{"id":102,"date":"2020-04-17T20:17:38","date_gmt":"2020-04-17T20:17:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/disordersofmood.com\/personal-research\/?p=102"},"modified":"2020-08-02T18:29:44","modified_gmt":"2020-08-02T18:29:44","slug":"the-truth-wants-to-make-you-free-3","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/disordersofmood.com\/personal-research\/the-truth-wants-to-make-you-free-3\/","title":{"rendered":"The Truth Wants to Make You Free"},"content":{"rendered":"
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“Today I escaped anxiety.
\n Or no, I discarded it,
\n because it was within me,
\n in my own perceptions— not outside.”<\/em><\/p>\n

—-Marcus Aurelius<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

I often try to get pessimistic, self-critical clients to give themselves more encouraging suggestions. For example, I told Barry: "Act as if<\/em> the people you are going to meet at the party like you." 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." This response is based on a key pillar of Barry’s subjective reality: The certainty that "people won’t like me." [Of course, the people at the party have not met Barry yet and so have not had a chance to form an opinion.] <\/p>\n

I remind Barry that he does not have the extra-se sensory powers to predict the future or read the minds of other people. Beyond his unquestioning acceptance of the obvious thinking errors, as his therapist I want Barry to understand: "Your negative judgments of yourself 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 valid statement. The only truth about your negative appraisal of yourself is that it impairs your social performance."<\/p>\n

How self-fulfilling prophecies work <\/h3>\n

The brain creates a map of the outside world from all the data it receives. As you know, the map is not the same as the world it is attempting to represent. Nevertheless, when you see a snake in the grass it is adaptive to react<\/em><\/strong> as if<\/em><\/strong> 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.<\/p>\n

A stage hypnotist entertains his nightclub audience by getting the subjects on stage to act as if<\/strong><\/em> his suggestions were true, when they are in fact fictions —for example: "There are heavy weights pulling your left arm down while helium balloons are lifting your right arm up," or more humorously and hence more likely to be part of a stage show, "There are snakes at your feet" [see Suggestion<\/a>]. <\/p>\n

To be effective, suggestions do not have to be delivered by an external entity. In fact, the most potent suggestions do not come from professional hypnotists but from the fictions you create to represent the world around you. <\/p>\n

Whenever you act as if<\/em><\/strong> a particular belief was true, you are exhibiting the hypnotic phenomenon of suggestion. Of particular interest to us: Negative self-appraisals — such as, "I cannot succeed" are effective at impairing performance for several reasons, including the fact that they are disheartening and so sap the motivation required for successful performance. Because expectations of failure are self-validating, they strengthen the potency of future handicapping suggestions. <\/p>\n

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Implicit Suggestion : Attribution Theory<\/h2>\n

The appraisal of yourself as a failure carries with it implicit causes for your failure. According to Attribution Theory, <\/a> individuals who attribute their failures to internal, stable and global causes are more vulnerable to clinical depression. <\/p>\n