You know how some people, when they lose a parent or spouse or child, someone really meaningful to them in whom they've invested a lot of themselves says, "I can't live without" this person and seems to get stuck with that belief? In natural grief people move "through" the grief and out the other side but I think some people have trouble doing that because they don't know themselves well enough to know they'll make it through the other side. Because they don't "know" they'll make it, they look towards and cling to the deceased person who can't help them anymore. They focus toward the wrong direction. If they look at it coldly/logically and admit the person is dead and can't "help" them further by "being" part of them and that they themselves don't feel good enough about themselves to get further, the problem can shift to learning about one's self and changing one's self so one can see one's self and all one's facets (including the role of the deaceased person) instead of just the other person "out there."

So I'm thinking about "belief" and how my stepmother and therapist (two different people, one abusive and one helpful) use to claim that if she said the sky was "blue" I'd say it was "green." For me, the sky can be "green" and that's equally as valid and true as it being "blue." Whether I say I can-live-without someone or cannot-live-without someone are both (whichever) true for ME and that's all there is. It's just that some beliefs and ideas to persue are more "useful" than others.

If I'm psychotic and say "I am God," that's true for me at that time. I just read the book, Mercy Unbound http://www.amazon.com/Mercy-Unbound-.../dp/1416908935 about a girl with anorexia who was saying she didn't have anorexia, she was an angel and angels didn't need to eat. Obviously her parents got her help, not necessarily because she said she was an angel, but because she wasn't eating. A psychotic (or other person with "belief" problems) isn't necessarily being treated for their beliefs per se but because of how they relate to the world. If someone's beliefs hamper their being able to care for themselves (or others like children under their care), then those beliefs aren't useful. The sky is blue/the sky is green doesn't hamper me in any way except "personally" since the majority of people around me see the sky as blue. But that doesn't mean it IS blue, that's just common belief and is wholly "made up." Everyone looked up one day and decided (pointing up) to label that color "blue." I wasn't there or I would have convinced them to label it green :-)

So, anytime you're stuck, realize it's your beliefs that can get your stuck and arbitrarily decide to look at an "opposite" belief and see if you can't get unstuck. If you're facing someone you can't-live-without, decide to face yourself/the other direction instead and find out what that looks like, why everyone ELSE says you're intelligent, kind, creative, stubborn, lazy, whatever. Shifting your beliefs can shift your focus and get you unstuck. I'm reminded of when I was a kid and use to climb up on top of my dresser and look at my room that way. It's arbitrary convention that things are "agreed" upon and there's no police that can "make" you believe one thing or another. But you can decided to believe one thing or another -- there's no Truth higher than you saying, "The sky is blue."