Alice McDowell - Hidden Treasure: How to Break Free of Five Patterns that Hide Your True Self

Alice McDowell has brought us a gem with Hidden Treasure! She has masterfully shared with us her in-depth knowledge and clinical experience working with the 5 Belief Systems / Character Structure. The material is clear, practical, easy to understand, and the exercises are sure to deepen self-awareness on ones transformational journey.

ANNE HOYE, Dean, Barbara Brennan School of
Healing and The Brennan Institute

Hidden Treasure provides a comprehensive, eye-opening exploration of five fundamental ways that humans distort their inner Light in order to protect themselves from real or imagined harm. It is a pleasure to read, with abundant real-life vignettes that help to flesh out the subtle workings of each of the defense structures. Written with exceptional clarity, it offers a number of approaches for healing each structure, making it eminently useful to anyone motivated to grow emotionally, psychologically, or spiritually.

DAVID HARMAN, PhD, Co-founder of Inner Source Healing
and co-author of The Way of Love

Based on decades of experience in guiding people towards psychological and spiritual wholeness, Alice McDowell introduces the five personality types of bio-enegetic therapy and shows how they can support self-healing and transformation. Practical, clear, and wise, this book is a precious gift to anyone seeking to understand the patterns that underlie their behavior.

JALAJA BONHEIM, PhD, author of The Sacred Ego:
Making Peace with Ourselves and Our World

Hidden Treasure will be of immense value to anyone who seeks a deeper understanding of the forces and circumstances that create the sense of self. Readers may be surprised to learn how the five basic character defenses McDowell describes manifest as distinguishable traits in the physical body. The treasure is the path of personal development and spiritual unfolding that knowledge of our character structure offers.

LISA LOUSTANAU, Director of Education, Institute of Core Energetics

Actions for the body, insights for the soulHidden Treasure is filled with gems polished by McDowells patient, exacting, and extensive experience guiding people from many professions and life paths. She has synthesized a wise and gentle approach to human development and personal freedom that can be used alone or with others.

MARY GILLILAND, author of Gathering Fire and the
Writing Walk-In Service Handbook

HIDDEN TREASURE

How to Break Free of Five
Patterns that Hide Your True Self

Alice McDowell, Ph.D.

Copyright 2017 by Alice McDowell

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, digital scanning, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law. For permission requests, please address She Writes Press.

Published 2017
Printed in the United States of America
Print ISBN: 978-1-63152-304-5
E-ISBN: 978-1-63152-305-2
Library of Congress Control Number: 2017944427

For information, address:
She Writes Press
1563 Solano Ave #546
Berkeley, CA 94707

Cover design Julie Metz, Ltd./metzdesign.com
Interior design by Tabitha Lahr
Cartoon illustrations Chris Dunham
Im Here illustration Molly Denicore
All other designs Sean McDowell

She Writes Press is a division of SparkPoint Studio, LLC.

Names and identifying characteristics have been changed to protect the privacy of certain individuals.

For Larry

Introduction:
Searching for the Hidden Treasure

Chapter 1:
Who I Thought Was Me is Not-Me.

Chapter 2:
Why Do I Feel I Dont Belong?

Chapter 3:
Why Do I Feel So Overwhelmed?

Chapter 4:
Why is Life So Hard?

Chapter 5:
Why Cant I Get Others to See Whats Right?

Chapter 6:
Why Do I Need to Have it All Together?.

Chapter 7:
Now What Do I Do?

Appendix A:
Becoming Aware of Your Idealized Self-Image, Shadow, and True Self.

Appendix B:
Active Imagination and Inner Child Work

T he last time I saw my father, he was standing in the doorway of my bedroom.

Alice. Aaa-lice, wake up! he said in his kind, gentle voice. Its time to get ready for school.

I felt annoyed at his intrusion into my sleep. Barely opening my eyes, I grumbled, All right, Daddy.

Little did I know these were the last words I would ever speak to him. He died of a heart attack one hour later, as my mother was driving him to the train station. And I was shattered. At age eleven, my world completely changed. My childhood ended.

I started to question everything. Why did this happen to me? What is the purpose of life, anyway? Why am I here? It was a time when divorce was rare, and everyone else seemed to have a father. I felt isolated and different. No one I knew had yet experienced the death of a parent. On the playground, my female classmates would talk about clothes and gossip about the uncool girls. How could they be concerned about such things when there could be such pain in life? There had to be something more than this superficiality and sorrow, but I didnt know what.

Do you ever experience that thought? There must be something more...

Maybe it arose when you realized your life was not working out the way you wanted, or that youd been living a nondescript life, flying below the radar. But it could just as easily pop up unbidden if youve lived an exciting lifesucceeding in your career, surrounding yourself with a loving family, leading what many might call the good life.

Sometimes the desire for something more is prompted by a serious crisisdivorce, illness, or, as in my case, deathforcing you to question whether this is all there is. You may feel a vague sense of missing something, though youd be hard-pressed to define exactly what that something is.

Well, there is something moreand this book will show in a clear, straightforward way how you can break through those stuck areas of your life so you can find it.

My journey to discover something more to life started by going to mass a few days a week while I was still in high school. I found the quiet atmosphere soothing, and noticed that the rest of my day felt smoother and more peaceful after I attended the service than other days. Spurred on by such experiences, I decided to go to a college where I could study philosophy and religion, hoping this would give me answers to my questions. Being practical, however, and following others advice, I majored in math, not religion. I then went on to work for two years as a statistical analyst in the New York City financial district.

At the end of those two years, still not satisfied, I defied all sense of practicality and went to graduate school for religious studies.

I focused on the study of religious experience, knowing that most of the worlds religions began with some profound spiritual awakening Moses experience on Mount Sinai, the apostles experience of the risen Christ (whatever that was), Buddhas enlightenment under the Bodhi tree, Mohammeds experience of Gabriel urging him to write the Koran. The wisdom traditions seemed to be pointing to something similar, though they gave it different namesatman (Hinduism), Buddha nature (Buddhism), the kingdom of heaven or pearl of great price (Christianity), divine spark or Shekinah (Judaism), and hidden treasure (Sufism).