Its easy to obsess about truth. Possibly the more abused you have been in your life the more, that is, that someone has visited their chosen reality on you as the truth, the greater the need to make your truth heard. Your truth will only fully become your truth when it is acknowledged by precisely those people who denied and distorted the essence of your worth in your inner and outer world.

At least, that is your sincere belief and Ill admit that I was stuck in that one for the longest time.

Did it help me at all? Did it serve any useful purpose? Does it ever? No, because the person who you most want to see your truth is heavily invested in not seeing it. He (or she) is much more interested in defending their own truth, or version of events; the version in which they are always justified, or hard done by, or exonerated by circumstances such as your unreasonable behaviour.

Their beliefs serve them; they are exquisitely useful to them. But are your beliefs useful to you?

Do (or did) your beliefs about who your partner could be, how the relationship could look, and how you should be treated in that relationship really serve you? Are they useful in promoting your peace, happiness and health? Or do they actually harm you. Are they still harming you even though the relationship is allegedly over?

What has happened is that a shift has occurred from the beliefs you can seriously hold about yourself, to the beliefs you need another person to hold about you. Instead of you being convinced of the respect, care and consideration that you are entitled to in any and every relationship in your life, you believe you have to make this other person believe that about it, for it to become true.

In my book, thats a long way from being a useful belief because it will keep you hooked into a damaging relationship for far longer than anyone should ever choose to put up with ill treatment even intermittent ill treatment.

So what more useful beliefs could you hold about yourself?

Well, first of all, how about the belief that you can kick beliefs that are not useful to you? After all, how has the belief that you have to stick with the old beliefs about powerlessness and worthlessness ever been useful to you. What positive result has it ever brought about in your life?

Second, you can start telling yourself just how great you are. Ive worked with abused women for years now, and one of the most fascinating things that Ive learned is this: at some level all these women knew how great and valuable they are. They were just stuck in the misguided belief that it takes a mans endorsement to change that knowledge into belief; until they learned how to do it for themselves.

Its as if women hold the credit card and the bank account and yet theyre waiting around for an unreliable man to provide the all important PIN number. When you and I both know perfectly well that by taking a couple of simple steps they could easily get a new PIN number for themselves, so that they could access their wealth whenever they wanted to.

Third, there are no monopolies on truth, only franchises. Your (ex)partner has his franchise on truth and you have yours. Hes probably not running his franchise too efficiently, if hes always attempting to take over yours which, in any case, he cant do. Unless you surrender it to him.

You can run your franchise as well as you choose to. At any time you can revise the way you run it, so it becomes more successful. And you can choose the beliefs that will be most useful to you in your life at any given time.

Psycho-analysis, or a popular view of psycho-analysis, saw the subconscious rather like a fridge whose contents havent been emptied in living memory. Seriously nasty. Theres no way youd want to peer into the bowls and jars and bottles They can be pretty scary.

Happily, thats not the only view. A more useful one is that your subconscious is a great, dumb servant that can easily be duped and will labour gallantly and tirelessly on your behalf. Provided you tell it exactly what you want it to do.

And because that old belief hasnt been useful to you, youve got nothing to lose by replacing it with the new one that youve tailored to your own requirements. Of course, youll never know whether youre missing out on something that will really help you to feel as good about yourself as you deserve to, unless you give it a serious try.

So why not start noticing which of your beliefs are useful to you right now, in your current situation? If theyre not, you can start clearing your subconscious fridge. You may find that its far easier than you believed it to be.

Thats what makes it such a pleasure to help women move on to become the person they know they truly can be.

(C)2005 Annie Kaszina