“Now I’m confused!” This reaction to a simple explanation from a counsellor arises, again and again. Suddenly the clients can no longer keep up, lose the thread, no longer understand the simplest correlations, forget what has just been said by the other person etc. The thinking process no longer works properly. What lies at the …
An effective procedure for keeping your distance from as many feelings as possible is to speak intellectually, abstractly and with nice words about yourself (or others). People who behave that way appear very distant, because they, themselves, no longer know how they feel. When in doubt, they explain and justify their behaviour logically and impeccably, …
In destructive contexts, a change in body language and in physical awareness is often necessary for psychological survival. This happens involuntarily: Someone is stooped, is constantly ill, gives the impression he ought not be there, is the bull in the china shop, appears totally tense or unperturbable, moves like a shadow, hardly breathes, talks quietly …
Insisting upon not being able to understand something (“I am simply too stupid for this, and it must not happen to me again!”) is very effective for not changing oneself. There are clients who even consider it an imposition if, as a counsellor, one does not react with indignance to certain aspects of their person. …
Everybody creates that which he fears. Maybe this bundle of avoidance strategies can best be described in this short way. Psychological terms, such as repetition compulsions, script, incomplete shaping, self-created realities, systemic stability roughly mean exactly this phenomenon. Through our own perception we filter out exactly that which conforms to our (unconscious) expectations, and through …
Do you know people who are very difficult to judge, who have a poker face? They are practically ‘unreadable’. It is the expression of an avoidance strategy which controls self-expression behaviour. This creates insecurity in the social environment, or even mistrust, great caution, antipathy and withdrawal. If people have been frequently dominated, misunderstood, emotionally abused, …
One absolutely wide-spread form of avoiding change is wanting to improve yourself. If you are trying to improve yourself, you are fighting a ‘part’ of your soul, which you consider to be inadequate. Considering yourself to be bad, inadequate, wrong or too open, too soft, too vulnerable, too shy, too dumb, too nasty, too greedy, …
When a need is experienced as a problem, distracting oneself as quickly as possible is a good strategy to avoid really wanting something. One inhibits it at the beginning by quickly going to the fridge and eating something, instead of, for example, expressing the wish to be comforted by others. When, unexpected and sometimes inappropriate …
“I know that was bad for me. But that was, after all, yesterday!”. When people know about something, but it has no emotional relevance, it is a massive avoidance strategy in terms of giving past experiences an appropriate meaning. In that case one uses the self-perception process in such a way that one splits off …
Personal responsibility consists of choosing if and how one has influence, i.e. how one experiences oneself as an agent, and where one is the victim. One can utilise the decision-making possibilities to view something, such as rules, norms or prohibitions as ‘set’ and unalterable. In that case, one becomes the victim of a fixed ‘truth’ …