INNER PRISON

2024 Author: Harry Day | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 15:43

Many of us want to be good, keep our lives tolerable, and not demand too much. We don't want to mess with unknown things and develop potential. Quite reasonable intentions. And the author of these lines is far from incredibly fashionable ideas that call for endless development, planting an inspired audience on all kinds of developmental projects. But the author of these lines, from his own experience and the experience of people with whom he works every day, can say that the further, the more life becomes exhausting and boring.

In fact, many of us live in prison, but have no idea about it. Many of us live in prison because we want to be good. We take necessary actions that often conflict with our needs and abilities. Necessary actions are dictated by internal dialogues as “they” will evaluate this or that action. “They” are mom, dad, boss, colleagues. We would still live in shacks, if there were no people who took risks and made great discoveries, moved towards the unknown and, obviously, dangerous.

Very often we do not realize that our lack of knowledge, understanding and imagination builds high walls around us, behind which we cannot see new opportunities. These walls are as solid as our thoughts are. The inner walls make the outer walls insurmountable for us. Our inner jailers embody what we used to think of as threats. The jailers are our own fantasies, often born out of what we have been told and continue to say.

Many of us in childhood were frightened by the fact that if we allow ourselves more than what is permitted, then something tragic will certainly happen to us. We carry these threats into our present, without even knowing that we can try to look at them critically. We are trying to escape from this prison. It is very difficult to be in it. Often these attempts involve begging, threatening, or coaxing other people - trying to get the other person to do something for us. It would make sense if the jailers were outside.

The point of psychotherapy is often for the person to acknowledge that the most cruel jailers are within the person himself. If this can be done, the study of thoughts, feelings, bodily clamps begins, which represent the visibly tangible presence of jailers. Each of us has beliefs that will turn out to be ridiculous one has only to look closely at them. But often we do not even try to look closely at them and doubt their truth. If you start to study your thoughts, then after a while you can detect the presence of such thoughts and challenge them.

Having abandoned old beliefs, a person finds himself in a very difficult and frightening position for him. He finds himself in unknown territory without a map and a compass. A new map cannot be drawn by staying in one place. Therefore, some of the people, being shackled by fear, rush back into the old habitable and familiar. Others, plucking up courage, draw a map as they travel. Like everyone who went to untouched territories, they often have to return, get confused and look for a new road. A certain place can seem very attractive until you find yourself there. Being on the spot, a person discovers that it does not live up to his expectations and again needs to start looking for a new direction. In other cases, without experiencing any special delight from the place that opens up to the eye, you can subsequently find in it such opportunities that you never even dreamed of.

There will be no safe routes, and none of us can plot them in advance on the map. Only after passing this path, we will find out where we have been and what we were capable of. Many of us lose outer battles because all our energy is spent in inner battles. If we risked doubting our usual way of life, it means that we have made a big step forward. Further it will be difficult, and all the time we will be tempted by the chance to return to the old. But now we can use energy for new opportunities, for new experiments and research, and not to defend old methods of survival.

Many people live in prison and are unaware of it. They feel discouraged and depressed, they are waiting for that wonderful hour when everything will suddenly miraculously change, but this hour does not come. They themselves sentenced themselves to stay in prison, they themselves deprived themselves of their freedom.