Tree of Coaching

This was written for an academic journal about people with disabilities and what that means concerning their parent-child relationships.

As far back as I can remember, I have been hearing voices. It started when I was just three months old. I remember lying on my back in a cold sweat, undergoing nicotine withdrawal (as I found out decades later), my smoking mother having switched from breast-feeding to bottled formula. Gasping for breath, I heard my father yelling at my sister in the next room. She was wetting the bed every night, and my father was extremely upset. I couldn’t understand at all, and was preparing to scream aloud.

Suddenly a voice went off in my head, saying ?If you scream, something very bad will happen to you.? Since I was only a baby, it wasn’t in words, but I could hear the voice. I screamed anyway, and my mother came in, swooping me out of the crib into her loving arms. I heard my father’s yelling increase, and the sounds of my sister being spanked. It was so awful I can recall it even now, though I know that seems utterly impossible.

I grew up clumsy, anti-social, unable to communicate well. And the voices continued. I was watching TV once, ‘the Green Hornet? show, and I felt something spit very hard between my legs, going straight up my private parts. It was horrible. But I never told my parents about any of these things, keeping it all quietly to myself as the other kids taunted me, making fun of how weird and unusual I was, unable to keep up with them except in my schoolwork. There, I excelled. But for many years I spoke to no one, crying to myself even in the classroom, my body twisting up into awkward shapes uncontrollably. My mother noticed this, but we never saw a doctor about it. Instead, she sought out psychological counseling for me when I entered my teens. This did me no real good.

One day, a nice lady coach who had seen me jogging around the high school track asked me to join the girl’s track team. I did, and this began a partial recovery from my disabilities and social awkwardness. I made friends, and even came in second in one of our races. By the time I entered college I was pretty much normal, though often subject to strange feelings and occurrences, and occasional voices in my head. But still disturbed and given to crying fits, I dropped out of college, taking off hitch-hiking to blindly find my own haphazard way of living. I ended up in Washington State, where I found work as an attendant for the disabled. I met John Tyler, a most amazing man with polio who taught me that disability is not the end of your life, but the beginning, and I made friends with other disabled people.

For the first time in my life, I was happy; I blossomed with joy, no longer alone and afraid. I even married the most wonderful man in the world, Ron Schwarz, the son of Austrian Jews who had fled Hitler’s Holocaust; he had severe multiple sclerosis and used an electric wheelchair. We could not consummate our marriage, but we were deeply in love just the same. We all lived happily at Center Park, the first major apartment building in the country built specifically for people in wheelchairs and for all kinds of disabled people to abide within its beautiful walls independently. I met every sort of disabled person imaginable, including the deaf/blind, learning all about the various disabilities. But my sweet husband Ron finally died of cancer in February of 1985, two short months after my dearest friend John Tyler, my mentor and savior, unhappily succumbed to pneumonia.

Working just a few more years for the disabled, I stressed out, unable to work anymore, and in the middle of this, 1986, I had an incident where I tried to hurt myself by falling off a window ledge, ending up hospitalized and on several mental health medications. Previously in 1982 I had been diagnosed as depressed, but had not stayed on medications. Now I was forced to do so, until I finally had myself taken off them again. I went on struggling for years until I met Remigio, my present husband, in a certified nursing class in 1990. I went back to work for a disabled lady, Carrie, again at Center Park. Remigio and I lived with her there until she gave up her battle to live independently and moved to a nursing home, where she died.

I and Remigio, constantly arguing due to my mental disability, married and moved into our own apartment. As he couldn’t take the constant quarreling, he took me to a psychiatrist friend of his, and once again I was put on strong medications. These hurt me physically, and in 1997 I finally came down with a severe physical disability, chronic dystonia/dyskinesia of my left arm and head. We are presently treating this by reducing my psychiatric medications and using natural therapeutics. But I still constantly turn to the left, having to struggle to right myself at all times; my left arm sticks straight out, and it’s very difficult to bend it, or even type.

Yet I had already set myself up years ago in business as a freelance writer, copy editor, copy writer, ghost writer and website designer under the name Rainbow Writing, Inc. I have my own website, several of them in fact, and am listed within several Internet writing agencies. I work ten to twelve hours a day, almost seven days a week, getting there by taking frequent breaks. I am just starting to make some money at this, and was recently hired as a full-time ghost writer by The Floating Gallery of New York City.

It’s a daily struggle, and my left arm feels like it’s going to break off my body at the end of my challenging day. But it keeps me busy, and I truly love my work. Many people have said I am blessed with extraordinary skill and talent, and I try to go a little further and learn a little more each day.

Remigio, a former psychiatric aide, certified nurse aide, and Doctor of Osteopathy, is a Godsend. I love him as much as I loved Ron, in spite of my mental problems, which are starting to finally alleviate under Remigio’s constant care and loving support. And in 1994, we were blessed during Christmas, the same season that John Tyler died, with a beautiful little daughter, our sweet and loving Angela. Due to my disability, she suffered some psychological trauma, such as during the times I attempted suicide, but although partly severely disabled herself from this, she is healing and pulling through, excelling academically and socially in ways I never was able to learn. She is a dream come true.

If I could have written something for my parents, or told them something when I was growing up, I would have told them to not fear my special challenges. I would have asked them to read about people with disabilities, which my mother did a little, reading about an anti-social little boy when she sent me to counseling. I did not even know about disabilities when I was growing up, so I would have asked them to have taken a greater role in my upbringing, as they were often rather aloof and distant. They didn’t seem to realize that my problems were not all my own fault, but the fault of fate and my unknown, undiagnosed, untreated mental, social and physical problems.

I would tell the parents of children with similar disabilities to mine to pay more attention to their children, never blaming them for their problems, listening to them carefully and never comparing them to normal children, which shames them and only makes matters worse. I would tell them to read books about children with disabilities, and to enter any organizations for such children, exposing their own child(ren) to other, similarly-burdened children so they would have a peer group, which I did not have until adulthood.

I believe they would feel more accepted and normal that way, and a lot happier than I ever was. It would be a much more fun, healthy, and productive life for them to be surrounded with other disabled children, and to develop a healthier, more normal attitude about themselves and their disabilities. Above all, it would help to stress their abilities and cultivate their happiness, both within their families and in society at large, as they learn and grow.

About the Author:

RAINBOW WRITING, INC. — We offer inexpensive freelance writing, copy editing, ghost writing, graphics and CAD, Internet marketing, publishing help, search engine optimization, professional free services and supercheap dedicated web hosting and site development. Copyright – 2005 by Karen Cole-Peralta

There are many myths that undermine
relationships, but one of the most common is the
belief that “I am responsible for other people’s
happiness.” This pattern is so common as to be
almost primal. You can hardly find a person who
does not act this out to some degree.

In moderation, this belief supports the give and
take of healthy relationships. But in more
extreme expressions, those who believe they are
responsible for other people’s happiness can
become people pleasers, weighed down by a goal
they can never attain. For who can control the
reactions of others?

Pleasers often make their own needs and desires
secondary to everyone else’s. Believing their
actions are loving and kind, they may not see
that much of their energy is devoted to winning
approval.

This is why people pleasing often undermines
rather than nourishes a relationship. Healthy
relationships thrive when each person is coming
from honesty, a balance of caring for self and
others, and integrity with oneself.

Claire’s Aha: Let’s take a closer look at this
myth at work in an excerpt from an Option
dialogue I had with a client I’ll call Claire.

Claire came to me feeling very frustrated that
she couldn’t please her boyfriend. (Note: I’ve
left out a number of questions and details from
our hour session for the sake of brevity.)

Claire: I try this, I try that. No matter what I
do, Rodney never seems satisfied or happy.
Nothing I do is ever enough!

Q: Do you believe you can make Rodney happy?
A: Yes, I think I should be able to. I try to do
what he wants-I avoid disagreements with him, I
watch the movies he wants to see, we go out with
his friends, I dress the way he wants. But he’s
never satisfied.

Q: Why do you believe you can make him happy?
A: Because if I don’t make him happy, he’ll leave
me.

Q: Do you know if that’s true?
A: I believe that it’s true.

Q: Why do you believe that?
A: Because he gets upset if I don’t do everything
he wants to do.

Q: What might you be concerned would happen if
you didn’t believe he’d leave you?
A: I think I’d do what I wanted, and then he’d
really get mad.

Q: Would it be okay to do what you want
sometimes, even if he gets mad?
A: I’d like to do what I want sometimes, but I’m
afraid to risk the relationship.

Q: Is it worth it to you to not do what you want
in order to keep the relationship?
A: When you put it that way, I’m not sure. Hmm.
Maybe my being happy is as important as his being
happy.

Q: Do you believe it could be?
A: Yeah… Wow. What a concept! I could be
focusing on making myself happy!

Q: Would that be okay with you?
A: Maybe it would be okay, because right now
neither one of us is happy.

Even in this excerpt, you see Claire’s limiting
beliefs start to loosen up and shake free. She
has been acting from the myth that she is
responsible for Rodney’s happiness and that she
is responsible for keeping them together. In this
session, it occurred to her that she was not
putting enough importance on her own happiness.

Claire continued to explore this idea and uncover
more insights in subsequent sessions. And, at the
same time, her actions began to change. More and
more often, she took care of her own needs and
expressed her feelings and opinions to Rodney.
One day she reported in amazement that he was
much nicer to her now, as she got more
independent. (However, there are no guarantees
about how someone will react to our
transformations.)

Tool Kit for Unraveling the Myth

If you think you may have the tendency to lose
yourself in relationships, look for a belief that
could be underlying this behavior, such as, “I
must do –, or I won’t be loved,” then ask
yourself these questions:

Do I believe that?
Why do I believe that?
What seems true about that?
What am I concerned might happen if I didn’t
believe that? (What might happen that I would not
like?)
Something you have held as true may reveal itself
to be a myth-not true, and damaging to your
happiness and your relationships. Keep asking
yourself these questions, and more insights will
unfold. You’ll know the myth is unraveling when
you see your actions and reactions change. Where
your actions were frozen in a self-defeating
pattern, you’ll now discover a flow of options
and more peace.

Ain’t love grand? And let’s include self-love.
About the Author

Lenora specializes in helping people break free from limiting beliefs and conflicting emotions to create a life they love through teaching the Option Method over the past 16 years. Lenora is a consultant, teacher, author and leads transformational workshops and teleclasses throughout the U.S. and abroad, helping people live happier and more empowered lives.