"My husband will either go crazy, divorce me or both. To be honest, I get it. I nag him. Incessantly. I am unbearable, really.
"But you know what? That’s just me. That is just how I am. It's tragic, I suppose -- but I guess he's gotta to learn to live with it or get out." -- explains Jackie with a sad smile on her face.
Nope, this is not from one of my sessions. Picture me banging my head into imaginary walls while listening to my friend. Jackie doesn't think she has an actual problem, so why would she get a session?
Let me be more precise: she does not believe there is a solution to a problem she does not have. Since “that's just me”.
Here's the rub: there is no such thing as "just me", "just he", or "just she", in this case.
First, we never stop evolving. The fact is our egos fear change so they tell us stories about what we ARE. That we are constant.
But if you think about it: you were a fundamentally different person only a few years ago. "It’s just me" suggests that you were born in fixed state and that is how you will put be into your grave. Unchanged, the course of your life experiences having left no mark on you.
We all know this is untrue.
Second, we have multiple sub-personalities.
And thankfully so, you must engage a different sub-personality when you listen to your boss about a looming deadline, when you admonish your children about their naughty behavior, when you playfully seduce your partner for sex, when you joke loudly with your drinking buddies at the wine bar, or when update your mother over Skype about her grandchildren's latest developments. In each case, a different sub-personality steps into the appropriate context and does its job.
Jackie’s Judge (her inner critic), however is so strong, that she takes entire control of Jackie often in the wrong context and wrong time, critiquing her poor husband, or anybody, in fact, who stands in her way. If she wants to make peace with the Judge first she has to realize that it is just a voice. One of many inside of Jackie.
Jackie isn't tragically flawed. "That's just me" doesn't have to be her fate.
Jackie was born as a perfect baby and she can continue living without giving in to a habit of cruel nagging. She only has to choose to engage her Judge and find out: When and why did the Judge learn to nag to help Jackie? Her happiness is hidden in that answer and that is where she will find her new powers to be what she supposed to be.
Let’s keep our fingers crossed for Jackie before an entirely preventable divorce is put into motion. Please forward this to a friend of yours, you-know-who, who cheats themselves of happiness and fulfilled life, by telling you (and themselves) that “it’s just me”.
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