Yesterday I posted a video on our tendency to take a specific instance of failure, loss, or rejection and generalize it into a characterization of our identity. We then, with strong emotion, internalize these characterizations and imprint them into our unconscious minds, where they are integrated into our sense of identity unless later purged.
At the gym this morning, Sting’s “Every Little Thing She Does Is Magic” was playing and I picked up on the lines:
But my silent fears have gripped me
Long before I reach the phone
Long before my tongue has tripped me
Must I always be alone
Funny coincidence aside, this really speaks to our tendency to pile misery upon unhappiness (“Must I always be alone”). And once emotional, subjective self-criticisms are embedded in the unconscious mind they’re hard to remove. In the video, I had suggested simply accepting that in the emotional moment we would make the generalizations. Later, however, when emotions had settled, it’s important to do the work to understand what was the actual cause for the incident’s outcome without resorting to subjective criticisms about one’s identity (e.g., “She rejected me because I’m undesirable as a person to anyone”).
His other line, “But my silent fears have gripped me”, speaks also to our tendency to use our imagination for self-limiting purposes, but that’s the subject of another post.