Updated June 2024, Dec. 16, 2024 , Nov. 14. 2025; Feb. 4/26

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

Example: gravity is a problem. It pulls me from upright to down 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 feeling –  fear of falling – that would move my attention, my focus, to the feeling of being pulled down by gravity. I would have no chance to solve the problem that is the pull of gravity. I would have bad falls, thus proving that gravity is a real problem.

But many problems aren’t real. It follows that solving them is also unreal. I call this response an imaginary problem solving repsonse; psr for short. It’s a false or inappropriate problem solving response. It’s not my true response. But it makes me think it is a true response to a real problem. Once I’ve done it or if I observe it before I do it, I see that the problem and my response are not true. They are mostly imaginary with a sprinkling of reality. 

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 most ladders lead – somewhere unsafe. I picture falling. But then my imagination blows up the fall into a worst-case scenario, such as landing on my head and breaking it. Then it blows up further to me dying. Now I’m scared.

These two thought blow-ups 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, my 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 imaginary problem I searched my imagination 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. That set of psr’s gets added to by painful life experiences. When I remember them to get me to solve my anxiety, I call them self-attacks. 

I don’t have to know any of these psr’s to do the Seeing Sequence. However, psr’s are often powerful. Giving them a name  helps me disbelieve them. 

PF: Problem finding or fault finding

PF1  Looking for a problem. Looking for trouble. 

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 or how you hurt me. 
  • I tell myself over and over what happened.
  • I say “this reminds me of that” when something makes me feel bad. Or the reminder just flashes in, unbidden. 

PF 1.2  Parameter searching. I look over a situation in the present 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.
  • I expand the time I’ll have to wait for you into an eternity, or shrink it to dangerously not enough. 

PF 2  Magnifying the problem, a real one, 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.

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 or snakes or disapproval from someone whose point of view matters to me.

PF 4  Finding fault in myself through the eyes of others, real others or not. 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, I have to be motivated, 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 first 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, a type of inferiority – all work and no play – compared to happiness .

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

Examples:

  • Doing this will fail to make me happy.
  • I’ll fail to adapt to the world changing.
  • I’m going to miss the target.
  • This will take more time than I planned and put me behind my fantasized schedule to get to pleasure. 

PF 7  Finding fault in others, blaming others 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. This makes me believe I’m controlling what others think of me. I never let them choose disapproval. I can drive myself nuts with disapproval. 

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 you, or with what’s happening around me, or what went before. Fusing is my normal empathy gone too far. I’m  more active in creating it 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. This is not the same as going along with you if I predict will be disruptive or violent. When I do this I’m in a shun of you. (See The Rules of Hurt for what a shun looks like. 

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. If your disapproval is real, I imagine it will hurt me and I won’t recover. I prevent this by pretending to go along, to not differ from you. 

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 make up excuses when I have none.
  • 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”. Especially if you’re that wild creature called a young child.
  • I initiate what you should be initiating: I initiate affection when I see you aren’t, I clean up after you…(long list). 
  • 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.
  • I offer unsolicited help.

AS 6  Strong show of emotion to force approval of my point of view, that is, to manipulate you into giving approval to my point of view. 

AS 6.1  A 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 to an approving one. 
  • 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, to give me sympathy.

6.2.3  Give-up feelings: hopeless, overwhelmed, discouraged. A stronger way to get sympathy. 

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 innate human power of disapproval to hurt you or myself into approving of my point of view.

Accompanying this is the fantasy that the pain and fear I cause in you will be offset for the gratitude you will feel for seeing my point of view. It will be so much gratitude that you won’t go to war with me to make us even in the put-down I caused in you. 

Anger is the obvious example.

FTS: Fantasizing The Solution

FTS 1  A positive fantasy that I repeat over and over. 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.
    Examples: I fantasize something hard is easy because I wish it to be easy. I wishfully think you will get yourself out of your repeated lazy consideration of me. 

FTS 2  Passive waiting:  I wait for someone else or events to make something happen.

Example:

  • Waiting for you to meet my needs.
  • Waiting for everything to go my way. 
  • Waiting to feel like acting, in other words to feel motivatied 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!
  • Decide for me!

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.
  • I pretend that talk about doing is as good as doing. 

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

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.
  • I love taking short-cuts, which quickly turn long. 
  • When I move, I jump to it being over before I plan how to do it. Result: clumsy.

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 forever stop attacking myself.

PS: Pleasure Seeking

PS 1 Passive self-stimulation, distraction. 

Examples:

  • getting high, watching movies…long list.

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 favourite: cleaning or organizing), exercise, eating, 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 delaying getting up when I should.
  • I put everything off, in the double fantasy that 1) everything will go my way later and 2) because time is not filled up with stuff to do. (when time is stuffed with stuff to do). 
  • I think of some easy thing I can do or solve before I do anything (I check the kitchen before I put away a dish).