Taming Mr./Ms. Hyde

 Each of us has a Mr. or Ms. Hyde deep inside of us. We are all too familiar with the sound of his/her voice. It's that nasty little voice that keeps telling us how worthless and inferior we are. It's the voice that persuades us to compare ourselves to everyone around us and then brutally lies to us as it screams "You are such a loser! Look how inferior you are to everyone else. You're ugly! You're overweight! You're so stupid! No one will ever love you! etc."

I have listened to and accepted the lies of my Mr. Hyde for countless years. But no more. I've identified that wicked voice in my head. I know now that it's Mr. Hyde and I no longer believe the lies he spits at me. My current motto is "Bye-bye, Mr. Hyde." Every time his voice attempts to interrupt my thoughts, I interrupt his garbage with "Bye-bye, Mr. Hyde. I have no use for you." And then I laugh at him. He's the pathetic one, not me.

In other words, I'm learning to own my power against Mr. Hyde. I no longer instantly surrender to his voice and allow his words to be my reality. I have stopped allowing the fears he unearthed to control me. So, I have stopped projecting bad thoughts about myself onto other people. The people I encounter everyday are no longer enemies created by Hyde. In truth, no one was ever my enemy as much as I was while I was believing Hyde's lies.

Now, I can walk down the street, or through a mall filled with people and feel freer than I've ever felt in my life. My attention is on the reality outside of me, and no longer on all the fears inside of me that I turned into false realities by projecting them onto the glances or unhappy expressions of others. No longer am I the victim of myself or others-- or Hyde.

 This doesn't mean all is perfect. I'm trying to eradicate Hyde. I don't know if that's possible. We all have a dark side to balance our light side. Hyde is definitely part of the dark side in terms of my thought patterns. But those patterns can be broken. We don't have to be the helpless victims of them. Thoughts are only thoughts. We aren't required to accept them as our personal truth. We can reject any thoughts that fail to serve our purpose of being happy, mentally and emotionally healthy people.

There is no one on earth who doesn't have a Mr./Ms. Hyde inside of them. And we all slip up at times and allow our Hyde to make us negative, rude or even nasty toward ourselves and others. The difference between those of us who are codependent and those of us who are not is probably the reality that codependents run with the negative "Hydian" thoughts uncontrollably intent on hurting ourselves. I don't think many non-addicts put themselves through such misery-- or at least not near as consistently as we do.

Tired of accepting the Hyde inside of you. Learn to take your personal power over your thoughts back from him/her. 

I'm planning to created a retreat based on the idea of "Taming Hyde." Everyone of us needs to learn how.