Posted by pedrito on May 20, 2005, at 15:05:40
In reply to » pedrito , » alexandra_k, posted by badhaircut on May 16, 2005, at 0:31:48
> You're right. From what I wrote it sounds as though I bought into the idea. Like I was applying Albert Ellis' snarly rhetorical question: "Whaaat's so baaaad about being a jaaackass?" (I can hear his voice saying it. And hey, Pete, it sounds like Ellis would know! LOL)
-- Apparently, yes. He’s quite “unique” from what I hear!
> But that's not what I meant. I guess I've lived with the intense I'm-a-jerk mindset for so long that I didn't realize quite how I was applying mindful detachment.
-- Yes, I often find that I am employing well-known psychological techniques without ever having heard of them. It’s quite pleasing in some ways (since it makes me think I am clever =o) but also a bit gutting since it’s one more technique you’ve already tried without much success. D’oh.
> For me, "jackass" comes as a set, cemented to a ton of loud, persistent thoughts like:
> •People think I'm annoying.
> •No one will sincerely like me.
> •I don't know anything about wine.
> •etc etc etc
> And feelings of shame, humiliation, fear, and shame.-- Yes. Negative thinking is so insidious. It’s lightning fast and strikes hard. Really hard. Sickening.
> I guess by " 'being' a jackass" (and what I now realize I meant by the ironic quotes and the "sorta") I was talking about the whole set. Accepting Me as the guy who has all those thoughts all the time. Wow! That is what I meant.
-- Bueno.
> On any checklist of boorish behavior I would score very low. In this sense I am not a jackass. But that sense is inseparable in my mind from all those other senses that do apply to me. Senses like, "One who thinks he is a jackass." And they're not merely inseparable: they turn into each other so rapidly & sneakily that if I say any one sense is false I could end up trying to deny my own existence.
>
> I'm not a jackass except that I think that I am, and anyone who thinks that he is one, is.
>
> There's no way out of that.-- Not even if you accept yourself for having the thoughts that you are a jackass?
> > A feeling of conviction or certainty has become attached to the content of a thought being veridical, where really the sense of conviction or certainty should be attached to the fact that they are having the thought....
>
> A feeling of certainty is itself a sort of mental event one can watch float by like a cloud.
>
> Sometimes I cannot separate a feeling of certainty from the crazy thought it's attached to. But I can separate myself (my core sense of self-recognition, the mindful "observer-me") from both the crazy thought and its attached feeling of certainty. Both of which walk along with me, but neither of them is me or even part of me.
>
> Easier to write about than to practice, of course.-- Yes. I am learning, slowly, that just because I have powerful visions, images and thoughts that I am loathesome and worthless, that I don’t have to believe them. I’m slowly beginning to believe that no amount of rational challenging could address that thinking and that I just do it. Lexapro is certainly helping here, I can feel it. It’s weird.
>
> ACT says, Apply problem-solving to the exterior world; apply acceptance to the interior. Though the authors do go into more detail than "Just accept it."
>
> > bhc - have you tried these techniques? have you had much success?
>
> I got outside my house on Thursday! This is no small thing. ACT says start somewhere and keep broadening the circle of un-avoided experiences, moving toward the things that are most personally important to you, and only you. But I don't know what's important to me, and I'm afraid to find out, so I haven't continued broadening my experience much. This exact situation wasn't covered in the literature.-- Good on you son!
> In these posts I sound like a recruiter for the local ACT house. I'm not. I've been burned by NEW! & IMPROVED! Psychology enough times to be jaded. But I'd love to get people interested enough in ACT issues to tear through the theory with me. As you two have been doing.
>
> -bhc-- Well I’m along for the ride. Apologies for going quiet this week, I’ve been feeling OK for once and have been maxing out on making the most of it. I am studious and battle-scarred enough not to take this for granted and to keep working. Thus I will be reading up on ACT still.
Cheers,
pete
poster:pedrito
thread:492810
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/books/20050501/msgs/500415.html