Updated November 25, 2025
(Short versions far below )
The Problem
I love perfection.
A small list :
I love perfect presence of positive real things: my clothes folded perfectly, in perfect lines on their shelf; my hair perfectly in place; my body perfectly comfortable when I go to bed; my perfectly made bed after I get up.
I love perfect absence of negative real things: the complete absence of germs, of dirt, of fungus, of bugs. Of cold, of hot. Of seams in my clothes that rub on my perfect skin.
I love perfecting my thoughts by finding and fixing anything wrong with them. Even if they are not real. I picture being perfectly rich, like a princess or prince, or an oligarch.
I love perfecting other peoples thoughts, and their feelings and their lives; even if they aren’t asking me too.
I love making positive all negative feelings or thoughts, even if they come from my imagination.
Problem is, I can’t make decisions. I can barely start anything because I’m too busy perfecting all the faults that come into my mind. And finish anything? Forget it. My method of doing stuff: wait until there’s some consequence that scares me into starting. Then don’t finish it for fear of what it will cost me. As a result, my mood swings down when I have to do something, then up when I manage to get part way through it, then down when I have to get through the boredom of finishing it, then up into relief when I avoid it.
Or I’m the opposite. I can’t stop getting things done. I can’t stop cleaning, or repairing or preparing food or organizing stuff or pulling weeds or …
One of the worst parts is with people. I pretend to be normal with them, but I don’t like them because they have too many flaws. And they don’t like me because I fight with them or avoid them or try to improve them. Ugh. Lonely, even when I’m not alone. And when I am alone, I’m so tense, which means I’m afraid, and constantly solving, solving it.
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 (also called “flow” or “flow-with” the psr’s, often many times (instructions are in the examples below). 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. Instead, I simply externalize it.
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.
- All loss, no matter how small, causes pain. That pain is the feeling called grief. Thus, loss causes grief.
- Since failure causes 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 distractions that appear at the end of my thought that forms my true response, my decision. I call the grief triggered by my failing to ignore distractions,”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. Failing to ignore them triggers my high pain of failing to ignore, which triggers my fear of that pain. As a result, I’m afraid of making any decision. When my fear of making a decision appears, I’m compelled to solve the fear. So, I search for the cause of my fear. I find that the cause is problems – faults – with the decision and I solve those faults. Solving gets me the positive feeling of relief. Relief replaces my fear and so distracts me from the pain of failing to ignore. The result: I’m always editing (looking for and solving flaws), in other words, problem-solving, the thought that forms my decision. I edit 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 lieth 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” 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, 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, that’s in my mind.
- All emotions, including the grief caused by loss of anything, big or small, will keep coming back if opposed. 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 pain of failing to ignore. Culture says I should fix this pain. My brain says I should feel it, that is, suffer it, 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 Psr’s using the following Example List
1. I perfect what I’m writing.
2. I perfect getting rid of germs.
3. I’m detached from what’s around me because I keep trying to perfect what I want to do with it.
Example 1
I need to write a message to a friend.
“Dear friend”, That’s too stiff.
“Hey friend!” Too excited.
“Hello friend” Stiff. And I forgot the comma after friend.
“Friend”, Doesn’t sound the same as the greeting I was taught in school.
But I’m getting bored. So I go find something to drink and bring it back to where I’m writing. I make myself extra comfortable.
All the above greetings run rapidly through my mind. I picture my friend reading it and smiling at how bad I wrote it.
“Want to come over to my place?” But I haven’t addressed my friend. Rude.
“Hi Friend, come on over.” I write this quickly so I won’t attack it.
“Signed, me” It’s too short, and my friend might want to know why I’m inviting them. But I can’t think of what I can do to make them want to come. I can’t think of what we’ll do together that doesn’t have flaws.
I’ll be funny. But how? I’ll be serious. Boring. I’ll just go along. But what if nobody says anything or does anything?
I’m discouraged. I give up. Then I remember I can bitch and complain.
Step 1
Pick the thought or feeling I think is a psr. Optional: A useful guide is this page on the website: The Database of Psr’s
In this case, imagining my note will fail to get my friend’s approval.
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 (anger always comes with the fantasy that I can shake up the environment into going my way),
“bad me” for hurting or judging myself.
“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 to learn to type on a keyboard, or do anything well. It’s a large number. )
Like this
Good me, I’ll write a really nice note.
What if it isn’t well receive. Bad me, predicting failure.
Bad me, I’m finding fault with whatever I think of saying.
I edit the good words that come to me. Good me.
I can’t stop editing. Poor me.
Good me, I’ll take a break.
Poor me, I feel like giving up.
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 (feel like giving up because I’m caught in the momentum of finding fault with and fixing (called editing) the words I created on my first try),
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’m not sure which one to choose, I can guess.
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 look at an object I was reaching for”;
3) “the end of what I was just doing (which was): feeling my happiness about my success (at externalizing my true response, in other words, at matching my action to my action image)”
Or “feeling happy 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 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 seeing beauty.”
4) “the end of what I was just doing(which was): experiencing or observing a problem I can’t solve now or have no business solving even if I could, or both.
(Examples from an endless list:)
a) observing your lazy consideration” (about what you know I need you to consider). (For example your anger at me for being independent of you.)
b) experiencing bad luck”, such as an accident or an unlucky coincidence.: 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 what to think in a situation in which I need to find an answer. This could be be before I’ve tried to figure it out when I have no idea, or after I’ve run out of ideas. Example: a math equation.
b) I finish matching my action to my action image and I haven’t decided what to do next. A blank at the end of feeling happy is a good example. A blank is the most common cause of repeating myself when I finish saying something or finish a thought or feeling. The repeat literally fills in the blank in order to solve the psr that predicts the blank will fail to be brief or will fail to be infrequent. (Example psr: “My mind will just stop forever, but I’ll still be alive and able to sense everything!”)
)
(End of endings, now continuing with bnc)
which was: imagining my action image (of my true response) : composing the words of my note.
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 decision (my true response) out there).
So start ignoring the delay by moving my focus on to
(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)
(matching my external action –writing the note -to my action image:the words that came to my mind.
Step 3
Wait to see what comes into my mind.
If another psr, repeat Steps 1 and 2 until; psr’s stop, or I decide to stop or until 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 write what comes to mind. Then I move on.
Short version:
psrs: poor me, bad momentum (also called “fear driven seeking of relief) took over my thoughts
distraction: (delay in the pleasure of getting over) grief from loss of momentum
ending (end of what I was just doing):creating words
true response: focus on _______( write them )
Repeat all until I do it.
Example 2
I perfect getting rid of germs.
Step 1
Pick the thought or feeling I think is a psr. Optional: A useful guide: The Database of Psr’s
In this case, get rid of all germs, achieve the absence of germs.
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 (anger always comes with the fantasy that I can shake up the environment into going my way),
“bad me” for hurting or judging myself.
“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 I’ll get sick from germs. (I could also say “predicting failure to avoid getting sick”)
I’ll wash my hands to get rid of them. Good me.
Maybe I missed some germs. Bad me predicting failure to get them all.
Good me, I’ll wash my hands again, and use a clean towel to dry them. That will be perfect.
Poor me, I’m afraid my dishes and cooking surfaces are not clean enough, door knobs are full of germs, and on and on about every surface I come across in my day.
I’ll get sick and die. Bad me, jumping to a worst case scenario.
Good me. I’ll clean my dishes and counters and examine them until they’re perfectly clean.
Poor me, I’m losing control of my thoughts to bad momentum of perfecting germ avoidance.
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 (perfect getting rid of germs, as a form of editing my thoughts about touching the environment),
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’m not sure which one to choose, I can guess.
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 look at an object I was reaching for”;
3) “the end of what I was just doing (which was): feeling my happiness/satisfaction about my success (at externalizing my true response, in other words, at matching my action to my action image)”
Or “feeling happy 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 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 seeing beauty.”
4) “the end of what I was just doing(which was): experiencing or observing a problem I can’t solve now or have no business solving even if I could, or both.
(Examples from an endless list:)
a) observing your lazy consideration” (about what you know I need you to consider). (For example your anger at me for being independent of you.)
b) experiencing bad luck”, such as an accident or an unlucky coincidence.: 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 what to think in a situation in which I need to find an answer. This could be be before I’ve tried to figure it out when I have no idea, or after I’ve run out of ideas. Example: a math equation.
b) I finish matching my action to my action image and I haven’t decided what to do next. A blank at the end of feeling happy is a good example. A blank is the most common cause of repeating myself when I finish saying something or finish a thought or feeling. The repeat literally fills in the blank in order to solve the psr that predicts the blank will fail to be brief or will fail to be infrequent. (Example psr: “My mind will just stop forever, but I’ll still be alive and able to sense everything!”)
)
(End of endings, now continuing with bnc)
(which was) being satisfied with my thought that there aren’t sickness-causing germs on this surface – my hands, or most of the other surfaces I come across.
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 out there: touch the environment.)
So start ignoring the delay by moving my focus on to
(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 external action to the action image of my decision/true response)
______.”(I describe the action image of my true response)
(doing what I’ve decided to do with my clean hands).
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 move on to: I’ve already decided I won’t get sick from this imperfectly sanitized environment, so I’m going to reach out and leave my hand prints on it by working in it.
Short version:
psrs: bad me, predicting a worst case scenario that I’ll get sick
good me, avoid
distraction: (delay in the pleasure of getting over) grief from loss of momentum
ending (end of what I was just doing): being satisfied that there are no sickness-causing germs where I’ll touch
true response: focus on _______( touch the imperfectly sanitized surface )
Repeat all until I do it.
Example 3
I notice I’m very often detached from the environment. When others are having fun, I don’t take part. Instead, I describe to myself what they’re doing and why they’re doing it. Then I find fault with them or their activity and create solutions in my imagination. This leads me to often distance myself and analyze when I should be doing stuff, either by myself or with others.
When I was younger, my mom used to say I acted like I was 300 years old. What she should have done instead was shun my sorry (you know what). ( Click on this link to see how to shun: The Rules of Hurt/Mirroring/Shunning)
For example, she should have shunned me by giving me a pile of dusty old books to read and making me write analytical essays on them. Or she should have sent me to Debating Camp. Or she should have sent me every summer to hang out with my grandfather and his fellow farmers at the township livestock auction, where boring analysis of cows, pigs and horses was all they did, punctuated by puffs of the sweetest smelling smoke from their pipes and hilarious quips of gossip.
But she didn’t understand that I was anxious and needed to bitch and complain my anxiety. The anxiety takes the form of detachment and leads to more detachment. So here is what would have helped me. And still does.
Step 1
Bad me, predicting failure to get into it
Poor me, afraid to try.
Good me, I’m stepping back from this fun situation and analyzing it until I can perfectly predict how I’ll do in it.
Good me, I know just how to solve the flaws I see in it.
I’m imagining I tell others what I came up with and they think I’m amazing. Good me.
When actually they’ll be thinking “nerd alert”. Poor me.
Step 2
Reversal
Because poor me if I didn’t (detach and fantasize someone will be impressed),
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) imagining my action image, which is me coming out of myself and getting absorbed in the fun.
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 decision (true response) out there ___(get into the scene in front of me)).
So start ignoring the delay by moving my focus on to
mechanically matching my action-image of how I would take part in the fun -on this try/in the next moment – with actually doing it.
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’m letting myself get absorbed in what’s fun for me in this situation. (the nerd is temporarily not …)
Short version:
psrs: good me, analyze
distraction: (delay in the pleasure of getting over) grief from loss of momentum
ending (end of what I was just doing): imagining how I’ll have fun
true response: focus on _______( letting myself get absorbed by matching my action image with action)
Repeat all until I do it.
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 signal – a psr – to b and c an astonishingly large number of times. To not b and c is to suffer constant anxiety and the exhausting work of trying to solve it. Thus, both ways suck. 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 that pulls my focus into it and reroutes my focus to my true responses.
Reminder 4 to self:
Question
Why don’t I just say what the 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 of getting it over with. That delay occurs in the instant I have to transition, that is, change, my focus, from forming my true response to externalizing it.
To take this answer back to where I started: 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 my failure. Because the pain is intense, it’s frightens me. To solve the fear, my brain is compelled to use psr’s to fix, not the fear, but it’s cause, the pain.
But if I want to avoid constantly disappointing myself by not externalizing my true responses, I must not give in to the fixing. Through more repetitions than I ever feared, I must train myself to b and c until I can mechanically focus on externalizing my true response.
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