew I had power? What would my life be like if I knew I could do and be and have everything I wanted?

Lexi

A Moodscope member