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True Self-Improvement, Overcoming Fear and the Special Nature of Adrenal Memories and Its Relationship to Understanding PTSD (Part Two)
- By Peyton Quinn
- Published 12/27/2009
- Personal Accountability , Inspiration and Motivation
- Unrated
Peyton Quinn
www www.rmcat.com www.peytonquinn.com Peyton DOB 2/24/50 Author: Freedom From Fear: Taking Back Control, Of Your Life and Dissolving Depression (ISBN-10: 0975999605, ISBN-13: 978-0975999608, The Science & Art of love & Romance: A Strategy for Success a Program For Healing ISBN 978-1442177482.Black Belt Hall of Fame
View all articles by Peyton Quinn
True Self-Improvement, Overcoming Fear and the Special Nature of Adrenal Memories And Its Relationship To Understanding PTSD (Part Two)
Irrational fears limit us. Irrational fears block us from actualizing our greater full potential in life.
Let me offer another example of a self-limiting and irrational fear that is not so dissimilar from the ‘fear of flying people,’ but it is a much more common fear and a far more self-limiting one too. It is the fear of personal rejection.
Suppose John finds Judy very attractive and he would very much like to know her better. Perhaps he nurtures the ambition of developing a personal relationship with her.
But there is an irrational fear that might raise its ugly head here in John’s mind. It is that inner voice that says to him: “ Forget it! Judy is beautiful and every guy wants her. I don’t stand any chance of getting her attention on me. So why even bother? It would just mean frustration and pain for me to even start to try”
Do you see that the first problem John has here is an uncertain personal self-image? A simpler way of saying this is he lacks self-confidence. Yet how can we truly augment our self-confidence except though engaging new challenges and overcoming new fears?
John’s irrational fear may thus allow the potential ‘love of his life’ to slip through his fingers! Hell, Judy could even be a ‘secret admirer’ of his for all he really knows. But his fear can keep him from trying. His fear can keep him from ever going any further than just saying “Hi” to Judy and perhaps a bit nervously too when she passes by.
But lets look deeper; if he does not try then it is clear that he certainly can’t win Judy. But what further has he then lost? He has even lost the experience of pursuing Judy and then having things not work out as he hoped. That experience is often a very formative and necessary experience too. Looking at it longer term that experience could actually be beneficial for John too in preparing him for a later romantic success down his personal path of life.
He might even discover that though she is pretty on the outside, Judy is not really so pretty on the inside. There are many possibilities here but they would all expand John’s experience and thus they could augment his next chance for success!
However, as a consequence of ‘not trying out of fear’ John can remain inexperienced in the ‘romantic courting experience and methodology’. He has thus not begun to season himself in the arena of love, which can certainly sometimes be an intense emotional battlefield. Let’s keep in mind that it is the ‘inexperienced solider’ that most often first falls victim to the war too. This fear of rejection just does not serve John in any way at all. John’s fear of rejection severely limits him and narrows the very scope of his life.
What would help John here is a program that would allow him to overcome his fear and further still, to allow him to thus experience and know that he can overcome other fears as well. An ‘overcoming fear of rejection’ program could be achieved through an authentic simulation too. Though this is a bit more challenging the “fear of flying” program simulation I spoke of.
But a program that challenged John and prepared him to successfully overcome any real challenge and fear (in whatever way that true challenge and fear manifested itself in that program) would enhance John’s personal self-image.
And again it is from that ‘view of ourselves’ our personal self-image from which flows all our accomplishments, or conversely from which flows all our inner fears and failures.
So if we legitimately challenge John, and John rises to that challenge and puts his fear aside to do so, then we have truly improved his life. That more ‘self-confident John’ would at least approach Judy. And then of course he takes his chance like any other ‘man or bird or fish’. But the coin does get tossed and John is moving ahead in a more mentally healthy manner because he has transcended a portion of his fear of rejection..
I have directly seen that when one has a really self-limiting fear and then they just ‘take the plunge’ and go for it in an effort to overcome that fear as best they can, then they have truly grown and expanded themselves. And they have done so in every important way too: personally, spiritually and in every way that truly counts in regard to this somewhat limited life spans of ours.
We really have no time for the ‘self-imposed handicaps of irrational fears’ in living our life fully. Every irrational fear is a true shackle on our body and on our mind.
An effective self-improvement training program provides the special environment where a person is forced to face and overcome a fear. When they overcome that fear they make that essential personal self-discovery that they are more, that they can do more, than they previously imagined.
This is a well-established principle in military training programs and I have some knowledge of such programs too. But there the trainers are dealing with tens of thousands and so almost by necessity the basic method is to ‘break them down’ first, so you can ‘built them back up’ to what the military needs.
But in smaller groups and for different objectives some of the military conceptual principles do apply to true self-improvement training. After all the military does take ‘ordinary people’ and teaches them to do some truly extraordinary things.
Elite combat units are thus by their nature are trained in smaller numerical units. You are thinning out ‘the best of the best’ and then making them better still. The basic method is one of continuing challenges (and also education and increasing their skill set).
Please think about it, these programs are in part trying to train people to overcome the greatest fear of all, the fear of death. But the objective is for them to let go of the disabling part of that fear so as to enhance greatly their chances of survival in combat.
In my own self-defense/self-improvement training program for civilians a man once jokingly asked me before the weekend training began, “ Are you going to turn me into a commando too?” My reply was, “No, I will be happy when you leave here just thinking like one”
Yet, isn’t life itself a form of ‘combat’ for us sometimes though? And I mean that in a significant and important sense too. We are all, or at least I feel that we should be ‘spiritual warriors’ in life. Each new day can bring each of us new and sometimes unwanted ‘challenges’ Does not each day have the potential to bring us fresh disappointments, even true tragedy as well as perhaps moments of elation and also times of doubt and even depression? This is the spiritual battlefield of life.
When we engage those life challenges and engineer our path to overcome them and triumph over them, then what we have really done first is to overcome or at least ‘set aside’ our fear that we might be unable to overcome them. Very often our most significant and general self-aware fear is simply the fear of ‘failure’.
It is only when we overcome an irrational fear that we can then look back and truly see the role that irrational fear has previously played in limiting us from actualizing our innate potential and in achieving, or failing to achieve, any of the goals we might aspire too.
In the final installment of this article we are now better prepared to understand the nayure and origins of PTSD (Post Traumatic Stress Disorder).
I was publishing my first paper on PTSD in 1974. However, at that time nearly half the Doctorial Board told me PTSD did not exist, but was only a fiction created by Hollywood writers for dramatic film and TV purposes. Of course I knew they were mistaken, as I had some PTSD myself.
In understanding PTSD we are able to further realize just how much of the repeated behaviors we might engage in, the ones that do not serve us and are ‘mistakes’, are directed from our non self-aware minds. That is these behaviors have been conditioned into us without our self-aware knowledge.
This is no fantasy, this is no ‘abstract theory’ either. In the next installment I will give you a very concrete example of this process. It is an example of the non self- aware mind controlling your behavior that you almost certainly have personally experienced yourself.
It is only when we understand this process itself that we have the means to intervene and correct these repeated ‘behavioral mistakes”, these can be the repeated mistakes that often stand between us and achieving our most important life’s goals.
Irrational fears limit us. Irrational fears block us from actualizing our greater full potential in life.
Let me offer another example of a self-limiting and irrational fear that is not so dissimilar from the ‘fear of flying people,’ but it is a much more common fear and a far more self-limiting one too. It is the fear of personal rejection.
Suppose John finds Judy very attractive and he would very much like to know her better. Perhaps he nurtures the ambition of developing a personal relationship with her.
But there is an irrational fear that might raise its ugly head here in John’s mind. It is that inner voice that says to him: “ Forget it! Judy is beautiful and every guy wants her. I don’t stand any chance of getting her attention on me. So why even bother? It would just mean frustration and pain for me to even start to try”
Do you see that the first problem John has here is an uncertain personal self-image? A simpler way of saying this is he lacks self-confidence. Yet how can we truly augment our self-confidence except though engaging new challenges and overcoming new fears?
John’s irrational fear may thus allow the potential ‘love of his life’ to slip through his fingers! Hell, Judy could even be a ‘secret admirer’ of his for all he really knows. But his fear can keep him from trying. His fear can keep him from ever going any further than just saying “Hi” to Judy and perhaps a bit nervously too when she passes by.
But lets look deeper; if he does not try then it is clear that he certainly can’t win Judy. But what further has he then lost? He has even lost the experience of pursuing Judy and then having things not work out as he hoped. That experience is often a very formative and necessary experience too. Looking at it longer term that experience could actually be beneficial for John too in preparing him for a later romantic success down his personal path of life.
He might even discover that though she is pretty on the outside, Judy is not really so pretty on the inside. There are many possibilities here but they would all expand John’s experience and thus they could augment his next chance for success!
However, as a consequence of ‘not trying out of fear’ John can remain inexperienced in the ‘romantic courting experience and methodology’. He has thus not begun to season himself in the arena of love, which can certainly sometimes be an intense emotional battlefield. Let’s keep in mind that it is the ‘inexperienced solider’ that most often first falls victim to the war too. This fear of rejection just does not serve John in any way at all. John’s fear of rejection severely limits him and narrows the very scope of his life.
What would help John here is a program that would allow him to overcome his fear and further still, to allow him to thus experience and know that he can overcome other fears as well. An ‘overcoming fear of rejection’ program could be achieved through an authentic simulation too. Though this is a bit more challenging the “fear of flying” program simulation I spoke of.
But a program that challenged John and prepared him to successfully overcome any real challenge and fear (in whatever way that true challenge and fear manifested itself in that program) would enhance John’s personal self-image.
And again it is from that ‘view of ourselves’ our personal self-image from which flows all our accomplishments, or conversely from which flows all our inner fears and failures.
So if we legitimately challenge John, and John rises to that challenge and puts his fear aside to do so, then we have truly improved his life. That more ‘self-confident John’ would at least approach Judy. And then of course he takes his chance like any other ‘man or bird or fish’. But the coin does get tossed and John is moving ahead in a more mentally healthy manner because he has transcended a portion of his fear of rejection..
I have directly seen that when one has a really self-limiting fear and then they just ‘take the plunge’ and go for it in an effort to overcome that fear as best they can, then they have truly grown and expanded themselves. And they have done so in every important way too: personally, spiritually and in every way that truly counts in regard to this somewhat limited life spans of ours.
We really have no time for the ‘self-imposed handicaps of irrational fears’ in living our life fully. Every irrational fear is a true shackle on our body and on our mind.
An effective self-improvement training program provides the special environment where a person is forced to face and overcome a fear. When they overcome that fear they make that essential personal self-discovery that they are more, that they can do more, than they previously imagined.
This is a well-established principle in military training programs and I have some knowledge of such programs too. But there the trainers are dealing with tens of thousands and so almost by necessity the basic method is to ‘break them down’ first, so you can ‘built them back up’ to what the military needs.
But in smaller groups and for different objectives some of the military conceptual principles do apply to true self-improvement training. After all the military does take ‘ordinary people’ and teaches them to do some truly extraordinary things.
Elite combat units are thus by their nature are trained in smaller numerical units. You are thinning out ‘the best of the best’ and then making them better still. The basic method is one of continuing challenges (and also education and increasing their skill set).
Please think about it, these programs are in part trying to train people to overcome the greatest fear of all, the fear of death. But the objective is for them to let go of the disabling part of that fear so as to enhance greatly their chances of survival in combat.
In my own self-defense/self-improvement training program for civilians a man once jokingly asked me before the weekend training began, “ Are you going to turn me into a commando too?” My reply was, “No, I will be happy when you leave here just thinking like one”
Yet, isn’t life itself a form of ‘combat’ for us sometimes though? And I mean that in a significant and important sense too. We are all, or at least I feel that we should be ‘spiritual warriors’ in life. Each new day can bring each of us new and sometimes unwanted ‘challenges’ Does not each day have the potential to bring us fresh disappointments, even true tragedy as well as perhaps moments of elation and also times of doubt and even depression? This is the spiritual battlefield of life.
When we engage those life challenges and engineer our path to overcome them and triumph over them, then what we have really done first is to overcome or at least ‘set aside’ our fear that we might be unable to overcome them. Very often our most significant and general self-aware fear is simply the fear of ‘failure’.
It is only when we overcome an irrational fear that we can then look back and truly see the role that irrational fear has previously played in limiting us from actualizing our innate potential and in achieving, or failing to achieve, any of the goals we might aspire too.
In the final installment of this article we are now better prepared to understand the nayure and origins of PTSD (Post Traumatic Stress Disorder).
I was publishing my first paper on PTSD in 1974. However, at that time nearly half the Doctorial Board told me PTSD did not exist, but was only a fiction created by Hollywood writers for dramatic film and TV purposes. Of course I knew they were mistaken, as I had some PTSD myself.
In understanding PTSD we are able to further realize just how much of the repeated behaviors we might engage in, the ones that do not serve us and are ‘mistakes’, are directed from our non self-aware minds. That is these behaviors have been conditioned into us without our self-aware knowledge.
This is no fantasy, this is no ‘abstract theory’ either. In the next installment I will give you a very concrete example of this process. It is an example of the non self- aware mind controlling your behavior that you almost certainly have personally experienced yourself.
It is only when we understand this process itself that we have the means to intervene and correct these repeated ‘behavioral mistakes”, these can be the repeated mistakes that often stand between us and achieving our most important life’s goals.
