Change your thoughts and your life will change. Change your thoughts and your life will change. Positive thinking - success in life

Thanks to documentaries and books, but still this tool enjoy only a few. If you change your thoughts, it will change. If you want to make your life better and more interesting, read the article.

The power of thought

Everything in the Universe is energy. Thoughts are also energy, only in a mobile, fast and light form. This energy always strives to take shape, and this desire is inherent in its nature. That is, all our thoughts are taken into account in the Universe and become our reality.

Single thoughts do not have enormous power and have only a minor impact on the quality of our life, but repeated thoughts, moreover, repeatedly, create our reality.

This is clearly illustrated by an example: imagine that your thoughts are the rays of the sun. Now imagine a magnifying glass and move it from side to side, passing light through it. What happens? Nothing. The light scatters and nothing happens. The same thing happens with “one-off” thoughts that appear in our heads.

Now imagine that you hold the glass motionless at a certain height and let in the same sun rays, thereby concentrating them in one place. What's happening? That's right, fire.

That is, if you choose thoughts that improve the quality of your life and begin to concentrate on them, the miracle that you dreamed of begins to happen in your life.
Look critically at your life, what thoughts are preventing you from being happy today? Perhaps you want to be excellent, but you constantly think about how awkward you are, how you don’t know how to interest the audience, and replay pictures of unsuccessful performances in your head over and over again?

Or maybe you strive for, but often complain about the lack, high prices, for low wages?
These are examples of those thoughts that act as a barrier to achievement. Track such thoughts in yourself and replace them with those that will lead to what you want.

At the first stage, it is worth understanding that thoughts have their own special power and your future will depend on what thoughts you concentrate on.

Good news. Regardless of the circumstances in which you find yourself at the moment, or bad experiences in life, you can develop the necessary type of thinking to achieve in any area of ​​​​life. To do this, you just need to change your thoughts and simple techniques will help you with this.

Tools for success

Statements

This is the simplest technique that will help you influence your thoughts, and then your life. It has been used for centuries in religion and other areas in the form of prayers and mantras. By saying affirmations, you instruct your brain what kind of thoughts it should create.
For example, if you think of yourself as a loser, then your will look for events in life that confirm this belief.

If you begin to pronounce the statement “I am a successful, creative person and success accompanies me in everything,” as an example, then the brain will look for confirmation that corresponds to these words.

It's simple. In the first case, you are demotivated and depressed, in the second, you move towards your goal with ease. Choose a statement that matches your desire for today and say it silently or out loud.

It is important to know:

1. Choose positive statements.

For example, the statement “I am never late” is incorrect. Why? Because when pronouncing such a statement, the subconscious hears “I’m late... I’m late... I’m late...”. An option like: “I am always punctual and arrive on time” will be correct. Write about what you want, not what you don't want.

2. Keep your statements short, like mantras.

There is no need to write them on half a page. Write in such a way that it is easy to repeat them several times a day.

3. Use other people's experience.

If you don't know where to get it good statements, then take them from a person who has achieved success in the area of ​​​​life that interests you.
For example, you are looking for statements for financial sector. Find successful people in this field and look at their biographies, you can always find their way of thinking there, model it.

4. Google it.

Another way to find suitable affirmations is to simply ask Google for them :-)

Creative visualization

- this is the creation of mental images, the creation of your future. It's like watching a movie with yourself in the lead role. Imagine yourself with all the desired qualities, things and surrounding objects. That is, you picture the life you dream about first in your head, and then this picture takes shape and becomes your reality.

Everyone uses creative visualization successful people. For example, Arnold Schwarzenegger regularly imagined himself going on stage and being awarded the Mr. Olympia title before it became his reality.

Jim Carrey wrote himself a check for $10,000,000 “for acting services rendered,” then he visualized himself receiving it. After some time, by the date indicated on the check, Jim could actually cash it.

Soviet scientists conducted an experiment in which world-class athletes took part. They were divided into 4 groups:

1 – studied 100% only physical training
2 – 75% engaged in physical training, 25% in visualization
3 – 50% to 50%
4 – 25% to 75%

The results were amazing. It was group 4 that achieved the maximum improvement in their sports performance. That group that spent most of their time training in their heads.

All of these examples show how powerful concentrated thoughts can be.
You have a choice: to believe that thoughts create the desired reality or not to believe in it. Just remember that in any case you will reap the benefits of either action or inaction. Choose your action! You can do it, I know!

How might they relate to your life? your thoughts? Yes, the most direct! Here's an illustration. If you feel unworthy of love and happiness, you may attract situations that bring disappointment, feelings of powerlessness, and pain. Conversely, self-esteem can produce positive results. Our consciousness is considered the source of all actions, thoughts and feelings. Charles Fillmore said: “The mind is the seat of perception of what we see, hear and feel. It is thanks to the mind that we see the beauty of the earth and sky, music, painting - everything. The silent shuttle of thought, scurrying between cells and nerves, weaves harmonious matter from myriad states of mind - and we call this matter life.”

Thinking is a creative force that is constantly at work in humanity and throughout creation.

The magnetic atmosphere of thought moves with you and is part of you. To cultivate a positive attitude towards life, it is important to invest your faith in strong and positive thoughts, not allowing circumstances and external conditions to rule you and give rise to a negative attitude towards what is happening.

Everything depends on you! Your mind is a projector, your views and attitudes are a film reel, and your life experiences are a film projected onto a screen. If you see patterns of sincere and kind feelings and close bonds on it, it shows that you have a healthy respect for yourself and others.

Frequent resentment and frustration can be caused by negative thinking and the inner conviction that you do not deserve better.

Listen to how a negativist thinks: “I know that I am prone to pessimism and that many things scare me. People tell me that I am difficult to deal with and that I think too badly about everything and everyone, but is that surprising? There is always someone who is ready to squeeze you or profit at your expense. You can't trust anyone! And then, I know that I am an unattractive woman, so no one needs me!”

It is not difficult to guess how the life of such a woman turns out. Her personal relationships are complex and do not last long. With her negative charge, she can enter a restaurant - and people can really be rude to her or look at her disapprovingly. The prices seem too high to her, the food is disgusting. It seems to such a woman that everything always turns out not in her favor, while others are constantly lucky.

What happens: does she think this way because something bad happens to her, or does something bad happen because she thinks this way?

Both options are possible, so it is difficult to get to the root of the problem without knowing the person's life history. But even if you can find some sad set of circumstances and say that this is the reason for her negative way of thinking, what good is that? Is it possible to reduce the negative role of her negativism by blaming her past for everything? And if we say that a person cannot treat himself or others well because of something that happened to him in childhood, is that person doomed to carry such a burden for the rest of his days? Not at all.

Every person, regardless of external circumstances, can change their thinking. This can be done by constantly and methodically monitoring your thoughts. If a person wants his life to become better, he needs to move from negative thinking to positive thinking. By starting to think in new ways, you can find goodness in yourself and in those around you; all you have to do is make the decision to change. You have to be willing to try. The mind has a powerful creative charge. He is capable of moving to more and more high levels thinking. Exercise the “muscles” of your mind! It is you who decide what views your mind will accept, express and project. Both the projector and the film strip belong to you.

You have the power and freedom to create your own wonderful life and the most wonderful attitude towards her that you can imagine.

Such changes require constant vigilance from you: you must not allow negative thoughts to slip into your consciousness. Changing your mindset may require the courage to look at your negative thoughts with thoughtful and compassionate honesty. It also requires a firm belief that you and the people around you are equally valuable. Superiority and inferiority in equally prevent good from coming into your life. If you tell yourself that life is wonderful and you are surrounded good people, but you don’t believe in it, then beauty and goodness will hide from you. If you think highly of yourself but think poorly of others, then people will not be pleasant to you.

The tendency to judge others prevents you from appreciating them good qualities. In The Power of the Macro Mind, Rebecca Clarke emphasizes: “Immediately begin to channel your impulses and feelings in the right direction. Your dreams and ideals are the parents of your impulses and feelings. Your attitude towards people, places, situations and things shapes your life. Refuse to accept thoughts about others that you would not accept as part of yourself. You are the collection of your thoughts.”

If you want to change your life for the better, watch your thinking. Change your thoughts- and in any situation you will find the limitless goodness of life - it is just waiting for you to see and accept it.

The ability to choose gives a person the power to control his actions. Choice implies that the action taken is the best one and that all other alternatives have been rejected. We cannot consciously choose what is not best for us. The ability to pursue a course, whether it is generally accepted or not, is measured by courage. The more courage we have, the greater our ability to act in ways that create change.

Current page: 1 (book has 10 pages total) [available reading passage: 7 pages]

Karen Casey
Change your thoughts - your life will change
12 simple principles

Introduction

Many people believe that our lives are too confusing and complex and at the same time too unique to be easily changed. But this is not true. The truth is that we have chosen a way of thinking that does not allow us to actively influence the process of change. I assure you: in fact, simple changes, even if they are not immediately noticeable, happen in every minute, with every experience - in every life; they will change in better side and your life - in an elusive, incomprehensible and incomprehensible, at first glance, way. I know that even small changes can have a significant impact on everything. My life today is indicative in this regard. Many of the statements I make in this book were born out of precisely these tiny changes that have happened to me over the past three decades.

More than a quarter of a century ago, I wandered into my first support group, an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting in Minneapolis, Minnesota. In the Alcoholics Anonymous group, I hoped to learn how to control someone else's drinking habits, because I was desperate to find out how to “adapt” to these types of problems. I came to the group absolutely convinced that if only I could change the people around me, I would be free from fear. But during the first meeting, I began to think differently. Several times that day the group burst out laughing at the idea that we can control or manipulate other people's behavior. This laughter scared me. When someone said that you can only change yourself and not anyone else, and everyone laughed at it in agreement, it seemed to me that I had landed somewhere on Mars. “These people must have had no life experience like this.” my“, I thought, “otherwise they wouldn’t laugh.” I desperately needed to gain the ability to change the people around me. Was Do I have any other choice?!

Luckily, I stayed in that group long enough to not only understand why they laughed, but also to be able to laugh at myself and my obsession with controlling the uncontrollable. In fact, we cannot change anyone but ourselves, but at the same time, many of us strive to act in exactly this way until our death, that is, unnaturally.

My life has changed in exciting ways since that long-ago spring evening when I first heard that I am able to control only one thing: what I let into my mind, and my resulting reactions and actions. For the next thirty years, I practiced controlling my own mind, and the results exceeded all my expectations. I hope this book helps you too.

In more than sixty years of my life, I have never met a person in my life who did not want more peace, more joy and more satisfaction than he currently has. Problems such as conflict with the boss, an unhappy marriage, personal worries due to bad habits or concerns about children and maintaining peace in the world, one way or another affect each and every one of us. I hope that the book you now have in front of you will give you strong reasons to believe that with a little willingness on your part - willingness to change your thinking, your tomorrow will certainly be better than today!

Preface

My journey

I am the third daughter in the family. Sixty-five years ago, my father, ignoring the recommendations of doctors, insisted that his wife, my mother, become pregnant again. He wanted a son, but his mother didn’t want any more children at all. I cannot say that, while in my mother’s womb, I felt my mother’s despondency about my future birth, but I think that I could feel it. And our family doctor also thought so. Two years later, after my birth, the fourth child appeared - a son. And the father rejoiced. And mom became even sadder.

My early memories clearly reflect the actions of my parents, reflecting the fact that I was the cause of their unhappiness, my father's anger and my mother's sadness. Peering into their faces in order to understand what I should expect from my parents, how to show my feelings and how to behave became familiar to me - like second nature. And I began to purposefully avoid meeting their gaze.

Most of the time I felt scared. Sometimes the fear intensified. I spent many Sunday afternoons and evenings of my life lying on the couch in my room and retching because on Monday morning I had to go back to school and see the faces of teachers who caused me the same fear and discomfort as my parents. Fear haunted me throughout my childhood and the entire period of growing up, and with it, stomach pain and other similar phenomena.

During the period of study in high school I developed a habit of “negotiating” with my anxiety, which consisted of escaping into a fictional world, which I wrote about in my free moments. I wanted to spend as little time as possible with my family of origin, so I got a job at a department store. I had to lie about my real age, otherwise the fifteen-year-old me would have been rejected. I went to work every day—after school and on Saturdays—thus greatly reducing the number of hours I would otherwise spend with my family.

Unfortunately, this did nothing to ease my anxiety.

Growing up, neither my sisters nor I ever discussed the almost always tense environment in our home. It's sad, but we rarely talked openly with each other, so I never knew what it was that they were afraid of. It seemed that each of us - to a greater or lesser extent - tiptoed around the house, trying to avoid our father's wrath, without even realizing these actions. Perhaps our isolation from each other allowed us to hide and escape our fear of “real reality.”

Only in last years When I meet my sisters, I bring up the topic of tension in our family. When no two people share the same perception of a "dysfunctional family", it is usually not surprising that no one discusses this topic as intensely as I do. And one of my sisters has a hard time addressing this issue.

During my high school years, although I was an “in” member, I always felt a little distant. I often tried to guess from the faces of my friends how much they liked me, which was a common behavior for me in the family. And I am absolutely convinced: none of my friends had any idea how insecure I was. Usually I never talked about my fears. At the age of fifteen, I discovered a great remedy for reducing anxiety: alcohol.

My binges had begun. I didn’t drink every day, of course, but only until I got married; from that moment I started drinking daily. Whenever I drank, I immediately began to feel peaceful; I liked this freedom - from fear, which alcohol gave. My addiction to alcohol was not reproached or perhaps even noticed by my parents. They drank too, as did their friends and their brothers and sisters. It was so easy to indulge my desires, running away from myself. And by a “happy” coincidence for me, at frequent family parties, I “merged” with the interior, holding a drink in one hand and a stolen cigarette in the other.

In 1957, I reluctantly entered college with one goal in mind: to find a husband to party with. Naturally, I did not express this intention in words, but it was clear to everyone who saw me. And I succeeded. We entered into our first marriage during our senior year at Purdue University, and this marriage, quite surprisingly, lasted twelve years. Alcohol first became our “glue” and then our poison.

We didn't want to hurt each other, but we did it anyway. Again and again.

Long before the end of that marriage, we moved to Minnesota, where my husband was attending graduate school. The misery of our lives was exacerbated by alcohol and infidelity. When we divorced, my alcoholism was already out of control, but miraculously I was able to attend graduate school. Looking back, I am amazed at how easily I completed the PhD program. After all, when I moved to Minnesota, I didn’t even plan to get this degree. Alcohol served as fuel for my confidence, and with nothing else to do, without believing in the reality of this plan, I entered graduate school.

I am sure that if I had not been drinking at that time, I would not have gotten into graduate school. For eight years I was a teacher primary classes in Indiana and Minnesota and doubted that I would be able to do anything else. No one was more surprised than I was when I began to prepare to give up alcohol... However, my fear still controlled me. I still could not cope without the constant care and support of others, especially men. It turned out so well that in the end I stopped drinking, that is, I did what I needed to do. I gave up alcohol and drugs in 1976 and was able to save my life, which was rapidly approaching death.

Becoming a teetotaler made me think deeply about the fact that everything is not a coincidence. Where we are, where I am right now, is all predetermined. The same, of course, can be said about you.

The formation of such a vision took many years - years that were spent not only exploring many spiritual paths, but also trying to hear inner voice, which I believe is the source of all knowledge. This vision, which includes the understanding that everything we need to know is within us, has explained and clarified aspects of my life. It inspired me to make decisions. And it led me to write and publish sixteen books over twenty years.

The book you now hold in your hands is very different, reflecting a deeper level of faith in the power of this vision. She is like the statement of Abraham Lincoln: “We are only as happy as we decide to be happy”; I like this idea - it simplifies our task. We can live better if we decide to live better. The choice is up to us. Wherever we go, wherever we are - like all people, we have already gained the confidence to be there.

We're deciding. This explains a lot. We decide whether to live more “bitter” or “sweet” lives. We decide - at every moment of our lives - how and what to react to, to react peacefully or with fear. We're deciding.

It is truth. And it doesn't require too much effort to make life more “sweet.” It makes us willing to make tiny shifts in the way we perceive our life experiences and our fellow travelers. Instead of perceiving someone or something as a potential threat, we can view each moment as an opportunity to find peace. And every time we respond peacefully, we pave the way not only to our own happiness, but also to world peace. In this book I will teach you twelve principles that will help you achieve peace. Just twelve simple, practical principles. This is all you need to find peace and change your life for the better.

Have I convinced you to join me?

Chapter 1: Become a Careful Gardener

It's so easy to put all your attention on other people. As a rule, it is mostly women who do this. We condemn, criticize, and sometimes loudly; through anger, manipulation of shame and guilt, we try to control the people sharing our journey with us. But I have news for you: the result will always be the wrong choice. This is not the work we are called to do.

Focusing on the environment and trying to control other people is a clever avoidance technique, although at times it certainly helps avoid addressing one's own troubled behavior. The irony is that we always see in others those behavioral characteristics that we need to pay attention to in ourselves. Always!

The people in our lives—family and friends, neighbors, even strangers at the grocery store or in the car ahead of us in a traffic jam—are mirrors that reflect us. Our reactions to these people indicate what we need to work on in ourselves and how much we allow others to live their own lives; we must return to those things that we can truly control: responsibility for our own lives.

Great, but how? Just. We can learn a new behavior and practice it.

Formation of new behavior

Many of us, early in life, acquired the habit of interfering in the affairs of other people. We heard our parents speak critically about their friends or other family members, about their neighbors, their actions or attitudes. Obsessively observing the behavior of other people - family members, relatives, neighbors, friends and even strangers, as well as a passionate desire to change or control their behavior - is an excellent catalyst for internal turmoil. All of these manifestations go hand in hand with the erroneous idea that we can supposedly change anyone other than ourselves. You will spend years trying to change your spouse or one of your friends, but in the end you will realize (or maybe not) that the affairs of others are not “subject to” our control or even judgment. To be able to manage yourself is quite enough.

I think it's worth repeating: we cannot control others - neither their behavior, nor their thoughts, nor their dreams, nor their problems, nor their successes, nor the mistakes they make.

Even as parents, we must understand that our children have their own path, and our so-called control over them is, in fact, an illusion. We can become an example for them, we can behave in a certain way, demonstrate certain ethical rules, even demand from children that they clearly follow the “rules” internal regulations", living under our roof, but in the end they will decide for themselves what they want to be and what they want to do, despite our best efforts. And in time we will be grateful to them.

I say: “Recognize the known fact that we cannot control anyone but ourselves. This will help us withstand heavy burdens and thankless work that does not bring us satisfaction. Control of every thought and every action, the willingness to let go of the past while enjoying the present will undoubtedly allow us to be as busy as we need to be. Doing this, and only this, is what we are here for. Only when we live our own lives and manage our own affairs, giving others the freedom to do the same, can we achieve the peace we seek and deserve.”

Many of us spend a lot of hours or weeks, and in the saddest cases even years, trying to force someone to be what they want them to be, or to force them to do what they think best suits them (or perhaps , our) interests. This is the tragedy of a life wasted unwisely. It's time to change the ending of the play.

I first heard about the idea of ​​“letting go” in a Twelve Step support group and was very slow to understand what it meant. It is not my place to direct someone else's decisions and actions. But how can I not control others? I have always believed that not doing this is a manifestation of selfishness and indifference. Thank God, in the end I realized that our spouses, friends, neighbors, even the strangers we meet along the way can only be who they are, and not who they should be, from our point of view. They have the right to make their mistakes and learn from them, which will lead them to their success.

There are many reasons to break the pattern of this unhelpful behavior, but the most important is that we will never succeed in controlling others and will never be able to live in harmony with ourselves while we are busy questioning how we should live for someone else. If we want to find peace, we must allow others to create their lives and take care of the state of affairs in only one life: ours.

Just as no one can be fully focused on our lives effectively and harmoniously, we cannot waste our precious time thinking about how we can be or become the center of someone else's life. This may be due to our perhaps over-inflated ego. However, it is time to realize an important truth. This does not mean that we should avoid interactions with other people or isolate ourselves from them so as to become unavailable. Nor does this mean that, for fear of addiction being too painful, we should ignore what others think or behave. Observing others, in any case, can be useful and instructive.

It simply means that we need to play our role in all relationships and be able to see where our responsibilities end and the responsibilities of other people begin. Interfering with other people's actions, dreams, or dramas binds us to their unhealthy emotional expressions and prevents us from growing the way we deserve. Unfortunately, many of us perceive the feeling of security incorrectly. We want people around us to always pay attention to us and not make plans in which we have no place. But this is not a relationship, this is an addiction; These are vicious connections. True relationships bring peace and form mutual dependence. They allow us to communicate, while living and honoring our own lives, and to build a “learning partnership.”

Many of us believe that our most meaningful work- take care of the affairs of others. Why is it so difficult to let other people follow their path? Why are we so persistent in interfering in other people's lives, especially when it brings little or no benefit? Because our parents did this without giving us sufficient explanations. No doubt we have seen our parents do many things that we would rather avoid. But there is another reason.

Over the past three decades, as I have grown emotionally and spiritually through the Twelve Steps and other spiritual modalities, I have come to realize that we interfere with, if not take hostage, our insecurities. We “invest” in other people, and we perceive the results of these actions as the results of our life, which reduces or enhances, first of all, our unrealized significance.

How sad that we strive to achieve prosperity by clinging, even randomly, to the decisions of others. But we do this again and again, and our lives never change for the better, even at the very end. In the short term, trying to help a loved one live their life may be more right action– this can be a very attractive job; however, learn to manage own life is the most important task facing us. The personal life task is known only to a specific person and God.

In fact, thinking about God, even periodically, during life experiences—including both socializing with others and being alone—can dramatically change our life prospects. No task in life will remain hidden from us if we remember who is in charge.

It is very important to understand that agreeing that God is in control of all lives does not mean that we should do nothing. In fact, planning your “maneuvers” may seem a little boring and overly specific and detailed, but it is always necessary. We must take responsibility for every moment of our lives, demonstrating it in action, and God will always guide us, as well as others. None of us will ever fall out of his “field of vision.”

Chapter 2. Stop focusing on problems - this will help in solving them

Many people believe that by attacking a problem, they will solve it faster. And therefore they will study this problem, analyze it from all sides, identify causes and consequences, using the so-called decision-making techniques, through which they have previously managed to achieve some success, but, alas, with all this they do not “go” deep into the problem. But, meanwhile, we create problems for ourselves. This is true. Problems only exist because we allow our ego to create them, and then continually feed them with our attention.

Explore your beliefs that require change and have a direct bearing on how you identify problems in your life. Never doubt that by changing your thinking, you can change any experience in your life.

Many people believe that our lives are too confusing and complex and at the same time too unique to be easily changed. But this is not true. The truth is that we have chosen a way of thinking that does not allow us to actively influence the process of change. I assure you: in fact, simple changes, even if they are not immediately noticeable, happen in every minute, with every experience - in every life; they will change your life for the better - in an elusive, incomprehensible and incomprehensible, at first glance, way. I know that even small changes can have a significant impact on everything. My life today is indicative in this regard. Many of the statements I make in this book were born out of precisely these tiny changes that have happened to me over the past three decades.

More than a quarter of a century ago, I wandered into my first support group, an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting in Minneapolis, Minnesota. In the Alcoholics Anonymous group, I hoped to learn how to control someone else's drinking habits, because I was desperate to find out how to “adapt” to these types of problems. I came to the group absolutely convinced that if only I could change the people around me, I would be free from fear. But during the first meeting, I began to think differently. Several times that day the group burst out laughing at the idea that we can control or manipulate other people's behavior. This laughter scared me. When someone said that you can only change yourself and not anyone else, and everyone laughed at it in agreement, it seemed to me that I had landed somewhere on Mars. “These people must have had no life experience like this.” my“, I thought, “otherwise they wouldn’t laugh.” I desperately needed to gain the ability to change the people around me. Was Do I have any other choice?!

Luckily, I stayed in that group long enough to not only understand why they laughed, but also to be able to laugh at myself and my obsession with controlling the uncontrollable. In fact, we cannot change anyone but ourselves, but at the same time, many of us strive to act in exactly this way until our death, that is, unnaturally.

My life has changed in exciting ways since that long-ago spring evening when I first heard that I am able to control only one thing: what I let into my mind, and my resulting reactions and actions. For the next thirty years, I practiced controlling my own mind, and the results exceeded all my expectations. I hope this book helps you too.

In more than sixty years of my life, I have never met a person in my life who did not want more peace, more joy and more satisfaction than he currently has. Problems such as conflict with your boss, an unhappy marriage, personal worries due to bad habits, or worries about children and maintaining peace in the world, one way or another affect each and every one of us. I hope that the book you now have in front of you will give you strong reasons to believe that with a little willingness on your part - willingness to change your thinking, your tomorrow will certainly be better than today!

I am the third daughter in the family. Sixty-five years ago, my father, ignoring the recommendations of doctors, insisted that his wife, my mother, become pregnant again. He wanted a son, but his mother didn’t want any more children at all. I cannot say that, while in my mother’s womb, I felt my mother’s despondency about my future birth, but I think that I could feel it. And our family doctor also thought so. Two years later, after my birth, the fourth child appeared - a son. And the father rejoiced. And mom became even sadder.

My early memories clearly reflect the actions of my parents, reflecting the fact that I was the cause of their unhappiness, my father's anger and my mother's sadness. Peering into their faces in order to understand what I should expect from my parents, how to show my feelings and how to behave became familiar to me - like second nature. And I began to purposefully avoid meeting their gaze.

Most of the time I felt scared. Sometimes the fear intensified. I spent many Sunday afternoons and evenings of my life lying on the couch in my room and retching because on Monday morning I had to go back to school and see the faces of teachers who caused me the same fear and discomfort as my parents. Fear haunted me throughout my childhood and the entire period of growing up, and with it, stomach pain and other similar phenomena.

During high school, I developed a habit of “negotiating” my anxiety by escaping into a fantasy world that I wrote about in my spare moments. I wanted to spend as little time as possible with my family of origin, so I got a job at a department store. I had to lie about my real age, otherwise the fifteen-year-old me would have been rejected. I went to work every day—after school and on Saturdays—thus greatly reducing the number of hours I would otherwise spend with my family.

Unfortunately, this did nothing to ease my anxiety.

Growing up, neither my sisters nor I ever discussed the almost always tense environment in our home. It's sad, but we rarely talked openly with each other, so I never knew what it was that they were afraid of. It seemed that each of us - to a greater or lesser extent - tiptoed around the house, trying to avoid our father's wrath, without even realizing these actions. Perhaps our isolation from each other allowed us to hide and escape our fear of “real reality.”

Only in recent years, when meeting my sisters, have I brought up the topic of tension in our family. When no two people share the same perception of a "dysfunctional family", it is usually not surprising that no one discusses this topic as intensely as I do. And one of my sisters has a hard time addressing this issue.

During my high school years, although I was an “in” member, I always felt a little distant. I often tried to guess from the faces of my friends how much they liked me, which was a common behavior for me in the family. And I am absolutely convinced: none of my friends had any idea how insecure I was. Usually I never talked about my fears. At the age of fifteen, I discovered a great remedy for reducing anxiety: alcohol.

My binges had begun. I didn’t drink every day, of course, but only until I got married; from that moment I started drinking daily. Whenever I drank, I immediately began to feel peaceful; I liked this freedom - from fear, which alcohol gave. My addiction to alcohol was not reproached or perhaps even noticed by my parents. They drank too, as did their friends and their brothers and sisters. It was so easy to indulge my desires, running away from myself. And by a “happy” coincidence for me, at frequent family parties, I “merged” with the interior, holding a drink in one hand and a stolen cigarette in the other.

In 1957, I reluctantly entered college with one goal in mind: to find a husband to party with. Naturally, I did not express this intention in words, but it was clear to everyone who saw me. And I succeeded. We entered into our first marriage during our senior year at Purdue University, and this marriage, quite surprisingly, lasted twelve years. Alcohol first became our “glue” and then our poison.

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