How an angry, depressed man transformed his life and his relationships.
This is an anonymous success story for a client I’ll call Arthur, although that’s not his real name. I’ve also disguised him a little bit by changing some of the details of his life to conceal his identity. The information about his transformation, however, is accurate.
When I first met Arthur, he had a lot of anxiety. He was negative, angry, depressed, sad, and frustrated. He hadn’t gotten over the death of his sister three years ago and his brother ten years before that. Although he had been very successful running his own business over the years, he felt like a failure, and he thought he was incompetent and unskilled. He closed his business, didn’t have a job, and was extremely unmotivated to work. He was divorced and his four kids lived with their mother. Everyone around him told him he was a bad, narcissistic, immature, and undisciplined person who lacked empathy. And he agreed with them. He couldn’t win and was always the bad guy no matter what he did.
Arthur wanted to start a new business but wasn’t able to make much progress. He wanted to build a strong bond with his family but had only succeeded in alienating them. He was desperate to find someone who would love him but thought he would never find her or be able to keep her from leaving once she saw who he really was. He had tried everything to improve his life, but nothing had worked. He didn’t have any hope that things would get better, and he was skeptical that I would be able to help him.
Arthur had a very challenging childhood. His parents were seldom around, and when they were, they yelled at him and his father beat him. They focused their anger on him much more than his younger siblings and made it clear that the most important thing was money. This caused him to think he wasn’t important, lovable, or worthy.
As he got older, Arthur became quick to anger and blamed the other person for getting him upset. He was very controlling and intimidating. He wanted everything to be done his way and argued with everyone. He didn’t like to be around his family and his parents, fearing he would turn into what they called “the angry monster” or “the Hulk.” Over the years, his anger had gotten much worse, and he was worried that his now explosive, uncontrollable anger would lead to him seriously hurting someone he cared about. To keep himself calm and sedated, he used drugs, but it had the side effect of making him lose his drive. He became lazy and procrastinated important things. On top of this, he had a lot of brain fog, short-term memory challenges, and difficulty thinking. He was isolated, lonely, and lost.
Arthur also felt quite a bit of guilt, shame, and regret around some of the bad things he had done. He thought he was a horrible person who needed to be punished and was incapable of becoming a good person. Once bad, always bad, and forever defined by his worst moments. Additionally, he thought trying to be a good person was a waste of time because his bad karma would catch up with him. He was depressed, felt hopeless, and participated in a lot of escape activities.
I showed Arthur that there was hope, that he could change if he really wanted to, and that he wasn’t defined by his past. He could learn from his experiences and do something good with his knowledge. I also reminded him that he was a nice, innocent child when he started this life, but had gone down a different and difficult path as he tried to survive his brutal upbringing.
Arthur went through the transformation process. He was able to see the good inside himself and could understand why he did what he did. He saw how he had been trying to prove he was a tough guy so no one would be able to scare him and hurt him like his parents did. And he saw he wasn’t able to create the close family relationships he wanted because everyone was afraid of him.
Arthur was then introduced to the concept of the Wise Loving Being and was asked to start treating himself and others as if he was one, because it had the power to transform his relationships. He was also shown how to transform the way he behaves and interacts with others by using the twenty-one principles of Universal Elevation. He learned that he was actually responsible for his anger and was letting other people control him.
He also learned how to:
Set better goals with the 5W’S Complete Goal Setting Framework,
See life from new perspectives,
Make positive changes in his life by using Ridiculously Easy Goals,
Overcome his fears and turn them into strengths,
Use the freedom and forgiveness process to move forward without the constraints of his past, and
Reprogram the autopilot that had been running his life so it would now help him achieve his dreams.
Arthur worked hard, did his homework, was open to new ideas, was brutally honest with himself, and confronted the truth of who he was. With this new knowledge and perspective, he started to turn his life around by taking action and implementing what he learned.
Arthur set a goal to transform his family relationships and create a new business. He started a charitable organization to help others only he could reach because of his background. He ended the terrible cycle of violence of fathers abusing their children that had been handed down to him over many generations, and he overcame his unhealthy anger, guilt, shame, and regret.
But more importantly, Arthur forgave himself and could now look at himself with a balanced view, seeing the good, the bad, and everything in between. He also saw the valuable impact he could make, created a new vision and purpose for his life, and stopped doing drugs and participating in escape activities.
Even more amazing was that Arthur was able to transform the terrible relationships he had with his family into strong, loving, and supportive relationships, including the relationship with his parents. He no longer yelled at his ex-wife and parents or got angry with them. He stopped being controlling and let others make their own choices. Of course, he did voice his concerns based on his experiences, but he did this in a loving way, with the goal of helping them. People took notice and talked to him about the positive changes they saw. He started dating a nice woman who could see his tremendous capacity for good.
At the end of our three months working together in online sessions, Arthur completely transformed his life. He created a life filled with love, peace, joy, freedom, and fulfillment. And he did something that isn’t easy to do and is rarely done: he converted his past trauma and guilt over the bad things he did into a powerfully positive force for good that otherwise wouldn’t have been possible.
Great job Arthur! I can’t wait to see what you do next!