Cut the Strings That Are Holding You Down

The Strings That Keep You Down

It is often hard to see it in your own life, but there are strings that by themselves are nothing, but together hold you down from what and where you want to be.

Like in Gulliver’s Travels (I will wait here while some of you do a web search on the title), where the Lilliputians (little people) held down our hero with lots and lots of little strings, it is often the combination and accumulation of so many little things that make us feel overwhelmed.  Tired.  Unable to move.

Down So Long, Looks Like Up To Me

Counselors, family and friends can often see the strings before you can – things like medical problems or trouble in paying some bills.  As a vocational counselor, I work with people who have a disabling condition and other strings from medications to figuring our transportation to just plain old fear of the unknown.

The days and especially the nights of feeling stuck in this web of strings take their toll until people find ways of coping with the pain of being stuck.

– Settling: There is getting comfortable with the cramped apartment and the demands of the landlord; the food budget that shrinks every month and a sense of just having to accept things “as they are”.

– Fear: Sometimes this fear becomes like a snowball rolling down a hill (sorry for any post-traumatic shock for people who survived this past winter), gathering other smaller fears into what becomes larger and scarier as it rolls.

– Baby steps: THIS is what every counselor and parent hopes for in the person wrapped by those strings.  By breaking some of the strings the person begins to see a way out. For example- –

* Finding a way to get transportation to a job site.

* Getting reliable practice in job interviewing skills.

* Meeting people who respect them for the capabilities and ‘gifts’ they have.

* Finding they have an internal locus of control and can have an effect on the world around them.

  By the Yard, Life Is Hard; By The Inch, Life’s a Cinch

Once a person gains a sense that their actions have an effect, they can begin to break the strings they face.  Here is a video that describes it – enjoy, eh?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j9lAqk2KOKo