The Choice — Embrace the Possible by Edith Eva Eger

This article is just a compilation of good reads from the book “The Choice — Embrace the Possible by Edith Eva Eger”. The theme of the book is about the choices we make to respond to a situation or past. It is my first attempt to share such points. Do give comments about the same.

I would say the story is similar to a common man struggling in a day to day life. (Of course, not every common man has experienced death camp. BUT whatever he has suffered is big suffering for him) For everyone, it matters a lot what they experienced in childhood. Everyone has their struggles and those are the biggest. BUT how to deal with them, that we can learn from this book.

The author has learned from the experiences of her patients. She explains beautifully how the patient recovered and helped her as well to heal. I have shared a few examples in this article as well.

Actually one should read the whole book, but this is just a summary for your reference

1. The worst brings out the best in us.

2. Today, more than seventy years have passed. What happened can never be forgotten and can never be changed. But over time I learned that I can choose how to respond to the past. I can be miserable, or I can be hopeful — I can be depressed, or I can be happy. We always have that choice, that opportunity for control. I’m here, this is now, I have learned to tell myself, over and over, until the panicky feeling begins to ease.

3. Freedom lies in learning to embrace what happened. Freedom means we muster the courage to dismantle the prison, brick by brick.

4. Suffering is universal. But victimhood is optional.

5. Memory is sacred ground. But it’s haunted too.

6. We don’t know where we’re going. We don’t know what’s going to happen. Just remember, no one can take away from you what you’ve put in your mind.”

7. To survive is to transcend your own needs and commit yourself to someone or something outside yourself.

8. Which is worse, I wonder, to be a child who has lost her mother or a mother who has lost her child?

9. Worse than the fear of death is the feeling of being locked in and powerless, of not knowing what will happen in the next breath.

10. There is always a worse hell.

11. The irony of freedom is that it is harder to find hope and purpose.

12. Survival is a matter of interdependence, that survival isn’t possible alone.

13. I will treat him not as he is, but as I trust he can be.

14. You have to love what you are doing. Otherwise, you shouldn’t do it. It isn’t worth it.”

15. I don’t know that fears kept hidden only grow more fierce. I don’t know that my habits of providing and placating — of pretending — are only making us worse.

16. No one can take away from you what you’ve put in your mind. We can’t choose to vanish the dark, but we can choose to kindle the light.

17. No one heals in a straight line.

18. If you’re going to live, you have to stand for something.

19. I see the need for change, but I don’t know what kind of change will help me feel freer and more joyful.

20. It did not really matter what we expected from life, but rather what life expected from us,

21. Seligman’s experiments — which were done with dogs and unfortunately preceded current protections against cruelty to animals — taught him about the concept he called “learned helplessness.” When dogs who were given painful shocks were able to stop the shocks by pressing a lever, they learned quickly to stop the pain. And they were able, in subsequent experiments, to figure out how to escape painful shocks administered in a kennel cage by leaping over a small barrier. Dogs who hadn’t been given the means to stop the pain, however, had learned the lesson that they were helpless against it. When they were put in a kennel cage and administered shocks, they ignored the route to escape and just lay down in the kennel and whimpered. From this Seligman concluded that when we feel we have no control over our circumstances when we believe that nothing we do can alleviate our suffering or improve our lives, we stop taking action on our own behalf because we believe there is no point. This is what happened at the camps, when former inmates left through the gates only to return to prison, to sit vacantly, unsure what to do with their freedom now that it had finally come.

22. The belief determines our feelings (sadness, anger, anxiety, etc.), and our feelings, in turn, influence our behavior (acting out, shutting down, self-medicating to ease the discomfort). To change our behavior, Ellis taught, we must change our feelings, and to change our feelings, we change our thoughts.

23. Carl Rogers, one of my most influential mentors, was a master of helping patients to fully accept themselves. Rogers theorized that when our need to self-actualize comes into conflict with our need for positive regard, or vice versa, we might choose to repress or hide or neglect our genuine personalities and desires. When we come to believe that there is no way to be loved and to be genuine, we are at risk of denying our true nature.

24. Only I can do what I can do the way I can do it.

25. You can live to avenge the past, or you can live to enrich the present. You can live in the prison of the past, or you can let the past be the springboard that helps you reach the life you want now.

26. Suppressing the feelings only makes it harder to let them go. An expression is the opposite of depression.

27. You can’t heal what you can’t feel.

28. It’s easier to hold someone or something else responsible for your pain than to take responsibility for ending your own victimhood.

29. You deny what hurts, what you fear. You avoid it at all costs. Then you find a way to welcome and embrace what you’re most afraid of. And then you can finally let it go.

30. Times are changing and we are changing with them. We are always in the process of becoming.”

31. The past doesn’t taint the present, the present doesn’t diminish the past.

32. When we heal, we embrace our real and possible selves. I had a patient who was obese, and she was cruel to herself every time she saw her reflection or stepped on a scale. She called herself a cow, disgusting. She believed her husband found her disappointing and her children found her embarrassing, that the people who loved her deserved better. But for her to be the person she wanted to be she first had to love herself for who she was. We sat in my office and I would ask her to pick a part of her body — a toe, a finger, her stomach, her neck, her chin — and talk about it in a loving way. It looks like this, it feels like this, it is beautiful because … It was awkward at first, even painful. It was easier for her to bash herself than to spend time attentively, willingly, in her own skin. We went slowly, we went gently. I began to notice little changes. She came to see me one day wearing a beautiful bright new scarf. Another day she had treated herself to a pedicure. Another day she told me she had called the sister she had grown distant from. Another time she had discovered that she loved walking on the trail around the park where her daughter played soccer. As she practiced loving all parts of herself, she discovered more joy in her life, and more ease. She also began to lose weight. Release begins with acceptance.

33. Maybe to heal isn’t to erase the scar, or even to make the scar. To heal is to cherish the wound.

34. Work has set me free. I survived so that I could do my work. Not the work the Nazis meant — the hard labor of sacrifice and hunger, of exhaustion and enslavement. It was the inner work. Of learning to survive and thrive, of learning to forgive myself, of helping others to do the same. And when I do this work, then I am no longer the hostage or the prisoner of anything. I am free.

35. Our painful experiences aren’t a liability — they’re a gift. They give us perspective and meaning, an opportunity to find our unique purpose and our strength.

36. The husband was also a drinker. One day, he’d had enough. He didn’t want to drink anymore. He wanted to get help. He decided that rehab was the best option, and he started working hard on his sobriety. This was precisely what his wife had been praying would happen. They both expected his sobriety to be the solution to all their problems. But as his recovery progressed, their marriage got worse. When the wife visited the rehab facility, angry and bitter feelings would surface. She couldn’t stop herself from rehashing the past. Remember five years ago when you came home and threw up all over my favorite rug? And that other time you ruined our anniversary party? She couldn’t keep from reciting a litany of all the mistakes he’d made, all the ways he’d hurt and disappointed her. The better her husband got, the worse she became. He felt stronger, less toxic, less ashamed, more in touch with himself, more tuned in to his life and relationships. And she grew more and more enraged. He let go of the drinking, but she couldn’t let go of the criticism and blame. I call this the seesaw. One person’s up, and one person’s down. Lots of marriages and relationships are built this way. Two people agree to an unspoken contract: One of them will be good and one of them will be bad. The whole system relies on one person’s inadequacy. The “bad” partner gets a free pass to test all the limits; the “good” partner gets to say, look how selfless I am! Look how patient I am! Look at everything I put up with! But what happens if the “bad” one in the relationship gets sick of that role? What if he shows up to audition for the other part? Then the “good” one’s place in the relationship is no longer secure. She’s got to remind him how bad he is so she can keep her position. Or she might become bad — hostile, explosive — so that they can still balance the seesaw even if they switch positions. Either way, the blame is the pivot that keeps the two seats joined. In a lot of cases, someone else’s actions really do contribute to our discomfort and unhappiness. I’m not suggesting that we should be okay with behavior that is hurtful or destructive. But we remain victims as long as we hold another person responsible for our own well-being. If Ling says, “I can only be happy and at peace, if Jun stops drinking,” she leaves herself vulnerable to a life of sorrow and unrest. Her happiness will always be a bottle or a swig away from disaster. Likewise, if Jun says, “The only reason I drink is because Ling is so nagging and critical,” he gives up all of his freedom of choice. He isn’t his own agent. He is Ling’s puppet. He might get the temporary relief of a buzz as a protection against her unkindness, but he won’t be free. So often when we are unhappy it is because we are taking too much responsibility or we are taking too little. Instead of being assertive and choosing clearly for ourselves, we might become aggressive (choosing for others), or passive (letting others choose for us), or passive-aggressive (choosing for others by preventing them from achieving what they are choosing for themselves). It gives me no pleasure to admit that I used to be passive-aggressive with Béla. He was very punctual, it was important to him to be on time, and when I was annoyed with him, I would stall when it was time to leave the house. I would intentionally find a way to slow us down, to make us late, just to spite him. He was choosing to arrive on time, and I wouldn’t let him get what he wanted. I told Ling and Jun that in blaming each other for their unhappiness, they were avoiding the responsibility of making their own joy. While on the surface they both seemed very assertive — Ling always on Jun’s case, Jun doing what he pleased instead of what Ling asked him to do — they were both experts at avoiding an honest expression of “I want” or “I am.” Ling used the words “I want” — “I want my husband to stop drinking” — but in wanting something for someone else, she escaped having to know what she wanted for herself. And Jun could rationalize his drinking by saying that his drinking was Ling’s fault, a way to assert himself against her oppressive expectations and criticisms. But if you give up the authority of your own choices, then you are agreeing to be a victim — and a prisoner.

37. If we are to evolve instead of revolve, it’s time to take action now.

38. As long as you live, there’s the risk that you might suffer more. There’s also the opportunity to find a way to suffer less, to choose happiness, which requires taking responsibility for yourself.

39. Trying to be the caretaker who sees another person’s every need is as problematic as avoiding your responsibility to yourself.

40. I think that a certain amount of risk is always inseparable from healing.

41. “Forgiveness isn’t you forgiving your molester for what he did to you,” I told her. “It’s you forgiving the part of yourself that was victimized and letting go of all blame.

42. Time doesn’t heal. It’s what you do with the time. Healing is possible when we choose to take responsibility when we choose to take risks, and finally when we choose to release the wound, to let go of the past or the grief.

43. The most important truth I know, that the biggest prison is in your own mind, and in your pocket you already hold the key: the willingness to take absolute responsibility for your life; the willingness to risk; the willingness to release yourself from judgment and reclaim your innocence, accepting and loving yourself for who you really are — human, imperfect, and whole.

44. To run away from the past or to fight against our present pain is to imprison ourselves. Freedom is in accepting what is and forgiving ourselves, in opening our hearts to discover the miracles that exist now.

45. I can’t heal you — or anyone — but I can celebrate your choice to dismantle the prison in your mind, brick by brick. You can’t change what happened, you can’t change what you did or what was done to you. But you can choose how you live now.

I hope this summary helps you set free and chose wisely. I also recommend to read this book and apply your learning’s in your life