How In The Hell Did This Happen To Me?

Actually, the title of this article is the title of the book that I'm in the process of writing as well as the main theme of my radio show, "Welcome to Life Happens". It has to do with patterns that we develop in our lives from childhood on.

We don't consciously or purposefully choose to develop these patterns. Instead they developed unknowingly and unconsciously. We picked them up by watching how our parents and other significant figures dealt with their lives. We also learned them as a result of experiences that we encountered growing up. We may have had a "bent" in the direction of developing those patterns because of our personality types or because of circumstances in our early development that demanded a certain adjustment on our part. Perhaps something traumatic occurred that resulted in a certain type reaction or just that the family commonly practiced the pattern.

The problem with these early developmental patterns is that although they may have been effective at one point in our lives, they're still being practiced and they don't work anymore. Many of these patterns may have grown out of a child's not having any choices because of their dependence on parents or parental figures. When we don't have choices, we tend to compensate by developing patterns that might usually go to extremes. If there's one rule that I've learned from working with thousands of people it is this: extremes never work! Essentially, when we go to extremes, we believe that the opposite of whatever the problem is for which we're trying to compensate will take us to the answers that we need to find. Instead, we usually end up going into another set of problems.

The answer to life is balance. However, we cannot attain a sense of balance that lasts indefinitely. We can only strive to attain balance in our lives and realize that striving is a necessary constant in life if we want to become healthy and happy. It means that we need to be aware and willing to work at gaining balance. I liken this process to exercising and the effort it takes to "stay in shape". So, when our patterns of dealing with life coming into our adult years become problematic....even though they worked for us previously....we need to consciously change them. Because these patterns were part of our learned behaviors, we can learn to change them a little at a time. At first it's difficult but with determination and practice, it will become easier and we will become healthier.