I'm finding these tiresome fantasies about a life of romance with this famous person seem to have dissipated a bit. I don't know if it's a temporary respite, or if this dissipation of these fantasies represents a substantial, point-of-no-return change for how I think about this famous person. The other night, as I lay in bed in a bummed out state of mind about this situation, I started talking back to my bummer thoughts about the situation. I decided that, 1) I would actually have to spend a substantive amount of real time with the real live famous woman to come to a decision about her romantically and, 2) that I will take responsibility for my own personal happiness and not try to put it off on some famous person I've never met, etc., etc.
These past several days I stood ready to jump ship on this particular deal, but that fizzled. It would have been nice to have someone to talk to and go on dates with, but logistics may have been the culprit on that one. I think my desire to just find a real person to go out with speaks volumes about where my heart and mind resides in regards to this phantom of a presence I've had to deal with these past seven years. I think my demonstrated willingness to jump ship may have helped diminish this psycho, probably-divorced-from-reality flame I have no desire to keep alive at this moment in time.
In the self-help book Feeling Good by Dr. David Burns, he tells of several cases where patients had to come to terms with wayward spouses, elusive boyfriends, or spouses who were reluctant to do things with their afflicted wives, such as go to a museum or take a class. Dr. Burns encourages emotional self reliance in these patients, and gets results that basically tell the same story to a point where the afflicted party feels so good about themselves they state that they don't need the elusive boyfriend or the wayward spouse, and they make whatever decision they wind up making about that person coming from that place mentally and emotionally. He tells of one story where he counsels the abandoned wife to not give her strayed husband shit when he called, and to instead set up a reward system when he did call her. She finds happiness through this process, and the husband leaves his girlfriend and comes back to her.
Several different outcomes pivot off of the emotional self reliance that the author counsels his patients to work towards, depending on the individual circumstances of the patient and what the patient concludes they want to do. That's what I'm going for. I don't want to tell anyone at this moment in time to go jump in the lake, I just want to achieve that sense of self reliance in regards to my own personal happiness.
I think these principals that David Burns talks about in these stories can apply to the absurd situation I find myself in. One thing I've noticed in the days since I re-upped on the idea that I want to take responsibility for my own happiness has to do with just how much of a basis in reality these thoughts I have about this famous woman contain. I see the process of letting go of my convictions about these thoughts' bases in reality as first coming from this willingness to attend to my own happiness and satisfaction with my life, and then reevaluating what exactly I think about what goes on around me in my world, and how that all fits in the larger world that this famous woman inhabits somewhere.
As this sought after outcome of personal happiness seems to unfold before me, it makes sense to me that the process works this way rather than the other way around, that is to say, instead of first debunking these thoughts' bases in reality, then trying to attend to one's needs. It makes sense that it works to attend to one's personal happiness first from the perspective of someone with a mental illness on the inside looking out to the world, rather than someone on the outside looking in to some world of happiness that one can only achieve if one first lets go of the unusual thoughts about someone such as this famous person and where this famous person stands in the world relative to to the afflicted person.
These past several days I stood ready to jump ship on this particular deal, but that fizzled. It would have been nice to have someone to talk to and go on dates with, but logistics may have been the culprit on that one. I think my desire to just find a real person to go out with speaks volumes about where my heart and mind resides in regards to this phantom of a presence I've had to deal with these past seven years. I think my demonstrated willingness to jump ship may have helped diminish this psycho, probably-divorced-from-reality flame I have no desire to keep alive at this moment in time.
In the self-help book Feeling Good by Dr. David Burns, he tells of several cases where patients had to come to terms with wayward spouses, elusive boyfriends, or spouses who were reluctant to do things with their afflicted wives, such as go to a museum or take a class. Dr. Burns encourages emotional self reliance in these patients, and gets results that basically tell the same story to a point where the afflicted party feels so good about themselves they state that they don't need the elusive boyfriend or the wayward spouse, and they make whatever decision they wind up making about that person coming from that place mentally and emotionally. He tells of one story where he counsels the abandoned wife to not give her strayed husband shit when he called, and to instead set up a reward system when he did call her. She finds happiness through this process, and the husband leaves his girlfriend and comes back to her.
Several different outcomes pivot off of the emotional self reliance that the author counsels his patients to work towards, depending on the individual circumstances of the patient and what the patient concludes they want to do. That's what I'm going for. I don't want to tell anyone at this moment in time to go jump in the lake, I just want to achieve that sense of self reliance in regards to my own personal happiness.
I think these principals that David Burns talks about in these stories can apply to the absurd situation I find myself in. One thing I've noticed in the days since I re-upped on the idea that I want to take responsibility for my own happiness has to do with just how much of a basis in reality these thoughts I have about this famous woman contain. I see the process of letting go of my convictions about these thoughts' bases in reality as first coming from this willingness to attend to my own happiness and satisfaction with my life, and then reevaluating what exactly I think about what goes on around me in my world, and how that all fits in the larger world that this famous woman inhabits somewhere.
As this sought after outcome of personal happiness seems to unfold before me, it makes sense to me that the process works this way rather than the other way around, that is to say, instead of first debunking these thoughts' bases in reality, then trying to attend to one's needs. It makes sense that it works to attend to one's personal happiness first from the perspective of someone with a mental illness on the inside looking out to the world, rather than someone on the outside looking in to some world of happiness that one can only achieve if one first lets go of the unusual thoughts about someone such as this famous person and where this famous person stands in the world relative to to the afflicted person.
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