Transformational Teachings from Counselor Jane Ilene Cohen

This is a part of the “Ask Jane” Series,
in which Jane answers questions
you email to her that of concern to you.

(Names are changed to protect your privacy.)

Just go to the “Contact Jane” page
and ask your question in the contact form.

This is a dialog with a client of mine, I’ll call Diana:

Diana: You mentioned that I have a limiting decision* regarding not trusting my own perception of reality. Does that mean I let myself be too influenced by others?

Jane: When a person makes a limiting decision* that they can’t trust their own perception of reality, it makes them overly dependent on how other people respond to them and define reality.  It often, also, makes them overly dependent on people they consider authority figures, likely resenting the input given by those they don’t consider to be authority figures. And the reason they feel resentful of them, is that the person finds themselves being overly influenced by just anyone, which feels humiliating.  And so they blame them for having that kind of affect on them, as if they were an authority.

Diana: You teach that limiting decisions* we have made cause us to have the wrong perception of reality. Wouldn’t I be right then not to trust my perception of reality in the present state I am in?

Jane: It is true that when a person makes a limiting decision*, in the area of their life that is affected by that limiting decision*, they are invested in avoiding present moment experience in order to avoid finding out what they are afraid is true (i.e. that they’re unlovable, not valuable, that people can’t be trusted, and so on).  This results in them having a distorted view of reality.  So the solution is to open yourself up to here-and-now experience in those areas.  Another way to put that is to “stand in the question.”  What I mean by that is you stand in the unknown, admitting you don’t know what is true, and basically open yourself up to finding out what is true, rather than reactively defending yourself or avoiding what you are afraid is true.

It’s not that you can’t actually trust your own perceptions of reality in general.  Often you have very clear perceptions.  It’s that you are generally not willing to reveal what your experience is, because you’re afraid of the results of revealing it.  But if you don’t, you won’t find out what is actually true.  Instead you hide behind non-verbal expressions, which comes across to other people as an attack.  When you actually reveal your perceptions, you can get reality feedback from others, which helps you to learn what is actually true and accurate.  You can find out how what you said affects other people, and who does and doesn’t resonate with it.  When you start engaging and relating to others, it brings you into here-and-now experience which is where you can get clarity about what is true.  But the challenge for you may be that when people do respond to you, you may find it difficult to distinguish if they are coming from a clear place or not, which is why the transformational group experience can be so helpful for you in that there’s the opportunity to sort this all out.

*Limiting Decision:  Unconscious decisions made in early childhood that are some form of deciding life doesn’t work and usually that there is something inherently wrong with you, such as “I am unlovable,” “Other people can’t be trusted,” “I am bad,” and so on.