Is:
- Is a sequence of statements I learn and repeat to myself whenever I’m anxious (anxiety is: more fear than I should feel for this situation, or fear that continues when the event that triggered the fear has passed).
- Is a way to turn my anxiety off in any moment, so I can be my true self in that moment.
- Is a way to change. If I do it a lot, I will stop doing a lot of the stuff I want to stop, and discover new stuff I should stop.
Isn’t:
- Isn’t a cure or even a treatment for anxiety. My anxiety will persist my entire life. But I don’t care, as long as I can turn it off when I need to.
- Isn’t a quick method. There are no quick methods for turning off anxiety. It can work in seconds, but mostly it takes a number of tries, the number of which I can’t predict. That’s not my fault or any method aiming to turn anxiety off. It’s the way the brain works.
- Isn’t a philosophy or anything else that requires belief, or conflicts with my beliefs. I have to see, not believe. That’s why it’s called the seeing sequence.
Next, the statements.
I have been out of practice of b&c for many years, poor me.
I am going to work on small steps to remember how to do it correctly, good me.
I have been avoiding this and my anxiety is at an all time high, bad me.
Poor me, will I ever figure out how to do this right?
Good me, if I lack confidence in my ability I can avoid b&c because I’m a perfectionist .
Bad me, the relief I get from procrastination will only come back to hurt me
Poor me, my mind spins in circles all the time
Good me, Im such an avoider
Bad me, nothing ever changes
Poor me, I’m probably doing this all wrong
Good me, at least I’m trying to b&c again
Good me, Im practicing again
Bad me, I wanna stop trying and give up
Im so tired of feeling mixed up, poor me.
Good me, Im gonna go to bed and shut off my mind.
poor me, I hate that I have to work in the morning
poor me I hate working
good me, I will force myself to go even if I don’t want to
God help me, poor me
Any input would help. Good me I can leave it up to someone else to figure it out
Bad me this wont help my situation
It’s good work. Corrections: 1. cut off this first step after a few sentences. Why? Because you are actually describing several rounds of b and c, but without the other steps. Your brain is anticipating where the b and c will end up after the other steps are completed. 2. Hate is a form of anger. Anger is a form of the fantasy that the brain can scare the environment into going the brain’s way. So: “good me” I hate working (because I love the fantasy I can scare work into making me feel like going to work.) 3. The same applies to any positive end, no matter how negative the means to get there. Thus: good me, I wanna stop trying and give up (and get the positive feeling of relief that giving up always brings).
Now back to the next step, the reversal: “because poor me if I didn’t spin out of control” or “because poor me if I didn’t love so much to avoid, I’m afraid I’ll see I’m in the pain of failing to ignore distractions….” and so on.
You’ve written an excellent b and c of your psrs. You need to go on to step 2, the reversal. Note that the more you do b and c, the more you will cut off step 1 at one to five statements and move on to step 2. Also, cut off step 1 if the first to third psr’s is a worst-case scenario. These build bad momentum fast because they present unsolvable problems that scare you into trying to solve them. The result is failure every time. And the emotional response is feeling overwhelmed or panic, or both.
Hi
Major life change just happened and my anxiety is through the roof. I moved out on my own. I am finding as soon as I start the b&c my anxiety already goes down.
I’m just getting stuff from remembering how it goes.
Good me I moved out. Poor me I think it was a mistake. Because poor me I’m afraid I’ll see the I’m in the pain of failing to ignore… uh my true response which is this is a good step to take. I’m having trouble now
Updated October 28, 2025
I didn’t reply to your comment when it first appeared because I predicted you would read further to refresh your memory.
But now I’ve updated the Seeing Sequence.
Changes (which you will not be able to compare to your old comment because I accidentally erased it when I copied and pasted part of this update):
I’ve narrowed “distractions” down to one thing: “the delay in the pleasure of getting over the grief from the loss of momentum caused by the end of what I was just doing, which was…” and I state whatever I was just doing.
In addition, I’ve classified “the end of what I was just doing” into 5 possible “endings”:
1) “the end of what I was just doing, which was: imagining my action image” (of my true response/decision);
2) “the end of what I was just doing (which was): trying and failing to match my action to my action image – for example “my failing to observe not solve” while trying to fall asleep; or any failure;
3) “the end of what I was just doing: feeling my happiness about my success (at externalizing my true response, in other words, at matching my action to my action image)” A lot of success is more passive than matching. It’s often just experiencing, that is, enjoying, receiving/observing-not-solving (not editing, not perfecting, not putting my mark on) what the environment gives me that fits me and therefore triggers pleasure.
A frequent example is something beautiful coming into my view.For this the wording is “the end of what I was just doing: enjoying, ( or I could say “feeling pleasure about”), my luck at seeing beauty.”
4) “the end of what I was just doing: experiencing a problem I can’t solve now and, mostly, would never solve even if I could: for example, your lazy consideration (of my consideration of you).”
5) “the end of what I was just doing: being in a blank, (a state of no thought or feeling).” This can occur when I don’t know what to think in a situation. It also often occurs when I finish matching my action to my action image and I haven’t decided what to do next. The end of feeling happy is good example. A blank is the most common cause of repeating myself, either in speech or in action. The repeat literally fills in the blank.
I have dropped the following distractions:
1) “this thought is behind me, and therefore I no longer want to connect to it to make me happy” as a way of explaining the distraction is with repeating myself. But I discovered that the thought that has ended, while behind me in time, occurs after the grief from the loss of momentum produced by that same ending. It’s the grief, which takes time to get over, that distracts me from focusing on my true response and if I fail to ignore it, triggers the pain of failing to ignore.
2) “your disapproval of my coming shun” (of your lazy consideration). It’s accurate to predict your disapproval of my shun, but it’s already been factored into my true response. Another way of saying this: at the moment of matching my action or actions to my action image, my brain doesn’t care about consequences, which come only after a successful match. Thus, my focus is on executing my shun. Looking ahead is a psr, specifically, a solution, to my predicting failure, which is also a psr. (Predicting failure to get your approval of my shun.)
End of changes
So here is what I would say today if I were you:
“(in Step 2) …I’m afraid I’ll see I’m in the pain of failing to ignore distractions, namely the delay in the pleasure of getting over the grief from the loss of momentum caused by the end of what I was just doing: (which was) feeling happy about my good move.
At the end of my thought that forms my true response: (which is)
I’m already dead inside about this act of ignoring, but I have to ignore anyway if I want to feel my happiness free of self-attack prs’s.
So start ignoring the delay by focusing on mechanically observing my good situation and letting my happiness flow for the few seconds it can last.
Step 3
I check what comes into my mind now. If I feel a clean happy feeling for a few seconds, I’m good to go.
If another psr comes in, I start over at Step 1. But really, I just fuse that with Step 2. For example, Step 1 – I identify another prediction of failure to adapt well to my new situation.
Step 2 – I instantly say “bad me, self-attack by predicting failure.”
The psr that is not identified here, but is spoken to in the use of the general word “mistake”, is the fantasy that I should feel a prolonged happiness that carries me forward. And that happiness will make me feel like moving on to the next decision I need to make and externalize on my own. But “on my own” means without feeling like it. Therefore, prolonged happiness won’t make me feel like externalizing true responses. So it’s a psr to think not having prolonged happiness is a “mistake”. The real mistake is looking farther ahead than my next decision. It’s a psr.
Let’s say I’m in an interaction where I can’t b&c quickly enough to find and externalize my true response, and my anxiety causes me to screw it up. Afterwards, however, like we would do in your office, I can “relive” the scenario, b&c my psr’s, and figure out how I would have proceeded had I gotten my anxiety under control.
Here is my question: like athletes use visualization to prepare, can I take the above scenario (once I know how to proceed more fluidly, ie. less anxiously), and repeat it to myself? Or better yet, can I make up hypothetical scenarios that would cause my anxiety to spike, and b&c them out? That is, does my brain know the difference between live and “visualized” scenarios?
Your brain doesn’t care. Your practice plan is good. However, it will get boring. Just keep practicing.
I will. I’m realizing that if I’m in an unanxious state, the approach I proposed will only let me practice the correct response, and not how to flow my way out of anxiety before I figure out the correct response. If I’m unanxious, there are no psrs to b&c out. My brain is already as close as it will get to thinking more clearly.
hi,
Iam going back on dex.so I focus and try to do the seeing sequence.hope it works
The key is repetition. The more you try it, the more it gets into memory and works. Doing it without focus is hard, requires more tries, but keep trying no-matter-what. You will slowly start to remember to do it more and more often, until you remember to do it often, then very often. Best of luck.
Hi doc. It’s been awhile and that’s not good on my part! I haven’t been doing my b&c. It’s hard when I don’t have a weekly fresher upper I find. But I’m starting to see my anxiety creeping up more and more. While my life has moved along in a lot of ways which is good but I need to commit back to this. I’m afraid I won’t remember all the phrases tho. I hope your doing well and I may be commenting a lot in the next little bit to make sure I have it right so I can start repeat repeat repeat again.
Thanks
R
B & c how you hate doing b&c or anything else that you put off.