Life! By Design_ 6 Steps to an Extraordinary You - Laura Morton [25]
“Tell me that dark secret, the thing that you’ve held back from everyone.” I hoped Jim was ready. I told him to relax, close his eyes, and just speak from his heart.
“Tell me about a time in your early childhood when something happened. Something that really impacted your life.” I had a hunch that whatever Jim needed to talk about happened when he was a young boy. Jim suddenly got choked up.
“Let it out, man. It’s okay to cry.” And he did for several minutes. When he finally caught a breath, I asked him to describe what he was seeing. “Don’t just tell me about it. Describe it.” The difference was that he would have to feel the emotion to describe the experience. That way, it wouldn’t be just “words” he was speaking.
“I am in the living room of a house playing with my little brother. We had just opened up a large corrugated box. There was something in the box, but I can’t remember what it was. I am holding the box upright so my little brother could climb on it. We were having fun, laughing, and just goofing around. And then, suddenly, he fell and hit his head. Everyone in the house came running into the room. The next thing I remember is an ambulance coming and one of the emergency techs telling my mother that my brother was dead. My mom looked at me and yelled, ‘How could you have done this? How could you let your little brother die? You killed your brother.’”
I knew that Jim felt safe in my office telling me this story because he was no longer crying. He wasn’t emotionalizing what he had just shared. I slowly brought Jim out of the relaxed, dreamlike state he’d been in so we could talk about that experience.
“My parents never forgave me, Tom. We were playing. He fell, cracked open his head, and died. It was an accident.” Even though Jim called it an accident, he had spent the past thirty-seven years of his life convinced that in some way he had killed his brother. There was never a time when his mother or father told him it wasn’t his fault. Their insistence that Jim killed their son was cemented so deeply in his consciousness that he believed it.
“How’s your relationship with your mom today?” I was curious.
“We haven’t spoken for twelve years.” I wasn’t surprised by his answer.
I spent the next twenty minutes talking to Jim about the impact this has had on every area of his life. We spoke about his relationship with his wife. I asked if she would say they have an extraordinary relationship.
“We’re good, but I know I hold back from her, so we are not great.” I assured Jim that I would probably be the same way if I grew up with that story imprinted in my brain. I asked Jim if he could step outside himself to look at the situation from a distance for a moment. I wanted him to remove himself from the story altogether.
“Would an innocent three-year-old boy playing with his one-year-old brother intentionally kill him?” I asked.
“Of course not.” He was quick to respond. And yet Jim had lived his entire life believing that this was exactly what happened. I asked him several variations of that same question until he could sit in front of me and say, without any pause, that he did not kill his brother.
Breakthrough number one.
Before the end of the session, I asked Jim one last question. “How do you think your life would have been different if your brother was alive? What would your life look like today if he fell, your mom kissed the boo-boo on his forehead and put a Band-Aid on it, and then he went right back to playing?”
Jim had a blank look on his face for several minutes before answering. I am not sure he’d ever given that possible scenario any thought. “Wow, I don’t think I’d have the edge that I have all the time. The constant guarded feeling I carry with me everywhere I go.”
Breakthrough number two.
Jim had spent thirty-seven years carrying around the weight of his dead brother.