Updated June 2024, Dec. 16, 2024 (small wording changes).

A problem is any difference from what fits me. My brain tells me it’s a problem by giving me a negative feeling. Difference produces negative feelings. Similarity produces positive feelings.

Example: gravity is a problem. It pulls me from upright towards the ground. The difference from up here to down there is recorded by my brain as a problem if I don’t want to be down there. Good thing. Imagine if I didn’t feel the negative – in this case the fear of falling – and have my attention moved to the feeling of being pulled down by gravity. Bad falls.

A psr is a problem solving response. Really, it’s a false or inapproprate problem solving response. It’s not my true response. But it makes me think it is a true response to a real problem. When I’ve done it or if I observe it before I do it, I see that the problem and my response are not true, are mostly imaginary.

Example: I’ve climbed onto something I don’t usually climb. This could be a unicycle or a kitchen chair or a ladder to a place where all ladders lead – somewhere unsafe. I picture falling. But then my imagination blows the fall into a worst-case scenario, such as landing on my head and breaking it. Then it goes further to me dying. Now I’m really scared.

These two thoughts are psr’s. Why? I’ve already decided that my chances of falling are low. It’s why I climbed in the first place. That decision is my true response. The psr’s are attacking/opposing my true response in order to get me to solve them, so I can get the positive feeling of relief, which I will use to offset my anxiety, which has been triggered by my decision/true response, which… . It’s a long story. It’s here: Why the Seeing Sequence works

Psr’s fall into 4 groups. One group is problem finding, which is most often imaginary. It gets me to do the other three – approval seeking, fantasizing the solution and pleasure seeking – in order to solve the problem I looked for and found. How long does it usually take me to find a problem? A fraction of a second.

Some psr’s are much more common than others. I expect that everybody has their own set of psr’s, like a finger print, only it’s a mind print.

I don’t have to know any of these psr’s to do the Seeing Sequence, but it helps sometimes by giving the psr’s in my head a name.

PF: Problem finding or fault finding

PF1  Looking for a problem.

PF 1.1  I look in the past for a problem. I might re-enact, re-describe, or rehearse it.

Examples:

  • I remember again and again how I failed.
  • I tell myself over and over what happened.
  • I say “this reminds me of that” when something makes me feel bad.

PF 1.2  I look for a problem in the present by parameter searching. I look over the situation for a part of it, a parameter, like time, that I can turn into a negative, a problem.

Examples:

  • I’m happy with how I did but it’s not perfect.
  • You tell me something good. I look for something bad in it.

PF 2  Magnifying the real problem by exaggerating it, or by finding similar problems, or by finding any problem.

Examples:

  • After this failure, I remember a similar failure, and this one too, and this reminds me of another failure.
  • The back door is unlocked during the day. I imagine a robber will come in.

PF 3  Progressing a negative to an uncontrolled end; jumping to a worst case scenario.

Examples:

  • I’m in pain and I’ll never get out of it.
  • Any phobia. (Phobia: an extreme fear of something that produces a small fear, like height or spiders).

PF 4  Finding fault in myself through the eyes of others. I imagine them disapproving of me, blaming me, angry with me or trying to hurt me. But it’s really me doing it.

Examples:

  • I’m happy with what I’ve done but others won’t be happy about it.
  • You will judge me for my failure.
  • You will want to hurt me for being different from you.

PF 5  Finding fault in myself using a fantasized standard. It’s impossible to find fault with myself so I use an imaginary standard. It says I have to think or do something to meet the standard or I’m inferior or bad things will happen to me and make me inferior. But mainly, the fantasized standard says I have to feel like doing my true response and if I don’t I’ll never be able to do it.

Examples:

  • I should not have failed.
  • I should be happy.
  • I have to get your approval, by being like you, or I’ll never feel like being myself.
  • I have to feel like doing my true response. If I don’t feel like it and I do it anyway, I’ll be miserable forever.

PF 6  Predicting failure. I look for a problem in the future, Usually it’s the immediate future.

Examples:

  • Doing this won’t make me happy.
  • I’m going to miss the target.
  • This will take forever.

PF 7  Finding fault in others or blaming them by comparing them to a fantasized standard that they should have done what makes me feel comfortable, what fits me.

Examples:

  • You didn’t read my mind!
  • You’re not my colour, my religion, my gender.
  • You don’t spell colour like color.

 

AS: Approval Seeking

All approval seeking is to solve disapproval of me. Most of the disapproval in my brain is imaginary, created by me. But most of the time I think it’s real. So, I think of all these ways to solve it, to control the approval.

AS 1.1 Passive Submission: going along with what is in your head without questioning it, feeling what you feel to the point where I forget what I feel.

Examples:

  • I feel guilty when you criticize me.
  • I go along with what you want as my first response. I don’t even think of me.

AS 1.2 Fusing: becoming one with what’s happening around me, or what went before. Fusing is my normal empathy gone too far. It’s more active than passive submission.

Examples:

  • If everyone around me is going fast, I go fast.
  • I feel your pain and don’t come back into my own head to see I’m not you.
  • I take on someone’s point of view without question.

AS 2 Pretended submission, to a person or an idea.

Examples:

  • I tell you what you want to hear.
  • I say “yes”, or go along, when my true response is “no”. I suck up to avoid your disapproval, which I’m imagining.

AS 3 Sharing.

Example:

  • I share the obvious, put everything into words, to get your approval.

AS 4 Explaining.

AS 4.1 Helpful explaining, story telling.

Example:

  • I say “because” to myself or others after everything I decide or say.
  • I tell a story for everything I do or say.

AS 4.2 Defensive explaining.

Example:

  • You blame me and I argue with you, to change your mind.
  • I did this because you made me do it, or something else outside me made me do it.

AS 4.3  Warning of consequences.

Example:

  • I tell you what will happen if you don’t stop doing what doesn’t fit me.

AS 5  Doing the work for someone who can do it themselves, either the physical work, or most often, thinking work. Also called offering unsolicited help.

Example:

  • I tell you to say “thank you” or “sorry”.
  • I clean up after you.
  • I ask you to tell me what you’re thinking.
  • I offer solutions to every problem you tell me, even though you only want me to just listen.

AS 6  Strong show of emotion to force approval of my point of view.

AS 6.1  Strong show of positive feelings: enthusiasm, affection.

Example:

  • I show you more approval than you actually make me feel in order to manipulate your view of me.
  • I use enthusiasm to sell my point of view.
  • I get very excited about something I do or think, even though it’s only a bit exciting.

AS 6.2 Show of negative submissive feelings: hurt, fear, guilt, sadness.

6.2.1  When I show these feelings to myself, I’m feeling sorry for myself.
6.2.2  When I show these feeling to others, I’m trying to get them to feel sorry for me
6.2.3  Give-up feelings: hopeless, overwhelmed, discouraged.

AS 6.3  Show of negative dominant feelings: intensity, impatience, frustration, anger; towards myself or you, to shake up, frighten or hurt me or you, to force approval of my point of view. In other words, I use the power of disapproval to hurt you or myself into approving of my point of view.

Anger is the obvious example.

 

FTS: Fantasizing The Solution

FTS 1  A positive fantasy that I repeat. This is like AS 6.1, (show feelings) but there is a positive event that I fantasize.

Examples:

  • Nostalgia – I relive or redo a positive past event.
  • Optimism – The future will go my way.
  • Wishful thinking – I will get what I wish for, just because I wish for it. For example,I fantasize something hard is easy because I wish it to be easy. Or I think you will get yourself out of your repeated lazy consideration of me.

FTS 2  Passive waiting: A positive image, that I wait for someone else or events to make happen.

Example:

  • Waiting for you to meet my needs.
  • Waiting for everything to go my way, or to feel like acting before I act.

FTS 3  Dependent thinking. Fantasizing that the thinking of someone else is better than my own and depending on them to tell me what to think or do. Depending on a fantasized standard that says I have to do something or I’ll be inferior.

Examples:

  • Tell me what to do!
  • Tell me the answer!

FTS 4  Pretending: making rules of living; denying that a negative exists, faking anything, imagining analysis will solve the problem.

Examples:

  • I imagine that I can live by rules and not have to adjust to reality in the moment.
  • I pretend there are no consequences to my avoiding work.
  • I pretend that if I analyze and understand, I can solve the problem.
  • I lie.
  • I pretend I don’t know. I play dumb.

FTS 5  Jumping to the solution: an easy one which I accept without much thought;  jumping to the end;  jumping to the opposite of the problem; a counter-thought.

Examples:

  • You tell me your pain, I jump to telling you the solution.
  • You say “black”, I counter by saying “not that black”, or “white”.
  • You want to go ahead. I want to think about it again, and again.

FTS 6  An ideal solution, thinking big.

Example:

  • An ambitious plan, a perfect solution.
  • I try to do everything at once.

FTS 7  There has to be an answer, and pushing my thinking to find it.

Example:

  • I keep going over and over a problem after everything I’ve tried has failed.

FTS 8  A final solution, big or small.

Example:

  • I cut you off after you hurt me.
  • If I improve myself, I’ll stop attacking myself forever.

 

PS: Pleasure Seeking

PS 1 Passive self-stimulation and distraction.

Examples:

  • getting high, watching movies, tv….

PS 2 Active self-stimulation and distraction

Examples

  • day dreaming/going with any thoughts that come in, associating from what I’m thinking to something else related to something related to that and so on, video games, fidgeting, work, especially physical work (everybody’s favorite: cleaning or organizing), exercise, eating, sex, shopping, surfing the internet, gambling….

PS 3 Procrastination: by doing the easy thing first, and second, and third and on and on.

Examples

  • I keep delaying bedtime, and getting up when I should.
  • I put everything off, in the fantasy that everything will go my way later
  • I think of some easy thing I can do or solve before I do anything, or even say my point of view.