Recommended Read – 'The Gift' by Edith Eger

The Gift by psychologist and Holocaust survivor Edith Eger explores the prisons we can create for ourselves through fear, guilt, shame, avoidance, old beliefs and patterns of thinking – and how we might begin to free ourselves from them.

At its heart is a deceptively simple idea: we can't always choose what happens to us, but we can choose how we respond.

Eger is clear that this doesn't mean denying pain or pretending that terrible things haven't happened. She makes an important distinction between being victimised (something that can genuinely happen to us) and developing a 'victim' identity, where what has happened begins to determine what happens next.

I found her exploration of choice particularly powerful – and challenging.

She encourages us to notice the language of "I can’t", "I have to" and "I should", and to question where we may be waiting for circumstances, other people, or even ourselves to change before we start living differently.

I was also interested to see her draw on Transactional Analysis and the 'Parent-Adult-Child' model. Sometimes we comply because a part of us thinks we should. Sometimes we rebel simply because we don't want to be told what to do. The challenge is to find our rational, compassionate 'Adult' - the part capable of seeing what is actually happening now and consciously choosing what to do next.

This book has left me with as many questions as answers!

I'm well aware that knowing that we have a choice doesn't necessarily make choosing differently easy. Habits, emotions, beliefs and deeply ingrained patterns don't necessarily disappear simply because we've spotted them.

However, rather than wrestling with whether we have a choice or not, what shifts when we accept we do and turn our attention to what helps us actually take it?

Is the work about noticing (in Eger's words) the prison, becoming curious about what keeps us there, recognising that there may be a door – and practising walking through it.

Eger's ultimate message is one of hope. We can't change what happened, or avoid all of life's pain and loss. But we can choose what we do with it and, in her words, learn to "find the gift" in our lives.

This was a hugely thought-provoking read that I believe I’ll continue thinking about for some time.

Find the book here.