Obscurities
If one’s own expectations and fears are not consciously known, but only lived out implicitly, then this always has dysfunctional consequences. One of these is that one’s own assumptions about how a situation is going to develop will, in all likelihood, hold true, (“Of course, in front of my boss I will regret this bitterly!”). This expectation is problematical in itself. However, it becomes even more so, when I am so certain about it, that I feel as if it had already happened. If this happens, I cease to critically check this expectation. In this case we are speaking of an obscurity. Often, one then uses some signal from the environment (“He hardly speaks to me anymore!”), in order to reassure oneself about the correctness of one’s own assumptions. The famous story of Paul Watzlawick about a man who wishes to borrow a hammer from his neighbour (<ahref=”https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anleitung_zum_Ungl%C3%BCcklichsein.” target=”_blank”>Link</a>), illustrates this in a wonderful way. Expectations have great potential to become self-fulfilling prophecies. This is the reason why, in counselling, the process often revolves around becoming aware of these (unconscious) expectations. A person who is fixated on unconscious expectations, must, to a certain extent, ‘unobscure’ himself. He must take into account that his assumptions about the world are not as rational as he has thought, but rather the result of old experiences, that have been stored as expectations in the implicit memory.