Common steps and sub-activities
Reducing opportunities - list what is bad about the obsessions
Now take every obsession and list everything that was actually not pleasurable about it – every aspect that turned out to be anything but pleasurable. Where a pleasure has been taken away, we are apt to romanticise it and put it in a rosy light, forgetting all the downsides.
Remember in this that you are ‘reasoning’ with your inner child, so keep it simple. Be honest. Be realistic. Also use humour. Come down hard on all the really unpleasurable aspects you can think of – anything in effect that gave the child pain. Use pictures and analogy. Use symbols. Draw pictures too – that helps. I have had to invent a bit here for the example - I only weigh 24 stone really.
Obsession |
Bad things about this ‘pleasure’ |
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Chocolate |
It is bad for your heart – too much fat and sugar, that’s why you weigh 25 stone and can’t sit on a toilet without breaking the seat
It makes you feel sick if you have too much. You have been sick. It wasn’t nice – brown ick all down that tent you call a dress
It gives you acne and you look ugly – really ugly - like a cabbage patch dolly with pock marks |
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Love |
Aaah but love is never permanent it can be taken away very easily. It has been, don’t you remember? Think of the hurt that caused
Even those you love and who have loved you, can go – leave or die. Everything dies – do not forget everything dies.
Human love and even animal love is very fickle. Are you sure they loved you or did they just love what you did for them? Sometimes what you think is love is only an expression of gratitude for you giving pleasure to them, they don’t actually love you, they love what you do for them.
Think of the hours, months and years you have wasted crying when love was taken away by another human being, what a waste of a life that was
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