[RoastBeefCurtains4Me]

(09-23-2017 02:19 AM)Paracelsus Wrote:  

^^^^

The old joke among psychiatrists is that therapy produces insight, or therapy produces changes, but never both.

Here's the guts of it, something which has its echoes in Steve Pressfield's book The War Of Art and his observations about resistance: human beings will do just about everything to avoid the mental work of actual change. They will continue their addictions not because they want to continue their habits, but simply because the ego likes things predictable and the same as yesterday, so it makes the change appear harder. A change necessitates a change in who the person is; you can't just give up the bottle, you have to give up being the sort of person who does drink in your own mind. And that change is difficult, and the dark side of ourselves always resists; as Steve Pressfield (maybe with tongue in cheek) noted, Adolf Hitler had wanted to be a painter in his early years. He sucked at it, though. He actually found it easier to start a world war than face a blank canvas knowing he sucked as an artist.

In hindsight, I suspect this is why on the Australian version of The Biggest Loser one of the few success stories who took the weight off and kept it off was a guy who, during one of the cathartic stupid jump-off-a-cliff challenges, kept screaming "The new me!" to push himself through ... and called the weight loss business he ran afterwards by that name. If you change your behaviour, the ego will only accept and foster the change if you force it to accept that you are changing the very person you are.

Therapy invariably involves exploration of why you are the person you currently are. The problem is that finding out you're an alcoholic because your Dad gave you sips from the bottle every weekend but nothing but bitterness otherwise ignores the crucial question that therapy all but seeks to avoid you asking yourself: Okay, so now what?

Narcissism also isn't helped by therapy much because therapy is coming from the idea that identity transcends behaviour. The problem with this is that a narcissist is nothing but themselves (I cringe when I listen to Jim Carrey's cringeworthy pep talk: one of his very lines is "Like you, I was afraid about the idea of going out and doing something bigger than myself. But that's when I realised -- there actually is nothing bigger than myself.)

Indeed one of the tells for a narcissist with a family is that when the condition is pointed out to them, their first response is "I want to stop being a narcissist, I want to change." Not "I'm worried about how I'm hurting my kids with my narcissism." Therapy often makes narcissism worse, not better, because as said, it generates insight or change, but never both ... and narcissists can't do anything with insight alone, because insight is still I. I. I. Me. Me. Me.

It's the same with taking the red pill. If a man is fully bluepill, and has a set of beliefs and values and behavioral patterns that are wrapped up in it, this often goes to the core of his identity. Taking the red pill is often a conversion experience, because you have to reject your previous view of who you are and how you relate to women, and start being a different person.

Of course, just like with therapy, or any other transition from dysfuctional behavior to becoming successfully functional, you still are yourself. Before the conversion experience, you think your dysfunctional pattern is a core of your identity. However, after you lay down whatever dysfunction you've become attached to, you find you still have the same self identity, but now you are stronger and better.

Unfortunately, many are never able to let go of their old identity and break away from whatever dysfunctional pattern they are stuck in. Likewise, most men are unable to take the red pill.