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every statement a person makes about themselves, their lives, the nature of reality etc. has a shadow statement. in order to find it worthwhile to say a thing you must simultaneously be aware of the possibility of it being false, or else it wouldn't even occur to you to say
in some cases the shadow statement is where almost all of the content is. when people say things like "oh i can just be nice to myself" that's fighting against a much larger shadow statement, all the ways it's felt true that they can't be nice to themselves
i like therapeutic techniques centered around saying stuff, admitting things to yourself that feel uncomfortable but seem true, things like that i think a common fear people have about this is that "saying it will make it true," and ime the exact opposite happens if anything
in my experience, both with myself and with clients and friends, admitting the thing out loud expands awareness of the possibility that it might be false. it's very freeing! otoh it's when you never admit the thing that it has the power to control you and become your reality 😬
you can kinda tell when almost everything a person says is an attempt to fight against much larger shadow statements that are what they (or at least a part of them) actually believe. this is probably why byron katie's "turnaround" thing works https://t.co/drWBLs9EaO https://t.co/UHEbo10E6p
@QiaochuYuan https://t.co/HaPT40Ycz0
@QiaochuYuan Borges: The Garden of Forking Paths: He believed in an infinite series of times, in a growing, dizzying net of divergent, convergent and parallel times. We do not exist in the majority of these times; in some you exist, and not I; in others I, and not you; in others, both of us.
@QiaochuYuan yessssssss https://t.co/oCqDCyv0A8
As with choice, my general sense with "commitment" is that if you're tempted to commit to something or say "I'm committed to X" then what this actually means if you're reifying an identification with one part of you, in opposition to some other part of you that you don't trust.