If someone you know or love has a problem, but does not SEE it as a problem … then it’s going to STAY a problem.
That’s just how it is.
People don’t overcome problems without defining their problems AS PROBLEMS. That’s why people who continue to act in self-defeating ways keep doing so — until or unless they identify it as a problem.
Sometimes people do know they have a problem, but they continue to engage in it anyway. It’s usually because they don’t want to overcome it badly enough. Changing or overcoming a problem is hard. It requires maintenance, sometimes for the rest of one’s life. It’s not impossible. In some ways, it might not be as hard as you think. But it’s still hard. You have to really WANT to change, in order to change.
So many problems are not obvious. Sometimes people really, honestly think they’re ok, but they’re not. YOUR identification of another’s problem is not enough to make that person better or happier. Love, while very important, does not and CANNOT conquer all. It just can’t.
Mental health professionals and others have bent over backwards, for decades now, trying to convince us there’s no such thing as free will or choice. Yet there is. Even the decision to conclude there is no such thing as choice is itself a choice. The world might be divided into two camps: Those who think there’s choice, and those who don’t. Both camps make choices, though.
The sooner and more fully you accept all this, the more serenity you will have.
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