A while ago, I wrote about my “am I still the same?” question. There is another old favourite whining around in my head at the moment. It’s the “are you angry with me?” one. I feel like a squeaky teenager who I’d like to give a good shake.
“Are you angry with me?” “What have I done?” “Don’t you like me anymore?”
(more…)
Belief.
I am an educated women; but I’ve still had to resort to the dictionary to really pin this one down. It says: “something that somebody believes in – a statement, principle or doctorine that a person or group accepts as true”.
I hadn’t given the word a lot of consideration until recently. Belief was all about religion and ideas; it hadn’t really entered the therapeutic vocabulary.
This was quite an oversight.
Belief is right at the centre of everything. What you believe about yourself is so important that I didn’t even consider it. The link between thought and action is so obvious that I totally missed it. And had to go right back to the beginning.
My pondering on perception has opened a whole can of worms.
I’ve been going round and round and round and coming back to the same conclusion: we’re all unique and we all see things a bit differently.
It’s best illustrated through marmite. You either love it or hate it. A marmite lover talking about marmite is likely to create a very different impression of the flavour sensation to that given by a marmite hater.
As I said, it’s all subjective.
And subjectivity is a precarious basis for self perception.
A lesson in the precarious world of perception.
For years, I believed that my voice was way too loud. I had a whole issue about speaking too much; was convinced that the volume was a notch or two too high, that I came across as overbearing or demanding.
One day, I was told that my voice was so quiet that it could barely be heard. That, by unspoken agreement, windows were closed when I was in the room so that any other noise was blocked out.
Moral of the story: your head can get it wrong.
When you reach a certain age, running around with no clothes on stops being socially acceptable.
It’s the best example that I can think of to show how we learn about the intangible things. How an emotional experience can be as tangible as a physical one.
The hot pan analogy started me thinking about how we form beliefs about things. Adam and Eve have taken it a step further. We don’t just form physical beliefs. We also form emotional ones.
And I think that it works in the same way as the burning pan scenario. We learn by reaction.
