Struggle - The Psyche's Operating System

by Mark Sichel, LCSW

If you have doubts about your abilities to struggle, dispose of them now. If you've gotten this far, you've clearly struggled with the ability to read. You certainly did not emerge from the womb with a twelfth grade reading level, but you stuck with the task and you learned to master the written word. Think back to all the successful struggles in your life:

  • Walking
  • Talking
  • Mastering toilet training
  • Separating from your parents and going off to school.
  • Learning arithmetic
  • Learning how to socialize with others
  • Getting an education
  • Getting a job
  • Managing your money
  • Managing your time

    Continue this list either on a separate sheet of paper or in your head. Anyone who has struggled with as many things as YOU have, has the capacity to take on all sorts of new challenges and struggles. It is an example of proving to yourself, "I know I can, I know I can" rather than saying to yourself, "It's too hard, too difficult, too much for me." How many tasks in your life did you imagine you could not master? How often did you want to "throw in the towel" and stop fighting?

    What was your greatest struggle? This is a question for which all of us have different answers. Often when individuals look back at their lives and remember what their greatest struggle was, it can give them the confidence to take on new challenges.

    Was it learning to swim? Getting your high school or college diploma? Starting a business? Surviving a tremendous personal loss such as death of a parent or a sibling? Serving in the Army? Think back and recall all the struggles you've triumphed over, and the idea that you are a winner will begin taking shape for you.

    Just as you would at the gym, we recommend you supplement your psychological cardiovascular training with strength training. The following exercises are equivalent to psychological "free weights" or nautilus repetitions. Keep working on them, chart them, struggle with them, and you will achieve the results you seek. This chapter is continued with an examination of specific ego functions, the nautilus stations of building psychological muscle. These include:

  • frustration tolerance
  • delay of gratification
  • mastery and competence
  • interposing thought between a feeling and an action
  • perseverance

    Struggle, once embraced, can become a way of life that is actually quite gratifying, because the rewards of struggle are bountiful. Your capacity for perseverance, as well as frustration tolerance, delay of gratification, interposing thought between feeling and action, and mastery and competence will remain with you and become as natural as walking and talking. Ego functions are exactly like riding a bicycle. Once you know how to do it, you never forget, and you get better and better at it.

    If you're ready to start powering up your psyche, head on over to the Psybersquare Gym.






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