Take a Giant Step Outside Your Mind!

You stare at me in disbelief
You say for you there's no relieve
But I swear I'll prove you wrong.
Don't stay in your lonely room
Just staring back in silent gloom.
That's not where you belong
Come with me I'll take you where the taste of life is green
And everyday holds wonders to be seen.
Come with me, leave yesterday behind
And take a giant step outside your mind.

Gerry Goffin and Carole King, Take a Giant Step

 In reality, there’s only one world. Yet nearly all of us have created parallel universes inside our heads. Addicts, in particular, seem to spend way too much time inside their head-worlds. I suppose this is because the real outer-world didn’t feel safe to us when we were children. So we chose to escape from it by withdrawing into a little dream world inside our childhood heads. Unfortunately, with each passing year, our childhood dream worlds slowly eroded into adult nightmare worlds; probably because we became more and more reliant upon living outside of reality.

I know when I first entered therapy, I was told that I was living too much inside my head and that I was totally out of touch with my body. In other words, I had become a talking head who was emotionally shut-down to the max. The fact that I refused to face my feelings contributed to the increasing craziness in my mind.

For years my head-world had been a mess. I was trapped in fear-filled thinking. I had never felt safe to be me. As a child, I learned early that my parents weren’t on my side and so I lost trust that anyone in my family was on my side. My parents provided me with my first image and likeness of God, and since I couldn’t trust my parents, I couldn’t trust their God either. It didn’t take long to learn that friends often backbite and disappoint you, so I had fewer and fewer friends as time passed me by.

All of these factors moved me further and further inside of my own little head-world. It was the only place that held any hope of safety. Looking back now, I realize that with each passing year I closed the door on the real world the same way I came to close the door to my bedroom—tightly with a secure lock. I wanted to keep family, God and everyone away from me as a means of protecting myself from any further emotional injury.

The less I was able to trust others, the more I isolated in my own little head-world; and the more paranoid and fearful I became when I was forced to go outside my head. Of course, I had to go to school and eventually, as an adult, I had to find a job, but I always did my best to avoid the real world for fear that one day it would emotionally annihilate me. The only pleasure I derived from the real world was two fold: 1) I held tight to the hope of finding someone I could trust enough to rescue me, which of course never happened; and when that failed 2) I turned to the real world to medicate away my inner pain by shopping for records or clothes.

Music was important to me even as a small child. I remember watching The Monkees on TV and their music is still important to me today. Songs like Take a Giant Step were popularized through the TV show. Even today, these lyrics speak to me of the importance of remembering times when I felt safe and was free from my worried head-world: “Remember the feeling as a child, When you woke up and morning smiled, It's time you felt like you did then. There's just no percentage in remembering the past, It's time you learned to live again at last. Come with me, leave yesterday behind, And take a giant step outside your mind.”

Certainly recovery has taught me to get outside of my head. I know when I’ve spent too much time there because my feelings (which I am now in-touch with) tell me. When I’m feeling anxious, frustrated or angry, I know that I am trapped inside my head-world again. And it’s all to easy to slip back into our head-worlds without even realizing that we’ve done so.

Yesterday was my day off. Having a day off generally means that you do things to relax yourself, or to have fun. Yet at times yesterday I caught myself feeling frustrated and angry. Why? Because I allowed myself to leave the real world and return to my head-world where I quickly jumped into the future. Instead of enjoying the moment, I was thinking about a business meeting that was coming up and all of the injustices that I was determined to expose. With each and every thought I became angrier. It finally escalated to the point that I knew I was no longer enjoying myself. I knew I had a choice to make: I could shake-off these ugly thought and get out of my head, or I could make myself more miserable by choosing to be RIGHT inside my head-world.

I chose to shake-off the negative thoughts and return to the real world. Of course, it took more than one try, but eventually I left my head-world behind. I took that Giant Step outside of my mind and landed back in the real world, which is actually safer now than being trapped inside myself.

If you’re hungering for a taste of life that’s green and free from fear, try taking a giant step outside of your own mind. Return to the present moment. The best way to do so is to simply breathe deeply and then choose to observe real life all around you. Look at everything outside of yourself and take pleasure in it. Don’t judge anyone or anything you see negatively. Just observe and enjoy. It takes me out of my head every time and returns me to the reality of the one and only world—which is outside of my head and yours. And I am at peace long enough to get my bearings back and to move forward successfully.