It’s no secret that I am a fan of Dr. Phil. (Although I do wish it was a secret because it is quite embarrassing.) I was watching an episode yesterday of a young woman who was incredibly sick and lost to drug addiction. There were drug interventionists on scene at a seedy hotel with her parents trying to get her to go to treatment. It made for quite interesting television!
What caught my attention was the battle she had within herself about whether or not to go into rehab. Every now and then she would look like she was going to give in and go. You could see it in her body language and in the words she spoke, but then, almost on reflex, she would pull back and block out everyone who was trying to help her. Her words are what haunted me. She kept saying, “I know myself. I won’t be able to do it. You can’t help me. I will fail at it again. I’m too broken.”
This was quite striking and telling to me. She wanted help. She wanted out of the horrible situation she was in. But she didn’t trust herself enough to do what was necessary. She had given up on herself. She had many experienced, capable people around her offering her help, begging her to take it, telling her she was worth it, but none of it mattered because she believed that she was irretrievable.
And it struck me just how powerful our beliefs about ourselves are. We can have a whole stadium cheering our name, believing in our abilities and our worth, but if we don’t believe it, that’s all that matters. We spend so much time trying to positively influence the opinions of others and make others see us in a positive light when really, the only opinion that will ever have any real bearing on our life and our outcomes is our own.
The other part of this episode that caught my attention was how afraid she was. She had already hit rock bottom. She was being prostituted out; her organs were failing her; she had a drug needle embedded and lost in her hand, and she had no place to go, but none of that seemed to scare her as much as the idea of trying and failing, of hoping and having those hopes dashed.
And I think that’s an important lesson for people to understand. I’m not sure there is anything more terrifying to most people than the idea of risking your hopes and expectations and of breaking that trust in yourself. It’s like we believe that absolutely nothing can hurt as much as trying and failing.
But is that true? How many people never reach out for their dreams open handed because they fear failure? How many people unconsciously sabotage themselves so that they have something to blame when they fail? How many people live their lives with both feet cemented to the ground because they are too afraid to fly?
I’ve been there. In some aspect of my life, I am still there. It’s not easy to leave that place. But it’s also not easy to stay there. And surely it’s no place to live.