Steve Andreas - Help with Negative Self–talk Volume I

Within a larger context, the problem typically appears much smaller and easier to solve. The additional information included in the big picture may even provide a basis for a solution that wasn't available when focusing exclusively on the problem. If you have ever had a bad leak in a pipe and tried to stop it, expanding your scope to include the main shutoff valve helps tremendously.

Years ago I had a friend who often focused very narrowly. Once we were working together on a truck, putting on a radiator hose. He was busily tightening the metal clamp with a screwdriver, and he was puzzled because the hose was still loose, even after he had been tightening it for some time. Finally the hose started folding and crumpling, and he realized that it had slipped off the metal tube at the back of the radiator. He was so focused on the hose and the clamp that he didn't notice something only a few inches away. On another occasion, he was using a pocketknife to cut a string that bound together a bunch of fruit trees that we were going to plant. He was oblivious to the fact that he was holding the bundle of trees with his left hand; as soon as the knife cut through the string, it would go right into his left hand!

When a doctor has to tell someone bad news about a serious illness, they typically only talk about the problem, and what needs to be done. The person receiving the bad news will usually think of the illness in isolation, and may become very upset. The resulting stress doesn't help them make difficult decisions about treatment alternatives, and also doesn't help them heal.

Now imagine that your doctor did the following, instead: "If we were to take CAT scans or MRIs of your entire body, and put them up on view (gesturing as if putting a series of a dozen or more images up on the translucent viewing screen) we would find that almost all of them would show that your body is functioning in a healthy way, responding quickly and appropriately to any temporary injury or imbalance. Now (gesturing putting up one more image) there is a significant problem in this one area that we need to do something about."

Seeing the illness or injury in relation to all those other images of healthy functioning would create a much broader perspective in which the illness would seem much less significant and less upsetting, and the prospects for treatment recovery would seem much better.

Another kind of perspective is to see an event that occurred in one place and time in relation to another in a different place and time. If someone you care for scowls at you, it would be easy to assume that they are angry with you and become upset. However, if you remember that they lost their job a couple of days ago, you can see their unhappiness in relation to that past event, and perhaps feel some compassion for what they are going through, a very different response that will probably be more useful than getting upset.

Whenever we plan, we think of what we can do now, in relation to how it will influence what will happen later, in a sequence of experiences. "If I leave before 3, I'll avoid rush hour traffic." "If I prepare thoroughly, then I'll be pleased with the result." "If I turn down eating that sweet dessert now, I'll be able to enjoy a slender body that feels good all the time."

Yet another kind of perspective results from seeing an unpleasant event, while simultaneously seeing several pleasant ones. For instance, you can literally see someone's annoying behavior side by side with several images of times when you enjoyed their companionship in different ways. Seeing all those images together at the same time provides a "balanced perspective" that would be lost if you only saw their annoying behavior in isolation.

We also tend to take a problem experience out of the flow of time. If you see a still picture of a problem event, that isolates it from all the events that preceded it and followed it. And since a still picture doesn't change, it seems to last for all eternity, magnifying the unpleasantness. This is something that happens commonly in people who have PTSD or other traumas. While this kind of concentration can sometimes be useful in order to study a problem to see what can be done, a narrow view often leaves out the very information that we need in order to start moving toward a solution.

When you see your partner doing that habit that particularly annoys you, if that is a still picture that fills your field of vision, you have "lost perspective" in this way. If you allow that still picture to expand into a movie that includes what happened

before and what will happen later, you will likely find many, many pleasant events in the past and in the future. When you see that annoying habit embedded in the flow of all the events in this larger time span, it typically seems much less important, less upsetting, and much easier to either accept, or to start working toward a solution.

To summarize, we can gain perspective by seeing an event in relation to its larger context in the moment, in relation to a future event, or a past event, or in the larger flow ofevents that occurred before and after that event. We can gain exactly the same kind of perspective in the auditory system.

For instance, if someone makes a critical comment, and that occupies all your attention, it can be pretty devastating. But if you also recall all the complimentary things that the same person said to you both before and after the critical comment, that expansion of your time frame can put that one comment in perspective. That makes it much easier to hear the critical comment, and then consider if that is something that you can use for feedback. It might be very accurate information about your behavior — even if it is communicated poorly — or it might be only information about the speaker's frustration, and really has very little to do with you. Years ago, my wife and I developed a "strategy for responding to criticism" that is useful in regaining this kind of perspective. (3, ch. 8)

We often focus our "tunnel hearing" on one voice while ignoring their tone of voice, other voices, or all the other background sounds. You can broaden your scope of hearing to include all these sounds around you to provide a larger auditory context: "the big sound" that can create the same kind of perspective as "the big picture."

You can relate what someone says in one place and time to something at another place and time, either from the past to the present, or from the present into the future. Recalling what someone said long ago may be useful to you in the present, or may be helpful in forecasting what someone may say in the future. You may decide to refuse something that a small child wants, "No, you can't have that," and hope to hear later, "Thanks Mom, I'm so glad that you were firm with me; that saved me a lot of trouble."

Hearing one voice surrounded by a number of others will be familiar to anyone who has sung in a chorus. Although usually those in a chorus sing the same words, sometimes with different melodies, some choral works interweave different words as well as different melodies. This creates the same kind of perspective in the auditory system as seeing one image surrounded by others in the visual system. However, since this is something that many people have not learned to do, it can provide a particularly powerful new way of gaining perspective about a voice or sound.

I'd like to demonstrate one way to gain perspective with a troubling voice in the auditory system, using a process I learned years ago from John McWhirter. (18) I don't need to know any content. It can be your own voice, or someone else's voice, or it could even be a sound that has no words with it. (Tim volunteers.)