“No kind of distress is worse than the feeling you are trapped.”
I feel trapped when there are external conditions that limit me. Every way I turn, I see barriers and impossibilities. Most of the time, though, I manufacture my own barriers and impossibilities.
Here is an example that plays around in my head from time to time. I think about moving to another place instead of where I live right now. This is what happens next:
“I cannot move to (Random Place), because I know no one there. I will be alone. Plus I might not like it there. I will pick a bad neighborhood to live in. The house will be terrible. I might not like the weather. I will have to start from scratch again with my business and I might fail. I will be sad and alone.”
These are made-up reasons, from my own head. I can think of a dozen more reasons to explain to myself why I cannot move to (Random Place). All of them are wrong, and all of them are made up from some kernel of truth.
Yes, I know no one in (Random Place). This is true right now, while I am living where I live. I haven’t even visited (Random Place). How could I possibly make any judgments about the place?
Does the conclusion (“I cannot move to (Random Place) because . . .”) follow from sound premises? Of course not. This is faulty logic. I start from the true assertion that I do not know a soul in (Random Place) and reach the conclusion that I will never have a friend in (Random Place).
Will I forever know no one and be totally alone if I go to (Random Place) and live there? No. When I say it like that it doesn’t make sense.
Etc. Examine every impossibility and see if it comes from your own brain, manufactured from a tiny seed of current truth, but embellished with an enormous amount of speculative fiction.
And isn’t it interesting that the speculative embellishment of the future usually seems to be of the “doom and gloom” variety?
Wouldn’t it be interesting if the brain said instead, “Why not move to (Random Place)? You know what will happen? In two years you will have so many new friends that you won’t have time to take a nap.”
My point here is that I am distressed because I feel trapped by things I think are true, but they are not. They are created by my own thinking, my own imagination. They aren’t real.
I am trapped by my own lies told to myself, which I believe.
How much better would it be to tell myself nothing? Let the future unfold as it will.
Or even better, find the way to self-talk so I experience a future that I truly desire.