POISONS AND ANTIDOTES
PHILIP B. ROSENTHAL
Over the last few years I've developed a self-help practice called Poisons and Antidotes
Poisons and Antidotes evolved from things I did working with my most difficult client....MYSELF.
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I would find myself feeling lousy and trying to be articulate about what was bothering me.
When I probed I often found some set of negative thoughts about myself.
"I don't finish projects.
I'm not where I should be....career-wise, relationship-wise, confidence-wise.
I'm weak.
I'm stuck where I've always been.
I just cannot do what I have to do."
It seemed to be helpful to take a pen in hand and write down these thoughts, to get them onto paper, and not just rolling around in my mind. I began to think that I was draining some of the poisons that were inside me.
I'm not sure exactly how the rest of the practice evolved, but it did.
I started to feel a need to find something to deal with these negative thoughts. I began to try to come up with counter-arguments. If these thoughts dragged me down, what might lift me up?
I yearned to have some wisdom that I could hold onto, something positive, that related specifically to the particular negative thoughts.
Just like poisons have specific antidotes, the substances that counteract the poisonous effects, I wondered if I could come up with specific psychological antidotes for these psychological poisons. There's got to be an antidote for rat poison, for lye, for sulfuric acid. There's got to be an antidote for "nothing I do ever works" or "I'm hopelessly behind all my peers."
I found that I was calling on very different parts of myself. When I wrote the poisons I was taking down the words and messages of my most vulnerable, most fearful, most discouraged self. When I wrote down the antidotes I was calling upon my wisest, most solid, most compassionate self.
Often the Poisons and Antidotes derivation was a two step process. Often when I was beset by my negative thoughts all I could do was write them down, as vividly and pungently as possible. While in the middle of the negativity I could not locate any voice of positiveness or wisdom. It would only be hours, days or weeks later that I could locate a voice inside myself that had something to say to counter the poison.
It did help to have the poison written down. Let's say I found what I'd written days afterward. Now I was not caught in the negative thoughts but I could certainly remember some of the feelings and recognize what had been written as "mine". Having the explicit statement of the negative thoughts then served as a precipitant, as a challenge, to come up with what a person who was beset by such negative thoughts might need to hear. The poison was the grain of sand that served as an irritant for the oyster to create its pearl.
When I work with my clients on POISONS AND ANTIDOTES I bring them over to my desk. I begin to type on my laptop computer and they watch the screen. They see me distill what they have told me into a few very pungent, maybe exaggerated sentences that make a strong statement of the poison. Then they watch as I tap out on the keyboard a few sentences that might serve as a good antidote to that particular set of poisonous thoughts about themselves.
Each time I improvise. It's never the exactly the same poison. It's never exactly the same antidote.
How might we characterize the antidote that I come up with? If this antidote takes on a voice, how might we characterize that voice?
It is a voice that looks upon the yuck that the poison has so pungently captured with openness. It does not argue away the facts of the poison. It does not argue with the poison. It does not turn away in aversion. It does not say "No, that's not so. That isn't true!"
The voice for the antidote meets the poison, greets the poison and in a way dances with it.
The voice of the antidote is a wise voice of experience. The voice of the antidote has seen things come and go, has seen the tide go out and the tide come back in. The voice of the antidote understands the tidal nature of experience.....the cyclical nature of experience.
The voice of the antidote is a cousin of the Tibetan meditation which instructs us to turn the corners of our mouths upward in a smile. This is not smiley-face insipid sticker smile. It is a deep inner smile of acceptance. We look upon our foolishness, our frantic thrashings, our urgencies .....and smile.
Often the words of the antidote begin "Yes......." and paraphrase some of the poison message. Yes, you do feel that way. Yes, you do feel that way now.
The antidote voice lets the distraught voice of the poison know he or she has been heard. It wouldn't work if the antidote voice skirted the message of the poison and simply said "You're a good person" or "God loves you."
In this practice it is best if the antidote really meets the poison. The specific words of the antidote come from some intuitive understanding of how that particular poison works.
Let's look at some examples:
Here is one of my own:
Here's the poison:
I am prone to periods of deflation when I am pulled by all the unfinished projects and wasted money.
Here's the antidote I came up with:
Yes, you are prone to periods of deflation.
Is this a bear market? Is this related to having promoted a bull market in which things were overvalued? Overvalued in a manic, not so grounded way?
Don’t assume things are as value-less as you might calculate right now.
Withhold judgment.
Put one foot in front of the other.
Turn to an alternative image of yourself.....not excessively wonderful....but positive.....hold it in your mind’s eye.....take some action, even small from this image.
Note that the first line of the antidote acknowledges the existence of the emotional state. The rest of the antidote goes on to re-interpret the meaning of the state and tries to place it into a context that might provide a handle with which a person could take some useful actions.
Here is another example:
Poison:
You are manipulative. Like the pickpocket who sees only the pocket...that’s the level of involvement you have with people....what can they do for you....how can they feed you....
And the antidote:
There is an element of truth in this, but it’s not the whole truth.
I am trying to learn ways of relating that are less for me, me, me.
I have noticed that I am curious about other people and can be more generous when I’m less anxious and better fed emotionally.
In the next example one of my clients was very down on herself for trying to quit smoking and not succeeding. I provided her with an antidote.
Poison:
You are weak. You are hurting yourself and you’re not doing anything about it. No matter what you say, you’re not successful at this.
For the antidote I tried to get a voice that could acknowledge what she had done and what she had yet to do.
Your strengths and weaknesses are mountains and valleys. You I do have valleys and you do have mountains. Everyone is unneven. It's your job to identify the valleys and do something to bring them up a little bit at a time.
The accusations are way too broadbrush.
You actually have done some things to address your concerns about smoking.
Don’t you get partial credit on this exam?
You have cut down.
You have put a lot of attention into this area.
You are looking for more tools to use to help yourself with this problem.
Smoking is the Rodney Dangerfield of addictions. It gets no respect. If you are going to tackle this addiction you need to respect its strength and how it is intertwined with so many things in your life.
You will need to re-tool a lot of the ways that you do things. That’s not an excuse for doing nothing. How can you begin? What are some small steps that you can take?
Can you write down and keep track of the small, even very small steps that you do take?
Being weak and being strong are not mutually exclusive. You are strong and you are weak. So is probably everyone I know. Denying weakness is not a strength. Identifying and knowing and studying and “palpating” the weakness can give you more to work with.
If you start and continue to work on your breathing and excitement/anxiety management this will help you be able to replace cigarette smoking which has been the tool you've really relied on til now.
Poisons and Antidotes assumes that our personal poisons are like perennials in a garden. They come up every year. Sometimes they are referred to as "hardy perennials." In Poisons and Antidotes we assume that a poison we encounter, and for which we work with to articulate an antidote, will return. The negative thought will be back. And if it returns, and we can remember that we've got our Poisons and Antidotes written up, we can be helped by the antidote.
After working on POISONS AND ANTIDOTES with a client in my office I encourage that client to be on the lookout for more poisons in their life experience. When they feel lousy they are to ask themselves "What's the poison here? What am I telling myself?" And then they are to try to write down the essence of that poison.
Early on I do not expect my clients to be able to do a great job of coming up with an antidote. At this point their job is to come up with the poison. And to bring it in to a therapy session where we can work on it together.
Most people need a lot of teaching and a lot of modelling to refine their ability to speak well in the voice of the antidote, to get into their voice of wisdom and experience.
Often we need to be REMINDED of things in order to assimilate them and integrate them into our beings.
We get some new perspective; it seems to make sense. We may say "Ah. That's a much better way to look at things. The old way caused me such trouble." And then over time we forget the new way to look at things and we're back with the old troublesome non-productive perspective. That's where reminders can be helpful.
What we write down can serve as a reminder to ourselves, but HOW we write it down and where we write it down can have a significant effect on just how useful it will be.
If we scrawl something down it will be hard to read. At the other end of the continuum if we write it clearly, concisely and maybe even BOLDLY....then this reminder is more likely to give a strong clear message.
It also helps to store the reminders in a consistent and accessible place, so that it is really easy to get to the reminder. That is why I suggest putting these messages in a consistent place in a file on one's computer or setting aside a section of one's journal devoted solely to such reminders.
If you were a squirrel you might have some awareness that winter is coming, and it would be a good idea to gather some acorns while they are available and plentiful....and to put them in a specific spot, let's say a hole in a particular tree. Then when winter comes, and you the squirrel feel hungry and there are no acorns around, then you might remember there's that tree with the hole in it, and that's where the acorns are.
It is helpful to have things come from out there to provide fresh messages, especially at times when the messages from inside are negative. Over the course of work with Poisons and Antidotes one develops and cultivates a voice of wisdom that co-exists with the negative voice. Over time what evolves is a different and more flowing balance among the many members of one's internal committee.Is
YOU’RE LAZY! YOU NEVER FOLLOW THINGS THROUGH
This IS an issue for you. An old, familiar, perennial issue. As such, welcome back. I welcome you back as an old friend, or at least I’ll try to. Trying to ignore the issue or eradicate it hasn’t worked.
Lazy.
What does this word really mean? Maybe calling yourself “lazy” is being lazy. Because it doesn’t specify what’s going on, where the gaps are that will need to be filled.
Is it a problem in getting started?
Is it a problem in staying with something?
Is it a problem in bringing some piece of work to a conclusion?
Being more specific can give you more of a handle on what you are dealing with.
You’re selfish. Preoccupied with your drama and how you’re looking and how you’re doing. You don’t give a damn about other people.
You say this to yourself with a certain ferocity. Looking down at a lower form of life. As if we know that the people who aren’t selfish are much higher forms of life than the people who are selfish. Isn’t that a little bit arrogant? And who is it that’s making this judgment?
There are many things that can interfere with the capacity to feel compassion for other people.
It’s good to get curious about what interferes with your capacity to be mindful of what others are experiencing.
It’s good to get curious about what conditions seem to favor your being able to feel something in your heart for others and not be so pulled by your own particular drama.
You don’t finish what you start.
Ooh. That smarts.
It hurts to tell yourself that you never finish anything you start.
Why would someone say that to himself or herself? It’s such a broadbrush generalization. Always. Never. They can’t help but be over-inclusive.
Consider getting interested in what stands in the way of completing what you start.
Regard the interference as an object of interest. You are a butterfly collector and it’s another species, another specimen to study. So get close to it. Get it into your net. Bring it back so we can look at it.
You did it AGAIN. You’d said you wouldn’t and you did. Again.
Do we sense some disappointment here? Some anger? Some exasperation? Even despair?
Broken promises make the maker of the broken promise feel terrible. You probably should never have made the promise in the first place.
You were likely feeling awful the last time you did whatever it was....and made a vow “I’ll never do THAT again!” It backfired! It was a disaster! I felt so awful!”
It’s easy to make such a vow after you’ve done whatever it is.
It’s like finishing a big big bag of potato chips, feeling sick to your stomach and vowing “That is SO stupid! I’ll never do this again!” Easy to say when the bag is empty and your stomach feels sick. Much harder to follow through on when you’re hungry and the bag is full.
You’ll need more than a New Years Resolution. It shows insufficient respect for the pull of the bad habit to make such vows. They are way too bold. They are intentions without an infrastructure. They need to be broken down into more modest experiments.
You can’t make decisions. You don’t know what you want.
You are disgusted right now with how you deal with decisions.
That disgust makes you draw away from what you do. Uccch! How incompetent! How pathetic!
Instead of taking those steps away from yourself as incompetent decision maker consider taking an identical number of steps TOWARD yourself as incompetent decision maker.
Regard your incompetent decision making as an interesting tourist destination, worth exploring. And exploring with curious eyes, attentive ears and an open heart.
There are so many interesting questions:
Which decisions tend to make you feel most paralyzed or confused?
Which decisions--even if they seem trivial--are relatively less hard to make or carry through?
Is it more that you don’t know what you want or that you don’t accept what you want?
Is it that you cannot accept the downsides of a path you might be choosing?
Is it that you are afraid to make the “wrong” choice? Is a “wrong” choice one that leads to a non-preferred outcome?
You’re a phony.
What if you said it differently?
“I am a phony....among other things.”
That means you’re not just a phony. That means you’re not always a phony.
People who deny that they are are ever a phony.....what to make of them? Are they being honest with themselves?
Can we look a little closer at the phenomenon of being a phony or feeling like a phony? When does it happen? Where does it happen? What conditions seem to favor the emergence of feelings of phoniness? What conditions seem to favor something different emerging, feeling less phony?
Accusing yourself of being a phony does go along with an aspiration to be less phony. That is a good aspiration, but to be realized, that aspiration is best turned into small actions that allow for expression of the parts of yourself that you fear exposing.
You can’t maintain a relationship.
The accusation states: You can’t maintain a relationship.
How do you plead? Guilty or not guilty? Guilty with an explanation?
This accusation often follows the breakup of a relationship and involves a residue of feeling.
Somehow anger, hurt and sadness can be transformed into guilt and self-accusation.
It’s fine to bring yourself into court to judge your role in the breakdown of a relationship, but make sure the prosecuting attorneys don’t overpower or outtalk the defense attorneys. Also check whether the judge is a punishing judge or a judge that is compassionate and interested in education and rehabilitation.
You are a baby. Grow up! You can’t just keep on depending on everyone else.
“Grow up” is just as helpful to say to someone as it is to say “Take a shit” to someone who’s constipated.
It’s hard to grow up. We need all the help we can get to grow up. A kick in the ass is over-rated as a stimulus to growing up.
We weren’t meant to be totally self-reliant. A horse can walk within hours after being born, but you know what?.....it never develops beyond being a horse. Part of the human potential is to grow by being with other people and depending on them.
Exactly what does your being a baby involve? Could you look a little closer? What are you doing that you feel you shouldn’t be doing? What aren’t you doing that you feel you should be doing?
You’re a failure. You’ve fallen so far behind everyone else that you were with.
It’s easy to fall into making comparisons with others. Who’s ahead? Who’s accomplished what? Who’s risen how high? Who seems to have clarity of life direction?
Pay attention to what might have thrown you into this negative comparison. Even if you’re prone to such comparisons, and this is a recurrent experience, still pay some attention to what the precipitating words were this time. Just what happened?
Can you acknowledge that you were hurt? disappointed? surprised? jarred?
What aspiration are you falling short of? Take a fresh look at that aspiration. Don’t abandon it too abruptly. Don’t hold onto it too tightly. Look at it with fresh eyes.
I can’t hold onto a man / woman.
This can be a big ouch. A big heartache. How many songs are there sung by people who are aching because of the woman or the man who left? And the person who’s been left behind taking it personally, no, more than personally. Taking it as an indictment of the inner being, proof of a deep permanent defect.
Here’s the implied poetry for a man: If I were okay, she’d have stayed. If I had the right body, the right weight, the right lines, she’d have stayed in love with me.
For a woman: If I had played harder to get, he would have stayed. If I weren’t so fucked up, he would have stayed.
These formulations neglect the truth that relationships are co-created and co-destroyed. It isn’t fair or accurate to claim 100 percent of the blame for the non-survival of a relationship. The very wording of the poison (“I can’t hold onto......”) implies that the survival of the relationship was determined by the “holding onto” skills (or absence thereof) of one person. It’s greedy, inaccurate and un-helpful to put all of the weight for a relationship’s survival on one person.
What skills ARE helpful to being in a relationship? Negotiation. Compassion. A sense of self, but not one too rigidly held. A commitment to keep learning. Acceptance that some yucky feelings will come, and you’ll have to learn how to manage fear, disappointment, hurt and anger.
I just don’t have any energy. I’m tired. The comings and goings of energy often seem mysterious.
How come I’m totally exhausted one minute and not exhausted the next? How come I can be exhausted after sleeping and sleeping and full of energy when I’ve had virtually no sleep.
Degrees of tiredness or alertness are not strictly related to how many hours you’ve slept or how much effort you’ve put out.
Often being stuck is the greatest energy drain. When you can’t stay and you can’t leave. When you can’t move forward and you can’t move backward.
It’s worth it to scan for possible energy drains, those places in your life where you are caught.
I don’t care. I don’t give a shit
Let’s imagine a pole with two ends: I care and I don’t care.
It’s not automatically better to care.
Caring can lead to some wonderful moments and also some very painful ones.
It’s how you care.
Some caring is very tight and possessive. I care so much. I want things to be a certain way. I want you to love me. I want you to be with me. I want things to work out between us.
Is there a way to care.....without being so attached to the way things go, that allow you to go with the flow of life?
Often people who say “I don’t give a shit” are people who cared too much, who were attached to certain outcomes, were disappointed and hurt, and now have gone to the other extreme.
I should have dealt with this issue years ago.
I’m too far behind to catch up. The metaphor here is that of a race and you are too far behind and you’ll never catch up. That’s a powerful metaphor, infused with its power over the years by cultural and family teachings.
Races are to be won. The crowd cheers winners.
Are you keeping up?
Several key items that may be helpful.
The comparisons to others are not as relevent as comparisons to yourself.
When you compare yourself to others often you forget some of the factors that may tend to hold you back. Did you start off even with these people? What supports have they accessed? Which supports have you accessed?
Better to compare yourself with yourself. Have you moved at all, even a little bit, from where you were? Is there anything you know now that you didn’t used to know?
You cannot make up tremendous amounts of ground in a short period of time. You can get started though. And you can try to turn your attention to what you are doing or can do, and turn your attention away from those people who are way ahead of you.
I say I’m going to do it and then I don’t do it.
A recognition, but it seems like a painful recognition. Is there an implication of a pattern, that this happens again and again?
It would probably be good to adopt an attitude of curiosity about this phenomenon. How could it come to happen, and happen in this way?
If you are curious that implies some acknowledgment that this going to do it and not doing it thing exists. So you are turning toward it rather than away from it.
Can you remember what was going on inside you when you said you were going to do it? Can you remember what was going on around you when you said you were going to do it?
Were you aware of any doubts about whether you could or would do it before you said “yes”? If you had doubts, what did you do with them?
Did you take long enough to consider whether to say “yes”? Did you consider the downsides as well as the upsides?
Were there some ways that you didn’t want to do it?
Were there some ways that you found it harder to do than you’d anticipated?
Sometimes it’s hard to untangle the relative influences of not wanting to do something and finding it hard to do. Does not wanting to do it make it hard? Does it being hard make you not want to? The influence can and does go in both directions. How might it play out here?
I know I lied but I can’t admit that I lied.
People lie most often when they fear what would come if they didn’t lie. But the lying often leads to a new fear, the fear of being confronted on their lie. By avoiding one fear, the person has become vulnerable to another.
So it takes some work with vulnerability to admit that you have lied.
All helpful ways of dealing with one’s own lying are hard.
It’s a good thing to study what led to the lie, what the pressures were, what the assumptions were.
It’s a good thing to take interest in how the lie and its exposure has affected the other person.
You may or may not be able to share all the of stuff that led up to the lie. It depends on the depth of the relationship.
It keeps on happening again and again and again.
And obviously you're not happy about it happening again and again and again. Presumably you're tried to keep it from happening, and yet here you are and it's happened AGAIN. The again-ness...to make up a word....gets to you. It's a pattern. A pattern you don't like, but haven't been exactly successful in getting rid of.
Two things to consider. One is that you're taking this experience, situation or occurrence as INSTANCE NUMBER 201 or 5,648 of the pattern. And you are not paying enough attention to specifics of THIS experience, situation or occurrence. It's a variation on a theme, but you're paying all the attention to the theme and not to the variation. What would happen if you asked yourself "How is this instance different? What are the special or unique qualities of this time around?"The other thing to consider is that the effort to FIGHT what is happening doesn't work very well. Protesting, promising "I won't let this happen again", and hating yourself for it usually don't lead to useful learning or interesting change. As hard as it might be, lean into "Here I am again. Instead of fighting it, my prayer is "Let me squeeze as much learning out of the experience as I can, Let me fully experience this particular variation on the theme." As you do this, the theme will become more nuanced and rich.
I can’t help being over-sensitive.
You can’t help BEING over-sensitive.
When something hits a button of yours, you can’t help having a reaction that’s out of proportion. That’s what makes a button a button. Press here, little reaction. Press here, little reaction. Press here, BIG reaction.
You can help yourself and the others around you by working with this over-sensitivity. It doesn’t have to be a hard unchangeable entity, a script that always goes the same lousy way every time it is evoked.
First it might help to identify those situations, people, comments or experiences that are most likely to GET you.
Next it might help to say, “It got me. Again.” And that’s where I am now. Maybe I won’t always be this sensitive, but I am this sensitive now.”
Who can help me?
I can turn inward and try to find some voice of wisdom inside me.
I can turn outward and try to find some voice ofg wisdom outside me.
I hate my body. It’s too ......fat, old, frail.....
Hmmm. You hate your body. You’ve said it clearly, emphatically and with feeling. It’s not the first time you’ve said it. It won’t be the last time.
You’ve learned to hate your body from cultural and personal sources.
The culture teaches that not all bodies are acceptable and that there are STANDARDS to judge bodies by. And if you don’t measure up to these standards there are some nasty words that apply: “fat” “disgusting” “old” and many others. Certain types of bodies are appreciated, and evidently the peak of beauty and acceptability comes somewhere around sixteen or eighteen years of age.
That’s from the general culture, but your particular experiences have doubtless imprinted other excellent reasons to hate your body.
Dig in for the long haul on this particular poison. it’s not gonna go away, or if it goes away, it’ll be back.
Resolving to devote yourself to improving your body might seem like a natural or obvious solution, but is it really THAT natural or obvious.
What about having COUPLES THERAPY between you and your body? What about airing the resentments and disappointments that you have had with your body AND allowing your body to air the disappointments and hurts it has suffered living with you.
I’m overwhelmed. There’s just too much to deal with.
This might sound terribly stupid, inadequate and hopelessly corny.
Take a deep breath.
Concentrate on the breath. Take another.
Slowly.
Don’t press too hard to make it an amazingly deep breath. Do it comfortably. Concentrate on the breath.
I don’t know where to start. There’s just so much.
I can’t get support from inside until I get support from the outside. I can’t get support from the outside until I get support from the inside. I’m fucked. If you don’t have access to internal support that does make it harder to access external support. If you don’t have access to external support it’s harder to access internal support. Together the two statement can put people in a difficult, precarious position. Difficult but not impossible. May feel like “totally fucked” but not really totally fucked.
I make a plan and don’t follow it.
It can’t feel great to notice that you made a plan and you didn’t follow it.
It feels less great to notice multiple instances.
Let’s get interested in the pattern. Instead of a stance of disgust or judgment, let’s adopt a stance of curiosity.
Where did this plan come from? How did this plan come about? By what process did it emerge?
At what stage of a mood cycle did this plan get hatched?
Was there any attention to the possible obstacles to this plan being carried out? Obstacles on the outside....obstacles on the inside.
Having a healthy respect for the obstacles can make a difference. It’s not respectful to set out climbing a tall rugged mountain like Mount McKinley in sandals and shorts. That shows insufficient respect for the mountain. More preparations. Better supplies. A little bit of training.
Here’s another way to put it. Many plans to do hard things fail because of INSUFFICIENT ACCESS TO INTERNAL AND OR EXTERNAL SUPPORT.
I start things and never finish them.
You just said “I start things and never finish them.”
It’s probably not the first time you’ve said this to yourself. How do you feel as you say it? We may not know exactly how you feel as you say it, but we can be pretty sure you’re not happy, you’re not content, you’re not at peace.
There’s a negative tone.
But let’s look a little closer at the experience.
Can you turn toward the experiences you’ve just had rather than turn away in disgust? Can you embrace them and learn from them? You’ll need to learn more about your own process of starting, staying with and finishing things. You’ll need to identify what gets in the way of completion.
Some ways of telling the story are more useful than others. Simply saying “I must be lazy” doesn’t give you a handle. “I’d be afraid that I didn’t quite do it right and people would be upset with me” gives you more to work with. Identifying the fears that come in, or would come in if you opened to the experience, can be an important step. Learning how to better manage those fears comes next.
If I said it....they’d be mad, there goes the relationship, I couldn’t stand their reaction.
I have this sinking feeling in my guts again.
You have made an important discovery. Not that you’re the first to have discovered it.....an important discovery that your body is connected to your mind, that your body responds when things are going on in your life.
What makes THESE physical feelings so difficult to tolerate? If you knew that they were a stomach virus, it’d probably be easier to tolerate. You’d hate the feelings, you’d try to find some way of spending time that made the time go by (watching a video or lying in bed), and you’d give yourself the gift of letting go of expectations of what you’re supposed to do or accomplish.
But these feelings iin your gut are different. You connect them with what is goiing on in your life and in your mind. You associate them wiith depression and wiith anxiety.
I doubt that you’ll ever like having a sinking feeling, but can you learn to be less quick to evaluate it and attach such a meaning to the experience? Maybe there’s some information to be had. Maybe the signal from your sinking-feeling-ometer can teach you something valuable about your humanness and your vulnerability.
I made the wrong choice and now I’m stuck with it.
So you were at an important crossroads as you were going through the woods of life. At the crossroads you were faced with going down path A or path B. And you chose A. And now you’re convinced it was the wrong path, and B would have been better, and here you are on lousy path A.
First thing to point out is that you’re making this evaluation having gone part way down path A. Your experience with this path is not complete or sufficient to judge.
You are probably experiencing some of the bumps or down sides of path A. But EVERY path has some down sides and bumps. You’re in a much better position to feel and be upset by the bumps and down sides of path A. They’re all around you.
You’re fooling yourself if you believe that path B was without down sides and bumps.
Also you’re a fool not to notice, experience and exploit the up sides of the path you’re on. You are paying for the down sides. It’s unfortunate if you don’t notice the up sides.
Let’s say you had to decide between a weekend in the country and a weekend in the city. You choose the country. Okay, miss the cafe’s and the museums. But notice the green covered hills.
My mind just keeps going and going....and it’s not about good stuff, it’s about bad stuff.
Yes, your mind is having trouble slowing down or turning off.
What might be contributing to that? Which fears have been mobilized that are getting you going?
Your fears are probably leading you to imagine all the bad things that have happened, are happening or could happen in the future.
It’s like you’re the sole member of the audience in a private movie theater and the movies are all horror movies.
Can you imagine turning around to the projectionist and telling the projectionist to choose another movie.
Do you have OTHER movies to view?
They don’t need to be completely opposite in terms of being all good to balance out the all bad. They could be more middle and mixed movies.