Self Matters by Dr. Phil McGraw

Self Matters by Dr. Phil McGraw

Author:Dr. Phil McGraw
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Free Press


7 LOCUS OF CONTROL

“The best place to find a helping hand is at the end of your arm.”

—S WEDISH PROVERB

STOP. For this chapter to be meaningful, you need to do some homework first. I want you now to take the two “self-tests” found in Appendix A and Appendix B. You’re going to find that this chapter is highly interactive, but you need to have your results from those tests before you go on. Take as much time as you need to answer all of the questions in both tests. Remember that honest self-appraisal is the key. We’ll be dealing very directly with what you do in those self-tests, so don’t cheat yourself by not doing them. Once you have finished both tests, come back here.

• • •

Okay, if you have taken both test, we are ready to go! In one of my “past lives,” that would be before I came to my senses and pulled my head out, I helped direct a pain clinic in which we treated people with chronic and debilitating physically based pain. We once had two patients in the program with strikingly similar profiles. Both men were truck drivers, both were from the same town, both were married, they were close in age, and they had the identical diagnosis: protruding disks in the lower back, with severe pain irradiating down the left leg. Two patients that, although very much alike physically, proved to be dramatically different in some very important and outcome-determinative ways.

At his first appointment, Steve described for me his bouts with intense pain and his deep, reactive depression. He nonetheless wanted to be actively involved in his treatment and asked me to provide him with reading material—books, articles, anything—that might explain his pain syndrome and could help him understand why and how he was continuing to suffer with this chronic and life-altering problem. He said that traditional medical treatment had proven unsuccessful and that he believed that there “just has to be something that I can do to help myself.” After some uncommonly in-depth questions and discussion, Steve’s appointment came to an end and he headed home, loaded up with the kinds of documents he’d asked for.

Ten days into his therapy, Steve told me had reached two conclusions: first, that his pain emanated from a chronic imbalance in his muscles; and second, that this muscle problem was in turn being kept alive by his emotional stress and imbalance. He described the long-term stress he had accumulated from feeling overworked and overburdened year after year and by his recent frustration with his nagging pain. He also told me that he suspected his many battles with depression were complicated by a family history marked by frequent bouts of depression and anxiety.

Steve then said he had decided he, himself, could reverse his condition by improving the behavioral and emotional balance in his life and consequently his muscle tension. He believed it was now within his power to break the cycle of pain. True to this prediction, he



Download



Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.