Freedom: What Is the Experience of Living Without Negative Self-Imposed Limitations?

By Dr. Angela Celeste May

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• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Jun 25, 2009
• ISBN: 9781469105475

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Copyright © 2009 by Dr. Angela Celeste May.

Library of Congress Control Number:   2007905983

ISBN:   Hardcover   978-1-4257-8266-5

Softcover   978-1-4257-8261-0

ISBN:   ebook   978-1-4691-0547-5

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Contents

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

FORWARD

ABSTRACT

CHAPTER I

Personal Knowledge and Experience

CHAPTER II

Statement of the Thesis Question

CHAPTER III

Review of Literature

CHAPTER IV

Research Model

CHAPTER V

Methods and Procedures

CHAPTER VI

Handling and Presentation Data

CHAPTER VII

Implications and Applications

REFERENCES

APPENDIX A

Participation—Release Agreement

APPENDIX B

Guiding Questions for Research Participants

DEDICATION

My Lord and Savior Jesus Christ from whom my limitless-ness comes.

Grandma Willie May Walton, who is and always will be with me. Thank you for the lessons of faith and freedom. Your powerful life demonstrated to me what limitless living really looks like. Thank you, also, for the unconditional love that instilled in me the knowledge that I can do and be anything.

My Mom, Mary Ella Walton, especially, for recognizing the need and constantly encouraging me to publish my work. You were my first, and life long, best friend. Thank you for always seeing the real me.

My husband Richard Donaldson Scott, my life partner, prayer partner, business partner, music partner and lifelong and only love. Talk about best friends… now if we could just stop laughing…

Dale, Michelle, Viola, Dad, Ron. If love had names, these would be them. No one can replace my fa-mah-wee.

Irving and Billy, Semi and Betty, and of course, Malcolm.

A very special dedication and thank you to Dr. Aombaye Ramsey, my second mentor in the field of psychology. Thank you for all that you did for me, that I know about and that I do not know about. You always encouraged me to publish my book, you always let me know that my gifts are extra special and should be shared with the world. I have no doubt that you are looking down on me and smiling. I hope I make you proud.

You all are my love, life, inspiration and support.

Thank you for prayers, constant encouragement, and unwavering belief in me.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

A special thank you to Dr. Karen Tracy. My first mentor in the field of psychology. It is because of you that I found CHS.

A sincere thank you to all of my co-researchers. It was my privilege and honor to spend that time with you. Thank you for sharing yourselves with me, and God bless you.

Also thank you to Jill Benton, Marie Shaw, Laura Gordon, Bruce Tebashneck, Maram Hakim and Colleen McNally at CHS, for sharing your support, expertise and endless knowledge with me.

An extra thank you to Michelle, Mom, and my loving husband Richard, for all the help above and beyond, when this thesis was first created. You always proof-read, even when you were too tired to see straight! You are appreciated more than you know.

To Deborah Wadley, I cannot thank you enough for the time you took to transcribe this work. Thank you, thank you, thank you again.

Much appreciation to Xlibris, who came into my life right on time…then remained, patiently, to the end.

Thanks also to my fellow author, Dr. Lois L. Williams, for your encouragement during my revisions process.

And thanks to my loving family, including my PC family over the years, for your ever present prayers and support.

FORWARD

Dear Reader: Please keep in mind that this book was originally written during the year 1993-1994. This means that, while all of the information remains valuable for people in today’s world, some of the individual circumstances may have changed (For example, in the book, I stated that my mom was pursuing a Masters degree, which was true then, but she has long since realized that goal).

I also want to acknowledge to my fellow behavioral experts, my decision to let stand all of the American Psychological Association (APA) standards for writing, research and documentation (including citations and referencing) that were part of the APA manual at the time that my thesis was written. Maintaining this document in its original form required that I not alter even those aspects of my book.

ABSTRACT

The purpose of this thesis is to explore the question, Freedom: What is the Experience of Living Without Negative Self-Imposed Limitations? This is a qualitative study that employs a heuristic research paradigm. Qualitative interviews were conducted with specifically selected people, called co-researchers, whose responses were used as data. Co-researchers were chosen based upon whether they had experience with living in a way that limited them in their capacity to function at their fullest level. Living without negative self-imposed limitations is defined as thinking, behaving, reacting or emoting in a way that is consistent with one’s own value system and inner truth. The requirement was that each person could relate to this question in at least one area of her or his life. Ten co-researchers and the author’s experiences were used in the study. A thorough literature search of limitations was conducted in the areas of cognitive psychology, humanistic/existential psychology and sociology, as well as education and business literature. There were seven themes that emerged from the study of limited living: origins, reasons, results of limitations, motivations for change, methods for change, kinds of changes and the results of living freely. This study is significant particularly to therapists in helping to understand the dynamics that keep clients from becoming fully actualized.

CHAPTER I

Personal Knowledge and Experience

I remember being a little girl who loved to get into everything! I loved to play with toy cars and trucks, to play with dolls, and play house. If it was at my disposal, I was interested in it. I loved to play tackle football with my brother’s friends as much as I enjoyed learning to bake cakes with my great-aunt. As I grew older, my father and I would spend hours under the hood of one of the family cars; he taught me everything he could think of about its engine. When it was time for a good game of catch, both my brother and I were called to come out and play. None of this may sound particularly unusual because many little girls are so called Tomboys at one time or another.

During my high school years I attended an all girls school where physical competition was the norm. Because we made up the team players, and were not on the sidelines doing the cheerleading, as is the case for many girls in traditional schools, I never had the feeling that being physically competitive was unusual or unladylike.

Imagine my surprise when, as an adult, it took a good half hour of conversation to convince my boyfriend that I was seriously interested in building a car with him. He was convinced that I was only trying to make him feel good by doing something that he liked and I did not. This was the first time in my life that anyone had seriously questioned my interest in any activity based on being female. Once he realized that I really did like the idea of building cars, he was not only pleased but fascinated.

As time went on I discovered that he was not the unusual one, rather I was. I began to discover more and more people who grew up with real notions of what women and men were supposed to think like, act like, move like, etc. Of course, this is not new information. In order to fit into society and get along with people, our parents teach us all kinds of norms so that we will have good home training. But what I have found, and continue to discover as I live each day, is that home training and stifling one’s creativity and exploration of the world, are too often synonymous.

My research topic, the experience of living without negative, self-imposed limitations, came out of my personal experiences. This concept of limitless living does not mean that I did not have boundaries. Those who raised me were old-fashioned in their ideas and were strict about rules and regulations. However, I was blessed to grow up with the unconditional love of members of my family. This instilled in me a strong sense of myself as a worthwhile person who can have anything out of life. Anything that I wanted to explore or learn about was open for me to learn. I was never told not to play with trucks because girls do not do that; nor was I ever conditioned to expect any less of myself because of the color of my skin.

That experience taught me that it is OK for me to discover for myself what I am about. I believe that this strengthened my sense of self-worth and identity because no one told me that my dreams were faulty because they did not fit someone else’s norm. A strong self identity means that I do not look outside of myself in order to define who I am. This gives me a great sense of freedom from requiring anyone or anything in my life to give me life.

In my experience, this concept of living without allowing negative self-imposed limitations to stand in the way of possibility, also comes from the family examples that I had while growing up. In my family background there were my two great-great-grandmothers on my mother’s side, for whom many stories were told. They were known throughout their community as women who took care of people. Because of their strong faith they were able to do the impossible, which was to go into quarantined areas and feed and clothe those that no one else dared to go near. Both women regularly took care of people whose diseases were highly contagious and fatal if caught. Limitations meant nothing to them.

My maternal grandmother in a similar manner. She was a person who believed that anything was possible and lived her life in that manner. She believed very strongly that because she was a child of God, she should always go first class in every aspect of her