GENERAL SEMANTICS CONCEPTS AND PRINCIPLES FOR MATURITY

v WORDS DON’T MEAN, PEOPLE MEAN—words are only symbols that represent an idea. The same word doesn’t mean the same thing to all people (when people described car accidents, they describe it from their point of view). When we communicate, either to ourselves or others, it’s important to keep in mind that about 90% of our communication is sent and received non-verbally, and the rest are the words we say. People give meaning to words and communication.

v BE CONSCIOUS OF THE “IS” OF IDENTITY—someone may say “everyone with a mental illness is a criminal,” or “all African Americans are good basketball players,” or “all Asian Americans get good grades.” These are all examples of the “is” of identity principle. First of all, these are stereotypes. Secondly, any one of the examples mentioned above doesn’t define all of who a person really is. If I say, “I am so angry with you for what you did” am I anger in a human body? Has anyone ever seen anger as a person, place or thing? Facts tell us no. Listen to yourself to see how often you use the verb “to be” and practice using other verbs such as “I really got pissed off at you when you borrowed my bike and didn’t tell me.”

v THINK IN INCREMENTS—an increment is a smaller piece of the pie than the whole pie. When we have a lot of stress in our lives, we generally tend to see it as a large, overwhelming weight or obstacle, and we often feel like victims of circumstances without any power to deal with it. To think incrementally is to break down the huge pile of dirt that we have to move into smaller shovelfuls. Another way to state this is to use the phrase, “A journey of a thousand miles begins with the first step.”

v USE THE PRINCIPLE OF DATING—no I’m not talking about going out to 6th street for a night on the town! Here’s what I mean: John Smith1958 is a different person from John Smith1984. One of the old writers wrote, ‘You never cross the same river twice,’ meaning that the river is always moving so there’s no way to cross the same water to get to the other side. Life isn’t stuck in cement, without any changes—we just feel like it is at times, because we see it through our eyes, and we may feel stuck in our lives. Dating helps us to remember that our lives, like the moving river, are constantly changing, and that we can use our own empowerment to make positive changes in our lives.

v USE THE PRINCIPLE OF INDEXING—this is similar to dating because it can help us to understand our difference from others. A healthy person doesn’t let others define him or her. To be self-differentiated from others is a mark of a mature person. Setting up personal boundaries for ourselves and others enables us to be more self-differentiated. We know where we end, and others start, so we can keep ourselves from just blending into another group or person. For some people stressors, tension and anxiety has become a pattern so that we simply react in knee-jerk ways to what life throws at us or to how others in our families react or respond. It’s played out as co-dependency. Indexing goes like this: Mary1 is not Mary2 or Mary3. ©Christopher Bear Beam, M.A. July, 2009