"The stories of our lives, far from being fixed narratives, are under  constant revision. The slender threads of causality are rewoven and  reinterpreted as we attempt to explain to ourselves and others how we  became the people we are. Certainly we are shaped by them and must learn  from them if we are to avoid the repetitious mistakes that make us feel  trapped in a long-running drama of our own authorship. Because  acceptance of responsibility for what we do and how we feel requires an  act of will, it is natural to blame people in our pasts, especially our  parents, for not doing a better job. No child escapes unscathed from  parental abuse or neglect. It is important to go about examining this  sympathetically, in a way that emphasizes learning but rejects the  assumption that even the most awful experiences define our lives  forever. All of us have endured events and losses about which we had no  choice. These include the families into which we were born, the way we  were treated as children, the deaths and divorces of those close to us.  It is not hard to make a case that we have been adversely affected by  events and people outside our control. The idea that we have to sit and  talk about the problems we face and the things we have tried that have  failed implies a slow and unwieldy process that has at its core an  uncomfortable assumption: We are responsible for most of what happens to  us."
 
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