The Choice

by Edith Eger

We are hungry for approval, attention, affection. We are hungry for the freedom to embrace life and to really know and be ourselves.

My own search for freedom and my years of experience as a licensed clinical psychologist have taught me that suffering is universal. But victimhood is optional. There is a difference between victimization and victimhood. We are all likely to be victimized in some way in the course of our lives.

At some point...

suffer some kind of affliction or calamity or abuse, caused by circumstances or people or institutions over which we have little or no control. This is life. And this is victimization. It comes from the outside. It’s the neighborhood bully, the boss who rages, the spouse who hits, the lover wh...

No one can make you a victim but you. We become victims not because of what happens to us but when we choose to hold on to our victimization. We develop a victim’s mind—a way of thinking and being that is rigid, blaming, pessimistic, stuck in the past, unforgiving, punitive, and without healthy limits or ...

live to guide others to a position of empowerment in the face of all of life’s hardships.

Being a survivor, being a “thriver” requires absolute acceptance of what was and what is. If we discount our pain, or punish ourselves for feeling lost or isolated or scared about the challenges in our lives, however insignificant these challenges may seem to someone else, then we’re still choosing to be victims.

don’t want you to hear my story and say, “My own suffering is less significant.” I want you to hear my story and say, “If she can do it, then so can I!”

Survivors don’t have time to ask, “Why me?” For survivors, the only relevant question is, “What now?”

I invite you to make the choice to be free.

What follows is the story of the choices, big and small, that can lead us from trauma to triumph, from darkness to light, from imprisonment to freedom.

We can choose what the horror teaches us. To become bitter in our grief and fear. Hostile. Paralyzed. Or to hold on to the childlike part of us, the lively and curious part, the part that is innocent.

And besides, who would provide the best shelter now? Someone who knows what I have endured, a fellow survivor? Or someone who doesn’t, who can help me forget? Someone who knew me before I went through hell, who can help me back to my former self? Or someone who can look at me now without always seeing what’s been destroyed?

if I can keep the noise and the urgency around me at all times, I will not have to be alone for even a moment with my own thoughts. I work so hard that my hands shake and shake in the dark when I get home.

He understands how a man who has nothing left in this world may still know bliss, be it only for a brief moment, in the contemplation of his beloved.

Just remember, no one can take away from you what you’ve put in your mind.

Frankl’s teaching: Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms—to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.

In place of discovering my own genuine purpose and direction, I found meaning in fighting against him, against the ways I imagined that he limited me. Really, Béla was supportive of my schooling, he paid for my tuition, he loved talking with me about the philosophy and literature I was reading, he found my reading lists and analyses interesting complements to his favorite subject: history.

the more choices they have, the less they’ll feel like victims.

Now that I have faced myself a little more fully, I can see that the emptiness I felt in our marriage wasn’t a sign of something wrong in our relationship, it was the void I carry with me, even now, the void that no man or achievement will ever fill. Nothing will ever make up for the loss of my parents and childhood. And no one else is responsible for my freedom. I am.

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.

Suffering is inevitable and universal. But how we respond to suffering differs.

Albert Ellis, who founded Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy, a precursor to cognitive behavior therapy, taught me the extent to which we teach ourselves negative feelings about ourselves—and the negative and self-defeating behaviors that follow from these feelings. He showed that underlying our least effective and most harmful behaviors is a philosophical or ideological core that is irrational but is so central to our views of our self and the world that often we aren’t aware that it is only a belief, nor are we aware of how persistently we repeat this belief to ourselves in our daily lives. The belief determines our feelings (sadness, anger, anxiety, etc.), and our feelings in turn influence our behavior (acting out, shutting down, self-medicating to

discomfort). To change our behavior, Ellis taught, we must change our feelings, and to change our feelings, we change our thoughts.

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.

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

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.

We can choose to be our own jailors, or we can choose to be free.

each of us has the capacity to gain the perspective that transforms us from victim to thriver. We can choose to take responsibility for our hardships and our healing. We can choose to be free.

Expression is the opposite of depression.

I was of no help to him.

my professional success had to come from a deeper place within me—not from the little girl trying to please others and win approval but from my whole and authentic self, the one who was vulnerable and curious, who was accepting of herself and ready to grow.

It was a well I could draw on, a deep source of understanding and intuition about my patients, their pain, and the path to healing.

When you have something to prove, you aren’t free.

could tell that Emma’s father was living in a prison of his own making—he was living within a limited image of who he should be. He behaved more like a drill sergeant than a supportive husband or concerned father. He didn’t ask questions; he ran an interrogation. He didn’t acknowledge his fears or vulnerabilities; he asserted his ego.

we could build a clearer picture of her emotional landscape and get more familiar with the psychological aspects of the disease.

With any new patient, it’s important to be sensitive to his or her psychological boundaries from the very first moments of our initial encounter. I must intuit immediately if this is a person who wants me to take her hand or keep my physical distance, if this is a person who needs me to give him an order or a gentle suggestion.

it’s vital to create a structured environment where there is safety in clear rules and rituals.

In a home with punitive discipline, children grow accustomed to hearing threats, and these threats can escalate quickly or, at the other extreme, prove empty.

The spare-the-rod-spoil-the-child approach to discipline had created a climate in which the children seemed to get only negative attention (bad attention, after all, is better than no attention). The strict environment, the black-and-white nature of the rules and roles imposed on the children, the palpable tension between the parents—all made for an emotional famine in the home.

Control, punitive discipline, emotional incest—no wonder Emma was dying in the midst of plenty.

how much hearing them yell and blame frightened her, and how resentful she felt when they changed the rules or expectations at the last minute

When we grieve, it’s not just over what happened—we grieve for what didn’t happen.

old Hungarian saying I learned as a girl: Don’t inhale your anger to your chest.

I’d invited the women in the audience to ask themselves, What feeling or belief am I holding on to? Am I willing to let it go? Agnes asked me now, “How do you know if there’s something you’re holding on to?”

“Helping people. But also finding out what’s really going on. Finding out the truth. Finding what’s under the surface and fixing the problem.”

“Anger isn’t a value,” I told Agnes. “It’s a feeling. It doesn’t mean you’re bad. It just means you’re alive.”

“I’d like you to try something. An exercise. You’re going to turn yourself inside out. Whatever you usually hold in, you’re going to get out, and whatever you usually get rid of, you’re going to put back in.” I took the pad of hotel stationery off the desk and handed it to her with a pen. “Each person in your immediate family gets one sentence. I want you to write down something you haven’t told that person. It might be a desire or a secret or a regret—it might be something small, like, ‘I wish you’d put your dirty socks in the laundry.’ The only rule is it has to be something you’ve never said out loud.” She smiled faintly, nervously. “Are you going to make me actually say these?” “What you do with them is entirely up to you. You can tear them up like confetti and flush them down the toilet, or set them on fire. I just want you to get them out of your body by writing them down.” She sat in silence for a few minutes and then began to write. Several times she crossed something out. Finally she looked up. “How do you feel?” “A little dizzy.” “Topsy-turvy?” “Yes.” “Then it’s time to fill yourself back up again. But with the things you usually give to other people. You’re going to put all that love and protection and nurturing back inside.” I asked her to picture herself getting very small, so tiny that she could climb inside her own ear. I told her to crawl down the canal, and down her throat and esophagus, all the way to her stomach. As she journeyed within, I asked her to p...

we had to find a way to move toward insight and healing, a way for Jason to flow with whatever emotions and situations were overwhelming him into catatonia. And if I was to guide him toward wellness, I couldn’t force him to talk. I had to flow with his current state of mind, his current choices and conditions, and stay open to opportunities for revelation and change. “I

wonder if you can help me,” I finally said. This is an approach I sometimes take with a reluctant patient, a tough customer. I take the attention away from the patient’s problem. I become the one with the problem. I appeal to the patient’s sympathy. I wanted Jason to feel like he was the one with strength and solutions, and I was just a person, curious and somewhat desperate, asking to be helped. “I really want to know how you want to spend your time here with me. You’re a young man, a soldier. I’m just a grandmother. Could you help me out?”