Personal Growth and Spiritual Growth with Dr. Y.Personal growth involves adult developmental issues. They are calling for personal growth and/or spiritual growth, as we move from our teens, to young adulthood, to mid-life, and finally toward death. From a mental health standpoint, these adult developmental issues often involve coping skills, self-concepts, differentiation, intimacy, and resolving unaddressed issues from our childhood. Coping skills are the ways we use to cope with stress, anxiety, and challenges in our life. In our adult years we often find that the coping skills of our childhood no longer serve us, if in fact they really ever did. Is it time to develop or learn some additional coping skills? Self-concepts involve how we see ourselves. Am I valuable and important and to whom? Who am I? Who is the real me? These are some of the self-concept questions we might be asking ourselves that involve personal growth. Differentiation is the process of becoming an independent person while remaining in relationship with those we love. As adults, we need to be able to stand on our own two feet, to have a loving, committed relationship without feeling smothered or controlled in that relationship. We want to be able to be our own selves, while experiencing intimacy. Intimacy means letting other that you love see the real you, the real deal. Self-referenced intimacy, the only really true intimacy, means allowing yourself to be intimate even when your loved ones are not. Showing your real self to your spouse, even when you spouse may not reveal his/herself to you and not requiring to receive their acceptance or validation. It takes courage to be intimate! Unresolved childhood issues have a way of haunting our lives and our relationships. The reverberating effects of childhood abuse (sexual, physical, verbal) and traumas can touch so many aspects of our adult lives. Even things and events that adults would consider of little consequence, can affect the healthy development of a child. Denial is a powerful defense mechanism that children use to "forget" some of their most important childhood traumas. These old wounds sometimes need to be revisited and healed. There comes a time too when we have therapeutically revisited such childhood events, and it is time to "get over it" and move on with our lives. Around one's mid-life we earnestly start our search for our authentic self--who we really are and what we are about--and for our unique purpose. We move from survival emphasis to a mastery emphasis of life's challenges in a search for meaning. Mid-life crises often result from turning and facing the second, and last, half of our lives, which brings about existential and spiritual questions of meaning and purpose. We start realizing on a very deep, personal level that we are going to someday die, that our life is finite. Hopefully, that time is yet a long ways off. This brings of spiritual questions about ultimate meanings and is there really life after death. By mid-life, our bodies too start to show some of the wear-and-tear of our lifestyle and our way of approaching life and relationships. Meaning most often lead to spiritual questions and meanings, as we now see death waiting down life's path. Spiritual questions involve the existence of a Creator/God, is there really life after death, seeing ourselves in a greater, more cosmic context, what is it that God wants us to do, and being connected on a deepening level with the spiritual aspects of our lives. Personal growth and spiritual growth can not occur unless we step out of our comfort zone. We either grow, decline, or die; there is no standing still. The choice is ours. Change is inevitable and unstoppable. We can either choose to step out of our comfort zone on our own, or wait until life knocks us out. Either way, it will happen, and we will have the opportunity to grow. To grow means to move into a fuller, richer life. The other two options we really don't want to go there. Peace, Dr. Y |
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