Wrapping up the month of January, here’s a quick screenshot review of the month’s news. Let me know which ones you like the most. Thanks for your input, -David M Masters
Author: davidmastersadmin
You’re Awakening Not Going Crazy
People generally do not begin the process of awakening which is the precursor to the ebbing evolutionary tide of humanity. While it is a wave, it hits us all at different times and frequencies. When we are initially impacted with an awakening it can instantaneous, abrupt, and shocking to recognize for the first time that things are not as they appear. You could easily begin to lose your mind, and that is exactly what you need.
You may panic. This is the first line of defense of your ego which has been running the show since you were born. Now your heart consciousness explodes and even if only for a moment you get a glimpse of real life and all its possibilities, it can be overwhelming.
If you’re not ready or caught off guard, you could wake up in a hospital or jail, as your ego fights with every mental, physiological, biological, and emotional tool it has access to in an effort to preserve itself and its host: You. For it knows, if the heart consciousness is to emerge in all its glory, the ego must die.
Chaos can ensue in the bloom of your awakening. The contrast between light and dark is ever apparent and up to this moment, the very fabric of your being was convinced that dark is all there ever was. It was comfortable. You exerted great effort to find ways to make it feel like home. Prior to awakening, your world was everything.
Until that moment you are blinded by the burst of brightest light imaginable in a shocking blast. Frightening, to say the least, for anyone. Not to worry,
You’re awakening
Not going crazy
At this point, you basically have two choices; to embrace the awakening and try to find ways to deal with your expansion and evolution, or to reject it. Shut it down. Cover it up. Pretend it didn’t happen and find ways to snuggle back into the life society and your ego built for you. A little denial and self-medication might get you from here to there.
No enlightened being would judge you for making either choice.
Those who have witnessed your struggle in this moment may judge you, especially if they are unenlightened. Those who live in the darkness would certainly criticize you and try every means possible to bring you back into the fold. They might disrespect you, call you names, punish you, diagnose you with mental disorders, and drug you back into your life in the shadows, using force, if necessary.
Maybe…
Maybe you’re not ready to evolve. Maybe you are. Maybe it’s just too much to ask anyone at this time, or any time, for that matter. Maybe you just want to be “normal.” If now is not the time for you, another time will come. Maybe you’ll be better prepared in your next moment of momentary clarity. Maybe not. This is your journey, you are writing your story.
This evolutionary process of awakening and heart-centered conscious expansion is happening every day. “Normal” is shifting as more and more people awaken. When human evolution reaches critical mass, that shift will permeate every living being.
At that point, the world we live in will be a very different place.
Today, you can choose to be a part of the evolution, or not. There is no judgment here. We celebrate you and your story however it unfolds.
Hope your first glimpse of the truth as not too shocking for you. At least you can rest assured that you’re awakening, not going crazy.
Love and peace to you and yours.
You Feel Like You Don’t Fit In
Every day we’re surrounded by people, all different kinds of people, and no matter how you try, you feel like you don’t fit in. The good news is: This is really a good sign.
If you think about what the majority of the greater community represents the mindless majority blindly following society’s sleight of hand manipulations to keep us all manageable as a herd of cattle. While it sounds simple, the methods utilized by the social engineers to control us all en masse is extremely complex.
So, if you feel like you don’t fit in, this is a very good sign that you are awakening and your heart is evolving. Something inside you knows that there are huge problems with whatever societal view has been imposed upon you since birth.
If you dared to be different and decide to let your freak flag fly, who’d blame you (if not applaud you)?
As much as life tries to corral you and manage you along with the rest of the herd, there’s something inside you which is screaming, “I am not cattle!” You felt it at school, in your neighborhood, at work, in churches and organizations.
Maybe at one point, you did feel more comfortable in your environment, but things change. Your friends change. There was a time when you trusted your best friend and you believed this most trusted friend would be your best friend forever. But he or she changed, and so did you, leading to your drifting apart. At some point you realize you’re so different from each other you have little left except common courtesy at best, sometimes not even that.
Everything changes, even you.
This growing and changing as you adapt to life which is always in a state of flux, makes you feel awkward. Especially if you are noticing inconsistencies in the state of affairs all around you and God forbid, are questioning what may or may not be actually trustworthy and true.
The secret is not to cut yourself off from others or society and become a total recluse. Isolation is unhealthy and can cause psychological and physiological deterioration. You might just toy with the idea of giving up, squelching the beckoning of your heart which is evolving in its connection to your brain, and nestling yourself back into the herd, where you can embrace your former sense of safety and security, as false as it might have been. Taking the easy way out, refusing to be a part of the next evolutionary step of mankind. Or you can find someone who resonates with you.
Just start to gently speak your questions to people you come in contact with. Most of the people you talk to will instantly reject your thoughts and concerns. Do not press the subject any more with that person. Bless them and move on. Keep gently speaking your piece (or peace) to someone else, and move on, until it finds a spark of interest.
Then share your thoughts until that person becomes resistant, then bless them and move on. Using this process of elimination method will keep you true to you and will identify people inside or outside your circle of influence who may share the same thoughts, concerns, or conscious frequency. Feel free to restructure your circle of influence accordingly. These are your people.
Note that your people will change, for each and every one of them are on their own individual journey of growth, expansion, and evolution. At times, you will find those who are keenly matched to you in vibration and frequency.
While you are in the process of expansion be aware of how you represent yourself with the remainder of society. Be careful not to fall into the egotistical trap of thinking that you are in any way better than anyone else. And for God’s sake, do not engage in hate speech, ever. Hate speech is the precursor to hate action and hate crime. Fear masquerades as hate and cannot exist in love.
Choose love. Be respectful. Honoring each person’s right to his or her individual journey, just as you would expect them to respect your right to evolve at this time.
Find security in the idea that everyone is doing the best they can with what they have at every moment, just the same as you. Bless and love them as they find their own way to their individual destiny. You needn’t separate yourself totally from the rest of society while you are finding your people.
Once you have found people to associate with whom you can be open and honest, by remaining among the herd, you can be a subtle light influencing those around you.
Your evolved heart/brain-connected energy is felt by people and the world around you at least three-and-a-half-feet in every direction around you. As you continue to evolve, this energy reaches farther and farther in every direction all around you. No need to speak, just your being there affects the lives of others and the word in a positive way.
You may speak as you let your light shine but do so with grace, dignity, and love, keeping in mind that people can only handle what they can handle, so give them a little something to think about without having to threaten the world they live in. If they start to question, they may seek you out.
You might be one of their people when they’re feeling like they don’t fit in. Let them be able to find you.
Trust and the Past
The longer you’re with a partner or get to know a potential partner, the more you will discover about their past. Even though you know the past is the best predictor of things to come, people do change. So, it’s important to note the past and look for clues that they have changed since then, or not.
Haven’t you done things in the past, that have taught you valuable lessons? Haven’t you changed since then? We all learn lessons from mistakes and sometimes their effects are life-changing.
Sometimes people do not learn the lessons and continue to make the same mistakes over and over. That’s why you must keep your wits about you and be observant enough to see if your partner has changed. Even so, you need to know that he or she is not likely to have a relapse.
You want to look for patterns that repeat themselves.
How they talk about their ex may be a clue about what you may be facing. If they have nothing good to say, chances are when they are done with you, they will have nothing good to say about you.
On the other hand, if they are transparent about the things that went wrong and the part that they played in a past relationship, this is a good sign the next relationship (potentially yours) may benefit from the lessons they learned from their past relationship.
If they intimate details about physical abuse in their former relationship (even if they make it sound like a joke) this may be something to take note of. If it looks like he or she loses his or her cool and has a tendency to fly-off-the-handle, this may indicate trouble down the road. You might want to think about ways to protect yourself or avoid the situation altogether.
You will never have to tolerate and abuse in any relationship. Thankfully, in our modern day and age (unlike in the days of our grandparents) you can simply opt out or an abusive relationship and move on.
Some things that you learn about your partner may feel like a bigger deal than they are because of fear, jealousy, or deeply buried wounds that you’ve collected over time. Do not make your potential or current partner pay the price for someone else’s sins.
You might get a twinge of fear or are emotionally triggered because an ex- had more previous partners than you and moved on too quickly for your taste and hurt you in the process. That doesn’t mean that everyone who has had a lot of partners in the past isn’t going to love you incredibly. If you think you’ll have a tendency to overreact, best just let it be.
Be careful about the questions you ask, and if you don’t like the answers, try not to be too judgmental if you don’t get the answers you expected. Allow your partner to have the available bandwidth to be honest without feeling that the (potential) relationship might be put at risk for the sake of openness and honesty.
What if your partner had a checkered past or a previous occupation or vocation which might be questionable? You might jump to the conclusion that such a person might be untrustworthy. Not necessarily. Being able to be open and honest about your past is a key ingredient in successful relationships. And like it or not, people are not just simple two-dimensional beings. They grow, change, and evolve if given the opportunity. Some more successfully than others, but it happens all the time.
It’s very rare that anyone stays exactly the same all their life, though some are consistently predictable much of the time.
When you’re talking about the past, you can get furious about exes. You can ask (maybe start by telling something about your’s first, a bit of quid pro quo) but be careful not to confuse that twinge of insecurity for your intuition. It’s a common mistake that anyone could make.
It could rob you of any potential you and your partner might have had. Keep your fears in check.
Trust is the most important thing between you. If you want it, you must think about giving it first. Set the example and given the opportunity your partner will rise to your level of trust.
You need to figure out what you can and can not tolerate. This is your life.
Love like it’s the only thing that matters because it is.
What Can You Do if You Catch Your Partner Lying?
Everyone lies. We do it for all kinds of reasons; to make life easier on us, on those we care about, on the behalf of someone else, to be polite, and to outright deceive and defraud on purpose. But what can you do if you catch your partner lying?
You love and trust your partner. Without trust, where is the love? When you catch your partner lying, you feel as though you’ve been stabbed in the back, punched in the gut, or so disrespected or disregarded that you don’t know if you can think straight. What can you do?
Nobody will deny you your right to feel bad about being lied to, that’s a given. We’ve all been in the same boat, for who of us has made it through life without being lied to of deceived. Sometimes people can be harmfully deceitful without saying a word, as is the case of lying by omission.
Yes, even not saying anything is in order to cover something up or avoid being truthfully honest (lying by omission) is a venial sin. It doesn’t mean you have to be rudely open and honest, just to tell the truth, and if you love someone, be honest lovingly. Tell the truth in a way that respects your partner. Be gentle and speak your truth with grace and love, even if it is difficult. Nobody expects you to be perfect.
If you’ve caught your partner lying, don’t sweep it under the carpet or try to gloss it over. Dishonesty in a relationship will cause your trust to rust, and leads to the erosion of your love, especially if you’re harboring the truth about your knowledge of the deceit or dishonesty and not saying anything about it (lying by omission). Even you are a guilty enabler by engaging in the dishonesty.
Get it out in the open. Relationships go through periods of varying levels of comfort and discomfort, it’s the nature of two people sharing one life. It is all part of the growth process. If there is no conflict, there can be no growth, which leaves you with stagnation. Where is the life in that? You might be able to get by, but you can forget thriving in a relationship which is a cesspool.
Grab your grown-up skivvies and get ready for some gentle conversation about your awareness that something’s not adding up. As in all difficult conversations, create a safe space to frame the conversation and avoid being accusatory. This is about creating an environment where its safe to be honest. Avoid jumping-in, interrupting, or otherwise preventing your partner from fully sharing. Take notes on paper, if you have to, but let them speak their truth in peace.
Let them say whatever it is, without interruption, or else he or she will get defensive, and the flow of open communication will stop if your partner feels like he or she needs to take the defensive position.
Once you’ve actively heard what your partner needs to say, and you’ve affirmed that you’ve understood the key points by paraphrasing them back to him or her, now your partner owes you the same respect to hear what you have to say about it.
Check with your heart and center yourself. Take a cleansing breath, then speak your heart in love. Again, be honest, but try to avoid being harsh. If your feelings have been hurt, say so, but try to use words that are not abrupt or frightening. Remember you are expressing how you feel, so start your sentences with “I,” or, “I feel like,” and avoid starting any statement with, “You.”
Trust your intuition. When you feel like something just isn’t right. In most cases, something isn’t right. If your partner gives a perfectly good explanation, and it doesn’t feel right, you probably know by experience that something has most always been amiss when you’ve had feelings, like that, in the past.
Deciding whether you can live with this or not is only something you must decide for yourself. Everybody’s different, and we all can tolerate different degrees of what our partners are allowed to do or not do within the confines of our relationships.
Even though magazines and tabloids will gibe you a list of do’s and don’ts in black and white, there really is no strict guideline for what is and is not acceptable in a successful relationship. Each couple must figure out for themselves what works for them.
Forgiveness in a loving relationship goes a long way. For the repeat offender, you might think about negotiating new paradigms for the expansion of your relationship, or if you are unable to come to a workable compromise, it might be time to look for a better match for your true love to emerge.
It’s your love life. It’s up to you.
Love, love, love. Love like it’s all that matters because it is. And if you dare, think about loving unconditionally.
Narcissist or Narcissistic?
Are you, or is someone you know, a narcissist or narcissistic? Know there is a huge difference between the tow you can be narcissistic and not be a narcissist.
If you’re wondering if you are either a narcissist or simply narcissistic, chances are you’re probably not a narcissist. It would be very rare for a narcissist to wonder if he or she was a narcissist because that would be the furthest thing from his or her mind. Narcissists do not see themselves as being narcissistic at all.
But you may at times act or be perceived as being narcissistic, expressing yourself in a way that might make someone else wonder if you might be a narcissist, and this can be perfectly normal and even a positive attribute now and then in any normal healthy normal person’s life.
Being a little narcissistic periodically is not the same as being a narcissist. A narcissist is someone who suffers from a personality disorder which can be diagnosed as Narcissistic Personality Disorder or NPD.
The biggest distinction between expressing yourself or being perceived by others as being narcissistic and being a narcissist (one who is either diagnosed or undiagnosed with NPD) is that one comes and goes, and the other you’re stuck with.
Narcissists have certain traits which set them apart from the rest of us. Traits such as
• Being uncommonly selfish or self-centered
• See themselves as being superior to others
• Seek to connect with others who are also superior
• Need to be recognized or celebrated by others
• Abnormal sense of entitlement (expects others to support them)
• Will use others to get what they want
• Doesn’t care what others think or feel (especially if they’ve suffered consequences on the narcissist’s behalf)
• Want what others have, and are quick to judge others as wanting what they have
• Are arrogant, prone to disrespect, and likely to put others down
A narcissist possesses a majority of these attributes (more than half consistently) throughout their life.
You can see that some of these attributes are good ways to express yourself when you’re feeling confident, have high self-esteem, are proactively getting things done, setting boundaries, or protecting yourself and your sacred space.
If someone is not used to you exercising any of the attributes in the above list of NPD traits, which might be a natural act of self-preservation, choosing to increase your level of efficacy, desiring to experience a life in a higher emotional state or vibration, they may be surprised, shocked, and/or take it personally.
If they don’t know you very well, they may accuse you of being a narcissist. Clearly, you are not a narcissist, just because someone didn’t like or respect your ability to take the driver’s seat and manage your life effectively. But you can’t blame them for knowing what a narcissist looks like. This is a good thing.
Knowing how to identify a narcissist is an excellent skill to keep yourself suffering at the hands of a narcissist. Narcissists, are not malevolent, meaning they mean no harm, yet they do cause people around them to suffer, but there is no intent of malice.
They just have no regard for how their decisions or life choices affect other people’s lives around them. They have no conception of it. If you are trying to explain to them how something they did hurt your feeling, caused you distress, or hardship, they just cannot understand, and they will just think you are a weak person who is a little “off.” In the extreme, they may just have a totally irreverent response, like, “Oh well,” “Too bad,” or, “Sucks to be you.”
Don’t let it get to you, it’s just the way they are wired. Don’t take it personally. Realize that he or she is just doing the best they can; and keep a safe distance between the two of you to protect your sacred space, if you are so inclined.
So, don’t worry if someone accuses you of being a narcissist or narcissistic, you know you are not. Maybe you just caught someone off-guard with you growing into a more mature person. Don’t let that slow you down. You can understand why they might have felt that way.
Bless them and stay on track.
As your skills increase, you can express yourself affirmatively a little more gently without shocking others. Until then, do not let someone else’s insecurities slow you down.
You have the most exciting life waiting for you, and you are on your way to enjoying the best things in life.
Watching the People You Love Ruin Their Lives
You love them with all your heart, yet they make choices and decisions that bring discomfort, despair, and chaos into their life. There’s little worse than watching the people you love ruin their lives. You want to help. You give your input and suggestions, still, they insist on being their own worst enemy.
It breaks your heart every time they do it, yet you cannot prevent them from exercising their own free will and living the life they were meant to live.
What? “the life they were meant to live?” That’s right. Everyone is on their own individual journey. Each one is different and different people are destined to have different experiences, in a sense to play out the hand they were dealt in such a way to get them where their life’s journey leads.
You know, in your life, you’ve made bad decisions which have led to uncomfortable consequences. But didn’t you learn from those experiences? Weren’t there critical pivot points in your life which made you evaluate your decision-making process, change your life, and make better decisions in the future?
This is the process, and you can’t do it for anyone else. This may make you feel like you’re watching the people you love ruin their lives, but you’re not. You are not watching them ruin their lives, what you’re doing is watching the people you love make their own way through life, just as you’re making your own way through yours.
We’ve all learned key values based on our individual experiences, such as being a people pleaser or keeping up with the Joneses. Taking the easy way out, procrastination, giving up too soon or holding on too long. Asserting your superiority or not valuing others. You know all the right answers and everyone else is wrong. Not speaking your peace, or not being open to new ideas.
You know from your own experience that it’s not a good thing to bury the past and ignore it, to judge others harshly, to engage in hate speech, to think that what you want is all that matters, or to hold onto expectations so tightly that if something doesn’t go your way, your whole world collapses.
You’ve learned valuable life lessons, like having a bad experience doesn’t mean that everything associated with a similar focal point of your bad experience (stocks, cars, investments, mate choice, religion, social cliques, pets, children, relatives, etc.) is patently also potentially “bad.” You know better to throw the baby out with the bathwater. You’ve learned this over time.
You know if you feel like you can’t do it, you probably can. You’ve learned to be open to new ideas because you might end up making your own life easier or better. You’ve discovered that cutting yourself some slack, not judging yourself harshly, and taking time to relax and smell the roses are not only beneficial but necessary for living a good life.
You’ve learned that not all advice from people you care for and trust is not always the best advice.
Failure is not fatal. If you fall off the horse, you dust yourself off and get ready to give it another go. You’ve learned that you cannot give to others or love with all your heart if your cup is empty.
You’ve learned to graciously accept assistance if someone offers to lend a hand, and to avoid being seen as narcissistic by others.
You’ve learned to accept others as they are, where they are on their own individual journey. You love them, you let you make their own way, and you bless them as they learn from their own experiences.
Many of the most valuable lessons in life are learned by living life, by making mistakes, and learning from them. Why would you deny anyone that part of their journey?
The people you love have to find and make their own way, to discover all these things on their own. You may share your own story as an interesting anecdote, but do not preach to nor condemn them for having the courage to make their own decisions, and do not coddle them when they suffer the consequences.
This is their life. Honor them.
Yes, it can be hard to watch them go through it. You can pray for them, bless, them, love them, but do not judge them, for they are doing the best they can with what they have, as so have you.
Seeing Your Highest and Best Potential
You may not be able to see it, but for those of us who work with others, to assist them on their journey to achieve their full potential, sometimes we are given a gift of visionary insight when we are actually seeing your highest and best potential fully realized.
You may or may not be able to imagine, visualize, or see it, but for those of us doing this work, we are either given glimpses of it of can see it fully in fine detail.
This can be confusing because it just doesn’t only happen with clients, as I have seen the full potential in complete strangers. Some of them have been so powerful that I couldn’t help myself. I would open a conversation and talk about some of the details which might lead to the unfolding of their potential magnificence.
In general, you cannot communicate with someone’s potential, only their condition.
On occasion, these strangers are appalled that anyone could see any such potential in them at all. They are far from what lies ahead for them, and they cannot imagine anything that incredible coming from their living a life as simple, and painful as the life they are living in the moment.
There is so much trauma from the past and victimization. They’ve been ignored or berated, been abused, and disrespected, and they’re at a place where they feel little more than unworthiness and or looming depressions (if not fully engulfed in it).
Yet, I know I am not mistaken. The question is, will this person rise to the occasion or will they let “society,” or their lack of self-esteem, keep them from breaking away from life’s whirlpool which is dragging them in the opposite direction.
Even though I know it is not time, I might extend an offer to help them, as if to throw them a lifeline even though their caught in the overwhelming current of life. If the timing is not right (and I know it’s not) they will think they are in the presence of a crazy person.
In a few years, possibly many years, they will look back to this awkward conversation and think, “How’d he know?” Or, based on their not seizing the opportunities when they became available, they might think, “What a crackpot!”
When I am in the flow of helping someone achieve their highest and best, I may have them well in advance to their being ready to take certain steps necessary to bridge the gap from their being in the now to where they want to be, or to help find their way for what is already waiting for them to arrive.
In a sense, they are unable to see the forest for there are too many trees in the way.
These journeys, or unfoldings, don’t usually happen instantly (though on the rare occasion they do). There is normally a series of processes which must be experienced by the person inspired to do the work necessary to achieve their highest and best.
In most cases, personal or spiritual growth and change are necessary for the transformation, a sort of metamorphosis to have the tools necessary and to be the person who is ready to walk through the doo confidently when it begins to open for you.
When your calling is fervently calling you forward, you might find yourself at the doorway, unprepared, and not fully able to fully engage in the opportunity at the time. The door closes, but do not be dismayed, because another door will open.
And in that magical moment, when you and the opportunity are in alignment, we all will be seeing your highest and best potential being realized in massive ways.
Will you be seeing your highest and best potential in your mind’s eye or take an active role in it’s unfolding? Well, that’s up to you, isn’t it?
They Will Never Change
You know who I’m talking about. The person you’ve cared about, probably sacrificed for, because you believed that he or she could change, then he of she failed. Fell off the pedestal you’d built, came crashing to the ground with all his or her shortcomings intact, cementing your original thought, “They will never change.”
As much as that seems so very true, in the work that I do, I am in the unique position to see people change every day. Sometimes the change is slight, and other times that change is drastic. You might not even be able to recognize the person you once knew, the change was so dramatic.
Even though people can and do change, there is someone who comes to mind, right now, whom you know has told you that he or she would change in a sense to accommodate you. Promises were made, you believed. You believed so much that you couldn’t question or imagine that change was not imminent.
Now, here we are, again. The person you trusted, the one that promised the change would be irrevocably long-lasting. Again, you believed this time would be the real thing, yet here we are once again, and you feel betrayed.
You start singing that same ol’ song, “They will never change,” a sort of self-fulfilling prophesy, and based on your research and your results, you are absolutely right, they never change. No matter what they say or do to convince you otherwise, a leopard can never change its spots.
Who do you think is as fault, You? Or the Leopard?
There comes a time in an enlightened individual’s journey where you accept the idea that,
No one is broken, and no one needs to change.
Everyone is perfect just the way they are for where they are on their journey. Period. Nobody needs to be any different than they are right now, and if they needed to change, they would change on their own behalf.
People want to be wanted, loved, accepted, and – believe it or not – there are also people who need you, want to use you, exploit you, or mean you harm. Sometimes, because of your loving heart, your intuition fails you. Your desire to see the best in someone can override your better judgment.
Since it is impossible to know what is going on inside someone’s head (just like no one can know what is going on inside yours, when you’re silently thinking, daydreaming, attempting to go to sleep, or while you are asleep), it’s so hard to know what someone’s true motivation is, when they make a promise to change.
It is unrealistic, if not just wrong, to expect someone to make a change on your behalf.
On the other hand, people do change for a variety of reasons, out of obligation, love, respect, or fear of punishment. So, it’s not unreasonable to ask someone to change for you, but it may be too much to expect someone to be able to do it, when you would like to see the change take place.
People change when they want to change, and not until then. Sometimes just asking someone is enough. Maybe the thing you’re asking for is something they are ready to accommodate at this time. If it is not the right time, and you have high expectations that a change has been made, and it hasn’t, you may be shocked when you see the offense take place before your very eyes.
Since I’m in the change business, this one client came to me on and off for nine years because he wanted to make a particular change. He really did, but he wasn’t really ready to actually make the change. Thirty years later he looked me up and thanked me for my preliminary support in those early days of struggle. He intimated that several years ago he awoke one day changed without any effort whatsoever, and he has never gone back since. His time had come.
There’s no harm in asking someone to change to accommodate your desires. Either they will or they won’t, based on any of millions of reasons.
To think (or to say out loud), “They will never change,” is probably not true because it doesn’t allow for those who do.
Even people you think would never change; the cheaters, alcoholics, addicts, criminals, and, yes, even sex offenders do change. You can’t just blame it on genetic disposition, bad parenting, or brain chemistry because people with characteristics that are hard-coded in their personality without hope, change. When they are ready. If they are not ready, they will not.
You may not like it, but you must bless them as they walk their own path in their own way. After all, they are just doing the best they can with what they have, as are you and everyone else.
My Teen is Out of Control
If you’ve raised kids, are raising kids, or been a kid who’s gone through adolescence invariably, you, your parent, or both have cried out, “My teen is out of control!” (or something similar). Is it really just a phase? And What can you do about it?
Certainly. There is the normal level of adolescent behavior which accompanies the teen years indicating the teen’s quest to, in a sense, discover who they are and to establish their own identity. This process can be uncomfortable as he or she challenges all rules and boundaries. Normal adolescent behavior does not cross certain boundaries.
If you’re pulling your hair out or ready to scream “My teen is out of control” you might be witnessing something entirely different, and it is not your teenager’s loss of sanity.
When your teenager expresses themselves in a highly negative manner, they are not going crazy. When your teenager acts out by yelling and screaming, increases using foul and hate language at louder volumes, causes physical damage to inanimate objects, threatens or abuses others, your child is not crazy.
Neither is your child crazy for being insanely disrespectful, selfish and angry, refusing to honor curfew, staying out all night, getting drunk, high, and/or arrested. No, your teenager is not insane.
You might be surprised to discover that your out of control teenager is not really out of control at all.
The underlying message being communicated through all their appearing to be out-of-control is that your teenager does not have adequate skills to get their needs met, navigate social environments, negotiate, solve problems, communicate effectively, or create meaningful relationships.
So, they act out instead. And after a while, you lower your expectations and standards for your teen because it’s just too hard to deal with.
Now, who’s in control? Your out-of-control teen.
With all their inability to get their needs met, they’ve exerted their power over you by insolence, unrelenting force of will, and angst, and this becomes their method of getting what they want.
If left unchecked, this will follow them into adulthood, and all of us over the age of thirty can easily identify these individuals if they are fortunate enough to keep themselves out of prison. They are the bullies of our society, and we sometimes refer to them as narcissists.
Narcissists are either born or made. In this instance, these out of control teens learn to be narcissistic because this is the only way they know how to get through life. They are often accused of being mean, even though they are not acting out of any malice of intent.
These teens-turned-narcissists routinely hurt others as they try to get what they want or need any way they can, but they don’t mean to. They are just so focused on what they want, that they have no concept of any collateral damage which may occur as a result of exercising their methods.
They, just like you, are only doing the best they can with what they have.
Of course, the best method of preventing your child from becoming an out of control teen is to get to them early. A beloved mentor of mine once said, “If you don’t get them by age twelve, you will lose them.”
Even so, if you’re in the process of parenting a teen who you think is already out of control, there is hope, even though many parents are fearful of exerting any firm parenting skills in the fear that their out of control teen might dial 9-1-1, potentially landing the parent in jail. (This is a very fascinating state of affairs in our modern society.)
Without risking all, you can try to reason with your teen. Of course, their first reaction will be to deny any responsibility and blame their parents, the school, their friends, the societal and legal systems, their parents, and especially you for having to suffer their lot in life.
Maybe you can help them to discover new skills to get their needs met, navigate social environments, negotiate, solve problems, communicate effectively, and create meaningful relationships.
Be careful not to judge, ridicule, talk down to them, or preach to them. Listen to them and seek to understand what they are saying. Interject your thoughts gently and respectively, then let it go. Let your words simmer inside them. And love them.
Love them like there’s no tomorrow. Love them no matter what. Love them like it’s all there is, because it is.
Be a blessing, pray, and let love find the way.