If my girlfriend is late for the movie, I can be anxious if I believe she may be in an accident, or I can be angry if I believe that she does not care for my time, or I can be depressed if I believe that she does not like me any more.
Therefore the same event can cause different reactions based on our beliefs about the event.
Even if I know that my belief is incorrect, why can’t I change my belief?
- It may be that I get some benefit out of this belief. For example, it justifies my anger or my continued depression.
- It may be that I do not know how to change this belief.
- I, subconsciously, may still think that this belief is true. This could be because admitting that I am wrong means admitting that all my previous emotions and actions were incorrect and I may have to correct the impact of those actions on people who were affected. To eat humble-pie in front of all those persons would be terrifying.
- I am too involved in the emotion and I cannot detach myself from my experiences. It is easy to advise people on what to do, when they have emotional experiences – because you are detached from the problem. But to do the same to myself means detaching myself from my emotions and that is difficult to do.
Exercises 5 in the chapter on “Managing Negativity”, in my book talks about how to learn the process of dissociation, so that you can learn to detach yourself from your emotions and so be able to advise yourself.
I will first call her and will try to know what is the reason.After that I will try to verify her answer/excuse. If the reason given is true then I will be happy otherwise I will show my reaction. As all of us know every action should have some reaction otherwise Newton’s 3rd law will not be valid.
The above said statement is completely based on my personal point of view…………..
“Managing Negativity” Chapter must be a great read. I have been practicing ‘creative disassociation’ for sometime now but the process either make me heartless at times or theologist at another time.
@Anonymous
August 26, 2011 at 10:00 pm
How will you know whether the reason given by her is true or not? Most of the time we have to depend on trust. if you have trust on whatever she says then there is no need to show your reaction.
Hence the key point is trust which can automatically handle our emotions in this case.
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