Lindsay Gibson - Who You Were Meant to Be: A Guide to Finding or Recovering Your Lifes Purpose

Who You Were
Meant to Be

Who You Were
Meant to Be

A Guide to Finding or Recovering Your Lifes Purpose

Lindsay C. Gibson, Psy.D.

Copyright 2000 by Lindsay C. Gibson

All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form whatsoever, including electronic, mechanical, or any information storage or retrieval system, except as may be expressly permitted in the 1976 Copyright Act or in writing from the publisher. Requests for permission should be addressed to:

Second Edition 2020

Blue Bird Press
1 Columbus Center Suite 615
Virginia Beach, VA 23462

Gibson, Lindsay C.

Who You Were Meant To Be: A Guide to Finding or Recovering Your Lifes Purpose
(first edition, 2000) Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 99-70158

Print ISBN: 0-88282-187-3

Originally published by New Horizons Press, Far Hills, NJ
Manufactured in the USA.

2004 2003 2002 2001 2000 / s 4 3 2 1

To Skip and Carter, with all my love

Table of Contents

Authors Note

T his book is based on my psychotherapy work with patients, a study of the relevant literature, and my clients life experiences. Fictitious names and identities have been given to all characters in this book in order to protect individual privacy. Personal characteristics and family circumstances of the individuals in the book have been altered to prevent recognition.

Preface to the Second Edition

I hope this book will prove a useful guide to your self-discovery. It was written out of my lifelong desire as a psychotherapist to help people extricate themselves from childhood fears and unrealistic loyalties that hold them back in their lives. Who You Were Meant to Be came to me as a message from the heart, the ideas arising from my deep feelings about this subject. I was seeking not just to educate but also to cheer and encourage my reader, whose difficulties I knew so well. I hope its wholeheartedness shines through.

This second edition self-published when the publishing rights reverted to me after nearly twenty years of publication came about because I wanted to make sure that the book didnt go out of print. To judge from enthusiastic readers, it has found a home in the hearts of many people. I am hoping that new readers will discover it too as it reemerges on the coattails of my later books. A few changes such as roomier formatting, clearer divisions, and larger font size, hopefully make this edition an even more comfortable read. In this new edition, I tried to preserve the books clear and rhythmic voice while updating a few of the terms and topics in ways that better explain its concepts to new readers. Relevant new psychological and neurological research also has been added in places, to support the spirit of the books mission: to find or recover who you were meant to be.

Introduction

H ow did we get to be so uncomfortable with who we really are? Why do creative and capable people turn their energies away from their truest longing for self-expression? As a psychotherapist and concerned human being, these are questions that interest me deeply. I have been troubled all my life by watching bright and talented people not do what they were happiest doing and often for the noblest reasons.

In my early days as a therapist, I was a real cheerleader. It was second nature for me to jump in and start offering my clients ideas for how they could make themselves feel better. Like a smiling waiter offering a dessert tray, I would ask them to consider this solution or that idea. I was eager to whet their appetites for growth by showing them possibilities. My clients listened with interest, but they rarely followed up on these great suggestions. Worse, they seemed to feel badly about not being able to go along with me when I so obviously wanted to help them. I also recommended excellent self-help books, thinking some good ideas from outside sources would help. No dice.

There were forces operating in my consulting room that went beyond the scope of enthusiasm or positive thinking. There was something unseen standing in the way between my client and me, unperceived by us both, but which bounced back my ideas and encouragements as if I had hurled them against a wall. Finally I learned to sit back and fix my gaze in the middle distance. What was that wall? What was standing between my client and me? What was keeping this person from receiving help and growing? Soon I began to figure out what these forces were that joined us in every session, working as hard against my clients growth as I was to help them. Their power over my clients was formidable, yanking them back into depression or walloping them with an anxiety attack just when things started to get better.

When I began to relax and stopped trying so hard to fight through these psychological protectors, they became easier to see. As though materializing before my eyes, I began to discern patterns in my clients struggles that had a very consistent form. I began to understand how and why those unseen defenders got there. They were commissioned out of the deepest levels of love, fear, and protectiveness. These psychological defenses were charged with protecting sacred family loyalties, arising from deep empathy for parents or loved ones. Their purpose was ultimately so self-sacrificing, I stood in awe before what these people had given up in order not to hurt someone they loved.

What I was seeing was the retarding effect of inner forces that existed solely to keep my clients stuck in a certain role in their family or a certain self-image in their own minds. Growth itself did not have to be so slow or hard. In fact, I often marveled at how quickly and totally clients could bloom with psychological health on a good day, making it seem that they had suddenly gotten it all together. And so they had. Their growth was real. However, on other days, because of these invisible negative forces, these bodyguards of the status quo, my clients often gave up the ground they had gained and the struggle started all over again.

As time went on, I also became aware of the depth of my clients fears about growth, how frightened they were at times about getting in touch with their true selves. It was as though a vast space of complicated loyalties and terrors opened up before my eyes, and I saw like never before what these people were really up against. It was then I realized that there was a need for a special approach to living ones life effectively without being sabotaged by past demons. An approach designed to deal not only with the hurts from the past, but also to address peoples profound anxieties about how their growth might affect their loved ones.

Around the time of this realization, I woke up from a sound sleep one night with the words Who You Were Meant To Be in the forefront of my mind. Immediately I knew that this was what my clients were really trying to figure out when they came to me for help. They suffered because they were sick of living an unfulfilling life, but had no idea how to live any differently. Not knowing who they were meant to be, they had no way of knowing what would make them truly happy.

Later that spring I started a Growth Group, subtitled Who You Were Meant To Be. Some of the most earnest people I have ever met came to that group, and continued to come over the next two years. My clients and group members had one thing in common: they realized that they did not know what to do with their lives, but were terribly ready to find out.

Through a new understanding of their fears and family loyalties, my clients and group members began to recover their lost motivation. They began to express renewed creativity and an itch for accomplishment, as though some intrinsic energy had been released. However, this was often a challenging period in their lives, as these courageous people see-sawed between their new selves and their old self-doubts. Surprising ups and downs frequently followed in their lives, and often my role was simply to educate them about the growth process and to reassure them that they were on the right track. As my clients calmed down and grew steadily more sure of their new way of being in the world, the rest of their lives fell into place too, obedient now to a soul that knew where it was going.