Mary Auster Shanesy, PsyD, LP
I wrote Becoming the Hero of Your Own Life after doing therapy with patients for over a decade and seeing so many of the same things bogging down my patients--regardless of age, sex, socioeconomic status, education level, or any other surface-level signifier.
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I started calling this stuff that was bogging everyone down The Great Lies, and the Personal Lies. It was hard to see people suffer from these Great and Personal Lies over and over again, but I'd also come up with a remedy along the way. A framework for rethinking your life, better understanding the roots of your sadness, anxiety, trauma or other struggles, and a roadmap for how to remake your life into something better.
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Enter: Becoming the Hero of Your Own Life.
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I hope this book brings you comfort in knowing that you're not alone in grappling with the Great and Personal Lies--and some tools to help you overcome them.
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If you're located in the Minneapolis-St. Paul area, I also offer one-on-one counseling and specialize in anxiety, depression, life transitions, trauma, and substance abuse.
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Anxiety
Most people will tell you that they hate feeling anxious, that anxiety paralyzes or controls them. They can’t leave the house, talk to people, or take a deep breath. They can’t sleep, relax, or enjoy much of anything—and they don’t know how to make it stop. They just want their anxiety to go away so that they never have to feel that way again. But according to well established research, making anxiety go away would mean that many of us would never do or achieve anything. So actually, we all need some degree of anxiety in order to be the best that we can be. Just as our culture and values made a devil out of the normal sadness that can help us be more creative and effective in thinking about and solving our “problems in living,” our culture also decided that anxiety is another devil when, in fact, a moderate level of anxiety is vital to helping us achieve.
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When we become able to recognize that anxiety could be an ally in our desire to succeed at something that is important to us, we can learn to turn our attention to problem-solving and figuring out how to take control of anxiety rather than letting it control and enslave us. Once we stop demonizing anxiety, and start looking at it as simply a reaction to something that is important to us, we don’t have to be a victim to it.
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Becoming the Hero of Your Own Life can be your roadmap to moving from being a victim of the Lies, to being a champion in your own life.
Depression
Not surprisingly, depression has become a central concern and feature of American life and culture. We're no longer simply sad, down, or a bit blue. Instead, we're depressed. It’s as though depression has become so much a part of normal life that individuals shape and describe any form or level of distress as depression. People will talk with family, friends, and mental health professionals about my depression as though it’s a closely held, cherished possession as well as a disease that must be driven away in order to restore selfhood and banish all of life’s ills and difficulties. No wonder so many of us find ourselves thinking and feeling there must be something wrong with us when everyone else is living “happily ever after.”
Because when sadness or depression occurs in our lives, we’re totally unprepared. We have little experience with how to feel and manage this all-too-human emotion in a healthy way. But what if we begin to recognize that depression and sadness are actually just signals that something is broken in your life and that you need to bear down and mend it.
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Becoming the Hero of Your Own Life can help you learn how to become an Objective Observer with the skills and power to recognize the Lies that have held you, and overcome the depression and sadness that are keeping you from the life you want and deserve.
Life Transitions
Life Transitions is just another way to say "change," and for most of us change is pretty stressful. And that's all change - not just change we don't like, didn't want, or couldn't anticipate, even change we want or are looking forward to creates stress and anxiety. Losing a loved one, getting married, or starting a family is incredibly stressful. Losing a job, starting a new one, or retiring at the end of your career is incredibly stressful. Moving, whether across the street or across the country is incredibly stressful.
Life transitions are hard because they mean we have to think, choose and act differently in order to manage this change, and that's where the voice of the Lies, Great and Personal, can slip in. You know that voice, the one that tells you you can't, you shouldn't, you're not good enough, strong enough, smart enough, capable enough to manage the change you're facing.
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Becoming the Hero of Your Own Life can help you learn to see the truth of the life transition, the change, you are facing, and the incredible resources that have helped you through every other change in your life.
Trauma
Trauma is connected to the lack of control over what happens to us in terrible situations as well as our desire to never find ourselves with such a lack of control in the future. Trauma is one of those difficult interactions or situations that individuals survive and often results in anxiety and depression. All three of these distressing emotions have something important in common: they are usually triggered by a lack of control and our desire to regain control. But the reality of control is that it’s not real—it’s an illusion. The illusion of control is in service to the lies, Great and Personal, that can enslave and torture us throughout our lives.
None of us have control over when we’re born or when we die, and most of us have (grudgingly) accepted these realities. What is harder is that we also have no control over much of what happens to us in our lives and absolutely no control over how others react to, treat, perceive, speak to, or interact with us. And yet our thoughts and beliefs, the lies, Great and Personal, tell us that we do have control. If we could be different, do something different, or say something different, we could control how others perceive, react to, treat, speak to, and interact with us.
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Becoming the Hero of Your Own Life can help you to recognize the illusion of control, and ways to heal and move forward into your life despite the trauma of the past.
Substance Abuse
There are many ways people try to silence the Great and Personal Lies that create the suffering, depression, and anxiety that keep them from becoming their own Hero, and substances can be a big one. Alcohol and other "recreational chemicals" are a way to self-medicate away the distress and discomfort of the thoughts, feelings, choices, and lies without having to really look at them and fight back. The problem with this kind of "medication" is that we often just trade one kind of suffering for another, because all too frequently avoiding looking at and fighting the lies can lead to substance abuse and addiction.
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Avoidance, abuse, and addiction are a road that can be overcome when you find a way to face the fear, the anger, the hurt and disappointment, and make a choice the honors and respects the Hero inside.
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Becoming the Hero of Your Own Life can help you see through the lies, and find the resilience and resources to turn away from the road to abuse and addiction.