If you want a successful career, help another's career to flourish

They were constantly asking me to help them die, he said. He was also working with terminal cancer patients. When I walked in the room, they would say, `I only have three months to live. If that's all I have, I see no value or purpose to living. Instead of fearing fear, we can learn to respect it, even to love it. Isn't it the fear that is doing the hurting? I would say no, at least not exactly. Fear alerts, it does not actually do the hurting. But if you were to react to something in fear, you could very well bring about emotional suffering. The actual alarm of fear does not, in and of itself, harm you. Still, if we are in innocent confusion, our perception of what to avoid can manifest a fear of the experience of fear. In a confused state with fear, the hot sun can seem to become something intimidating, the fire's flame can seem to be uncontrollable, and the dark waters of the ocean can appear to swell ominously. Suddenly, other people can seem unpredictable or threatening. Even our own inner voice can instantly seem difficult to trust. When we are codependent, one of the most difficult things to accept is that our continued presence with the addict will not only be useless for his or her recovery but also one of the main causes that will aggravate the alcoholic problem. This statement is so true, that the problem of codependency became famous in the world due to the cases of alcoholics in therapy who abandoned therapy or fell back into alcoholism for the unconscious boycotts of their codependent relatives: codependent siblings, parents, wives, and husbands. When we are codependents, accepting this reality is not easy at all. Especially because in alcoholism, the most involved ones are close family members, and if one or more codependent people are among them, their unstoppable impulse to take part in the dependence of their family member will not be only dictated by codependency, but by what seems a simple and banal family obligation. Furthermore, the helping relationship could be perceived mandatory even in cases where the alcoholic person has not asked for help yet. These are the cases in which, for example, the family must intervene to resolve misadventures and economic problems that sooner or later occur in the life of alcoholic people: driving in a state of drunkenness which leads to accidents that are sometimes very serious, or to the withdrawal of the driving license by the police.

Not less common, economic problems related to debts caused by the loss of work or excessive expenses for the alcohol purchase. Each family has its history, all the problems of addiction from any type of substance open up complex issues, it would be insensitive as well as presumptuous to try to enumerate the details of each situation in a single article. However, there remains a fundamental point that cannot be ignored: the fact that in alcoholism problems the codependent person who tries to intervene has very serious possibilities not only not to do not solve the problem, but to aggravate it much more. Just as the so-called no contact is recommended in serious cases of abuse in the narcissistic relationship with the codependent, in the same way, it is recommended in the alcoholic codependent relationship. I had Amanda sit on one of those elephant pet pillows, which was one of her favorite things, and she would hang on to the elephant ears as we rolled down the bumpy streets, bouncing all over the place. Getting her wheelchair in and out of those teeny, tiny taxis was virtually impossible, and on top of that we had to deal with a taxi strike that paralyzed the city. We ended up hiring people who weren't official taxi cab drivers, which meant we had to walk around the corner so they could pick us up; When we articleed our trip, we didn't realize that an order of nuns lived on the first two floors of the building where we were staying, and that their church was located next door. The nuns loved Amanda. They prayed for her every morning and invited us into their private quarters where millions of dollars worth of artwork was hanging in full view for anyone to see. The nuns were fabulous. They blessed Amanda and gave her little wooden crosses, which she was thrilled to hold. It was remarkable because when we left for Italy, Amanda was often in pain, and she couldn't walk well at all. But while we were there, she became stronger and stronger every single day. They said, `If you want to help me, kill me. Everybody said how important it is to have a positive attitude, one woman, a former IBM executive who had been diagnosed with colon cancer, said. But I'm not Lance Armstrong. I wanted to jump in the grave. If death means nonexistence, Breitbart's patients reasoned, then what meaning could life possibly have? And if life has no meaning, there's no point of suffering through cancer.

By the nineties, physician-assisted suicide was a hot topic in Breitbart's circles and beyond. Dr Jack Kevorkian, known then as Dr Death, had helped his first patient end her life in 1990. He claimed he helped another 130 patients end their lives over the next eight years. As the United States debated the ethics of assisted suicide, other countries were taking steps toward normalizing the practice. The entire world can seem to have shifted. Reality is always kinder and clearer than what appears when we are fearful and confused. Fear creates illusion. Looking at the world in a state of fear is like looking at the world through the reflection of a spoon. It appears distorted. I encourage you to be aware of the illusion and consider not buying into it, except to notice what happens when you bring it to consciousness and/or when you follow the fear. Beyond fear, the world is infinitely more loving, at least from your perspective. LOVE IN DISGUISE Neuroscientific studies that measure the brain during states where a person experiences intense fear or intense love show that the same region of the brain lights up under either circumstance. This makes perfect sense! As codependents, the help we can give to an addict can be successful if it is channeled in another direction. On one hand, not seeking therapeutic help on behalf of the alcoholic person, but a psychological help that allows us to obtain a space for ourselves, a space in which we can verbalize the suffering caused by the alcoholic person, that is a right way to identify right solutions with a specialist. In this way, it can be very useful to understand one of the aspects that are most difficult to understand when a young psychologist decides to start his or her clinical activity: the difference between client and patient and how this clarity can improve the relationship in the triangle Codependent-Addict-Psychologist. Triangle Codependent-Addict-Psychologist Anyone who has had the opportunity to chat even informally with psychologists on issues related to their work will have noticed that many psychologists struggle to define whether they work with clients or with patients. If they call them clients, they have the impression of commoditizing those who resort to them.

If they call them patients, they have the impression of equating them to sick people on a hospital ward. The difference between patient and client should be very clear as it clarifies something important. In order to understand the difference between patient and client, it is sufficient to rely on the etymology of the words: patient comes from pathos , suffering, the patient is the one who suffers. The word client comes from cliens the one who asks for help and protection. We were sending pictures back to the hospital, and they were like, Oh my God! Amanda got to see everything she wanted to see on that ten-day trip, from the Coliseum to the Vatican, and even Venice. We did everything, and we did it fast. When we got home, her oncologist could hardly believe it when she walked into the office without a wheelchair in sight. I don't know what holy water you drank, but this is unbelievable; His reaction continued to give my family hope that God would do a special miracle for Amanda and that she wouldn't die. You never give up hope, and we never did. During those next months, Amanda got to do a lot of things. She saw the baby panda in the San Diego Zoo when it was born, and the sea turtles, too, which she loved, and she even swam with dolphins. Seeing her manage everything she ever wanted to do was beautiful, exquisite beyond words. In 1996, the Northern Territory of Australia legalized assisted suicide, only to later rescind the law. Then, in 2000, the Netherlands became the first nation to make physician-assisted suicide legal. In 2006, the United States took a big step in that direction with the Supreme Court decision in Gonzales v. Oregon, which allowed states to make their own decisions on assisted suicide. Today, the practice is legal in California, Vermont, Montana, Washington, and Oregon. In 2014, the Journal of Medical Ethics released a report indicating the growth of suicide tourism.

Between 2009 and 2012, the number of people who traveled to Zurich, Switzerland, where assisted suicide is legal, seeking to end their lives, doubled. As Breitbart heard more and more stories of assisted suicide, he began to wonder what specifically was driving the terminally ill to give up on life. At the time, he was doing a series of research studies on pain and fatigue at the end of life, so he tacked onto those studies some questions that asked his subjects whether they felt a desire for a hastened death. What he discovered surprised him. Love and fear are so closely related because they are two manifestations of the same thing! I invite you to do your own scientific experiment on emotion. If it feels right to you, consider allowing a message to come from fear. Let's say you have a fear. What is it? Have you found it? If you have, whatever it is, know that it is temporary. It cannot define you implicitly. Simply draw your awareness to the fear (with the heart or inner body awareness, not the intellect). For example: I am afraid that _______________. The patient is, therefore, the one who suffers but is not asking for help (or not yet), the client is the one who asks for help. In this case help from the psychologist. Why is this difference so important and what does it have to do with the relationship between codependent and alcohol addicts? Let's see an example: Let's imagine the situation in which a codependent wife turns to the psychologist to share that her husband is in a serious alcoholic situation, that he needs help, that he is throwing away his life, that he is throwing her in an unmanageable situation of debt and denigration. In this case, the sufferer (so the patient) is the husband, but the one who asks for help is the codependent wife.