I have a client who just blew me away. He’s a smart kid who’s in his late teenage years. He came in reporting feelings of depression, anxiety, panic attacks, fear of the future/unknown, and issues with death and dying. We did the normal first session teachings that you’ve read about here, and then we applied this new way of seeing things to his specific concerns. He seemed to really get it. We decided that two weeks would be a good amount of time to pass before he came back in.
So he came back in, and I asked how the last two weeks had been. He said he was feeling much better about things. Yes! I asked about the panic attacks, and he said they were now “no big deal.” Yes! I asked if he had had any of them since we had met, and he said that he had had two of them. One lasted for two minutes and one lasted for thirty seconds. I was trying to contain my laughter and tears of joy… It gets better, though. He said, “I kind of like them now, because they force me to stop and kind of meditate.” Remember that the teaching on panic attacks is just like any other feeling – stop, breathe, and welcome it. Totally allow it, but don’t hold it. Let it go. You can even demand more intensity, and watch what happens. You get less fearful of it and it goes away. He did this and it seems that they’ve been exposed as being not so bad. Remove the fear and welcome it, and you have a little kitty instead of a huge tiger. He actually said, “It kind of makes me feel invincible, as if anything that could be stress-causing can’t touch me.” YES!! We’ve talked quite a bit about our reality as a spiritual being and not a body, and he hit the nail on the head in this context. If you’re spirit and not a body, then you literally are invincible. The body is never invincible, but you are. You ain’t a “meatsuit.” He got a big taste of this. Whoa.
At this point, we were about five minutes into the session, and I didn’t know what we’d talk about the rest of the time. Hilarious. I scanned the notes from the first session and asked him about the rest of the things we had talked about. What about death and dying? No problem. He had a 24-year-old cousin die of cancer back in Fall 2012, and this shook him up quite a bit. It helped a lot to just really talk about death with somebody for the first time. I might’ve told him about how I actually feel closer to my dad since his death over a decade ago – I don’t remember. And my dad and I had gotten along just fine. I had also seen a gifted psychic a year after his passing, and that was a real game-changer. Understatement… That was a game-changer for my whole life. “Logical math guy” had to open up to the fact that the rules I’d grown up believing were not even close to valid.
I had also recommended a documentary on Netflix called The Afterlife. He watched this and loved it, saying it helped to see other opinions and viewpoints. The movie features a couple of medical doctors (i.e. trained scientists), and they approach the afterlife and near-death experiences from a totally logical, scientific viewpoint. They gather data and do all of those “scientific” things. That really appeals to me, as my readers know by now. Speaking of which, I just learned of a professor named Gary Schwartz, Ph.D, who studies the intersection of science and spirit. Cool stuff. Anyway, death and dying no longer seem to be an issue for my client.
I asked about fear of the future and fear of the unknown, and he said there’s still some of that. I said that I have some of that, too. He knows what to do with it now, though – stop and let go of it. Any feeling will pass. Any thought will pass. He can let it go and then remind himself that it’s just that pattern of fear of the future and of the unknown – no big deal. He reminds himself that he’s here now, so just live now. Great job.
We had covered all of the bases from the first session, so I asked about his daily life and how he can incorporate this major simplification. He said he can just live – go to school and work and keep it simple. He was getting stressed in math class recently, so he walked out, sat in the hall, and just breathed and let it go. He walked in feeling much better, and he had friends who could let him know what he had missed. Excellent! He was watching a depressing movie one day, and he felt himself feeling pretty bad and thinking negatively. He paused the movie, stopped, and released. He felt much better and watched the rest of the movie. In each case, he stopped a snowball while it was small and let it melt. Then he continued what he was doing. Yes!
Another thing he said was really awesome. He works at a restaurant, and it sounds like it’s not exactly his dream job. He’s found joy in helping his co-workers, though. He noticed that when he helps them, and it could be in very simple ways, it makes them happy. And this makes him happy. Yes! I explained how we have a warped concept of giving and receiving here on Earth. We think that when we give something, we lose it. When we receive something, somebody else loses it. This sure seems to be true in the material world, but with things like love and happiness, we give in order to receive. If you want love or happiness, give it away freely and watch what happens. Great stuff.
Well, that’s the tale for today. Whenever a client seems to really “get it” the first time they come in, I get excited about seeing them the next time. Life sometimes throws the kitchen sink at them in that time, which of course I warn them about. It doesn’t always happen like that, though. Anyway, I always want to see how they are when they return. This guy blew me away. I told him that the same things he’s been doing will work for the rest of his life. This is literally Human 101, the Laws of Living on Earth. They will not change. Life might throw more at him, but never get discouraged if it messes you up. Just get back on that horse. Feelings are still temporary and the voice in the head is still not the voice of truth. There’s no reason for him to come back in unless something big comes up or he wants to go deeper into some of the things we talked about, like the spiritual stuff. That’s his call, and I’m here if he needs me. But for most of what life will have in store for him, he’s all set as his own therapist now. And it’s times like this when I really love my job.