Susan Campbell - Getting Real: Ten Truth Skills You Need to Live an Authentic Life

GETTING
REAL

Other books by Susan M. Campbell, Ph.D.

Beyond the Power Struggle
The Couples Journey
Earth Community
Expanding Your Teaching Potential
From Chaos to Confidence

SUSAN CAMPBELL, P H .D.

FOREWORD BY BRAD BLANTON, PH.D.

An H J Kramer Book
published in a joint venture with
New World Library

Copyright 2001 by Susan M. Campbell

Cover design by Mary Beth Salmon
Text design by Mary Ann Casler

All rights reserved. This book may not be reproduced in whole or in part, or transmitted in any form, without written permission from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages in a review; nor may any part of this book be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or other, without written permission from the publisher.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Campbell, Susan M., 1941

Getting real : the ten truth skills you need to live an authentic life /

by Susan M. Campbell.

p. cm.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 0-915811-92-8 (perfect : alk. paper)

1. Self-actualization (Psychology) I. Title.

BF637.S4 C343 2001

158dc21 00-013263

First Printing, April 2001
ISBN 0-915811-92-8
Printed in Canada on acid-free paper
Distributed to the trade by Publishers Group West

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

On personal integrity hangs humanitys fate.

Buckminster Fuller

I would like to express my love and gratitude to my mother and father, who first encouraged me to listen to and trust my inner voice. I can still hear my mothers words, delivered in her slow southern drawl as I toddled off to my first day of kindergarten, Remember, Susan, that teachers not the boss o you. She continues to support my uniqueness to this day.

I am deeply grateful to my friend Robert Chaffey, who by his example has given me the courage to become more transparent in both my private and public life. He has been my greatest teacher.

I am blessed to have many creative friends who have read and critiqued various versions of the manuscript. Many thanks to Tom Huntington, Pam LaCoe, Dan Fox, Robert Willard, Brad Blanton, Liz Craig, Dean LaCoe, Susan Bradley, Greg Small, Peller Marion, and Flo Hoylman.

I owe so much to my early teachers: Fritz Perls, Marilyn Rosanes-Beret, Erv Polster, Miriam Polster, Robert Resnick, Jim Simkin, Bernie Gunther, Charlotte Selver, Steve Tobin, and Virginia Satir, and to my more recent teachers: Brad Blanton, Paul Lowe, and Dhiravamsa. The challenging support I have received from these gifted mentors has enabled me to offer a similar type of mentoring to others.

Much appreciation also goes to the wonderful people at H J Kramer/New World Library, who have helped me prepare the book for publication: Linda Kramer, Hal Kramer, Georgia Hughes, and Mimi Kusch.

Those of us who understand honesty as a fundamental spiritual practice know that simply being honest, like meditation, helps us to experience life more fully. Whether were meditating alone or being honest when sharing with others, we find that a natural ease, happiness, and love occurs when we simply pay attention and notice what is going on rather than thinking about it. In fact, a further magnification of the already enhanced experience of being that comes from noticing occurs when we accurately describe our experience of noticing to another. Intimacy happens. Two beings know each other and have learned more about being itself. Rather than getting smarter, this process involves getting simpler, even dumber. Come to think of it, paying attention to paying attention is really kind of a dumb idea itself. Luckily for us, Susan Campbell has written a pretty dumb book to explain this dumb idea to us. In this dumb book she says some really wise things: We dont have to protect ourselves all the time, like we all learned to do in order to survive, because were big now. Although it seems as if most of us should get that, most of us dont most of the time. Its too simple for a mind to get.

Susan also says, In most human interactions, relating is preferable to controlling because it brings you into the present. Aint it the truth and too few of us get to discover that truth before we die. Susan believes we human beings are evolving beyond control-oriented communication. God, I hope so. This fine book provides guidelines for getting real as an alternative to merely being right. (Susan has the best of both worlds because she gets to be right about getting real.)

I love Susan Campbell. She has been a part of our Radical Honesty cult for about five years now. A lot of what she says in this book she learned by being honest as a personal practice and from being with other honest people. We are some of the dumbest people you would ever want to meet. Now, mind you, were not completely cured of our smartness. We still have to remind each other about how smartness blocks wisdom. We still need to practice all the time to stay grounded in noticing so some wisdom occurs, now and then, more or less of its own accord. With this book, Susan has used her smartness in service to what she has learned through noticing like a dummie. It is a way to heal herself. Its a recovery program. She has done a beautiful job. Lucky for us, we get to come along.

Brad Blanton, Ph.D.,
author of Radical Honesty

As you, the reader, and I, the author, embark on this exploration of how to live authentically, Id like to share some experiences that have led me to be so passionate about this topic. I grew up in a happy home with wonderful parents and three siblings who loved and supported me, and still Im as screwed up as everybody else! My ability to be authentically myself started getting compromised just after I was born. That was when I started taking on a bunch of false beliefs about how the world works and how people are. From piecing together the details of my early life, based on my parents accounts, heres how I figure that happened.

When my mom tried to nurse me, her milk did not come down. As a hungry infant, I sucked and sucked, harder and harder, trying to get the nourishment I needed. No matter how hard I sucked, nothing came. I felt frustrated and empty, and there seemed to be nothing I could do to escape that feeling of emptiness. I was afraid, bewildered, alone, and in pain. And my mom felt pain, too, but hers was the pain of having her nipples ravaged. So she took me from her breast and put a bottle in my mouth. This critical incident created in my little mind what I now call false belief #1: if you express your wants too strongly, youll get punished.