The Problem
I have been hurt by you more than you would ever imagine. It’s not that you can’t imagine my pain. It’s that you won’t and will do everything you can not to, as you always have.
The only thing that eases my pain is fantasies of revenge. In these fantasies, I hurt you as much and more than you hurt me. But my relief is quickly followed by images of you countering my efforts and hurting me again.
My pain has kept coming back into my days and nights.
Now it comes when I have a little pain about anything at all, and when I’m transitioning from one thing to another. At these times my focus has low momentum, so there’s room for my pain to come in and be re-enacted.
Worst of all, it sometimes comes when I’m happy.
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 center that pulls my focus into it. While there, I don’t find fault with every thought while I form and carry out, externalize, a decision. In other words, I don’t oppose myself.
Good to know:
- While my mind can go blank, it’s rare compared to my mind’s almost constant stream of thoughts and feelings. This stream causes many distractions, all day every day. 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.
- Failure causes loss of what I was trying to do. Therefore, failure causes grief. The most important failure in daily life is the failure to ignore distractions which occur at the end of my thought that forms my true response, my decision. My decision is not a psr. It’s the real true me. I call the grief from failing to ignore distractions, at the moment my true response appears, 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. Since a decision triggers the need to ignore distractions, which trigger my high pain of failing to ignore, which triggers my fear of the pain, I’m afraid of making any decision. When my fear of making a decision appears, I’m compelled to solve it. So, I find problems – faults – with the decision and solve them. I get 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), that is, problem-solving, 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 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. I call this constant line of psr’s “fear driven seeking of relief” or “second guessing” or “obsessing” about my decision.
- If my pain of failing to ignore is weak, I’m not afraid of it. Therefore I don’t produce anxiety – an abnormal fear of a normal situation, and other psr’s that mess around with my decision.
- All emotions, including grief caused by loss of anything, big or small, will keep coming back if opposed or avoided. To solve grief, including by avoiding it, 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, suffer it, and see how it won’t harm me if I do. This will make me ignore it by my moving on to seeing and externalizing my true response/my decision.
The Seeing Sequence, which is the sequence of bitching and complaining in order to see my true response, 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 but not must read: Why the Seeing Sequence works.
(Notice: words in brackets below mean I can choose from several wordings, or the words are instructions or blanks to fill in that fit my experience.)
How to Bitch and Complain/Flow with Psr’s using the following Example List
1. You hurt me bad and you knew you were doing it.
2. You hurt me a little and didn’t know it.
3. You hurt me because I deserved it. Now I want war.
Example 1
1. You hurt me bad, and you knew you were doing it.
Step 1
Pick the thought or feeling I think is a psr. Optional: A useful guide: The Database of Psr’s
For example, fantasies of revenge.
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
Good me, I imagine hurting you as bad as you hurt me, or worse than you hurt me.
Good me, I’ll make you suffer the way you have made me suffer.
Good me, I’m so angry at you.
Good me, I’ll never speak to you again.
Bad me, I keep going over in my mind what you did to me, and trying to solve it.
Every counter-move I imagine is followed by a fantasy of how you would counter it. This can get wild and long. Poor me.
Good me, I’m checking to see if it still hurts. If it doesn’t, I feel like moving forward.
Poor me, it still hurts.
Poor me, afraid I’ll never get over this pain.
Good me, I fantasize someone understanding my pain and that making me feel better.
Poor me, it doesn’t work or only works for a short time.
Bad me, what you did has become part of my collection of self-attacks. This means, every time something doesn’t go my way, I have a brief flash of what you did to me.
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 (keep imagining revenge),
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 4 lines 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:
(namely) observing a problem I can’t solve now: this wave of my pain ending with no prospect of ever fixing it: (you hurt me and there was nothing I could do to stop you and there is no way to get justice/no way to make you pay/no way to achieve that outside similarity to my pain, in order to ease my pain).
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 to my true response, which is to move on to things I can solve now).
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 – observing – other than solving/opposing the delay in getting over grief)
mechanically observing that this unsolved pain has passed again without being solved and then moving (my focus) on to observing something else that leads to me to what I can do/solve now.
Step 3
Wait to see what comes into my mind.
If another psr, repeat Steps 1 and 2. I know this will take many repetitions.
If my true response, I will naturally externalize it: I will leave the pain unsolved and move my focus onward.
Example 2.
You hurt me a little and didn’t know it.
Step 1
Poor me, what you did triggered a negative feeling in me.
Good me, I see you didn’t mean to hurt me.
I’m afraid I won’t get over the negative feeling by myself. Poor me.
Bad me, I’m predicting failure, in order to create a fear, in order to get me to solve the fear, in order to get the positive feeling of relief, in order to make me feel like moving my focus on to my true response.
Good me, I’ll hurt you back, directly or indirectly (passive-aggressively), to get that feel-like feeling.
(I have more psr’s but they are weak now so I’ll stop labeling them and start 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 (imagine revenge),
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 4 lines 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:
(namely) observing a problem I can’t solve now or don’t want to solve now: this wave of my pain ending without the need to solve it because your hurt me by accident).
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 to my true response, which is to move on to ignore/let go of what you did).
So start ignoring the delay by focusing on
mechanically moving (my focus) on to observing the end of this hopeless pain, and then on back to you.
Step 3
Wait to see what comes into my mind.
If another psr, repeat Steps 1 and 2.
If my true response, I will naturally externalize it: ignore your mistake that you didn’t know you were making. And, b and c, the long-standing prs’s that were triggered by the mistake. I’m touchy, touchy!
Example 3
You hurt me because I deserved it. Now I want war.
Step 1
Good me, I’m angry at you for punishing me/giving me a consequence, for my hurting you because I was greedy. (or any other form of lazy consideration of you).
Good me, I’ll punish you back, which means I’m going to war with you.
And I don’t care how many times I’ve lost a war with you. Good me.
Good me, this time I’ll win by hurting you back until you stop giving me consequences.
Good me, I’ll cut you off. That’ll get me something. Relief from my anger.
I love that fantasy. Good me.
Step 2
Because poor me if I didn’t (fantasize going to war with you),
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:
(namely) observing a problem I can’t solve now: this wave of pain ending with no chance I’ll ever want to solve it in order to feel like moving on. (I got what I deserved for hurting you)
At the end of my thought that forms my true response:
I’m already dead inside about this act of ignoring.
But I have to ignore anyway (if I want to move on after I observe this problem I can’t solve now or ever.)
So start ignoring the delay by focusing on
mechanically taking my deserved punishment.
Step 3
Check what comes into my mind.
If a psr, repeat Steps 1 and 2.
If my true response, I’ll already be externalizing it: take responsibility for hurting you with my lazy consideration, which was caused by my anxiety, and suffer my punishment without complaint. And if appropriate, that is, this isn’t the hundredth time I’ve hurt you, apologize.
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 centers. Change doesn’t come from judgement or punishment or encouragement or copying rules or help from another. So I’m free not to use them, and I’m especially free of 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 center, a new planet, of bitching and complaining that pulls my focus into it and emits true responses.
Reminder 4 to self:
Question
Why don’t I just say what the the distraction is: grief? The grief from the loss of the 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 that don’t go away instantly. Therefore, it distracts me from focusing on my true response. Thus, the distraction is not the grief, it’s the delay in the pleasure of getting it over with in the instant I have to transition, that is, change, my focus to externalizing my true response. My high pain of failing to ignore that delay compels me to fix the pain. But I must not give in. I have to train to suffer that pain through that instant. Tall order.
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