Secrets of Your Self

By Dr. Angelo O. Subida

Have you tried to change your self with the best intentions? Yet, you ended up repeating the same old habits and patterns that harm you?

No other problem causes so much heartache, self damage, and unhappiness. It's a universal experience. A part of us, to a lesser or greater degree, tends to consciously or unconsciously sabotage our health, relationships, success, and joy.

In this book, psychotherapist Dr. Angelo O. Subida demystifies much what's hidden within our selves. He decides to turn the curtains back. He does something that doctors or therapists are not supposed to do. 

He shares himself, his struggles, and dilemmas. He moves outside the traditional mainstream where the focus is mostly symptomatic. And goes to the very essence of the whole person.

Many other books tell you only a lot of information or theories. This book helps you experientially, not just informationally, to discover the secrets of your self, heal, and get whole.

The author draws on years of research and his work with real-life individuals as well as his own personal journey, to help you become your true, best self. 

He shows you how to diagnose the secrets of your unique self with self analysis and depth wholeness process as follows, which helps you get to the very core of your being:

•  Over 100 bite-sized, super-short, self contained chapters in 400+ pages telling stories that you can blast read one at a time in a few minutes without adding to a busy schedule 

•   the author's own story, "Secrets and My Story" section, plus bits and pieces of his life are shared throughout the rest of the book as he reflects compassionately on those he helps heal in his therapy sessions 

• a 5-point method on how to use the book experientially, not just informationally, and "enter sessions through the book!"

•  countless lessons and stories from real people both inside and outside the therapist's sessions, with integrative insights from psychology, literature, science, and theology

•  a dose of hope and inspiration on varied issues for everyone across all ages and backgrounds to realize their full potential and life-purpose

•  self help quick-list guides, such as "40 Signs of a Healthy Self," "40 Signs of a Damaged Self" and "40 Things to Do To Help Heal a Damaged Self"

• the powerful # 1 secret to discover and become your true, best self

•  save money on your own personal therapy/counseling and medical costs as well as for those you care about through the book without attending sessions in person

May this book be a piece of canvass to you on which to add your own story of real life lessons, breakthroughs, and heroic wellness.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Dr. Angelo O. Subida
• Release date: Dec 6, 2018
• ISBN: 9781386669111

Dr. Angelo O. Subida

Dr. Angelo O. Subida is a psychotherapist, author, and speaker. He studied psychology, theology, and literature, which heavily influence his private practice. He has been featured in varied media as an expert in mental health and psycho-trauma recovery, including CNN, GMA7, ABS CBN, TV5, and UNTV. A former professor, newspaper journalist, and minister, he is author of other books, “Secrets of Your Self” and “God’s Inner Healing,” among others. He lives with his wife, Nhorie, in Manila, Philippines. They have five children, mostly adults. Dr. Subida can be found regularly in his web site www.drsubida.com.

Book preview

Dr. Angelo O. Subida

Secrets of Your Self

A Psychotherapist Tells You His Special Story ... And Takes Your Hand to Discover Your True Self

Copyright © 2018 by Dr. Angelo O. Subida

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, scanning, or otherwise without written permission from the publisher. It is illegal to copy this book, post it to a website, or distribute it by any other means without permission.

SECRETS OF YOUR SELF: A Psychotherapist Tells You His Special Story … and Takes Your Hand to Discover Your True Self

Published by LULU PRESS Inc. 860 Aviation Pkwy Suite 300 Morrisville, North Carolina 27560 United States of America

Names throughout the book have been changed to protect privacy and confidentiality.

Requests for information or additional copies of the book (ebook, print, audio) in global bookstores can be made by visiting http://www.secretsofyourself.com.

First edition

This book was professionally typeset on Reedsy

Find out more at reedsy.com

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Dedicated to all my loved ones, friends, clients, and every one whose secrets of self lead to a life of beautiful art, without whom this book never would have been written.

Contents

Preface

I. INTRODUCTION

Why This Book?

Secrets and My Story

Using This Book Experientially

II. KEY 1: AWARENESS

Guideline to Awareness

Self-Lies

False Self

Your Unique Self

Self Resides in the Invisible

Why Am I Like This?

The Prostitute Inside

Your Self Has Secrets

The Self That Hides

How Self Deception Happens

How Thoughts Distort

Self-Pity

Symptom or Root Problem

Knowing Who You Are

Self and Externals

Negative Love Programming

Your Self and Others

The Problem of Loneliness

Problem With No Name

Understanding Denial

Teen Self

Age Regression

Real Love, Fake Love

Self and Society

Sad After Sex

Sedative, Not Solution

Meet the Bully

Loving From Empty or Full Bucket?

The Poverty Mind

Shallow Relationships

Wall Between Me and My Heart

Love in the Wrong Places

When Your Parents Die Twice

Author Your Self

Disabled Will in Addiction

Addiction is Not the Problem

Depression Can Be Good

Awakenings

Men Who Can't Love

Responsibility-Avoidance Disease (RAD)

The Money Delusion

Parent Wounds

In Love with Love

Noticing Your Shadow

Integrate or Disintegrate

Immaturity Prolonged

T-person or N-person

Are You Peter Pan?

Rich, Empty Childhood

Religion and Self

III. KEY 2: EXPRESSION

Guideline to Expression

Metacommunicating

Listen Deeply to Your Self

Express Your Grief

Find Your Calm Center

Why We Need Emotions

Core Fears in Expression

Healthy Tears

Use Things, Not People

Difficult Expressions

Sometimes When We Touch

Transforming Loss

Dis-identify Your Self

Nostalgia Trip

Ambivalence Trap

Express in the Haunted House

On Believing Your Memories

Can You Know a Person Completely?

Carefrontation

Fully Conscious, Anyone?

Music to Express

Your Response to Abuse

No One to Blame

IV. KEY 3: RESOLUTION

Guideline to Resolution

A Prerequisite for Health

What the Goal Is

Just Google It?

Being Holds the Doing

Facing Vs. Avoiding

Visualization, Auto-Suggestion

Pick Your Self

Blocks On The Way

Break Free!

Get a Life Purpose

Real Helpfulness

Detoxing Anger

Championing You

Joining Groups

Never Too Late to Change

It’s Ok Not to Be Perfect

Mad at Dad

Make Good Movies

Willing and Choosing

Love Your Enemy Inside

Make Peace With Your Self

To Love Again

Take Responsibility for Your Self

Curing Your Death Anxiety

Beyond Talk Cure

Drugs Don’t Cure To The Core

Don’t Take It Personally

Fight to Be Who You Are

Unconditional Self-Acceptance

Facing Bad News

Be in Your Body

Challenge Your Denial

When People Reject You

Caring Without Losing You

Heal Through Wonder

Einstein’s Greatest Discovery

Screw What People Say!

Only to Make Use of You

Forgive Your Self

OFW Mental Health

Depression Will Pass

Life Takes Creativity

J-Lo’s Act

Steps to Love

Positive Loss and Failure

#1 Secret to Find Your True Self

V. KEY 4: PREVENTION

Guideline to Prevention

Relapse is Part of Recovery

Reshape Your Language

Live Simply

Stick to Routine

What You Allow Will Continue

Contentment Rx

Before It Gets Too Late

Total Self-Care

Master Forgiveness

Books to Heal

Don’t Let Work Choose You

The Lighthouse Protects You

Mind Your Legacy

Is It Worth Living For?

Your Higher Self

Keep Traveling

Alone but Not Lonely

Breaking Generational Cycle

What Psychotherapy Prevents

VI. IF YOU NEED HELP

40 Signs of a Healthy Self

40 Signs of a Damaged Self

40 Things to Do to Help Heal the Damaged Self

Getting Help

VII. CONCLUSION

Afterword

About the Author

Preface

Sometimes you don’t know when you’re taking the first step through a door until you’re already inside.

— Ann Voskamp

Have you tried to change your self with the best intentions? Yet, you ended up repeating the same old habits and patterns that harm you?

You consulted doctors or counselors. You read books or articles. You attended seminars and classes. You made promises to loved ones, friends.

Still, even swiftly, you reverted back to that old self where you remain stuck. Unhappy. Confused, tired, and feeling hopeless.

For years, I’ve been doing sessions with weary individuals. They’re desperate, tried everything. And I felt there had to be fundamentals being missed in the process.

That’s how this book came about. In the midst of the life work I do, mine as well as others. A quest for the secrets of the self that keep us bound or stuck.

I gratefully acknowledge many therapist authors, clinicians, as well as spiritual advisers whose words and influences speak loudly throughout the pages of the book.

Special gratitude for my sweetheart, Nhorie Esguerra, who knows the whole truth and does not judge but keeps on serving and loving as I write and live the book.

I’m also grateful for our children together - Angel, Paul, Christine, Shamei, and Finnegan - whose lives are a spur to the discovery of our own secrets and growth of our selves as parents.

Every doctor or therapist is also a student. So also my many, many thanks to all my clients who continue to teach me a lot in our sessions.

Most important of all, I thank my Lord whose love and grace for me has never failed. Without Him, I can’t do anything to heal and help others heal.

Please note that, except mine, names and identifying characteristics of clients and other individuals are disguised in these pages.

It serves to protect privacy and confidentiality. So any reader who thinks he recognizes a specific person will be mistaken.

May this book serve you joyfully and purposefully. This is my love letter to you and those you care about.

I welcome your letters. You can write me at [e-mail].

Dr. Angelo O. Subida

I

Introduction

Part 1 presents the reasons behind the writing of the book as well as the ways the book can be used experientially and not just informationally. Also included here is a special section - the author’s Secrets and My Story - which marries the personal and the professional in the making of the book.

1

Why This Book?

To know that one has a secret is to know half the secret itself. —Henry Ward Beecher

This book can change your life.

Truth is, we don’t always do and follow the best path or good for our self and life.

The self has secrets, which fuel it. They’re mostly hidden or unconscious, still unprocessed, shaped over time.

These secrets are written in a language of silence, memory, imagery, metaphor, emotion, imprinting, energy, and knowings.

They’re foreign to us. And would remain so until we experience awakenings. Or, retrained to accurately decipher them.

My passion is as a practicing psychotherapist and creative. As you’ll discover, I’m not mainstream or conventional. I go for the essence, not merely the form.

Information is important. But it’s never enough to make and maintain balance to the core. No one gets healed or whole by knowledge alone.

Traditional mainstream health care is too limited and impersonal. Some even think the medical system is critically sick.

15-minute HMO doctor visits, incomplete or shallow diagnoses, and instant drugs are often unsatisfying and ineffective.

Today, more and more people are seeking a new kind of mental health care and medicine. They’re longing for changes that truly heal.

One that’s deep-level, holistic, natural, spirit-driven, and personalized. It’s a hidden golden wisdom that’s often missed.

This book is part of that revolution. It works at the care of the whole self - physically, psychologically, emotionally, and spiritually.

I’ve spent long hours for many years now doing this. It turns out that knowing people’s secrets/stories has more nuances than are encompassed by our dire images.

Here I introduce you to newer nuances, insights, experiences, and tools I employ in my life and teach to clients/others. All towards deeper self awareness and wholeness.

It’s a kind of inside code. In this book, I share my four keys or parts in this code with you, although I’m often discovering and learning more.

As you start to dissect this 4-key-part code and its nuances, the secrets of your self will progressively come to light.

It happens as you learn to truly listen to your inner self, your experiences, your body, your thoughts and emotions, your soul.

You’ll recognize red or warning signals and act on them to help prevent trauma, losses, and self dysfunction.

You’ll also be shown some ways to utilize subtle energies and sources to heal depression, fear, grief, shame, anger, panic, and other symptoms.

The book is filled with true stories. Mine, as well as those I meet in my sessions and beyond. Coupled with it is much insight transferred from my sessions and life to these pages.

Feel transported from the humdrum of dailyness. Into the shoes of the author and real life people with their secrets, struggles, lessons, and triumphs.

You don’t have to read the book in one or few sittings. I wrote it in such a way that you can blast read bite-sized stories and insights. One piece at a time, without adding to a busy schedule.

The book is like a pocket therapist or counselor for you without attending sessions in person.

You’ll be surprised at how much from the book can benefit your self discovery, reflection, and growth.

I’ve intended to make the book’s parts and pieces shake your self up. To challenge the very heart of your soul.

Try to stay open. Possibly, travel to new territories as you reflect each time on what you read and discover.

Hopefully, this book will be able to create heroes out of our healed and whole selves to the world.

2

Secrets and My Story

It is true that your body grows only for about a fourth of your earthly years. Not so with your self. My self did its best growing only after my body had quit growing altogether.

— Dr. Calvin Miller

It’s my honor to birth this book. But also, I feel so humbled and exposed to you and the world.

I think that of all the things one can write about, it’s one on life and one’s self where readers can see right through the author.

I accept that reality to be a good thing. It pushes the issue of pretension.

It makes real for me on my external (public self) what is true on my internal (private self).

As a Christian, I know God sees even if others don’t. He knows if we are hypocrites.

That’s why I take it as a blessing to feel vulnerable and naked to you in a book such as this.

It’s a wake up signal from the pitfalls or damage of hypocrisy.

So to spare you some effort, waiting, or curiosity, I will tell you that you are reading a man with a self filled with secrets and stories.

I’m a man with a self

… who must always see every day that I’m the source of what hurts me;

… who struggles with the ability to act in a healthier way with sometimes the same old teenage fears;

… who is prone to feel anger and temper when he doesn’t get loved or noticed the way he expects;

… who is almost always postponing necessary work by distractions, leaving, or irritability, and so feeling a constraint in his spirit;

… who has been short on listening in emotionally charged situations and long on criticism and analysis;

… who can be unforgiving and lacking in compassion, rather pointing a finger to someone else;

… who has weak or conflicted moments in love relationships and family, and struggles with temptations and guilt in his own private space;

… who has loved his wife or a woman imperfecty, playing out some unprocessed pain from his own family of origin;

… who can turn negative or disconnect when his children disobey or ignore;

… and who doesn’t feel totally sure that his intentions and motives are clean, including writing this book and why he’s telling you his secrets and story

Many years ago, I experienced a painful psychological trauma. It’s a deepest cut like no other I’d not wish for anyone.

It’s midnight. I was unable to sleep. Every time I closed my eyes, I saw before me images, flashbacks, and memories.

I’d never been so hurt, helpless, mute, unable to express my self. My breathing slowed. The demons were swirling and I was floating away.

My wife of 13 years and our three children was everything to me. But that fateful day, something tragic happened.

I spotted my wife having a secret email inbox. Without warning. I discovered she’s having an affair with a foreigner whom she met online.

Eventually, she admitted she met him in person as shown by pictures of her secret trips to Hongkong.

Indignation. Rage. Shame. Fear. Blame. Uncertainty.

No wonder I couldn’t sleep.

Something in me shattered, a part so tender. In tears together as I heard her confession. In minutes, darkness overtook me.

After months of attempting therapy, she chose to disappear from home. She fled to the country where her paramour was.

Pain, too horrible to describe. Many years I waited for her to come home. She wouldn’t. I was about to give up, put away my wedding ring.

Ten years after she left, quite unexpectedly, she died of cancer. Prior to her death, she asked for my forgiveness. Something which I already gave her long ago.

But this story is not about her. It’s totally about me … and the secrets that kept my self wounded and unable to move on.

Psychologically, emotionally, spiritually… it took those many years. The last thing I wanted was a phantom secret self running loose in my consciousness.

Personally, I couldn’t bear the pain. I’d a million reasons then to want to die. Not move on. Or, love again.