Recovering The SelfA Journal of Hope and Healing

Inspirational

Bob Rich’s Self-Therapy Guide: You Get What You Send

In this series, Dr. Bob Rich teaches you how to leave behind depression, anxiety, and other forms of suffering all too common in our crazy world. Recovering the Self published three sections of Bob Rich’s book From Depression to Contentment: A self-therapy guide in a series of posts – the first section ending with the quest for meaning and the second section concluding with The Development of Resilience.

The third section of Bob’s work was marked by special attention to various techniques and practices that are helpful in controlling depression. It concluded with a discussion on values and their implication in therapy. Bob now shares the final section of his self-therapy guide that delves deeper into the practical side of his therapy work illustrating with examples from individual cases of his own patients. In the 4th post in this section, Loving the Inner Monster, Bob took the readers to meet their inner child, or inner monster for that. Here he reflects on the timeless treasure of thinking and doing good.

You Get What You Send

send out energy

When you send out negatives, the Universe obliges and puts negatives into your life. When you send out positives, you get back positives. Note that I am NOT talking about health, wealth or other manifestations of good fortune. (That kind of “positive thinking” is nonsense. You won’t win a lottery because you keep wishing for it.) It’s not the cards you were dealt that matter, but how you play them.

I have a dear friend, Rosemary, whom I’ve never met. Although still young, she is forced to be in a nursing home because of several very serious chronic health issues. She is confined to a wheelchair. This unfortunate set of circumstances has been her tool for growing spiritually. Insofar as her physical capabilities allow her, she spends all her time in making life a little better for those around her. She helps nursing home staff, looks after the requests of less mobile residents, reads to people, is a source of encouragement and help. If Rosemary can live a good life in her situation, she can inspire you in how to live yours.

If you’ve been reading thoughtfully, you might have noticed this pattern in many of my recommendations and case studies.

  • Way back in the First Aid chapter, there it was under Creativity. A boring, low paid, dead-end job can be converted into one of fun and meaning by making it creative.

Martin Seligman, in his classic book, Authentic Happiness, gave a beautiful example. A hospital orderly has an unskilled, low-paid job: wheeling patients from A to B, and assisting nurses with physical tasks like turning bedridden patients. On a visit to a friend in hospital, Martin saw a man enter the room. He read the case notes, then pulled and inspected several pictures from a bag, one at a time, until settling on one, which he hung facing the patient. Intrigued, Martin had a chat with him. He was an orderly, who made it part of his work to select a picture he felt would be uniquely uplifting and pleasant for the individual patient.

  • You’ll find the same message in the last paragraph of the First Aid chapter: “My final email to the medical student said, ‘My friend, you can pay me by passing the love on when it’s your turn to be a teacher.’”
  • Remember what I said is wrong with the romantic myth? It is a selfish attitude of “I want someone to love me.” The key to a good long term relationship is “I want someone to love:” giving love, not taking love.
  • Claire transformed her life by turning “Not fair, why not me” into “Bless you for being happy.”
  • What sorted out the coffee storm? Mutual umbrage transformed into mutual giving.
  • Giles’s healing realization was that he actually did matter, having been of service to others all his life.
  • Remember Ricky, the kid for whom everything was an attack? I’d used Narrative Therapy with him: identified his problem as being due to sending out dark energy, rather than something wrong with him, or with the people of his world. I taught him to send out silver energy instead. Isn’t that a perfect illustration for getting back what you send?
  • This way of thinking is central to Acceptance and Commitment Therapy. Using one of a wide variety of devices such as the “funeral oration” or the “film script,” you decide the kind of person you want to become, then do it. You can have a rapacious business shark become a beloved benefactor.

Homework

I’ll next describe ways of improving your contentment, sense of wellbeing, acceptance of the bad and celebration of the good in your life.

Before reading on, do your best to invent a few ways of getting there. As I’ve said before, anything you come up with from within yourself works better than copying someone else. No need to take too much time on this, since I’ve given you several solid hints.

– Dr. Bob Rich

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