Years ago, as a friend of mine was teaching me to ski, he started me off with a technique called “”snow plowing.”

This involved pointing the front of my skis together in the shape of a “V” and painstakingly moving down the ski run.

The technique was awkward and slow, and it put tremendous pressure on my knees and hips, but, surprisingly, it enabled me to ski down the slope without killing myself.

And since it was clear to all the more experienced skiers that I was a novice

and that I was on the verge of being out of control, they judiciously stayed out of my way.

After several runs, and several spills, and several periods of controlled terror, I achieved some level of confidence. It was at that point that my friend said, “OK, now I’m going to teach you how to really ski, so forget all you’ve learned so far!”

He then proceeded to teach me how to keep my skis parallel, to bend my knees, and to turn my skis to control my direction and speed.

I remember thinking, “This doesn’t feel right. Compared to snow plowing, which admittedly, has very little control, I now have no control at all!”

So, I immediately went back to snow plowing.

“Real” skiing was out of my comfort zone. From my point of view, there were no other options.

Compared to the discomfort of letting go of the “old ways” and rising to a higher level, I decided that the pain, misery, and limitations of snow plowing weren’t so bad after all.

And I held on to that kind of thinking until it finally became too painful to

continue doing so, which eventually it did. Then, and only then, did I finally learn to ski!

So it is with all survival skills.

We don’t change them until it hurts too much not to.

The Law of Accommodation states that what life requires, it creates.

In other words, when we are repeatedly confronted with increasing periods of instability and mind-boggling confusion, a variety of survival skills materialize.

Emotional numbness, denial, avoidance and isolation serve to protect us, and a rigid defensiveness makes it difficult to even consider new information.

When we’re used to thinking wrong, then what’s really right, seems really wrong.

That’s why, initially, a change in thinking patterns will not change the way you feel.

Recovery takes time.

Survival skills seem to be a logical attempt to cope with an illogical situation.

No one really chooses these patterns before hand. They just appear.

And because they are developed in the midst of crisis situations, they become inextricably linked to, and require a continuation of, additional crisis situations.

Life literally becomes nothing but one crisis after another.

As a result, there is a tendency to believe that the “real self” is a combination

of ‘brokenness”: unlovable, abandoned, victimized, confused, and maybe even crazy.

When we’re raised in an environment of instability and pain, there’s a tendency to accept these variables as normal, inevitably trusting the dysfunction, and hesitating to let it go.

The abnormal becomes normal, despair becomes reality, and the perception of helplessness and hopelessness creates the illusion that “this is as good as it gets.”

It may sound like a play on words, but the ultimate goal in recovery is not to change yourself or anyone else. It’s to make new choices that are more successful than the previous ones.

And with new choices, changes will occur on their own.

Such a process does not occur all at once, but comes in bits and pieces. We only change what hurts. And until it hurts long enough and hard enough that we can’t ignore it, numb it, or run from it, we tolerate it because we really don’t know how not to do what we’re doing.

That’s not an excuse. That’s just the way it is.

Crossing the boundaries of belief, and going beyond the paralysis of fear and anxiety are difficult. But agency is alive and well, and life is filled with a wide variety of choices.

So live your life in such a manner that you always have a choice. If you don’t, you won’t.

It would appear that this world is accomplishing the purpose for which it was created.

It’s full of joys and sorrows, successes and failures.

It prepares us to be able to withstand the storms of life; both the ones we’re experiencing now, and the ones yet to come. The challenges we’re facing now, those that we’re learning to manage in one way or another, are simply part of the preparation for us to be able to handle the bigger ones that will come; and come they will.

But that’s what this is all about: growing, experiencing, and rising above our previous self.

There really is a purpose to it, and there really are reasons behind it.

We’re caught up in something much greater than we are. The painful elements in life such as fear, anger, and sorrow are things that we all try to avoid.

In fact, sometimes we’re so successful in avoiding them that we never develop the life-management skills necessary to cope with them, and so we continue to be victimized by them.

Ironically, these elements are some of the integral components in the equation of life.

So instead of running from them, make the attempt to face them and embrace them; both for the lessons they teach, and for the strengths they leave behind.

Take charge of your survival skills.

You really do have a choice.

John Waterbury is a retired Clinical Mental Health Counselor who has lived in Utah since 1984 when he moved to Bountiful with his wife and four children. Since then, he has written a weekly column for several years for the Davis County Clipper titled “The Dear John Letters” which was also used throughout the intermountain West focusing on addiction and mental health problems. This new column will focus on mental health and life management issues.