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Cerebrum...In this exploration, the simple truth is that everyone screws up. We will face traumas, and make embarrassing errors. Accepting this as inevitable, how do we use the cerebrum to avoid spiraling into those experiences? What strategies can we use to redeem the inevitable and negative judgments of ourselves and others? How do we avoid allowing those experiences to control our lives? I have come to adopt a strategy that I call cerebral reconditioning. It is a type of self-therapy that does more than mask over the emotions and memories. Bad experiences are bad because we don't like the way they turned out. As described by Lewis, Amini and Lannon in A General Theory of Love, the successful therapist walks the patient up to the turning point in the experience, and then gently directs them to another conclusion. That process can proceed in many ways, but a way that I find fruitful, in my self-therapy, is to:
At first such imaginings were laborious. The first turning point was almost never the true turning point. I would pursue alternative paths, and discover that I had not gone deeply enough into the experience to engage the other participant(s) in the beneficial goal that I had hoped to achieve. In other words, I "chickened out", and had to re-enter the process again, this time with greater moral commitment. As I grew stronger, though, I found it easier and easier to come right to the heart of the matter. Over time, I realized an abstract principle that guides me without fail: love. With our story firmly established in our minds, we can attempt to engage the other participants, or their surrogates (e.g. - our current lover). The conversation starts: "Remember when…", leads into: "I wish I had…", and continues: "Would that have made a difference?" We almost never get the response we hope for, but it is the best way of starting a dialog that leads to healing. While this sounds potentially traumatic, the magic of pursuing love at all costs is that everybody wants to be loved. For that reason, when it is tendered, our correspondents almost always walk into our dreams and help us work things out ahead of time - or provide us advance warning that the process should not be pursued. And, in the latter case, that leaves us in control of the terms of the battle for our minds. |
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