some of us belong to a social group politely known as warriors that is we are close to panic on a range of issues pretty much all the time we worry that the scratch on our knee will turn cancerous that will catch a deadly disease from touching the hotel
door that all our savings might disappear in a random economic disaster and that our enemies could spread rumors that will forever disgrace and demean us so overwhelming and debilitating can these fears become we may be advised by well-meaning friends that we should probably go and visit a psychotherapist
in haste in order to calm ourselves here we're likely to learn a lot of very reassuring things in particular that none of our powerful fears is really any kind of reflection on what's likely to happen in the real world the scratch on the knee is just a scratch
there isn't about to be some global catastrophe there isn't some disease that's going to wipe us all out the hotel door is blameless we're not going to be financially ruined no one is properly interested in humiliating us and so on and so forth we learn to make a
distinction between our inner world and the outer world the first filled with terror and apprehension the second emerging as a far more benign indifferent and easygoing place we also learn if we read a little psychotherapeutic theory why there should in some of us be such a dislocation between
the inner and outer worlds it comes down to a theory about childhood some of us had childhoods that were so disturbed and cruel so filled with shame and loneliness that they have colored our view of the whole of life we assume that things will always be as bad
as they once were the task of psychotherapy is then to start to show us how powerfully and negatively biased our perceptions are and that the adult realm actually contains far fewer demons than we thought and far more opportunity solace and forgiveness we learn that the catastrophe we feared
would happen has in fact safely already happened we get a lot better but then if we're unlucky at key moments in our lives we may run into a range of harrowing events that threaten to upend everything we carefully learn to believe in and that make a mockery of
the soothing voices we've come to trust suddenly in spite of our best efforts to be resilient and sane we learn that we are in fact facing a mortal illness or after slowly overcoming a compulsive hand-washing fetish we're told that a germ truly might kill us after all Oh
despite our attempts to explore our sexuality with courage we learn that some enemies really do want to humiliate us for the pleasures we've pursued in confusion and bitterness we may turn against therapy and its naive view of reality and cry bitterly see it really is as bad as
I always thought it was I suspected that life was hell and it really is Oh as one comic is reputed to have had inscribed on their gravestone I told you this wasn't just a cough this may sound like the moment when all attempts at psychotherapeutic calm or an
emotional maturity and wisdom more broadly should fairly come to an end but once we've endured the initial panic we can actually insist that this need be nothing of the sort we can strive for wisdom despite or even in the midst of a range of the most awful external
eventualities we should be clear on what's at stake psychotherapy does not promise us that nothing will ever go wrong in our lives again it can't remove intractable evils what it can do however is to teach us a variety of mental maneuvers that will render those evils death among
them a great deal less painful and persecutory than they would otherwise have been there are better and worse ways to enjoy the afflictions we cannot avoid there are ways of interpreting disasters that add a whole new layer of pain and fear to them and others that while they
don't magic away the chaos at least remove its secondary aggravating characteristics let's consider two of the things that those of us with a choppy inner life and probably a difficult past may quite unfairly tell ourselves when we run into the difficulties of life and compare it with what
wiser voices might propose firstly this is going to be the end of everything it doesn't take very much when you've already felt a disaster or to rock your world at an early age to know in your bones what's coming next when a problem hits death is clearly nigh
there isn't going to be any safe way out of this debacle it's all over but however counterintuitive this might sound even in a pandemic one may be exaggerating even with a cancer diagnosis one may be losing perspective the outer world can be bad very bad and still the
inner world can be making it worse may be adding yet more fear yet more dread and more of a sense of doom than would be strictly necessary not every calamity is the end and not every end need to be a deluge some of us will have enjoyed the
blessing of that essential figure of early childhood the soothing adult a toy broke and it seemed it was a misery beyond compare we wailed we screamed we call death upon ourselves nothing so bad had ever been seen but then a kindly adult came took us in their arms
and said I know I know and held us so tightly until our tears abated and then in a calm and loving voice they plotted with us how we might repair things perhaps there'd be a similar toy in another shop maybe we could get some glue and have a
go at fixing the head back on maybe there'd be a way of playing with it even if it had only one leg and so gradually we recovered a taste for life and kept on going and many decades later when disaster strikes once more we're able to call on
that voice of the kindly parental figure and give ourselves more options certainly it is bad but think of how much remains perhaps we can pick up the pieces and begin anew maybe the horror will end there might just be a small solution and even if there isn't the
kindly voice gives us a sense that everything can be okay anyway even dying can be coped with for maybe the original owner of that calm voice approached their end a few years back with serenity and good humor and we can now emulate that in turn not even death
has to be a disaster you deserve all the bad things that happen to you for some of us it isn't just that bad things happen to us bad things happen to us because we are bad people we suffer because we deserve to suffer and we deserve to suffer
because we are to put it relatively mildly pieces of it feels natural to turn whatever is negative and might have been entirely accidental into a verdict on us and on our right to be we have such reservoirs of shame and self-loathing that when we suffer a reversal we
don't only end up for example sick or broke or abandoned in love we hear a voice in our heads that at once adds immeasurably to the misery a voice that tells us that we are aside from on our own and in a cold rented room also a mistake
that should never have been born no one doubts that sometimes people go broke no one doubts that love lives can go wrong but not everyone who goes broke or has a bad marriage ends up feeling that they are the worst person in the world and that the leading
option must be to kill themselves for some of us we aren't just our worst moments we can exist outside of our foolishness no error we make ever puts us entirely beyond the pale we may be in prison most of our friends may have left us but we still
know we've got lovable sides someone could in theory still see past our sins and love us we tend to believe that the difference between a good and a bad life must lie strictly in the quality of the events that befall people but to a surprising extent the difference
actually lies in the way each of us is able to interpret events there are newly convicted prisoners newly condemned patients and freshly diagnosed plague victims who know how not to add shame persecution self-hatred and unbounded panic to their already considerable burdens there are those of us who know
how to incorporate a soothing commentary to a battlefield who can tell ourselves in the middle of an inferno that we do not deserve this that a lot can be fixed that we are still lovable there is an old misanthropic joke that goes just because you're paranoid doesn't mean
someone's not following you the true retort to this grim wisecrack would be and even if someone is following you that doesn't mean you deserve it or that it has to be the end of you and in a related move just because there is a plague doesn't mean you're
gonna die and just because you're going to die doesn't mean you can't ever grow to accept your non-existence with a measure of dark humor and serenity even at the end of the world there will be some of us taking it worse than others some of us who will
feel that they deserve it that this means they're disgusting and wretched and that none of the beautiful staff ever meant anything and there will be others who will be greeting catastrophe without catastrophizing the good news is that long before the planet expires with a little help from therapy
and philosophy we have the capacity to move ourselves into the wiser camp the camp of those who can endure difficult things without adding a further critical persecutory commentary those of us who are able in the face of the most awful events to soothe themselves with the kindness and
empathy of the gentlest parent calming down the sobs of the distressed and frightened child we all once were and at some level all remain our online shop has a range of books and gifts that address the most important and often neglected areas of life click now to learn
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