Most people walk through the world in a trance of disempowerment.
Our work is to transform that into a trance of empowerment— Milton Erickson
The Personal Research Tool identifies the interpretive lens that is responsible for unwanted reactions to events that happen. This is a cognitive therapy tool designed to identify the thinking errors that create the pathogenic lens. The objective is to use your Abstract Processing System to identify irrational beliefs and replace them with more rational beliefs. In theory, this will decrease self-sabotaging reactions.
In practice, during the critical moments the rational operator is likely to be asleep at the wheel during the critical moments and the more primitive Experiential Processing System will be controlling the action. For some individuals a change strategy that relies on imaginative narrative rather than logical analysis is more likely to available during crises of great stress or temptation.
Rather than dispute thinking errors, the user of this strategy may acknowledge that she used to think this way but now act as if a new and more helpful premise is operative. If, for example, your social performance is impaired by the belief that " people are not going to like me [Fortune Telling]," you can use suggestion to imagine and act as if "the people at the group want me to interact with them so they look and feel popular."
You can and do use the same power as the stage hypnotist
Suggestion refers to acting as if a fiction is true. The audience observes the stage hypnotist evoking ridiculous reactions from his subjects by getting them to act as if his bogus descriptions of reality were true. Consider the parallels between your self-sabotaging reactions and the bizarre activities of hypnotic subjects on stage.
Your recurring patterns of unwanted outcomes result from the unintentinal use of suggestion— that is, acting as if your interpretations of the things that happen are valid and complete. Admitedly, they feel like they are valid and complete, which makes them so devilishly convincing and thereby capable of evoking self-sabotaging reactions. Understand this: Convictions are greater enemies of truth than are lies!
The mental faculty of abstraction comes with the blessing and curse of reification. Your symptoms are the curse. However, you can take advantage of this amazing faculty by using the power of suggestion intentionally as stage hypnotists do. The ability to control this power improves with practice. Practicing with Hypnotic Suggestion scripts [such as the Heavy Shoe] is the most direct and rapid path to taking advantage of your capability to abstract.
The events that happened in your past are now part of world history and cannot be changed. However, the story you tell yourself about what these events mean about the world, or say about you and other people, is a creative fiction. It is one of an infinite number of interpretations that you, or somebody else created. In practice, you need a map of reality in order to response. But it is important to appreciate that the map you are using at any one time is just a way of summarizing a world that is far too complex for us mortals to fully comprehend.
The traps responsible for your mood or addictive disorder are composed of beliefs and perspectives that occupy the space between antecedent conditions and your reaction to them. The way out of these traps is to adopt the humility of Socrates— "The only thing I know is that I know noting." Once you see these creative fictions for what they are, you are no longer bound to act as if they are true. In fact, you can research the consequences of acting as if different fictions are true.
What is the truth about you?
Are you a pathetic victim or a heroic survivor?
Are you good or bad?
Are you loveable or unlovable?
Are you a success or a failure?
. . . .
[fill in the fiction responsible for your trap and its alternative]
Nietzsche’s Perspectivism
Barry, the suicide bomber, the Buddhist monk, the valley girl, you, and me all experience different subjective realities. We each act as if we see things as they are. However, none of these perspectives is valid and complete. Nobody’s subjective reality is the correct one. However, some perspectives bring about better outcomes than others, and hence have greater utility.
Barry’s judgment of himself as socially undesirable impairs his social performance and so becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. The fact that his expectations are confirmed promotes further reification of this self-sabotaging appraisal. One way to describe my role in our collaboration is to help him to De-Reify his pathogenic fictions and Reify more helpful premises.
To follow Nietzsche’s logic: Your current perspective is just one of the many possible ways to look at things. Since you cannot use validity as the criterion to select among the contenders, on what criterion should you base your selection?
How I Chose My Photo
I recently had to choose a photo of myself for my web site. Naturally, I selected the most flattering one. Then I had the thought: "You can’t use that one, it makes you look more handsome than you really are," then I thought: "Actually, it’s the other pictures that make you less handsome than you really are." Needless to say, this internal dialogue is pointless. I did not alter any of the photos, so none of the selfish are more valid than any of the others. Each shows how I look from a particular angle, with certain lighting, at a particular moment in time. There is no "most valid" photo of me, so I cannot use validity as the basis of selection. Instead, I’d be wise to choose the photo most likely to do the job I want it to do: Namely, evoke a favorable reaction from the viewer.
Just as my face looks different from different camera angles, my experience of the events that happen depends upon the perspective from which I perceive them. Some camera angles produce more attractive photos than others; some perspectives elicit performance-enhancing reactions while others depress performance. It makes no sense to argue that some camera angles are more valid than others; the photographer positions the camera to produce the outcome he seeks. Likewise, utility—not validity— is the appropriate criterion for selecting the perspective from which to interpret the things that happen.
My claim is that Barry’s premise the others will see him as repulsive is no more valid than the premise that others have no opinion about Barry and will be attracted or repulsed by him depending on how he treats them. I propose that Barry put our alternative hypotheses to an empirical test.
To research the influence of Barry’s beliefs about on social outcomes, he should attend some parties believing "They are not going to like me" and some believing "they are going to like me." To do this research, Barry would have to act as if each belief was true. This will be difficult for him because he has a prejudice [prejudgment in favor of his self-sabotaging appraisal]. His poor social performance in the past has resulted in outcomes that confirmed his handicapping belief.
To overcome the advantages of the handicapping suggestion, we have to do something special: Suggestion [that is pretending or acting as if the suggested reality was true] is a rapid and effective method to do the research. But he would have to be pretty gullible to accept a fictional suggestion. . . wouldn’t he?