Waking Up from The American Nightmare

Growing up as part of the baby boomer generation, I was raised to work towards independence. It was the ultimate goal. 

Get an education, find a job related to that, buy a house with a white picket fence, and raise a family. The American Dream, right?

But where did it go wrong? How did it become such a nightmare?

There's nothing wrong with striving for independence.  What causes problems is when we do it at the expense of, or with no regard for, the needs of others. 

Independence becomes toxic when we climb to the top by stepping on others, and we don't care who gets hurt in the process.  

Most of us don't like to see ourselves that way. And we don't have to be going to that extreme to be part of the problem.  

Here's an example that explains how “The American Dream” became toxic. 

Consider the phrase, "I pulled myself up by my bootstraps." It refers to a person who worked hard to get where they are, rather than having success handed to them.   

But what can happen when we buy into the bootstrap mentality is that we forget about the system we're a part of that made the success possible.  

Someone made our boots. There were animals whose skin provided the leather that our boots are made of. And if we keep all of the leather for ourselves, there will be those who have no boots. 

How do we wake up from The American Nightmare? 

The first step is to realize that we're in it. And to do that, we need to look at individualism.  

In its healthy form, individualism is the principle of being independent and self-reliant. But individualism becomes toxic when it involves favoring freedom of action for individuals over the well being of the collective.  

Individualism, according to author and therapist Dick Schwartz, is one of the 4 main problems that is causing the nightmare we are living in the United States. 
   
Schwartz calls individualism a "burden" that is shared by most of the people in American culture. He uses the word burden, because it weighs us down. It prevents the Light, that core of goodness within each person and within our nation, from shining through.     

The first step in waking up from The American Nightmare is admitting that the darkness exists. And doing that includes finding the ways that we are perpetuating toxic individualism in our daily lives. 

Schwartz developed a therapy model called Internal Family Systems that helps people uncover and let go of both the personal and the collective burdens they carry.

When we let go of our personal burdens, it lessens the load that we are carrying as a collective. It frees up more energy to try and make sure that everyone’s needs are being met, and that no one is being harmed in the process. 

We need to stop pretending the darkness isn't there. Or blaming someone else for causing it.  It's inside most of us. We've grown up with it. But we've gotten so used to it that we don't see it.

The American Dream has become a Nightmare.  Let’s wake up and do something about it.