Courage

I'm digging into Alfred Adler at the moment, he was a psychologist, a contemporary of Jung and Freud but took a different route.

Instead of citing past trauma as the cause of distress, he posits that your anxiety, depression, stress etc are chosen tools that you are using to attempt to achieve your life goal.

Your life goal being be something such as, "I must always win", "I must be strong and not weak", "I must be centre stage" etc.

You decided on your goal at around 10 years of age and created strategies to achieve it.

Your anxiety, for example, could place you centre stage.

You chose it and use it to achieve your goal.

A sobering thought.

It is 'easy' to blame the past, but Adler invites us to take ownership, to have the courage, not change our goals, but create new strategies to achieve our goals for and with the community.

Read, ​The Courage to be Disliked.​

pierre