Like pressure building until it bursts

Feeling obligated for our body is equivalent to a mandatory situation and it means too extreme to be accepted. For our body, being forced to do something means that not doing it could have lethal consequences, so the perception of the obligation is for our central nervous system a reason more than enough to activate the alarm protocol of the amygdala. If we are forced to live with our manipulator, before starting our healing process, we will need a break necessarily, or our healing will not have any success. Break means no contact with him or her for weeks or months if needed. My daughters had a unique and extremely healthy reaction. Oh, Amanda's such a spoiled, rotten brat; When we lost Marty, who was so close with them, they responded in a similar way. Mom, so help me God, they told me, she better not take anyone else. If Amanda tries to take you to heaven, too, we're going to kill her. So that's how they're dealing with it. That dose of humor is really necessary and fundamental, and that's also something we touch on in our treatment paradigm because that's rarely included anywhere else. There's too much tiptoeing around. My mission remains to fulfill the promise I made to my daughter. I can never let this world forget that Amanda was alive. And The Atlantic's James Hamblin helped spark this article, which grew out of an article I wrote for him called There's More to Life Than Being Happy. Friends cheered me along and were always willing to talk meaning, especially Jennifer Aaker, Catherine Amble, Dan Bowling, Anne Brafford, Leona Brandwene, Eleanor Brenner, Emily Brolsma, Lauren Caracciola, Meghna Danton, Taylor Dryman, Jordan and Samara Hirsch, Kian and Lexi Hudson, Liz Kahane, Willie Kalema, Zak Kelm, Taylor Kreiss, Amita Kulkarni, Emily Larson, Cory Muscara, Emma Palley, Lucy Randall, Mike Schmidt, Bit Smith, Carol Szurkowski, Ali Tanara, Layli Tanara, Paolo Terni, Dan Tomasulo, Emily Ulrich, Marcy Van Arnam, Christine Wells, and David Yaden. My whole extended family has provided love, support, and encouragement for this project. Jennifer Aaker, Adam Grant, Charlie Hill, Roger Kimball, Darrin McMahon, James Panero, Lucy Randall, Reb Rebele, Judy Saltzberg, Martin Seligman, and David Yaden all took the time to read drafts of this article. Their comments made me a better thinker and writer. The transcendence article wouldn't have been the same without Ginny and Mark Dameron, who said I'd find mystery and beauty at the McDonald Observatory and in Marfa, Texas, and were right.

My conversations with them also made me think deeper about cultures of meaning--and their support, enthusiasm, and joyfulness for this project has helped to carry it along. I won the in-laws lottery. I would also like to acknowledge the many people who opened up to me about their lives, their life's work, and their sources of meaning--from researchers in psychology labs to ordinary people leading extraordinary lives. Not all of them appear in this article by name, but all of them shaped and inspired some aspect of it. Just be careful not to linger, spending more right now moments to lament or dwell upon a belief that you somehow did not act on that fear in the imagined past. Do not bully yourself. Like a repeating newscast reel or catalogued television show, all episodes of fear will repeat or can be called up on demand. If you feel like you miss one episode of fear, you can always stay tuned or tune back in. HONING AND HUNTING If you were an animal hunting for your prey (the ability to act on your fear) and you missed attaining your prize the first time, you might just innocently create suffering. A motivated hunter having failed, becomes that much better a hunter the next time. You can always be sure to watch this present moment for the next fear. Fear is made available to us so that, when we are so motivated, we can retrace our steps and rejoin life at its fullest. ROPE OUT OF THE LABYRINTH That time must be only for us, for reactivating our normal physiology and our finest cognitive functions. There is no difference if we pretend to heal from codependency if we feel obliged to do it, it means pretending to act without the support of our body, it means acting without having control of our thoughts and behaviors. It means that feeling obliged to change is not only unpleasant and not very useful given the few chances of success but above all, it is physiologically impossible. Often, too often, when we decide to get out of codependency we do it driven by suffering, driven by the desire not to suffer anymore and not to make our loved ones suffer. This is neither right nor wrong, it is a reality that accompanies the healing processes of most codependent people. Even so, we cannot overlook the fact that if we sincerely want to change by acting by our voluntary choice, we will be able to count with the help of our body during the healing process and the chances of success will be frankly higher.

So how do we get back in harmony with our body and be sure that we have a command center in full function? To start the first key to use is again the one of choice. Choosing to change, going in the direction we want for the simple fact of wanting it. The moment we permit ourselves to go in one direction because, in that direction we see what we like and is right for us, the moment we permit ourselves to heal, only for having sincerely chosen to want to heal, we allow our body to meet us. It's not going to happen. It gets me out of bed every morning, when I see what God has for me that day. We've literally helped thousands of children all over the world, in China and Ireland and England and Guam and Venezuela. We have a pipeline of projects ready to go as soon as we secure the funds and time to make them happen, and we will! We've become partners with Bard Access Systems, a medical equipment design and supply company, to create a special stabilizer for inserting IV needles into chemo ports, called the Amanda Needle. The FDA legal name is the Amanda Port Stabilizer. This came about because every time Amanda needed to have her port accessed, the ER nurses, not specially trained oncology nurses, had a one-inch or an inch-and-a-half needle that they stuck into the port in her chest, but they would often miss. Amanda would be in such pain whenever this happened. After watching the nurse miss the insertion three times on one occasion, and seven times another night, I knew I had to do something. Stop hurting me! The best part of writing this article was meeting and getting to know and learn from them. Many of them also took the time to confirm facts from their lives and research. Any remaining errors or omissions are mine. Finally, Charlie Dameron. Charlie was the angel on my shoulder from the beginning to the end. He read every proposal draft, commented on each article draft, and was there with me in Fort Davis, Tangier, Cleveland, and beyond.

We went in search of meaning all over the world together, but the most meaningful thing I did while writing this article was marrying this amazing and awe-inspiring man. He has pushed me to grow as a writer and as a person, taught me to love better and deeper, and gave me confidence when I was full of doubt. Every day with him is richer and fuller than the one before. We are often faced with the challenge of learning how to become better decision-makers. Fear helps to ensure our immediate and direct success in our journey back to experiencing the natural state of enlightenment. It acts like a mythical rope that you can grasp and climb from in order to get out of a complicated maze, labyrinth, or pit in which there is great suffering (think struggling with Cyclops or depression). Fear supports the soul and acts as a perfect and direct guide to the soul's freedom. Well, when we track, chase, run toward, test, or otherwise follow what we fear (the rope), we, the soul, loosen the ties that bind us--namely ego-mind, limitedness, attachment, identifications, and other illusions. HELPFUL PORTAL Fear can be a door to the experience of living in heaven while being embodied on Earth. It is a portal to enlightenment. While seen as a dangerous path by some, for those who are motivated to embrace it properly by using discernment, fear serves as a most rewarding portal. Like any portal to enlightenment, in acknowledging that which we fear, we begin to pull our Self up on the life line. How do we get into the quicksand of suffering? The second key is the shared pleasure. Codependency links us to the need and the obligation. Healing links us to the pleasure to do something for us, for others, and with others. When we let perceive pleasure to our nervous system, gradually it reactivates the normal protocol. It's like when we are on vacation after many months of hard work. We could only think about invoices, complaints, clients, credit collections, the phone, the email.

When we are so stressed if somebody talks to us about personal projects for the future we cannot even think about it, we postpone it or we reject it. Then, once on vacations, we suddenly talk about future, next travels, arts, movies. When we are moving to other polarities, we are looking for people we like, we are trying to get in tune with their identities. Or at least, to find out what they do to have shared pleasure with important people, within their polarities. I couldn't bear to hear Amanda or any other child screaming this any longer, and none of them should ever have to endure such a thing. I reached out to the president of the company. Why can't you find a better way? Why is it so hard for your ports to be accessed? Why does my daughter have to be tortured every time she goes to the emergency room? They were not aware that this was an issue. HIPPA laws, meant to support patient privacy, don't allow manufacturers to gather feedback from patients, and the ER nurses weren't the ones to get through. The problem is, emergency room nurses are not trained to access a port, which is the protocol when a patient enters the ER. They don't get to oncology until they're admitted, and you can't get admitted until the port is accessed in the ER. Even though Bard was conducting research with providers, they weren't talking to the patients or ER nurses at the level where the nightmares were happening. Perhaps, this is one of the main reasons why you are reading this article. Well, you are not alone. Growing to become a better decision-maker is not something that you can achieve in several minutes or hours. It's a lifelong journey. It takes time for you to learn and master the idea of enhancing your thought processes. Maybe you are racking your brains trying to conceptualize what mental models mean.