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The Truth Wants To Free You

“Today I escaped anxiety.
Or no, I discarded it,
because it was within me,
in my own perceptions— not outside.”

—-Marcus Aurelius

As Socrates, Plato, Tolstoy, and Nietzsche would tell you: You don't know the truth. The source of the avoidable suffering my clients experience is that they believe they do know the truth, and, depending on the client, it's depressing; or threatening, or anger provoking, etc.

My challenge is to get them to curb their dogma and consider more beneficial suggestions. For example, I've told Barry: "Act as if the people at the party like you and want you to show interest in them." But what was intended to be a simple, supportive recommendation turned out to be a hard sell—"I'm not going to lie to myself" was his retort. This response is based on a key pillar of Barry's subjective reality: The certainty that "people don't like me and want nothing to do with me." [Of course, this is Barry's creative fiction. The people at the party have not met him yet and so have not had a chance to form any opinion.]

I remind Barry that he does not have the extra-se sensory powers to predict the future or read the minds of other people. As his therapist, I want Barry to understand: "Your negative beliefs abut what other think of you are no more objectively true than appraisals that would be more helpful. If it is truth you seek, then it is more accurate to say: 'In the past, I acted like a wallflower at parties and no one approached me.' But your judgment of yourself as intrinsically unlikable and doomed to social failure goes way beyond that observation of the events that happened. The only truth about your negative appraisal of yourself is that it impairs your social performance."

How self-fulfilling prophecies work

Your representation of reality is a convenience for your nervous system— a working hypothesis— that simplifies the task of interacting with a complex and ever changing environment. For example, when you see a snake in the grass it is adaptive to react as if you encountered a genuine threat—even if the snake you saw was not actually dangerous, or what you saw was not a snake but a curved branch that looked like a snake. Such over-reactions are harmless. However, when your over-reaction produces bad outcome and there is a recurring pattern to these over-reactions, it's time to research what is going on between stimulus and response.

Understand this: Your interpretations, judgments, appraisals, understandings, etc. are you creations and are not objective facts. Whatever map of reality you are currently using contains distortions that are the product of your early conditioning, current emotional state, thinking errors, etc. and is not the same as the objective world it is attempting to represent! Nevertheless, in real time you are bound to react to the things that happen as if your map was the same as the territory—that your subjective reality was the same as objective reality, that you see the world as it really is.

Consider the parallels between your self-sabotaging reactions and the reactions of hypnotized subjects to suggestion. The stage hypnotist evokes ridiculous reactions from his subjects by getting them to act as if his bogus descriptions of reality were true. Likewise, your recurring patterns of unwanted outcomes are the result of acting as if your bogus interpretations of the things that happen are true. Recurring patterns of bad outcome suggest that the filters you are using to facilitate you interaction with your environment are not serving you well.

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 selfies 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.

There is no most valid appraisal of Barry's worth. Despite his certainty that he is a worthless failure, it is obvious to anyone who knows him that this appraisal reflects Barry's bias not reality. He would do well to replace this judgment of himself with one that is equally valid but of greater utility.




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