Extract of Take Charge of Your Future Banish Your Past

Contents

Introduction
Part one: Becoming the adult you should be
Chapter one: Who are you and who should you be?
Chapter two: Your self-esteem
Chapter three: Repairing a damaged self-esteem
Chapter four: Personal rights
Chapter five: Saying no
Chapter six: Identifying problems
Chapter seven: Steering a positive course
Chapter eight: Personal goals
Chapter nine: Helping yourself to heal
Part two: The distressed self
Chapter ten: Anger
Chapter eleven: Phobias and anxiety disorders
Chapter twelve: Anxiety and panic
Chapter thirteen: Chronic low mood and mild clinical depression
Chapter fourteen: Cognitive behavioural therapy
Chapter fifteen: Other therapies
Part three: Damaging influences in your life
Chapter sixteen: Damaging influences in childhood
Chapter seventeen: Damaging influences in adulthood
Chapter eighteen: Damaging influences of religion and culture
Chapter nineteen: The future: getting on with living
Index

Introduction

This book helps you to make enduring personal changes to enhance your life providing the skills, knowledge and awareness necessary to make it happen. If you feel that you haven't always taken opportunities that have come your way, or that life has dealt you an unkind hand in the past, this book will help you take control of your life. It will help you raise your self-esteem and reach your full potential – becoming the person you were always meant to be.

 Part one: Becoming the adult you should be

Each of us is meant to have a character all of our own, to be what no other can exactly be, and do what no other can exactly do.
William Ellery Channing (1780-1842)

Part one gives you the skills to shape yourself into the person you really want to, and should, be: it will help you take control of your life to assist you in living the life you deserve.

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Part two: The distressed self

A will finds a way.
Orison Swett Marden 1850-1924

The amount and type of stress each of us can cope with varies from individual to individual (depending on personality, heredity, upbringing, life events…), but we all have a threshold beyond which we can become emotionally distressed. The distress may be so great that we cannot continue at all with our everyday lives - we call this a breakdown - or we cannot continue effectively, having, for example: unrestrained anger, increased anxiety, panic attacks, and depression. We may try to struggle on, relying on medication and/or alcohol to see us through but these can lead to further problems without the underlying problems being helped in the long term.
  Part two looks at the forms emotional distress can take and gives suggestions about what can be done to help, including therapy with professionals.

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Part three: Damaging influences in your life

Life is a series of experiences, each one of which makes us bigger, even though sometimes it is hard to realise this. For the world was built to develop character, and we must learn that the setbacks and grieves which we endure help us in our marching onward.

Henry Ford (1863-1947)

Part three looks at outside influences that contribute to negative behaviour which is often a measure of how uncomfortable we are with ourselves and with others. Negative behaviour can be either aggressive - such as being threatening, throwing tantrums, undeservedly putting someone down, and being sarcastic or manipulative; or passive - such as being timid or shy, being over-apologetic, agreeing verbally when we mentally disagree, and not being able to say no.
  Positive behaviour is assertive behaviour that enables us to interact with other people without causing offence or undue upset; it is dealing with others with respect and consideration, being able to empathise and be non-judgemental. Frequently, people who have had damaging influences in their life have difficulty being assertive and also tend to have low self-esteem.
  Once an understanding of how you became the person you are has been achieved, draw a line under your past and concentrate on your future ensuring that you don't continue along the same negative paths with yourself and with other people. The final chapter helps you accomplish this.

 
Note

The ideas and suggestions in most of Part three are from research, personal experience, working in pastoral care and from observing people. The suggestions do not necessarily hold true for everyone emerging from any particular upbringing or familial experience: there are exceptions and other influences impinging on people's lives. However, there is good reason to include these general ideas as, even if you do not feel they apply to you, they may well apply to others around you. Gaining a fuller understanding of human nature and how certain behaviour might come about improves your ability to empathise and be non-judgemental.

Also see information on dealing with panic and having your life in a rut on my advice pages - the information was extracted from this book.