As an example, many people who aren't ill nonetheless
entertain fearful thoughts to the effect, "I know I have a serious disease." Hypochondriacs,
for instance, "buy into" this recurring thought in order to recycle and replay the
sense of being at the mercy of an (imagined) illness that will get the best of them.
Their suffering is the price they pay for their underlying emotional addiction
to the victimhood of helplessness and powerlessness.
With this awareness, we can take responsibility for
what's happening in our life. Remember that people resist taking responsibility
for their suffering. We deny our complicity in our suffering. Instead, we try
to blame it on others or on difficult circumstances.
The second category (B) is associated with negative
thoughts generated by our inner critic or superego. This agency in our psyche
is harsh and cruel, and it assails us with sarcasm, mockery, and other
belittling accusations. When we feel this harassment, we create a corresponding
thought that reflects our experience. The more chronic the inner harassment
from our inner critic, the more we're plagued by negative thoughts.
Essentially, we feel or we say to ourselves, in the form of negative thoughts
and impressions, what our inner critic is saying to us. As we absorb this
aggression from our inner critic, we become an unwitting spokesperson for that
part of our psyche. (Note that we can also be an unwitting spokesperson for
inner passivity, as in category A, as well as an unwitting spokesperson for our
defenses, as in category C.)
Category C is a list of statements that represent the duplicity
of our psychological defenses. Each of these statements can be traced back to
show the structure and operation of the underlying defense. For instance, this
statement on the list--"My problem is I'm too lazy"--is a defense that pleads
guilty to what our psyche's accounting system considers "a lesser crime". The
defense reads, "I'm not guilty of indulging in feelings of being helpless. The
problem is I'm too lazy." The individual, however, pays a big price for
employing this unconscious defense. In pleading guilty to being lazy, he or she
suffers with guilt and tormenting negative thoughts having to do with the
alleged laziness.
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