Lesson 2: Whose Life Is It Anyway?

Submodule 2

Whose life is it anyway? Another purpose of this course is to help you get your life back. You might think you are living your own life, but how can you be sure of that? Unit 2 offers insight into the difference in the quality of the lives of people who have a Healthy Sense of Self compared to those who are eternally struggling to find themselves—to find out who they are—of those who suffer from an inner emptiness they fill with achievements, which causes their lives to become one big performance. The central question in this unit is “Whose life is it, anyway?” Getting in touch with your own opinions, choices, preferences, and feelings needs to be facilitated and supported early and often in life when you are young. If that doesn’t take place, your life may end up being about living up to expectations of others and meeting specific (oftentimes self-imposed) conditions that you perceive to be of life or death importance. What are these expectations and conditions? They are conditions you assumed you had to meet in order to get your caregiver’s approval when you were very young.

The BENEFITS of Restoring your Sense of Self are:

• Being more comfortable facing your self, more self-accepting
• More likely to have clear preferences, tastes, and opinions, and able to stand up for them
• Know what you want
• Overall higher quality of life

GLOSSARY

For your convenience, here is a downloadable/printable PDF Glossary, or you may visit the Glossary on our website. (Note that the glossary on the website includes some additional terms not addressed in this course, and contains links to extended and more detailed information on each term.)

NEW SoS TERMS

• Natural Sense of Self (NatSoS)
• Lack of Sense of Self (LoSoS)

Definition Natural Sense of Self (NatSoS)

The subconscious sense — developed normally in childhood — of being alive as a “real,” definite person, who has an unconditional right to exist as you are, regardless of what others think, feel, or say about you.

Two groups of people

Have you ever met someone who seems genuinely at ease in their person? They seem to take risks and try new things with confidence; they deal with the natural level of fear that comes with new experiences much better than some others, who seem to freeze when faced with the same fear. These people say what’s on their minds and do not feel the reluctance to disagree with their parents, or later with their superiors. They clearly feel they have a right to be seen and heard by others; they intrinsically know they have the right to BE. When there are no obstacles for you to develop naturally as a person, from early childhood on, you test and question the rules set for you and later by you. But even the ability to discern the value of those rules is rooted in the capacity to think independently. A person with a Healthy Sense of Self develops that skill; the person with a Lack of Sense of Self becomes dependent (in their thinking) on the outcome of conditions that (they believe) need to be fulfilled in order to get other people’s approval. Humanity could almost be divided into two groups of people: one, as just described, that has a Healthy Sense of Self, and the other that doesn’t.

Definition Lack of (Natural) Sense of Self (LoSoS)

Characteristic of people who never developed a natural, ongoing inner knowing that he or she feels truly alive as a “real,” independent human being.

Are people-pleasers really serving others?

There are people who stand out for an entirely different set of reasons. They seem not to have the capacity to do or even to know, what they want. They look constantly to others for direction, ideas, and a standard to live by. They seek to avoid conflict and though it looks like they are serving others, it is purely because of the absence of any conviction in themselves. We could say therefore that rather than serving others, this attitude is self-serving. In the end, though, it really is at the expense of the opportunity to live their very own lives, and this unhealthy situation takes its toll on them in many ways.

Controlling behavior

What can be misleading about this type of person is that it appears they have a strict set of norms they live by, but if you look closely, those norms are products of a need to control their environment. They depend on the outcome of their activities and need things to be “just so”! What did it take for them to become a person who lives life in this way? Whose opinion or approval counts most to them?

GUIDING QUESTIONS

Here are a few questions you may elaborate on either in your thinking, by speaking out loud (perhaps into a recorder), or in writing—whatever way you prefer.

• Was there any room in your childhood for you to simply BE who you were at the time?
• What memories have shaped your becoming who you are now?
• When unpleasant memories surface, what effect do they have on you? How do you deal with them?

READING

Selected readings from Chapter 2. Also available on Amazon is the revised edition (2023) under the title: “Healthy Sense of Self, The Secret to Being Your Best Self”

ACTIVITY

Who was/is important in your life—starting when? Each of us has stories about who most influenced us in our early years: teachers who made an impact or mentors who guided us when we first started working. There are people you meet throughout your life who make a strong impression, either immediately or over time, and who leave you with a new way of seeing or doing things. Sometimes the influence is positive and sometimes it is not. Regardless, these people are important to you, and who you become is influenced by their presence in your life. For this activity, quickly draft a list of the people who are (or have been) important to you and for how long they have influenced your life. No evaluation or analysis, just the simple details of who it is/was, and for how long. They might or might not still be living, their influence may have been present since birth or only recently, a longtime connection or a new one; the common denominators are that they are IMPORTANT and MEMORABLE to you. Here is an example:

• My great grandmother, from the day I was born.
• My birth mother, since I was reunited with her at thirty-four years old.
• My daughter, since her birth thirteen years ago.
• My high school English teacher, from age fourteen.

When this list is finished, set it aside; it will be used for a future activity that deepens your awareness of WHAT you do and WHY you do it.

QUOTE FROM THE GUIDED JOURNAL

Day 49

How do you get access to your very own life?

By freeing yourself from the addiction to a

Substitute Sense of Self.

Because the dependency on

“Feeling-good-about-yourself” functions as a

Substitute Sense of Self,

and is based on

APPROVAL.

Restore your Sense of Self!

Be in and with your body

Think for yourself

Know WHY you do WHAT you do

That gives you freedom from the addiction to

approval . . .

Now you can be and do what YOU want!

RECAP

Being born doesn’t come with a guarantee that you get to live your own life. You either got the very early support you needed to develop a Natural Sense of Self, or you ended up with a Lack of Sense of Self. In this Unit, you learned to make that distinction and are now on your way to discover in which of the two groups you fit: Do you have a Healthy Sense of Self or a Lack of Sense of Self? To enable you to answer that question you were asked to make an inventory of early influences in your life.

LOOKING AHEAD

The next unit investigates what lies at the root of developing a healthy Sense of Self and looks at where the developmental process can go wrong. We will discuss certain survival mechanisms that are innate to children, and how the decisions made during that time continue to be important throughout the rest of your life. You will find out how parents and caregivers have the crucial function of reflecting back to you the message that you are a person who is real, by truly seeing and hearing you. You will have the opportunity to think back and assess your own experiences and how they have impacted you as a person.

*IMPORTANT NOTE* All comments left on the course are PUBLIC to course takers and Healthy Sense of Self employees. If you would like to send a private comment please email antoinetta@healthysenseofself.com