Updated November 25, 2025, Jan 19, 2026; Feb.. 3/26
(Short version far below )
The Problem
This glass I just drank from, still in my hand, I think of washing.
Predictions of failure immediately come into my mind: failure to wash in one easy try, or it will be boring, or I’ll have to waste time drying my hands, or all of these one after the other.
The image of failure makes me afraid.
I try to solve the fear by first making muscles in my shoulders tight, as if I’m readying to resist some physical force; then, by washing the glass harder.
I then oppose my own solving. I predict even worse failure, such as I’ll be doing boring tasks forever.
But really, I’m editing, which is finding and fixing flaws in thinking or writing in order to better communicate. In my brain, editing is an attempt to solve my anxiety. I find the flaw that my muscle tightness won’t fix my fear, in the fantasy that I can solve it and get the positive feeling of relief.
I try to solve the fear by imagining myself putting off the chore. Relief!
Then guilt comes in because this is the last clean dish I have.
I magnify the guilt into sadness by picturing all the other unclean things in my life. Then I compare myself to the fantasy standard of a clean person, in order to make myself feel inferior.
I solve my inferiority by picturing myself washing the glass.
As I approach the sink to wash it, I picture the glass cleaned and in the dish drainer. My mood jumps up a bit.
I start washing the glass. My mind wanders away and I drop the glass in the sink. My mood falls more than a bit.
The glass hasn’t broken. My mood rises into relief.
Then my mood settles back down, but a bit too far, into negative territory: boredom.
I continue to wash the glass. My mood quickly rises as I anticipate success.
It’s then that I notice I’m in the momentum of mood swings.
I don’t like it. I just want to get through the washing without my mood jerking up and down.
The Cause
Not upbringing, not experiences. Instead, psr’s. Psr = inappropriate or imaginary problem solving response. It’s not real solving of real stuff. Ipsr is too long and doesn’t roll off the tongue well, so … psr.
The Solution, The Change
Bitch and complain the psr’s. (synonyms are “flow” or “flow-with” or “deconstruct”, but not “complaining” because it’s not distinct from every complaining). I often have to do it many times (instructions are in the examples below). But this is not a flaw. The repetitions build a memory centre that pulls my focus into it. While there, I don’t oppose myself by finding fault with every thought that forms my true response/my decision, leaving it internalized. Instead, I simply externalize my true response. I move it from inside my mind to outside it. into my muscles. I turn the thought into action.
Good to know:
- While my mind can go blank more than a few times in a day, most of the time my mind produces a constant stream of thoughts and feelings. This stream causes many distractions, all day every day. In order to survive, (that means not die), I need to be good at ignoring them. The most important distraction is what happens at the end of thought or feeling: loss of momentum. Momentum is that automatic progression of thought towards a goal, whether the goal is good or bad. Momentum feels good. It’s painful to lose.
- All loss, no matter how small, causes pain. That pain is the feeling I call grief. Thus, loss causes grief.
- Failure causes loss of my goal, in other words, loss of what I was trying to achieve, The loss caused by failure causes grief. The most important failure in daily life is the failure to ignore the most important distraction – loss of momentum. The most important loss of momentum is at the end of my thought that forms my true response, my decision. Failing to ignore this loss of momentum causes a grief that affects every part of my existence. I call the grief triggered by my failing to ignore the distraction that is the loss of momentum, “the pain of failing to ignore”.
- Everyone is born with a different intensity of the pain of failing to ignore.
- If my pain of failing to ignore is strong, I am naturally afraid of it. The appearance in my mind of a decision triggers the need to ignore distractions, most importantly loss of the momentum of thought I was in while I was forming my decision, my true response. Failing to ignore this loss of momentum triggers my high pain of failing to ignore, which triggers my fear of that pain. As a result, I’m afraid of making the decisions I create all day. When my fear of making a decision appears, I’m compelled to solve that fear. So, I search for its cause. The only cause I can find is a problems – a fault – with the decision. I solve that fault. Often I find multiple faults and solve them. Solving it or them gets me the positive feeling of relief. Relief replaces my fear of my decision and fools me into thinking that I’ve gotten rid of the pain of failing to ignore. The result: I’m always editing -looking for and solving flaws, problem-solving the thought that forms my decision/my true response. To sum up: I edit my decisions in order to get relief from my normal fear of this abnormally high pain.
- One of these edits/problem-solving responses (psr’s) to a decision is the fantasy that the feeling of relief will make me feel like acting, feel motivated to act, on my decision. (Here lies the source of the world’s fruitless search for motivation.) But it doesn’t work. As soon as I solve one problem, a new one appears. In fact, solving signals my brain that I want to do more solving, so I can get more relief. So, it brings me more problems. Quickly, the problem solving gains momentum, and grows out of my control until it becomes frightening and snaps me out of it. I call this constant line of psr’s “fear driven seeking of relief” or “second guessing to panic” or “obsessing” or “bad momentum” about my decision. It’s the outcome of trying to feel-like acting on my decision.
- If my pain of failing to ignore is weak, I’m not afraid of it. Therefore, when I’m forming a true response/decision, my brain doesn’t produce anxiety – an abnormal fear of a normal situation, and other psr’s that mess around with my decision. I’m free to focus on externalizing it by matching my actions to the image of me acting -my action image.
- All emotions, including the grief caused by loss of anything, big or small, will keep coming back if I oppose them. To solve grief, including by avoiding grief, is to oppose it. As a result, solving grief causes it to come back.
- All my problems are caused by me trying to solve/oppose the grief I call the pain of failing to ignore. Culture says I should fix this pain. My brain says I should feel it, that is, let it run, and see how it won’t harm me if I do. This will make me ignore it by moving my focus onward to seeing and externalizing my true response/my decision. I externalize by matching my actions to the action image of my decision.
The Seeing Sequence is the sequence of bitching and complaining /flow/deconstructing psr’s in order to see my true response. It gets me to stop believing my psr’s which gets me to stop trying to solve the pain of failing to ignore. As a result, the pain, like all emotion, runs out by itself, most often in bits, not all at once. A good almost must-read: Why the Seeing Sequence works.
(NB (nota bene, Latin for note well): words below, that are in brackets or separated by forward slashes, mean I can choose from several wordings, or the words are instructions, or blanks to fill in that fit my own experience.)
How to Bitch and Complain/Flow with/Deconstruct Psr’s using the following Example List
1. Mood swings over small everyday things.
2. Mood swings when I fail to get you to see my point of view.
Example 1
Everyday things go wrong.
Step 1
Pick the thought or feeling I think is a psr. Optional: A useful guide: The Database of Psr’s
I predict that washing this glass will not go well.
Classify my emotional response to the psr using three simple classes:
“good me” for feelings that are positive (pleasure) or for feelings that I imagine will solve things fast and result in a positive feeling. For example: anger always comes with the fantasy that I can shake up the environment or shake up even my own mind into changing from not going my way to going my way. Thus, the feeling this fantasy triggers is good. Thus, “good me, I’m angry”.
“bad me” for hurting or judging myself, by predicting failure or by presenting a problem to spoil my happiness.
“poor me” for fear and for feeling sorry for myself.
(NB. I decide on how many psr’s I want to b and c. It could be just one, or I could do all of them until they stop coming. The more I practice, the closer I get to one, then a ghost of one, then none. The number of practices is like learning to walk, or to play a musical instrument, or to play a sport well or to cook food well, or do anything well. It’s a large number. )
Like this
Bad me, predicting failure.
Poor me, scared of the failure.
Good me, fix fear by avoiding.
Good me, I love that feeling of relief.
I’ll be bored forever. Bad me.
Poor me, I feel inferior to a fantasized standard that says I have to feel like washing the glass.
Good me I’m optimistic I can wash the glass.
Bad me, I dropped it.
Good me, I’m angry, because I love the fantasy I can reverse the drop by hurting myself with the power of the pain that disapproval brings.
Poor me, mood swings are in momentum.
Step 2
The reversal: find the cause of the psr’s, not by asking why, but by imagining what I would see if I didn’t do psr’s to myself.
Because poor me if I didn’t (do all these psr’s to myself),
I’m afraid I’ll see I’m in the pain of failing to ignore distractions, (which occur at the end of my thought that forms my true response; that wording is coming below)
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) _________
(
I fill this in using one of five possible “endings”. If I don’t know which one to choose, I can guess.
Endings
1) “the end of what I was just doing, (which was): imagining my action image if I see all the parts of it, or previewing my action image if I see a quick glimpse before I work out the parts”.
Examples:
All parts – doing something I’ve practised many times.
Quick glimpse: I see myself putting down a chopping knife just before I come to the end of using it, but my work surface is crowded and I haven’t yet looked for a place to put it.
2) “the end of what I was just doing (which was): trying and failing to match my action to my action image“.
Example: My failing to look at an object all the way to my reaching for it and grasping it.
3) “the end of what I was just doing (which was): feeling my happiness/satisfaction about my success (at forming and externalizing my true response, in other words, “at matching my action to my action image)”
Example: I look where I’m reaching for an object that’s not easy to hold onto, like a bunch of twigs to start a cooking fire.
Or “feeling happy/satisfied/content about what just came into my mind without me trying”. (This happiness is more passive than me matching my true response. It’s just experiencing, that is, enjoying, receiving, observing-not-solving, not editing, not perfecting, not putting my mark on, what the environment or my mind gives me that fits me and therefore triggers pleasure.)
Example 1: something beautiful coming into my view. For this the wording is “the end of what I was just doing: enjoying seeing beauty, or feeling lucky (seeing beauty)”.
Example 2: While observing a situation, usually a real problem, I get a bright idea about how to understand it or how to solve it, or both. I use wording something like: “the end of what I was just doing: feeling happy that a bright idea popped into my mind.”
4) “the end of what I was just doing (which was): experiencing or observing a problem (or something that is different from what fits me), that I can’t solve now or have no business solving even if I could, or both.”
(Four Examples from an endless list:)
a) observing your lazy consideration (about what you know I need you to consider). (Example: your anger at me for being independent of you.)
b) observing your disapproval. Example: your disapproval of my shun of your lazy consideration.
c) observing your fear of making the transition on your own from awake to falling asleep; and your attempts to get me to fix that fear for you.
d) experiencing a coincidence that doesn’t fit me (bad luck, such as an accident, or anything I have no interest in, like most distractions. This ending is similar to 2) above in that the end is a failure. But the difference is that it’s a failure of the environment to go my way, while 2) is my failure to make myself go my way.
5) “the end of what I was just doing (which was): being in a blank, (a state of no thought or feeling).”
A blank occurs when:
a) I don’t know or can’t remember what to think when I need to find an answer. This could be before I’ve tried to figure it out or after I’ve run out of ideas. Example: a math equation.
b) I finish a feeling, say happiness, that isn’t a psr. Or I finish matching my action to my action image, and I haven’t decided what to do next.
Example: A common sequence in me: end of solving, say an easy addition of a list of numbers; end of happiness at my success; a blank; then the psr “predicting failure” predicts the blank will fail to be brief; that causes fear, which is another psr; then a third psr: fix the fear in the quickest way I can think of – repeat what I just finished thinking or saying or feeling or doing. Thus, I often repeat myself to fill in blanks at the end of thinking or feeling or speaking or doing.
)
(End of endings, now continuing with bnc)
(I choose: ____________) imagining my action image (of my decision) : wash this glass
At the end of my thought that forms my true response:
I’m already dead inside about this act of ignoring. (Dead inside means I don’t at all feel like ignoring)
But I have to ignore anyway (if I want to get my true response/decision out there: stop these mood swings while I ____(wash this glass)).
So start ignoring the delay by focusing on
(ignoring is done by focusing on something other than the thing I want to ignore)(I want to ignore the delay in getting over grief, so I focus on something – matching the action image of my decision with action – other than the delay in getting over grief)
mechanically (which means without feeling like it/without motivation)
(externalizing my true response/decision by matching my action to the action image of my decision/true response)
______.”(I describe the action image of my true response)
washing this glass.
Step 3
Wait to see what comes into my mind next.
If another psr, repeat Steps 1 and 2 until: psr’s stop, or I decide to stop, or I run out of time and have to do something else.
If my true response, I naturally (which means in first-party observing self/un-self-consciously/without stepping outside myself/without thinking)
______ ( I describe my true response)
I wash the glass with the same emotion of a humanoid robot, that is, none. I come cheap, if you only want one glass washed.
Short version:
psrs: mood up and down in momentum, poor me.
because, poor me, I forgot to b and c early in this chain of mood swings.
distraction: (delay in the pleasure of getting over) grief from loss of momentum (caused by)
end of what I was just doing: imagining washing the glass
true response/decision: focus on _______( wash the glass like a humanoid robot )
Repeat all until I do it.
Example 2
2. Mood swings when I fail to get you to approve of my point of view.
Step 1
Pick a thought or feeling I think is a psr. Optional: A useful guide: The Database of Psr’s
I predict that you will never approve of my point of view.
Classify my emotional response to the psr using three simple classes:
“good me” for feelings that are positive (pleasure) or for feelings that I imagine will solve things fast and result in a positive feeling. For example: anger always comes with the fantasy that I can shake up the environment or shake up even my own mind into changing from not going my way to going my way. Thus, the feeling this fantasy triggers is good. Thus, “good me, I’m angry”.
“bad me” for hurting or judging myself, by predicting failure or by presenting a problem to spoil my happines
“poor me” for fear and for feeling sorry for myself.
(NB. I decide on how many psr’s I want to b and c. It could be just one, or I could do all of them until they stop coming. The more I practice, the closer I get to one, then a ghost of one, then none. The number of practices is like learning to walk, or to play a musical instrument, or to play a sport well or to cook food well, or do anything well. It’s a large number. )
Like this
Bad me, self attack, using the worst case scenario (PF3 in The Database of Psr’s ) that you’ll never approve of any of my points of view.
I’m very afraid of this image. Poor me.
Poor me, my mood has swing down to sad.
I give up. Poor me.
Good me, relief (my mood has swung up) that I don’t have to try anymore to get your approval, now that I’ve given up.
Good me, I’m tense, angry at myself or you.
Good me, solve it by pleasure seeking (I am imagining eating something, or doing very easy tasks like cleaning, or watching video or going for a walk….this list of pleasure seeking by doing easy stuff is very long).
I imagine explaining why you should approve of my point of view. Good me.
Bad me, another self attack: I imagine it doesn’t work to change your mind.
My mood is swinging out of control. Poor me.
I predict failure to quickly stop this bad momentum with b and c. Bad me.
(There may be many more psr’s, but I decide I’ve done most of them and I’ll be able to see my true response with Step 2.)
Step 2
The reversal: find the cause of the psr’s, not by asking why, but by imagining what I would see if I didn’t do psr’s to myself.
Because poor me if I didn’t (get caught in fear that makes my mood swing),
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)
(
I fill this in using one of five possible “endings”. If I don’t know which one to choose, I can guess.
Endings
1) “the end of what I was just doing, (which was): imagining my action image if I see all the parts of it, or previewing my action image if I see a quick glimpse before I work out the parts”.
Examples:
All parts – doing something I’ve practised many times.
Quick glimpse: I see myself putting down a chopping knife just before I come to the end of using it, but my work surface is crowded and I haven’t yet looked for a place to put it.
2) “the end of what I was just doing (which was): trying and failing to match my action to my action image“.
Example: My failing to look at an object all the way to my reaching for it and grasping it.
3) “the end of what I was just doing (which was): feeling my happiness/satisfaction about my success (at forming and externalizing my true response, in other words, “at matching my action to my action image)”
Example: I look where I’m reaching for an object that’s not easy to hold onto, like a bunch of twigs to start a cooking fire.
Or “feeling happy/satisfied/content about what just came into my mind without me trying”. (This happiness is more passive than me matching my true response. It’s just experiencing, that is, enjoying, receiving, observing-not-solving, not editing, not perfecting, not putting my mark on, what the environment or my mind gives me that fits me and therefore triggers pleasure.)
Example 1: something beautiful coming into my view. For this the wording is “the end of what I was just doing: enjoying seeing beauty, or feeling lucky (seeing beauty)”.
Example 2: While observing a situation, usually a real problem, I get a bright idea about how to understand it or how to solve it, or both. I use wording something like: “the end of what I was just doing: feeling happy that a bright idea popped into my mind.”
4) “the end of what I was just doing (which was): experiencing or observing a problem (or something that is different from what fits me), that I can’t solve now or have no business solving even if I could, or both.”
(Four Examples from an endless list:)
a) observing your lazy consideration (about what you know I need you to consider). (Example: your anger at me for being independent of you.)
b) observing your disapproval. Example: your disapproval of my shun of your lazy consideration.
c) observing your fear of making the transition on your own from awake to falling asleep; and your attempts to get me to fix that fear for you.
d) experiencing a coincidence that doesn’t fit me (bad luck, such as an accident, or anything I have no interest in, like most distractions. This ending is similar to 2) above in that the end is a failure. But the difference is that it’s a failure of the environment to go my way, while 2) is my failure to make myself go my way.
5) “the end of what I was just doing (which was): being in a blank, (a state of no thought or feeling).”
A blank occurs when:
a) I don’t know or can’t remember what to think when I need to find an answer. This could be before I’ve tried to figure it out or after I’ve run out of ideas. Example: a math equation.
b) I finish a feeling, say happiness, that isn’t a psr. Or I finish matching my action to my action image, and I haven’t decided what to do next.
Example: A common sequence in me: end of solving, say an easy addition of a list of numbers; end of happiness at my success; a blank; then the psr “predicting failure” predicts the blank will fail to be brief; that causes fear, which is another psr; then a third psr: fix the fear in the quickest way I can think of – repeat what I just finished thinking or saying or feeling or doing. Thus, I often repeat myself to fill in blanks at the end of thinking or feeling or speaking or doing.
)
(End of endings, now continuing with bnc)
(I choose: ____________) experiencing a problem I can’t solve now: the pain, (that is, the grief – there’s a second grief here in addition to the grief from the loss of momentum) caused by my having tried and failed to get your approval of my point of view ( ______(here I might want to name my point of view).
At the end of my thought that forms my true response:
I’m already dead inside about this act of ignoring. (Dead inside means I don’t at all feel like ignoring)
But I have to ignore anyway (if I want to stop these mood swings )
So start ignoring the delay byfocusing on
(ignoring is done by focusing on something other than the thing I want to ignore)(I want to ignore the delay in getting over grief, so I focus on something – matching the action image of my decision with action – other than the delay in getting over grief)
mechanically (which means without feeling like it/without motivation)
(externalizing my true response/decision by matching my action to the action image of my decision/true response)
______.”(I describe the action image of my true response)
observing this problem I can’t solve now.
Step 3
Wait to see what comes into my mind next.
If another psr, repeat Steps 1 and 2 until: psr’s stop, or I decide to stop, or I run out of time and have to do something else.
If my true response, I naturally (which means in first-party observing self/un-self-consciously/without stepping outside myself/without thinking)
______ ( I describe my true response)
This means suffering the pain, caused by your not approving of my point of view, until it goes away by itself. Amazing that the pain goes away so fast if I don’t try to fix it. I immediately see that my true response is two-fold: that just because I show you a point of view doesn’t mean you’re obliged to see it; and that all of my self-expression carries my assessment of the gamble, almost always small, that I won’t be seen and that pain is the price of that gamble. That makes my true pain very small, and worth the gamble. I wish I’d seen this when I first wanted to make new friends, or apply for jobs, or…
Postscript
Reminder 1 to self:
To b and c or not to b and c. That is the question. To b and c is to suffer the frustration of missing the starting signal – a psr, an astonishingly large number of times. To not b and c is to suffer repeating anxiety and the exhausting work of trying to solve it. Thus, both ways are difficult. And that sucks. But only I can decide which way I want my existence to suck in any moment, when I do catch the signal, the psr.
Reminder 2 to self:
I need to memorize these sentences or I’ll never do them. And even when I do memorize them, it will take more suffering my anxiety before I remember to do them, and even more suffering before I even decide to do them after I remember. Even then, I’ll need more practice to do it live, in the moment. That’s the easiest way? Yup.
Reminder 3 to self:
The above two reminders are about what causes change in my brain: persistent practice that builds alternate memory centres. Change doesn’t come from judgment or punishment or encouragement or copying rules or help from another. So I’m free not to use them, and I’m especially free from needing to judge myself for not using them.
To repeat in another way: the only thing that changes my brain is seeing through the tricks my anxiety plays on me to solve itself, and disbelieving them by b and c, over and over again. Only then will I have built a new memory centre, a new planet, of bitching and complaining/deconstructing that redirects my focus onto my true response.
Reminder 4 to self:
Question
Why don’t I just say what the distraction is? It’s grief. The grief from the loss of momentum caused by the end of whatever I was just doing,
Answer
Because grief would not be a distraction if it went away instantly. While grief is brief, like all emotion, it keeps coming back in waves. While I’m feeling the grief, I’m distracted into checking how long it’s lasting. As a result, the distraction is not the grief. It’s the delay in the pleasure, the relief, of getting it over with. That delay in getting over grief from loss of momentum occurs in the instant I have to transition, that is, change, my focus, from the high return work of forming my true response to the low return work of externalizing it. In other words, to go from fun to boredom without complaint.
Reminder Summary
To take this answer back to where I started seeing. Me being distracted means I have failed to ignore when I most need to ignore. My high pain of failing to ignore is triggered by this failure. Because the pain is intense, it frightens me. To solve the fear, my brain is compelled to use psr’s to fix, not the fear, but its cause, the pain.
But, if I want to avoid disappointing myself by failing to externalize my true response, followed by my scrambling to adapt to the consequences, I must not give in to the fixing of the pain of failing to ignore. Through more repetitions than I ever feared, and in every part of my life, I must train myself to b and c until I can mechanically, like a reflex, focus on externalizing my true response.
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