Why me?

I can laugh about it today, but this was a very serious question 13 years ago when I had my first psychotic episode. It seemed sooooooo unfair. My brain was producing numerous questions of self-pity: »What have I done to deserve this? Is this a punishment? For what? Have I not been taking good care of my health? How come it has happened precisely to me and not to somebody else? My class mates are finishing their studies, some are already married. Some have been already promised a job. And here I am – my BA not finished, single, no job perspectives, no boy-friend perspectives. I'm doomed.«

Well everyone has bad moments of self-pity. That's normal. The problem with my self-pity was that this »mode« was »on« 24 hours a day, 365 days per year, for 7 years. In the meantime I had finished BA, got a job and a wonderful boy-friend, but the »self-pity-mode« was still »on«.

How is this possible? It's called thinking patterns. One gets into the habit of self-pity and that's how it stays, even if the outer-world-situation changes. So in the summer of 2004 I decided to change my »inner-world-situation«. I was encouraged by my boy-friend's friend, who lent me a book by Louise Hay You Can Heal Your Life. I started reading. It didn't seem to work. I started doing the mental work described in the book. It didn't seem to work.

I said to myself: »I hit the bottom. I am constantly thinking of committing a suicide. I cannot fall any deeper. I will continue the affirmations and visualizations. It must start working some day.« I was stubborn as hell and so I persisted. Twice a day for about 20 minutes. The first results began to show after a year. They were not real results you could describe. I just began to feel a bit better. And so I went on with the mental work. Later I added the method of Phyllis Krystal. A year ago I joined a school for emotional intelligence. Now after 5 years of working on my ways of thinking I can say I have changed.

It's either the hard way or no way. It's your choice. But don't worry – after a few years you begin to like the mental work so much, you cannot stop doing it.