Where can any of us turn for trust when seeking to release fear?

First you must trust yourself so you are not blocked from your own release. We all feel inhibited. It is embarrassing to cry out in anguish. Look inside and ask yourself if you hold any of the following beliefs.

Negative beliefs:

• I've been hurting so long that it's too late to change.
• I'm waiting for someone to notice my pain.
• My pain means that I am alive.
• I deserve to be this way.
• Why won't someone rescue me?
• I am crying out to be loved.
• I am not meant to understand.

Each attitude gives you a reason to prolong suffering and block its release. Every time you repeat these rationales, you thicken the walls that imprison you. Trapped energies become stronger the more they are repressed. The cycle of denial and suffering has to be broken. In place of the negative beliefs that have thickened the walls of repression, begin to absorb those beliefs that make the walls thinner, even if you haven't fully accepted them yet. Each positive belief reverses a negative one.

Positive beliefs:

• It doesn't matter how long I've been hurting this way; I can change.
• Perhaps not enough people have noticed my pain and taken it seriously, but I have noticed, and that is enough.
• My pain doesn't make me alive, it shuts out countless possibilities by blocking them from my life
• I deserve to be healed.
• I don't need rescuing; I need help. There is always someone willing to help.
• I am desperate to be loved, so it is time to find the right person, someone who can hear my words and respond to my need.
• I may not understand what is happening to me now, but if I undertake the healing journey, understanding will come.

What you are developing is a healing attitude. Keep this list of beliefs close at hand, and when you feel discouraged, go back to it. Discuss with others how they have transformed a negative attitude into a positive one. Take a single item from the negative list and devote an entire day to examining how that belief has affected you, then take the next day to supply a positive belief in its place. Keep a journal in which you honestly divulge to yourself the ways in which negative beliefs influence you, as well as positive beliefs. Developing a new belief system is a campaign, and you must wage the battle from two directions. If reading the negative statements arouses anger or other resistance, pay special attention; you have touched a nerve.